16 August, 1594 - Mahamet

Here's what the Admiral's Men performed at the Rose playhouse on this day, 424 years ago...

Henslowe writes: y^e 14 of aguste 1594 ... R at mahomett ... iij^ll v^s

In modern English: [16^th] August, 1594 ... Received at Mahamet ... £3 and 5 shillings

Today, the Admiral's Men performed a play that Henslowe called Mahamet (an Elizabethan variant on the name Muhammad). This is its first appearance in the Diary, and Henslowe records a very high box office, the kind normally seen only at premieres. And yet he does not mark the play as "ne" (new), which indicates that the players were instead bringing back a old play that was received very well by the audience.

No play called Mahamet survives today, but most scholars suspect it was connected to a surviving play called The Battle of Alcazar by George Peele. This features an enjoyably evil villain named Muly Mahamet, who was one of the most famous roles of Edward Alleyn, star of the Admiral's Men.

If all this sounds familiar, it's because two years ago, one of the most popular plays at the Rose was Muly Molocco, a play about which one could say exactly the same thing: it too might have been The Battle of Alcazar, or else a prequel or an imitation of it. For the sake of convenience, then, here is the description of The Battle of Alcazar that I originally posted for Muly Molocco; apologies for the repetition.

If the play was The Battle of Alcazar...

1629 Portuguese illustration of the Battle of Alcazar

The title page of George Peele's play advertises it as The Battle of Alcazar, fought in Barbary between Sebastian King of Portugal and Abdelmelec King of Morocco; with the death of Captain Stukeley. It begins with Abd el-Malik (called Abdelmelec or Muly Molocco in the play) reclaiming his rightful throne by deposing the vicious usurper Muly Mahamet. Muly Mahamet escapes into the wilderness but survives to raise an army with the aid of King Sebastian of Portugal and the English Catholic adventurer Captain Thomas Stukeley. A great battle takes place at Alcazar (modern El-Ksar el-Kebir) in 1578. During the battle, Abdelmelec dies but his younger brother Seth props up his dead body as if alive, and this encourages the troops; the fleeing Muly Mahamet is then killed when his horse throws him in a river. The play ends with Muly Mahamet, King Sebastian and Stukeley all dead, Seth as King of Barbary, and Muly Mahamet's body stuffed as a warning to future usurpers.

In the play's final lines, Seth honours the dead King Sebastian:

And now my lords for this Christian king:
My lord Zareo, let it be your charge
To see the soldiers tread a solemn march,
Trailing their pikes and ensigns on the ground,
So to perform the princes' funerals.

Just for curiosity value, here's a clip from Battle of the Three Kings, a very obscure 1990 film about the Battle of Alcazar. It's apparently an Italian-Moroccan-Soviet-Spanish co-production. The clip is worth watching for a glimpse of F. Murray Abraham and Harvey Keitel looking rather surprised to be there.

 

If you would like to read The Battle of Alcazar, the most readable text is Charles Edelman's modern-spelling edition, which can be found in his anthology The Stukeley Plays (2005).

 

If the play was a lost one named Mahamet...

If Mahamet was not The Battle of Alcazar itself, it might have been a different play about the same characters - perhaps a prequel or imitation focused more closely on the character of Muly Mahamet.

Alternatively, the play might have had nothing to do with any of this, and could have been about some other Mahamet.  Intriguingly enough, Henslowe's inventory of props includes an enigmatic reference to "old Mahamet's head", which implies the existence of an entirely unknown play in which an aged Mahamet comes to a sticky end.

FURTHER READING

 

Mahamet information

• Roslyn L. Knutson and David McInnis, "Mahomet", Lost Plays Database (2014). 
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2012), entry 812.

Henslowe links

• Transcript of this page of the Diary (from W.W. Greg's 1904 edition)
• Facsimile of this page of the Diary (from the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project)

Comments?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!