Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire by Chloë Houston (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire by Chloë Houston
• Bernadette Andrea (bio)

Chloë Houston. Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. xii + 295 + 1 b/w illus. $129.99 hardback, $109.99 eBook.

With increasing attention in early modern studies to English representations of Persia/Iran—both as an “imaginative geography” (to borrow Edward Said’s concept from Orientalism) transmitted via translations of classical Greek sources and as a vibrant economic, military, and political empire coeval with England’s nascent global ambitions—Houston’s book is the first to offer a synoptic view of dramatic renderings from the early decades of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century. This time span covers the initial stirrings of the English Reformation, the anxious transition to a “female king” with Elizabeth I, some of the earliest English travelers in Safavid Iran and their quixotic attempt to establish an Anglo-Persian alliance, the political challenges pre- and post-Interregnum, and the constitutional crisis pre- and post-Glorious Revolution. While assessing plays that have received more critical attention — such as Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Parts 1 and 2 (1587–88) and John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins’s The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607)—Houston also adduces lesser known writers and genres to give a fuller picture of English understandings of “Persia,” both ancient (Achaemenid) and contemporary (Safavid). This breadth of engagement with English drama in the period—including interludes, closet drama, and stage plays—makes for a book that anyone who deals with any portion of the early modern Anglo-Persian encounter should consult.

Chapter 1, “Introduction: The Imagined Empire,” maps out this vast terrain starting with the itinerary of Robert Brancetour, a man born in England who, in the 1530s, travelled to the court of the Safavid shah, Tahmasp I, as part of a multicultural caravan to propose an alliance against the Ottoman Turks. His partner, who died en route, was an Italian. After completing this journey, Brancetour worked for the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, who was also king of Spain. Ten years later, the English king, Henry VIII, through his ambassador, Sir Thomas Wyatt, sought the return of Brancetour. As Houston explains, “Brancetour was viewed as a traitor because he had attempted to incite some Englishmen in Spain to rebel against Henry” during the fraught decades that saw Henry’s break with the Church of Rome (4). Charles V knew Brancetour as “he that hath been in Perse,” and refused to repatriate him to England for punishment. [End Page 486] The questions this episode provokes—“When Wyatt wrote ‘Perse’ in his letter in 1540, what did that word mean to him and to his English reader? What images did it conjure, and where did they come from?” (4)—frame Houston’s capacious study.

The rest of the book is divided into three sections arranged chronologically: “Tudor Plays of Persia,” covering 1530 to 1588; “Plays of Persia in the Stuart Period and the Inter-Regnum,” roughly from 1603 to 1660; and “Restoration Plays of Persia,” covering the rest of the seventeenth century. Chapter 2 focuses on an anonymous interlude from around 1530, The Godly Queene Hester, initially meant for Katherine of Aragon. The Persian court is presented as neither uniformly negative nor positive; rather, it serves as a mirror for princes and a conduct book for women. Printed in 1561, and perhaps performed then, this play of Persia was repurposed for the new sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, on both counts. Building on this close reading and careful contextualization, Chapter 3 focuses on non-canonical plays from the Elizabethan era—the anonymous Kyng Daryus (1565) and Thomas Preston’s Cambises (c. 1560)—that have been sidelined by Marlowe’s achievement in Tamburlaine. It is not incidental that the second documented Englishman at the Safavid court—Anthony Jenkinson, an agent of the Russia Company and envoy for Queen Elizabeth, who met Shah Tahmasp in 1562—had rekindled interest in contemporary Iran even as the “imaginative geography” from earlier interludes persisted. In Chapter 4, by pairing Marlowe’s canonical play with...