The Image of Egypt in a Selection of Elizabethan & Jacobean Plays

Abstract

<p>This study communicates the question of representational Egypt(ians) through textual analysis and close reading of Elizabethan and Jacobean selected plays, whose main concern is Egypt and Egyptians: Shakespeare’s Antony &amp; Cleopatra, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (All Is True)Henry VIII, and Cymbeline, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Jonson’s The Alchemist, Beaumont and Fletcher’s The False One, Daniel’s The Tragedie of Cleopatra, Chapman’s The Blind Beggar of Alexandria, and Webster’s The White Devil. It examines the process of labelling, the concomitant negative stereotyping of land and human, and its effect upon characters’ lives and future prospects as a result of the dramatists’ response to contemporary colonialist discourse that exaggerated the signs of cultural and epistemological difference.</p>