Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699

Chloë Houston is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, UK.

“Chloë Houston’s Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire, part of the New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800 series, encapsulates the essence of earlier scholars and offers a detailed analysis of the evolving portrayals of Persia in early modern English literature. ... This well-structured monograph analyzes fourteen dramatic works, either well-known or anonymous, and is divided into three sections according to the historical periods they reflected.” (Yaxin Shi, Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 56 (2), 2025)

• 1. Introduction: the imagined empire.- 2. ‘In this noble region’: politics and counsel in The Godly Queene Hester (Anonymous, c. 1530).- 3. ‘[A]dvice unto a Prince’: kingship and counsel in Kyng Daryus (Anonymous, 1565) and Cambises (Thomas Preston, c. 1560).- 4. ‘A crown enchas’d with pearl and gold’: wealth and absolute rule in The Warres of Cyrus (Richard Farrant, 1576-80) and Tamburlaine the Great Parts 1 and 2 (Christopher Marlowe, 1587-8).- ‘I wish to be none other but as he’: friendship and counsel in The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607) by John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins and contemporary closet drama.- 6. ‘Read[ing] philosophy to a king’: ideals of monarchy in William Cartwright’s The Royall Slave (1636).- 7. ‘[R]eally acted in Persia’: counsel, regicide and restoration in John Denham, The Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron, Mirza (1655).- 8. To ‘dispose of Crowns’: Conversion, the Authorityof Monarchy and the Issue of Succession: Elkanah Settle’s Cambyses (1667).- 9. ‘The king, who loves the Persian mode’: tyranny and excess in The Rival Queens (1677).- 10. ‘[D]evour’d by Luxury’: Gender, Governance and Absolute Kingship in John Crowne’s Darius, King of Persia (1688) and Colley Cibber’s Xerxes (1699).