***It is no small point, and no coincidence, that the very first representation of
Moors on the early modern stage takes its bearing from this complex, globally
oriented history. Othello, the Moor of Venice, is no anomaly. From Alcazarto
Othello, the Moor stands pivotally at the intersection of European and non-
European cultures. The Battle of Alcazaris, to be sure, a creaky and erratic play;
the earliest text we have (a 1594 quarto) may even be a shortened performance
script.^32 A choric Presenter introduces—and imposes moral judgments
upon—each act. In preparing the way for the first, he scrolls through Muly
Mahamet’s murderous usurpation of Moroccan throne and, with the aid of
two dumb shows, sets the stage for a classical revenge play, insisting that
“Nemesis, high mistress of revenge” calls for vengeance against the “traitor-
king” ( 1 Pro. 35 , 42 ). Accordingly, the first act starts with Abdelmelec’s campaign
to avenge his wrongs and “re-obtain [his] right” ( 1. 1. 83 ) and ends with his tri-
umph and Muly’s angry retreat to a “blasted grove,” where he self-indulgently
licks his political wounds ( 1. 2. 81 ). With Act Two, however, the dramatic terrain
shifts radically into what G. K. Hunter has termed a “tangled web of Realpoli-
tik.”^33 While Abdelmelec celebrates his victory, Muly Mahamet decides to gar-
ner new forces and fight back, enlisting the aid of the Portuguese king
Sebastian, who enlists the aid of the English venturer Thomas Stukeley, who is
leading Catholic troops to Ireland. With the Presenter’s announcement, “now
begins the game” ( 2 Pro. 52 ), the action that unfolds is at once a political history,
tracing the second triumph of Abdelmelec and the rise of Muly Mahamet Seth
(el-Mansur), and a moral tragedy, centered on Sebastian (whom the Presenter
glorifies) and his tragic entanglement in the “wily” Muly’s “dangerous war”
( 5 Pro. 3 – 4 ). And within the interstices of these dramas erupt the outlandish ac-
tions of Thomas Stukeley, who temporarily steals the show in its—and his—
final moments, recounting the full “story of [his] life” while “brave Sebastian’s
breathless corse” lies unattended ( 5. 1. 178 , 72 ).
The unorthodox mix of genres, convoluted display of Moroccan history,
and repeated shifts in focus from one main character to the next have baffled
critics, with the result that analyses of the play have tended to distill select na-
tionally and racially edged preoccupations from the dramatic chaos, to em-
phasizeAlcazar’s (and Alcazar’s) story as Stukeley’s, Sebastian’s, or Muly’s.
Thorlief Larsen, who initially set the terms for the criticism on Peele’s play in
1939 , valorized the real and imagined Stukeley as a “man of dare-devil courage,
of boundless energy, and of magnanimous temper,” and he also read Peele’s—
Enter Barbary 29