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No
western author expressed Europe's
fascination with any aspect of Arabism in
a more dramatic and poetic form than did
Shakespeare. Among his most attractive
characters two are Arabs or, as he calls
them, "moors"-Othello, from the
play of the same name and the Prince of
Morocco, one of the noblest figures in The
Merchant of Venice. The prince,
modeled on the great Sultan Ahmed
al-Mansur, shows a royal dignity
expressed in words of great nobility.
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Shakespeare
was by no means alone in falling under
the spell of Moorish subjects. In his Tamburlaine
the Great of 1587, Christopher
Marlowe introduces the "Kings of
Moroccus and Fez." A year later, a
certain Ed. White published A Brief
Rehearsal of the Bloody Battle in
Barbary; in 1594, George Peel's play,
The Battle of Alcazar, was
produced in London, and, shortly
afterwards, an anonymous author Ro. C.
published a history of Morocco entitled, A
True Discourse of Muley Hamet's Death.
The Oriental fashion, in which Arab
elements were often confused with Persian
and Indian, persisted through most of the
nineteenth century when Victor Hugo could
write: "In the age of Louis XIV all
the world was Hellenistic; now it is
Orientalist" (Preface to [£5
Orientales). While The Thousand
and One Nights did not alone create
this romantic flood, it greatly widened
the scope of European literature and
enriched its imagery and language,
providing a focus for Europe's yearning
for the exotic and stimulating latent
interests among its intellectuals.
Arabic literature, in addition to being
the crowning artistic and intellectual
achievement of the Arabs, also represents
one of their most enduring legacies to
the West. It is an aspect of the Arab
heritage which, though often neglected or
given to cursory description, offers
important insights toward a fuller
understanding of Arab culture and its
contributions.
We find Arab names and Arab settings in
the famous Aucassin et Nicoletie and
Arab echoes even in Boccaccio's Decameron.
Chaucer's Squires Tales uses a
theme brought to Europe by Italian
merchants who had traded in the Middle
East. And, of course, there is the most
famous medieval work of literature,
Dante's Divine Comedy, replete
with details from the story of the
Prophet Muhammad's ascension to heaven,
and details culled from the Meccan
Revolution by the great Arab mystic
Ibn Arabi.
Perhaps no work of Arabic literature has
stirred western imagination as much as The
Thousand and One Nights, popularly
known as The Arabian Nights. A
collection of separate stories~xciting,
romantic, amusing and always highly
entertain- |
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Whereas the
Prince of Morocco is but a minor character in The
Merchant of Venice, Othello completely
dominates the drama to which his name is given. A
man of unbounded passion, this moor "who
comes from a land of deserts, rocks and hills
whose heads touch heaven" (an obvious
reference to the Atlas Mountains)-is also a
paragon of loyalty, courage, honesty, and
possessed of a nobility rendered more striking by
contrast with the infamy of the 'white' lago. To
the present day, experts acquainted with the
moorish character are amazed at the insight with
which Shakespeare delineated Othello.
In the London of Queen
Elizabeth I, Morocco was very much "in the
news." Among the founders of the
"Barbary Company," an association of
London merchants trading with Morocco, we find
the Earl of Leicester, one of the bard's patrons;
it was from his many Barbary-merchant friends
that Shakespeare obtained much information of
Morocco and its people. Altogether we find more
than sixty references to Barbary (Morocco) in
Shakespeare's plays.
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