418 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



nations to the Muhammadan people that, by conquering Constantin- 

 ople in 1453, had gained a firm footing on European soil. This gave 

 rise to an altogether new series of Eastern subjects: whereas the 

 older class of Oriental tales is of purely literary character (fables, 

 parables, fairy-tales, stories, etc.), the Turkish wars occasioned a 

 number of compositions, chiefly dramatic, dealing with characters 

 and events taken from contemporary history. The rule of Solyman, 

 the tragic death of his eldest son Mustapha in 1553, and the deeds 

 of his general Ibrahim, became favorite subjects of Occidental poetry. 



As early as 1567 we find some Turkish tales. " Mohamet and Irene," 

 " Sultan Solyman," and others, in Painter's Pastyme of Pleasure, and 

 in the French collection of novels Le Printemps, by Jacques Yver 

 (1572, translated into English by Henry Wotton in 1578), the story 

 of " Solyman and Perseda " is related. In 1581 a Latin drama, Solyman 

 et Mustapha, was performed ; in 1587 Marlowe produced his Tambur- 

 laine the Great on the stage; in 1592 the drama of Solyman and 

 Perseda, generally ascribed to Kyd. appeared, followed in 1594 by the 

 anonymous piece, Selimus, ascribed to Greene, in 1609 by Brooke's 

 Mustapha, and in 1612 by Daborne's A Christian turned Turk. In 

 1603 Knolles published his fundamental Generall Historic of the 

 Turks, which filled young Byron with enthusiasm for the Orient, 

 excited in him the desire of seeing the Levant with his own eyes, 

 and, according to his own statement, contributed toward giving the 

 Oriental coloring to his epic tales. 



The above-named borrowings from Turkish history are almost 

 the sole Oriental subjects which can be pointed out in Elizabethan 

 literature. Only Greene's Penelope's Web (1582) and Marlowe's 

 Jew of Malta (ca. 1589) remain to be mentioned. Otherwise English 

 literature in the age of the Renaissance keeps remarkably aloof 

 from Oriental influences. Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson. save 

 for occasional isolated instances, show no Oriental features at all. 

 Antony and Cleopatra, in spite of its local background, is a Roman 

 tragedy. Classical antiquity and the great national tradition are the 

 commanding influences in English Renaissance literature by which 

 all others are overshadowed. The fact that England in those times. 

 as contrasted with the ensuing centuries on one side and the era 

 of the Crusades on the other, was comparatively little concerned in 

 the political events of the Orient, may also in part be responsible 

 for the lack of Oriental influences in the literature of the age. 



In the latter respect a change was to take place soon enough. The 

 goal of all the great explorers in the epoch of discoveries had been 

 the land of gold and wonders, India, to the quest of which even the 

 discovery of America was due. During the sixteenth century, the 

 Indies had been in the hands of the Portuguese and the Dutch; 

 the foundation, in 1600, of what was later called the East India 



