ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways Roxolana, first bondswoman and later the wife of Sultan Suleiman I, is imaginatively recreated in the figure of Queen Tota, wife to Mullisheg, King of Fez, in Thomas Heywood's Fair Maid of the West, or A Girl worth Gold. It explores the ways in which the Moorish Queen simultaneously represents the antithesis of Bess Bridges, 'the fair maid of the West', but, more dangerously, Tota also provides a role model for the queen-like tavern maid. The chapter explores that Heywood's geographic drama, The Fair Maid of the West, offers different political opinions about the dangers of female rule. The Fair Maid of the West follows the adventures of the upwardly mobile virtuous tavern maid Bess Bridges. At the beginning of the play, we see Bess besieged by male customers and suitors in the tavern, The Castle in Plymouth, where she works.
