Alexander the Great in Early Modern English Drama

This chapter provides an overview of Alexander the Great in early modern English drama, as a popular but ambiguous emissary of the ancient near east. Alexander’s appeal and notoriety both in Europe and the across the Bosphorus meant that he became a voluble figure of global empire, representing both prevailing European imperial ambitions and their limitations. Drama proves a particularly rich place for exploration of these ambiguities. Highlighting a recurring fascination with imagining a dead Alexander (rather than the humanist exemplary model in life), early modern English drama regularly isolates the figure of Alexander for scrutiny through versions of the mise-en-abyme device, as a way of exploring the unreconciled tensions between the sometime humanist hero and the imperial villain.