This is Ambassador Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anou, who led a Moorish delegation to Queen Elizabeth in 1600 to make an alliance against their common enemy, Spain. Although they failed to raise a fleet between them, he and his embassy remained in London for six months negotiating trade agreements.
Such a stunning figure: no wonder his portrait was painted! Seeing it at the Shakespeare Center in Stratford-upon-Avon inspired me to include the Moors’ visit in my novel Bedtrick. Ben Messaoud’s nephew Ibrahim plays a greater role in the novel—a fictional character as handsome as his uncle but younger, given to music and poetry more than trade and politics.
Shakespeare’s bloody revenge play, Titus Andronicus, features the Moor Aaron as the villain—a marvelous part that Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s leading actor would have played in blackface, leaving Titus himself to Edward Alleyn, borrowed from the Admiral’s Men for the production.
Aaron comes to Rome with the Goth captives Titus has brought home in triumph: Queen Tamora and her three sons. Despite Tamora’s anguished pleas, Titus orders the execution of her eldest, Alarbus, in revenge for his sons killed in the war with the Goths. Tamora silently vows revenge; publicly she marries the new Roman emperor Saturninus. She continues her long-standing love affair with Aaron, which near the end of the play produces a baby. Tamora orders Aaron to kill it; the dark-skinned boy will prove her adultery. But he cannot. Although he has gleefully encouraged every vengeful act imaginable against Titus and his family, Aaron loves his tiny son. He knows he’ll be put to death, but first he extracts a promise from Titus’ successor Lucius to preserve the infant’s life. In return Aaron will tell all—and in the telling actually exaggerates his evil deeds.
Shakespeare isn’t clear about whether Lucius will keep his promise. In one BBC production, there’s an infant coffin at the end; in Julie Taymor’s superb film Titus’ grandson holds the baby in the final frames as he walks into the future, offering hope for a new Rome.
The play I wrote for the American Shakespeare Center’s 2019 ‘Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries’ competition, Dearly Begotten, takes up the question of the infant’s survival. In my version, Aaron names his son Ishmael. In this play, following the court performance of Titus Andronicus, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men present ‘The Masque of Ishmael’ which ends in dancing joined by courtiers and ladies as often happened after palace productions. Slightly bizarre, following such a horrific story, but the masque softens it. [As it turned out, Titus Andronicus isn’t part of the coming ASC season after all, and Dearly Begotten will not be seen there.]
Of course I invented the masque itself and its authorship. In this play it’s written by none other than Amelia Bassano Lanyer, the supposed Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A writer of songs and poems, Amelia’s 1611 work was the first book of poetry published by a woman in England.
Instead of reflecting on the gore of Titus Andronicus, Dearly Begotten focuses on parenthood: the revenge plot is all about parents’ retaliating for the suffering and loss of their offspring, and at the end Shakespeare gives us Aaron’s touching moment of fatherhood.
Apart from this and his powerful personality, villainous Aaron doesn’t resemble the noble Moor in Othello. Aaron’s blackness emphasizes his malevolence. I’m with those who regard the visit of Ambassador ben Massoud as Shakespeare’s inspiration for his later depiction of tragic Othello, distinguished Moorish general deceived by Iago.
In Morocco in November, 2019, with his permission I took this photo of a Tuareg.
My guide said that given the power of that eminent and fierce tribe, Sultan Mulan Ahmad al-Mansur could easily have sent a Tuareg ambassador to London in 1600. Except for the ambassador’s black robe, this modern day tribesman is dressed identically.
So much more to say on the subject of noble Moors—which leads us to the Arabic Thousand and One Nights. These stories were known in Spain from the Islamic Golden Age and appear in works by Chaucer and Bocaccio. For another day . . . .
This is fascinating, and has an almost byzantine intrigue. For some reason the mysterious character makes me think of the quest for reconstructing the life of an lndian slave as told seven hundred years later by Amitav Ghosh within his book, ”In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler’s Tale.” ln my screenplay, ”Ashes, Ashes,” the young woman with whom a young exile from an event, or ”Be-ln’,” in North Dakota hitches a ride, the ”Woman in White Corvette,” explains her theory on Shakespeare’s Sonnets; that because of the frequency of the playwright’s use of ”glass,” or mirror, the source of the Dark Lady was something within and summoned when examining his own visage. Thus;
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remembered not to be,
Die single and thine image dies with thee.
-Sonnet lll
Thank you for this, John. I’ve been thinking a lot about Shakespeare’s ‘noble Moor’ during our current racial crisis.
Such fascinating information jinny’