and England’s—interest in Alcazar as an interest in him.^34 Joseph Candido,
after him, proposed Alcazar’s representation of the “charismatic and contro-
versial” Stukeley as the starting point for “Tudor ‘biographical’ drama,” and
the surrounding Moroccan history, merely the “panoramic backdrop against
which [his] life... is brought into relief.”^35 Scholars have treated Sebastian
similarly, as a signpost for the playing out of England’s national politics, un-
derscoring Sebastian’s ties to “the English house of Lancaster” and under-
standing Peele’s invocation of Moroccan history as “exotic” or incidental.^36
Criticism on Alcazar’s racial dimensions brought attention to the Moor, but
it has focused primarily on Muly, reading him in isolation from Morocco’s
complex history. In Barthelemy, for example, the “mimetic historical drama”
that embeds the allegorically demonized Muly only works to validate, in a
“real” world, the association of Moors and blacks with “the devil.”^37 Even
while Matar places England’s interactions in Barbary in the foreground of Al-
cazar, he singles out “the evil Muly Mahamet” as “the formative Moor in En-
glish dramatic imagination,” arguing that this “Negroid, evil, anti-Christian
and ruthless” figurehead, alongside “the dangerous Muly Mahamet Seth” and
Stukeley, “bring[s]...home” to England “the danger of political and military
entanglement with Moors.”^38
Yet although Alcazarstarts provincially, with a locally grounded and dra-
matically archaic revenge play, and although it produces a provocative series
of nationally embraceable heroes, as its political geography expands the play
presses significantly against the bounds of history, genre, race, and nation. On
Peele’s stage, Barbary provides a setting where not only Moors but also Turks,
Spaniards, Portuguese, and an Englishman “perform, in view of all the world”
(Alcazar 1. 1. 27 ). And as they do, the play explores the dynamic, if unpre-
dictable, interconnections that were shaping the Mediterranean. Within the
space of Barbary, the ideals of nationalism necessarily give way, and what
emerges in their stead is not a “tangled web” but an evolving cross-cultural en-
vironment, contingent on political alliances and exchange, with the Moor
providing the central model and means.
In dramatizing the Moroccan conflict, Peele seems initially to define the
competing Moors through an easily readable, color-coded, moral divide. On
the one side is the “black” and “barbarous” “negro” Moor, Muly Mahamet,
who has usurped the Moroccan throne; on the other is the rightful king, the
“brave Barbarian lord,” Abdelmelec, defined by class and country rather than
skin color, who is set (and sure) to reclaim his politically anointed place. Be-
fore the play proper begins, the Presenter underscores the difference between
30 chapter one