The Battle of Alcazar - Analysis

Analysis

The Battle of Alcazar is a five-act non-fiction play that tells the story of the battle. Like Shakespeare's Henry V (1599), it is narrated by a Chorus who describes the action in terms far more heroic than it warrants: King Sebastian of Portugal is referred to as "an honourable and courageous prince", but is in fact shown to be foolish in invading Morocco, having been duped by Mulai Mohammed, who is presented as a Machiavellian villain.

The enemy, led by "Muly Mahamet" (Abd al-Malik), are depicted sympathetically. The play's portrayal of the Moroccan leader has been singled out as "the first full dramatic treatment of a black Moor on the English Stage...." (Peele's orientation can be understood as anti-Spanish, and rather pro-Moroccan, within the historical context of contemporary attempts at an Anglo-Moroccan alliance between Elizabeth I of England and the Moroccan Sultan Ahmad al-Mansur.)

The primary protagonist in the play is Thomas Stukeley, presented as a larger-than-life figure driven by ambition: he is given a soliloquy on his desire to be a king which very probably influenced Shakespeare in writing the Duke of Gloucester's similar speech in Henry VI, Part 3. Peele may have chosen to treat Stukeley as he does in an attempt to create a hero compable to Marlowe's Tamburlaine, which was the great theatrical success of the late 1580s. (Peele wrote a poem,"A Farewell to Norris and Drake," in which he links Stukeley and Tamburlaine: "proud tragedians...mighty Tamburlaine,/ King Charlemagne, Tom Stukeley....")

Critics contend that the primary protagonist is determined by the reader's socio-political predilection. Thus, one might argue that Sebastian or Philip are alternative protagonists due to their significant religious and political involvement in the text. However, Abdelmelec (a fair skinned Moor) and his usurping nephew Muly Mahamet (a dark skinned Moor) are regularly recognised as central to the racial discourse that Alcazar is fundamentally concerned with.

Compared to Shakespeare's Othello, a later early modern play, Alcazar does not contain many explicit references to racial difference. This can be seen as a refining of the shades of racial difference in the early modern period. Whereas Muly Mahamet is defined by vague racial stereotypes in keeping with early modern racial ideology, Othello's racial difference is solely defined (radicalised by a treacherous Iago) by the colour of his skin, and many characters in the later play exhibit their own racial stereotypes through their astonishment at Othello's contradicting them.

The "plot" or plan for the Admiral's Men's production still exists, as MS. Add. 10,449, fol. 3, in the collection of the British Museum. Though damaged, the plot reveals most of the cast of the production, which included Edward Alleyn and Samuel Rowley among other members of the company. In comparing the plot to the play, W. W. Greg determined that the plot requires a larger cast than the printed version of the play does; he argued that the printed text was cut down from its original length to accommodate a smaller-scale production. Other scholars agree that the 1594 text was shortened, though the reason for that shortening has been disputed.

Peele was not the only English playwright to dramatize the story of Sebastian. A lost play, Sebastian, King of Portugal, was performed by the Admiral's Men in 1601. Massinger's Believe as You List (1631) was originally about Sebastian; Massinger shifted the play's setting to ancient Greece after the first version was suppressed. In the Restoration era, John Dryden wrote Don Sebastian (1689) on the same subject.