their “blood” ( 3. 2. 30 ), he nonetheless, “in pity to the Portugal,” appoints “se-
cret messengers to counsel” that misguided king ( 3. 2. 10 – 11 ). These efforts ap-
parently go unattended (we hear no further of them), but the Moor’s
diplomacy and perspicacity underscore the limits of Sebastian’s—and the lim-
its of Sebastian’s, the extent and expediency of the Moor’s. Focused only on
his own advancement, the Portuguese king waits futilely in Cadiz for support,
while Philip (who did assist, historically) “pretends a sudden fear and care to
keep / His own from Amurath’s firece invasion”—one which, if it has threat-
ened at all, has already been circumvented by Spain’s alliance with Abdelmelec
( 3. 3. 36 – 37 ). Some fifteen years after Alcazar,The Famous Historybuilds this
invented military abstention into a devious and decisive plot: there, Philip
promises troops only to set his Portuguese rival up for the kill, withdrawing
at the last minute and leaving Sebastian in Barbary and in danger, without ad-
equate arms.^53 In Peele, however, Philip never appears; the emphasis is rather
on Sebastian, who, because of his “ambitious wiles,” “poison’d eyes” ( 3 Pro. 20 )
and, as Abdelmelec puts it, “deceiving hope” ( 3. 2. 1 ) for power, overlooks the
political agendas of his rivals, and on Abdelmelec, who, in contrast, does not.
It is, not coincidentally, when Sebastian coerces Stukeley to abort his in-
vasion of Ireland and join the Portuguese campaign in Morocco that the play
challenges the logic and integrity of nationalism most explicitly, linking it to
an imperialist platform that is at once self-serving and self-defeating. In a ges-
ture that can only be ironic, Sebastian pressures the Englishman to change
course by glorifying the supreme right of the English queen and the invulner-
ability of her kingdom (which includes Ireland). Presenting Elizabeth’s “seat”
as “sacred, imperial, and holy,” “shining with wisdom, love, and mightiness”
( 2. 4. 109 – 10 ), he insists that neither “nature that everything imperfect made”
nor “fortune that never yet was constant found” nor “time that defaceth every
golden show” can “decay, remove, or her impair,” but rather “bless and serve
her royal majesty” ( 2. 4. 111 – 16 ). On every side, England is supported by natu-
ral defenses—by “wallowing oceans” and “raging floods” which “swallow up
her foes, / And on the rocks their ships in pieces split,” by “the narrow Britain-
sea,” “where Neptune sits in triumph to direct / Their course to hell that aim
at her disgrace,” by “the German seas,” “where Venus banquets all her water-
nymphs” ( 2. 4. 117 – 19 , 123 – 27 )—with the important consequence that “danger,
death, and hell” will “follow” “all that seek to danger” this blessed island or
blessed queen ( 2. 4. 132 – 33 ). “Were every ship ten thousand on the seas, /
Mann’d with the strength of all the eastern kings, / Conveying all the mon-
archs of the world,” Sebastian argues, “T’invade the island where her highness
36 chapter one