The Image of Egypt in a Selection of Elizabethan & Jacobean Play
This study communicates the question of representational Egypt(ians) through textual analysis and
close reading of Elizabethan and Jacobean selected plays, whose main concern is Egypt and
Egyptians: Shakespeare?s Antony & Cleopatra, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night?s Dream, (All Is
True)Henry VIII, and Cymbeline, Marlowe?s The Jew of Malta, Jonson?s The Alchemist, Beaumont
and Fletcher?s The False One, Daniel?s The Tragedie of Cleopatra, Chapman?s The Blind Beggar of
Alexandria, and Webster?s The White Devil. It examines the process of labelling, the concomitant
negative stereotyping of land and human, and its effect upon characters? lives and future prospects
as a result of the dramatists? response to contemporary colonialist discourse that exaggerated the
signs of cultural and epistemological difference.