straight and fly” ( 5. 1. 96 – 97 ). But instead of flying or fighting, he reiterates his
hope for vengeance, imagining now that he will meet the newly dead Abdel-
melec in hell and take revenge finally on his soul. If Muly’s final moment dis-
places Sebastian’s, Stukeley’s disassociated autobiographical outburst displaces
both, with the result that the moral tragedy loses its focus and its edge.
As the contenders’ saga ends thus with a spectacular, internally vexed,
thud, what prevails in its stead is Morocco’s political theater, where Muly Ma-
hamet Seth, like Abdelmelec before him, deftly negotiates lines of difference
and, unlike his opponents, actively accommodates “all the world.” In the final
scenes, instead of closing Morocco’s borders or invading Portugal’s, the victo-
rious Moor orders his Portuguese prisoners to recover Sebastian’s body, and
when they bring it forth, he seizes the moment to honor the “earth and
clay / Of him that erst was mighty King of Portugal” ( 5. 1. 222 – 23 ). His eulogy
anticipates similarly climactic moments, such as Marc Antony’s public adula-
tion of Brutus as that “noblest Roman of them all” in Julius Caesar( 5. 5. 68 ),
and Fortinbras’s arguably dubious reconstruction of Hamlet as one who
would “have prov’d most royal” “had he been put on” (Hamlet 5. 2. 397 – 98 ). In
Shakespeare, the opportunism of these gestures, which come only when the
valorized subjects can no longer flex their political muscles, is glaring: after the
adulation is done, Antony obliterates Brutus’s dreams of a managed republic
by supporting an insidious oligarchy (which he hopes to head), and Fortin-
bras claims Denmark for Norway. Here is power using subversion to advance
itself. In honoring “the mighty king of Portugal,” however, Muly Seth undoes
the terms of antagonism that Sebastian’s “holy Christian wars” have imposed
and establishes new grounds for connection, if not alliance ( 2. 4. 135 ). Where
Sebastian, in repeatedly announcing his aim to “fight for Christ,” codes the
Moors as misbelievers ( 3. 1. 31 ), Muly Seth gives the conquered Portuguese
Christians apparently due place: he not only allows them to “return from
hence to Christendom” ( 5. 1. 225 ); he also orders his lords to “tread a solemn
march, / Trailing their pikes and ensigns on the ground, / So to perform
the...funerals” of “this Christian king” ( 5. 1. 256 , 258 – 69 ). To be sure, Peele’s
representation of the Moors’ religious affiliation is inconsistent throughout.
Abdelmelec, for one, explicitly gives “God” “due thanks” and acts “in sight of
heaven” in some places ( 1. 1. 5 , 62 ) while invoking implicitly pagan “gods of
heaven” ( 2. 1. 20 ) in others. Still, Muly Seth’s valorization of Sebastian’s Chris-
tian body creates an important political bridge, emphasizing the compatibil-
ity between Barbary and Christendom, the Moroccans and the Portuguese.
This integrating tribute to the defeated king of Portugal is, in fact, sand-
42 chapter one