ABSTRACT

Early in Robert Daborne's A Christian Turned Turk, Agar, Voada, and Rabshake discuss the physical and religious constitution of Dansiker. Solyman and Perseda is an important play to consider in this regard because of its early performance date in the history of early modern English theatrical encounters with Islam, as well as because of its expanded meditation on both the body of the European convert to Islam and the religious rite of circumcision. Like race and gender, religion played an integral part in defining Englishness, since part of being English was to be Christian as opposed to Jewish or Muslim. Although differences between Muslims and Christians are marked in various ways throughout Solyman and Perseda, it is in the character of the miles gloriosus. The renegade's religion was certainly a cause of anxiety in the period, not only because the English saw more of their own converting to Islam than they saw Muslims converting to Protestantism.