"The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana": Two Plays of Captivity

By Miguel de Cervantes and Miguel de Ilika

Best known today as the author of Don Quixote—one of the most beloved and widely read novels in the Western tradition—Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) was a poet and a playwright as well. After some early successes on the Madrid stage in the 1580s, his theatrical career was interrupted by other literary efforts. Yet, eager to prove himself as a playwright, shortly before his death he published a collection of his later plays before they were ever performed.

With their depiction of captives in North Africa and at the Ottoman court, two of these, "The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana," draw heavily on Cervantes's own experiences as a captive, and echo important episodes in Don Quixote. They are set in a Mediterranean world where Spain and its Muslim neighbors clashed repeatedly while still remaining in close contact, with merchants, exiles, captives, soldiers, and renegades frequently crossing between the two sides. The plays provide revealing insights into Spain's complex perception of the world of Mediterranean Islam.

Despite their considerable literary and historical interest, these two plays have never before been translated into English. This edition presents them along with an introductory essay that places them in the context of Cervantes's drama, the early modern stage, and the political and cultural relations between Christianity and Islam in the early modern period.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Release date: May 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9780812207903

Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes was born on September 29, 1547, in Alcala de Henares, Spain. At twenty-three he enlisted in the Spanish militia and in 1571 fought against the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto, where a gunshot wound permanently crippled his left hand. He spent four more years at sea and then another five as a slave after being captured by Barbary pirates. Ransomed by his family, he returned to Madrid but his disability hampered him; it was in debtor's prison that he began to write Don Quixote. Cervantes wrote many other works, including poems and plays, but he remains best known as the author of Don Quixote. He died on April 23, 1616.

Reviews for "The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana"

[devil_llama · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Mostly works of curiosity, these plays are by the great Cervantes, but don't come close to his master work. According to some of the scholarly material accompanying the work, Cervantes created the genre of the captivity play following his own captivity. While on the surface these pieces appear to be anti-Muslim and pro-Christian (with a fair smattering of anti-Semitism worked in), it's difficult to be sure that the Christians come off any better than the Muslims. Quick read, not substantial, but interesting in the history of theatre.

[quantum_flapdoodle · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Mostly works of curiosity, these plays are by the great Cervantes, but don't come close to his master work. According to some of the scholarly material accompanying the work, Cervantes created the genre of the captivity play following his own captivity. While on the surface these pieces appear to be anti-Muslim and pro-Christian (with a fair smattering of anti-Semitism worked in), it's difficult to be sure that the Christians come off any better than the Muslims. Quick read, not substantial, but interesting in the history of theatre.

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Two late plays by Cervantes, printed without prior performance (by this time Cervantes had been displaced as a playwright by the tremendous success of Lope de Vega, as the introduction explains.) ne play is set in Algiers where Cervantes himself had been a prisoner, and in some respects is relatively realistic. depicting the hard choices facing Christians captured in Algiers (and in some cases their Muslim captors).; the other is set in Constantinople where Cervantes had not been, depicting Sultan Murad III's infatuation with a Christian captive woman --in real life she was from Corfu and Greek or Venetian, but Cervantes makes her a noble Spanish lady. This is the first English translation of these plays.