An Orientalist Reading of The Travailes of The Three English Brothers by John Day, George Wilkins, and William Rowley

Abstract

This article investigates the representation of the Oriental characters, particularly the Persians in John Day, George Wilkins, and William Rowley’s joint play The Travailes of the Three English Brothers (1607). The study explores how the writers have attempted to establish and assert the western cultural superiority and soundness of Christianity in the play in contrast to the Oriental culture and Muslims. While employing Edward Said's views in Orientalism, the researchers attempt to deconstruct the three playwrights' Eurocentric perspectives under which influence they have misrepresented the Orient and Oriental characters. It unveils textual contradictions and inconsistencies cloaked under the verbal rhetoric and which usually go unnoticed by a naïve reader. Due to their Eurocentric perspectives, the playwrights have depicted the positive and noble images of the English characters while demonized the Persian Muslim characters which explicitly indicates their biased and prejudiced attitudes towards the Orient in general and the Persian Muslims in particular. These opposite poles of values form what Said terms as binaries in his Orientalism.