A Christian Turn'd Turk

"A Christian Turn'd Turk" (1612) is a play by the English dramatist Robert Daborne. It concerns the conversion of the pirate John Ward to Islam.

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on February 1, 1612 (new style), and was published in quarto later that year by the bookseller William Barrenger. The text features an Epistle to the Reader, a Prologue and an Epilogue, all by the author. [Chambers, E. K. "The Elizabethan Stage." Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 271.]

In the Epilogue, Daborne appears to claim a hand in the authorship of the play "If It Be Not Good, the Devil Is in It," a drama normally attributed to Thomas Dekker. There is no supporting evidence for Daborne's claim. [Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. "The Popular School: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama." Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1975; p. 28.]

In the play, that Ward converts to Islam in order to marry Voada, a beautiful Turkish woman with whom he has fallen in love. Ward's conversion to Islam (portrayed in dumbshow) is contrasted with the repentance and pardon of Simon Dansiker, the other pirate captain in the play (also shown in dumbshow). Dansiker's reform is complicated by the reluctance of the French merchants he's robbed to accept him—until he returns to Tunis to apprehend the renegade Jew Benwash. The unrepentant Ward dies at the end of the play—though he delivers an anti-Muslim rant that conforms to the prejudices of the play's original audience. (This was a large leap of dramatic license on Daborne's part, since the real Ward would die eleven years after the play was written.) [Hoenselaars, A. J. "Images of Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries." Madison/Teaneck, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992; p. 173.]

Daborne based his plot on two popular pamphlets published in 1609. Edmund Gosse called Daborne's play "a wild and inchoate piece of melodrama" that "contains some vigorous passages." [Gosse, Edmund. "The Jacobean Poets." London, John Murray, 1894; p. 176.]

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