Islam and Politics in Elizabethan Drama: Tamburlaine the Great and Othello

The encounter between the West and the East is historically regarded a s crucial i n the European chronicles. I n the 16th century, the politics of Queen Elizabeth I towards Muslims was dualistic: on the one hand, her State united with Muslims to stand against imperial Spain, and on the other hand, after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 by the English, her State’s policy changed into a negative representation of Islam. The primary objective of this paper is to explain the dualistic policy of Elizabethan England—a policy which was directed towards a union between the English and the Muslims to oppose Catholics and Spain. At the same time, Elizabethan authors extensively practiced the discourse of demonizing Muslims in their writings. As a final point, the researchers endeavour to explore the misrepresentation and exploitation of Muslims in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great Part I, II and Shakespeare’s Othello,