Anonymous tracts, namely “A Dolorous Discourse of a most terrible and
bloudy Battel fought in Barbarie” ( 1579 ) and “Strange newes out of Affrick”
(referenced by Gosson in 1586 , but lost), sensationalized the event, drawing
on eyewitness accounts (available on the continent) written by Portuguese
and Spanish survivors.^3 George Whetstone’s English Myrror( 1586 ) and John
Polemon’s Second part of the booke of Battailes( 1587 ) wrote Alcazar into history—
in Whetstone’s case, exemplary English history. John Florio’s translation of
Montaigne’s essay “Against Idlenesse, or Doing Nothing” ( 1600 ) sanctified
Abd el-Malek as a moral champion who “stoutly” and “vigorously” made
“use” of his “undanted [sic] courage,” and who “caused himselfe to be carryed
and haled, where-ever neede called for him” while “he was even dying,” “lest
the souldiers hearing of his death, might fall into dispaire.”^4 Thomas Stuke-
ley became something of a cult figure, appearing in a number of English
ballads, chapbooks, pamphlets, and tracts.^5 For decades after Alcazar, as well,
a devoted cadre of “Sebastianists” in Portugal, Spain, and England resurrected
the Portuguese king in tracts such as “The Strangest Adventure that Ever
Happened” (translated by Anthony Munday, 1601 ) and “A Continuation of
the Lamentable and Admirable Adventures of Don Sebastian” ( 1603 ).^6 And as
late as 1633 , the English would still be reading Abd el-Malek’s story in John
Harrison’s The Tragicall Life and Death of Muley Abdala Melek, the hero of the
Moroccan civil war persisting as a marketable topic of English discourse,
outliving the local circumstances that defined his life and immediate textual
afterlife.^7
The events at Alcazar also provided the ground for the very first repre-
sentation of Moors on the early modern English stage. As best we can tell,
in 1588 – 89 , just after Marlowe had astounded English audiences with his
inimitable Tamburlaine, George Peele produced The Battle of Alcazar, fea-
turing the conflict between the “barbarous Moor,” the “negro Muly
Hamet” (or “Muly Mahamet”), and Abdelmelec, the “brave Barbarian
lord” ( 1 Pro. 6 – 7 , 12 ).^8 Peele’s play might have been preceded or followed by
another on the same subject, Muly Molocco(ca. 1580 – 90 )—the name Peele
and others give to Abd el-Malek—which is listed in Henslowe’s Diaryand
which might be either Peele’s play under a different name or another Al-
cazar play altogether.^9 And not only did Alcazar provide the dramatic pre-
cursors for Aaron, Eleazar, and Othello; after Peele, the battle and its
non-Moorish characters continued to be reanimated or invoked on the
early modern stage. The Famous History of Captain Thomas Stukeley( 1605 )
traces the fortunes of the Englishman Stukeley, from their highly question-
22 chapter one