And stop calling me Shirley....

A month or so ago I auditioned for a summer amateur production of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", and (as the palest auditionee of a very white bunch) was surprised by an offer of the part of the Prince of Morocco. Now in a play centring on one racial problem (anti-Semitism), how to portray Morocco is another one. (And the Prince of Arragon is a third - though, what with the frequent burlesquing of him and Don Armado in 'Love's Labours Lost', it's a surprise the British stage draws little criticism from the Spanish embassy.) Morocco is often played by a black actor - this was the case both times I've seen the play. The latter is freshest in my memory, when it was on at Shakespeare's Globe a few years ago - in that production he was every inch the 'noble chief', played with gusto to the pit as a three-parts-comedy-to-one-part-dignity priapic escapee from either 'Zulu' on film or 'the Lion King' on stage. Another amateur group of which I have heard had him bare to the waist, in Aladdin-style pyjama trousers and waving a scimitar.

But Shakespeare's own character note on him calls him a 'tawny Moor' - that is, a Middle Eastern or North African figure not a black one. So, instead of being another figure in Shakespeare's fascination with black Africans (not just Othello but also the villainous Aaron from 'Titus Andronicus'), he is the author's only direct portrayal (as far as I can recall) of a Muslim world otherwise only treated in the offstage events of 'Othello' and in mentions of the Sophy (ie Shah Abbas) or Soleman the Magnificent.

With these things mulling over in my mind, and also casting my mind back to Tate Britain's excellent 'Orientalism' exhibition, I was intrigued to find that not only their 'Van Dyck' show but also the BM's own 'Shah Abbas' were both showing portraits of the English adventurer Robert Shirley (shown right). At the time of writing of 'Merchant' he was ambassador from Persia (now Iran) to Elizabeth I's courts among others, where he encouraged trade links and courted European help for Persia against their mutual enemy the Ottoman Empire (Venice had been part of the Catholic League that had won naval victory over the Ottomans at Lepanto less than thirty years before the play was written - think Chesterton's "Don John of Austria is going to the war). Confusingly, Elizabeth had also asked the Ottomans for help against the Armada, but that's 16th century geopolitics for you. Plus I've also dug up an article suggesting Shakespeare most likely bumped into a Moroccan delegation to England and that was his inspiration for Morocco.

So, looking east from his Southwark window, at court and in the cosmopolitan port of London (surely the model for his mercantile Venice where fortunes are made and lost at sea), Shakespeare would have rubbed up against Middle Eastern figures of all kinds. Even if he had never met a single such figure (which I doubt), his concept of 'the East' and that of his contemporaries would probably have simultaneously held Muslims, Berbers et al to be a devilish imperial or piratical horde waiting to break down the doors into Europe (just before his suicide even Othello calls a Turk a "circumcised dog", which is an intriguing link to Shylock), a source of exotic goods, people, languages and so on, and as just another country with whom to do business - as a threat, a fascination and an opportunity. So my director's wish to portray Morocco without resort to El-Cid-style accents, caricature or blacking-up, but instead as a dignified, serious and noble figure who is almost as much a victim of Portia and the rest's racial double-standards as Shylock and his family, is in line with all this and it'll be a fascinating cameo to play - not that I'ld turn down a scimitar....