Gender and foreignness in William Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes Parts One and Two (1656–1663)

Abstract

William Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes plays, published and performed in two parts that straddle the Interregnum/Restoration boundary, constituted novel theatrical spectacles in a number of ways, and many of these innovations will have seemed foreign, in the sense of strange or unfamiliar to contemporary audiences. The plays celebrate their own strange ingenuity as an attractive facet, and this theme is mirrored in the foreignness of subject which centres on the Ottoman Empire's siege of Rhodes in 1522. This article shows that this results in a representation of foreignness, which is tied up most explicitly in the representation of gender and homosexuality, and which is surprisingly celebratory.