ABSTRACT
It is now a simple matter to rescue Alcazar from the implications of Greg’s fanciful reduction o f its cast to twelve. W hen we apply to this text the principles we have applied to others, it appears that there is no foundation at all for the idea. The Plotter calls for seventeen actors, and even if we follow his example by doubling the Queen o f Morocco with Christopher de Tavora, and make things a little easier for ourselves by casting the M oor’s son as a boy, we cannot reduce the adult cast required by the text below sixteen. Even then we will be in difficulties finding soldiers. The text, as we have seen, contains crucial scenes, and shows itself to be prescient about patterns o f doubling that justify our counting the cast as of standard size. But it will not be easily fitted. In the original performance represented by the text, sometime about 1588 or 1589, there must have been a fair complement o f boys. At I, ii, 230-3 , we are treated to a description of the previous scene in which we are told that Abdilmelec’s arrival at Tremissen was greeted by ‘many Dames of Fesse in mourning weeds’. They do not appear in stage-directions, except perhaps as ‘others’ and ‘the Ladies’, but they are addressed at I, i, 123 , and told to wipe their tears away. They must surely have been intended to appear; but there is not a sign of them in the Plot. Then, soldiers are needed for the first scene, to be addressed as ‘ ye Moors ’. W ith sixteen men we can produce four actors (nos. 10 , 1 1 , 15 , and 16 in the skeleton castplan on p. 244), but only if we had eighteen could we allow any o f these to be black, as is their leader Zareo. Once again, the Plotter can provide no Moorish troops at all.
