"The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana": Two Plays of Captivity

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Barbara Fuchs (Translator), Aaron J. Ilika (Translator)

Best known today as the author of Don Quixote—one of the most beloved and widely read novels in the Western tradition—Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) was a poet and a playwright as well. After some early successes on the Madrid stage in the 1580s, his theatrical career was interrupted by other literary efforts. Yet, eager to prove himself as a playwright, shortly before his death he published a collection of his later plays before they were ever performed.

With their depiction of captives in North Africa and at the Ottoman court, two of these, "The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana," draw heavily on Cervantes's own experiences as a captive, and echo important episodes in Don Quixote. They are set in a Mediterranean world where Spain and its Muslim neighbors clashed repeatedly while still remaining in close contact, with merchants, exiles, captives, soldiers, and renegades frequently crossing between the two sides. The plays provide revealing insights into Spain's complex perception of the world of Mediterranean Islam.

Despite their considerable literary and historical interest, these two plays have never before been translated into English. This edition presents them along with an introductory essay that places them in the context of Cervantes's drama, the early modern stage, and the political and cultural relations between Christianity and Islam in the early modern period.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1605

About the author

Miguel de Cervantes y Cortinas, later Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His novel Don Quixote is often considered his magnum opus, as well as the first modern novel.

It is assumed that Miguel de Cervantes was born in Alcalá de Henares. His father was Rodrigo de Cervantes, a surgeon of cordoban descent. Little is known of his mother Leonor de Cortinas, except that she was a native of Arganda del Rey.

In 1569, Cervantes moved to Italy, where he served as a valet to Giulio Acquaviva, a wealthy priest who was elevated to cardinal the next year. By then, Cervantes had enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment and continued his military life until 1575, when he was captured by Algerian corsairs. He was then released on ransom from his captors by his parents and the Trinitarians, a Catholic religious order.

He subsequently returned to his family in Madrid.
In Esquivias (Province of Toledo), on 12 December 1584, he married the much younger Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (Toledo, Esquivias –, 31 October 1626), daughter of Fernando de Salazar y Vozmediano and Catalina de Palacios. Her uncle Alonso de Quesada y Salazar is said to have inspired the character of Don Quixote. During the next 20 years Cervantes led a nomadic existence, working as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada and as a tax collector. He suffered a bankruptcy and was imprisoned at least twice (1597 and 1602) for irregularities in his accounts. Between 1596 and 1600, he lived primarily in Seville. In 1606, Cervantes settled in Madrid, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Cervantes died in Madrid on April 23, 1616.
-Copied from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Aaron Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Great Sultana is a fun play. It's rather straightforward, with barely the whiff of a B-plot, but the A-plot contains an intriguing view of sexual morality for the period, and the B-plot contains several sequences of male-to-female cross-dressing (a decidedly uncommon occurrence in the comedia nueva; the only other one of which I know is in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's Los Empeños de una Casa). The Bagnios of Algiers definitely has more swashbuckling adventure, but I found this play very difficult to follow and just overall quite messy, with clunky transitions and a divided focus. Both plays actually feel like they'd be better as novels, which feels like a rather obvious thing to say about two plays by Miguel de Cervantes, but I still think it's true.

The introductory material here is excellent, though, with a lot of great information about Spanish ideas about Ottoman sexual deviance, renegados, kidnappings, apostates, and differences between Moors and Turks.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cervantes didn’t find fame as a writer until he published Don Quixote at the age of 58. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t write. Prior to Don Quixote, he suffered years of rejection as a playwright. His patriotic tragedy, Numantia, was a relative success, but he struggled to have his other plays purchased and performed. Cervantes, though, appeared proud of his plays and published 16 of his dramatic works at the end of his life. (Oddly this book has never been translated into English. Come on, Spanish translators!)

This book features translations of two works Cervantes wrote related to his captivity in Algiers. Cervantes was captured by pirates when he traveled from Naples to Barcelona. He spent five years in captivity in the Islamic city of Algiers awaiting payment of his ransom. Overall, the plays revolve around the love stories of Spaniards captured or kidnapped during pirate raids and held in Algiers as slaves until they were ransomed.

The plays are interesting for the interplay of Christian, Muslim and Jewish characters/worlds. The Algerians are rather tolerant people, allowing the captives to practice their religion. But there is an economic reason for this: They made money off of ransoms for these prisoners. And no one wanted to pay for uncle Alfredo’s return if he converted to Islam.

Cervantes presents the Moorish characters (and religion) mostly sympathetically, but there is, unfortunately, a good bit of anti-Semitism in the plays. (The Moors are presented much better in the later plays than his earlier Commerce at Algiers.) Foremost, though, he was a Spanish patriot. Though not as excessively nationalistic as Numantia, Cervantes uses every opportunity to praise the Spanish spirit in these plays.

In general, Cervantes’ plays are okay. Some, like Numantia, are rather stiff and preachy. These later plays, however, are rather spirited works crammed with subplots. The prose translations (Cervantes play are written in verse) are rather stiff, but appear to be true to language of Cervantes – sacrificing art for accuracy.

These are not a must-read, but if you enjoy Cervantes, Spanish Golden Age theatre, or the interplay of religions in the 16th century Mediterranean, they are a good read.


The Bagnois of Algiers *** – The Bagnois (or prison) of Algiers is for Cervantes a rather lively play weaving at least four different plots together. The two main plots are about lovers – a Moorish princess (?) raised by a Christian slave falls in love with a captive and escapes with him to become a true Christian; and a man’s future wife is kidnapped in a raid and he follows her to Algiers to rescue her. It is standard melodramatic fare.

Cervantes patriotism – and his tendency for maudlin stories – is exemplified in the tear-jerker subplot about a brave Spanish boy who refuses to convert to Islam and is tortured to death (with many comparisons to Christ’s death). Even Cervantes says this should be presented in a fashion “most conducive to pity.”

The Great Sultana *** – This is another melodrama. The main story is about a Turk leader (the Sultan?) smitten by the beauty of a Christian Spaniard captive. He wants to marry her, but she holds out because she wants to maintain her faith. And there is a small story about a guy whose girlfriend is captured by the Moors and made a part of the Turk’s seraglio. So he dresses like a woman and becomes part of the harem. (Yes, no one can tell.)

What’s interesting to me is that there is some real comedy in this. Madrigal convinces a Moor he can talk to birds and is humorously called the elephant trainer. The guy who is dresses like a girl is picked by the Turk to have sex. It’s too bad Cervantes didn’t dig deeper into his humorous side with his plays.

[Jason Furman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Great Sultana," the second of the two Cervantes plays in this volume, was really enjoyable and interesting. "The Bagnios of Algiers" was fine but mostly of historical/contextual interest rather than something that stands on its own. Both were better than the only other Cervantes play I've read, The Gallant Spaniard.

"The Bagnios of Algiers" takes place among captives in Algiers, partly based on Cervantes' five years in captivity there. The best parts of it are recycled into (or taken from?) "The Captive's Tale" in Don Quixote, most notable the noble Moorish woman Zara/Zoraida who discovers her own path to Christianity and falls in love with a captain. The play has a lot of action and might even make a good movie, from Corsair raids on the Spanish coast to acquire captives and slaves to escapes from Algiers to betrayals, conversions, impalings, and more. It depicts Algiers as a mix of different types--Muslims, Christians, Jews, renegades, etc., but mostly disliking and demeaning each other (well, the Jews are just disliked and demeaned by the others without passing it on). But overall it has too many characters and incidents to form a fully coherent dramatic whole.

"The Great Sultana" is filled with disguises. Christians disguised as muslims. Men disguised as women. People disguised as people from other country's. All in the service of a story that takes place in Constantinople, again amongst captives. But "The Great Sultana" has more humor (including some silly humor, like a man who gets his freedom by promising to spend the next ten years teaching an elephant to speak, and who shows up periodically to report on his progress). Fewer characters and incidents and battles (unlike both Bagnios and the Gallant Spaniard), and thus what feels like more dramatic unity. It still does not have any characters who live and breathe in the way that characters in Don Quixote or Shakespeare do. So again is still a bit of a historical curiosity. But an enjoyable one.

[Lulu]

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