• Overview
• Staging information
• Translations
• Sample translations
• Production history

Titles

English title: The Sultan’s Queen
Notable variations on Spanish title: La gran sultana doña Catalina de Oviedo
Date written: sometime between 1607 and 1608
First publication date: 1615
First production date: 1992
Keywords: morality > vice-virtue, identity > sexuality, identity > gender, identity > ethnicity, family > duty, family > marriage, identity > gender cross dressing, love > desire, ideology > religion and faith
Genre and type: comedy

Title information

The play's full title is La gran sultana doña Catalina de Oviedo. This is important because of the contradiction between the Ottoman 'Sultan' (made into a female title by Cervantes as the comic 'Sultana') and the Christian, specifically Spanish name and title 'doña Catalina de Oviedo' (Oviedo is a town in Spain, and 'doña' denotes she is a woman of rank).

Pitch

Could - and did - a Spanish Catholic woman sit on the throne of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople? Cervantes plays with the loose historical evidence that Catalina de Oviedo ruled alongside the Sultan as his wife and queen. Catalina has been hidden from the Sultan’s eyes for six years by a servant.  When the Sultan hears about Catalina’s beauty from his chief eunuch, he demands to see her and once he does, he falls instantly in love.  He proposes marriage and places her on the throne in command of a vast empire. But is this a love story or the tale of a tragic abuse of power?

Synopsis

This play begins as it means to continue—with a cross-cultural character in disguise. Roberto is a Spaniard in Ottoman Constantinople posing as a Greek to find the Spaniard Lamberto.  Lamberto is dressed as a woman, Zelinda, in order to live with his beloved Clara, who has been imprisoned in Constantinople and is going by the name Zaida. However that is a mere side-story; the main event begins in the second scene, when the Sultan’s right-hand eunuch, Mamí, discovers that another servant, Rustán, has been hiding a beautiful Christian captive, Catalina de Oviedo, for almost six years. Mamí tells the Sultan of her beauty and he demands to see her; once he does, he immediately falls in love with her, instantly proposing marriage. She begs for three days to consider, and he agrees, while she prays to God for guidance. The play balances comedy with cultural negotiation. The comic servant, a Christian named Madrigal, narrowly escapes death (a punishment for his illicit relationship with a Muslim woman) by claiming to be able to teach an elephant to speak, while the Sultan and Catalina negotiate her cultural identity after the marriage. He allows her to retain her Christian religion, dress and customs, but Catalina’s father (also a prisoner) still thinks the union poses a severe threat to Catalina’s morality. The third act complicates matters further when the Sultan wants to have a child by another prisoner (who is actually a man, Lamberto, in disguise), and Catalina explodes in jealousy. The wedding is celebrated with a mix of Spanish and Arab dances and music. A play about power, religion, sexuality (both homo- and heterosexuality) and jealousy, its modern themes and sexual comedy should intrigue contemporary audiences.

Sources

Catalina de Oviedo did perhaps sit on the throne of the Ottoman Empire; see Paul Lewis-Smith (1981) for the historical details. Cervantes’s source for The Great Turk in this play is Murad III and Ssafidje, although the figure of ‘The Great Turk’ is folkloric and impersonal and often ridiculed or presented as comical on the Spanish stage during this period. His love affair with a Spanish prisoner is the subject of Italian novellas, specifically those of Bandello and Cintio (see Sevilla Arroyo and Rey Hazas in Cervantes 1998: 18). See also Lewis-Smith 1981.

• Lewis-Smith, Paul. 1981. ‘La gran sultana doña Catalina de Oviedo: A Cervantine Practical Joke’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 17, 68-82

Critical response

The Spanish press reviewed Marsillach’s 1992 production of La gran sultana positively in the main. It opened as part of the Expo ’92 celebrations. Many of the reviews are published, with full colour photos, in Cervantes en la Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico, Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, 21, Madrid, Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico, pp. 55-79.

Editions

• Cervantes Saavedra, 1998. La gran sultana; El laberinto de amor, eds. Florencio Sevilla Arroyo and Antonio Rey Hazas. Madrid, Alianza

Useful readings and websites

• 2007. El teatro según Cervantes. Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, 20, eds. Antonio Rey Hazas, Yolanda Mancebo and Mar Zubieta. Madrid, Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (in Spanish)

• Canavaggio, Jean. 1977. Cervantès dramaturge: un théâtre à naître. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France (in French)

• Canavaggio, Jean. 1997 (Revised edition). Cervantes. Madrid, Espasa Calpe (in Spanish)

• Castillo, Moisés R. 2004. ‘¿Ortodoxia cervantina? Un análisis de La gran sultana, El trato de Argel y Los baños de Argel’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 56, 2, 219-40 (in Spanish)

• Garcés, María Antonia. 2002. Cervantes in Algiers: a Captive’s Tale. Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press

• García Lorenzo, Luciano. 1994. ‘Cervantes, Constantinopla y La gran sultana’. In Los imperios orientales en el teatro del siglo de oro. Actas de las XVI Jornadas de Teatro Clásico de Almagro, July 1993, eds. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez and Rafael González Cañal, pp. 57-71. Almagro, Universidad Castilla-La Mancha and Festival de Almagro (in Spanish)

• González Cañal, Rafael. 1993. ‘Crónica de la mesa redonda sobre La gran sultana’. In Los imperios orientales en el teatro del siglo de oro. Actas de las XVI Jornadas de Teatro Clásico de Almagro, July 1993, eds. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez and Rafael González Cañal, pp. 146-7. Almagro, Universidad Castilla-La Mancha and Festival de Almagro (in Spanish)

• Hegyi, Ottmar. 1992. Cervantes and the Turks: Historical Reality Versus Literary Fiction in La Gran Sultana and El amante liberal. Newark, Delaware, Juan De La Cuesta

• Hernández Araico, Susana. 1994. Estreno de La gran sultana: teatro de lo otro, amor y humor, Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, 14, 2, 155-66 (in Spanish)

• Jurado Santos, Agapita. 1997. Tolerancia y ambigüedad en La gran sultana de Cervantes. Kassel, Reichenberger (in Spanish)

• Kanellos, Nicolas. 1975. ‘The Anti-Semitism of Cervantes’ Los baños de Argel and La gran sultana: A Reappraisal’, Bulletin of the Comediantes, 27, 1, 48-52

• Lewis-Smith, Paul. 1981. ‘La gran sultana doña Catalina de Oviedo: A Cervantine Practical Joke’, Forum for Modern Language Studies, 17, 68-82

• Lezra, Jacques. 2008. ‘Translated Turks on the Early Modern Stage’. In Transnational Exchange in Early Modern Theater, eds. Robert Henke and Eric Nicholson, pp. 159-78. Aldershot, UK, Ashgate

• López Estrada, Francisco. 1992. ‘Vista a oriente: la española en Constantinopla’. In Cervantes y el teatro. Cuadernos de Teatro Clásico, 7, 31-46. Madrid, Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (in Spanish)

• Lottman, Maryrica Ortiz. 1996. ‘La gran sultana: Transformations in Secret Speech’, Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America, 16, 1, 74-90

• Rey Hazas, Antonio. 1994. ‘Las comedias de cautivos de Cervantes’. In Los imperios orientales en el teatro del Siglo de Oro. Actas de las XVI Jornadas de Teatro Clásico de Almagro, July 1993, eds. Felipe B. Pedraza Jiménez and Rafael González Cañal, pp. 29-56. Almagro, Universidad Castilla-La Mancha and Festival de Almagro (in Spanish)

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Entry written by Kathleen Jeffs. Last updated on 15 November 2010.

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