B[oevey?]., J[ohn].

A five act play set in Constantinople shortly after its fall to the Ottomans in 1453, concerning the Sultan Mahomet's (i.e. Mehmet II) love for the Christian slave Irena and a resulting plot against his life by his Janissaries, with accompanying prose preface ("To the Reader"), Dramatis Personae, Prologue, and Epilogue, together with fragments of two scene from different plays, and ten poems, including a verse dedication of Mahomet the Second ("...To my Honour'd Brother-in-Law Col: Francis Courtenay of Pouderham Castle in the County of Devon..."), occasional pieces (including "On the Death of his Grace George Duke of Albemarle", "On Queen Anne's Coronation, April the 23th [sic] 1702"), and translations (including "Amore Fuggitivo or Love Turn'd Fugitive A Poem written originally in Italian by that famous Poet Sig. Torquato Tasso"), altogether 175 pages, folio, predominant watermark London arms (similar to Heawood 475-6), c.1702, in contemporary blind tooled calf with gilt stamp arms of Viscount Courtenay, wear to covers, hinges weak



An unpublished and previously unrecorded Restoration play, and an insight into English attitudes to Islam and the Ottoman Empire. The play is from about 1680, since in his preface, dated c.1702, Boevey notes that is "full three & Twenty years ago since I first writ this play". He did not, he explains, write for the stage, but had "distributed several Copy's [sic]" amongst friends, and "was much requested by them (especially by those of the fairer sex) to review & alter it, & to put it all into Heroick verse".  It is a retelling of a story from Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603), and is heavily indebted to the anonymous play Irena (1664). For the authorship of this play see lot 43.

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The story of the beautiful Irena, most famously dramatised in Samuel Johnson's Irene (1749), held an anduring fascination to the English imagination. J.B. is not entirely honest about his chief source, Irena (1664), assuring the reader that "whosoever compares that & mine togeather will soon see, that, on that account, I cannot, with Justice, be esteem'd a Plagiarie" and claiming that he only read the earlier play after completing his own: in fact not only the overall structure of the play but many individual passages of text are taken from Irena. Other versions of the story are found in Gilbert Swinhoe, The Unhappy Fair Irene (1658) and Henry Neville Payne, The Siege of Constantinople (1675).

This version of the story was written around the time of the Ottoman siege of Vienna and its treatment of Mahomet's relationship with the Christian characters is particularly revealing. Unlike other versions of the story, this play avoids depicting either converting to Islam or a sexual relationship between Irena and Mahomet. She continues to resist the Sultan's advances, even when he offers to marry her: this is because she refuses to betray the Byzantine general Justinianus to whom she is betrothed - even before she discovers that he also survived the city's fall. The play also emphasises the Sultan's noble character. When Justinianus saves the Sultan's life (Mahomet orders his Janissaries to kill Justinianus but they turn on him instead) Mahomet vows to allow Irena and Justinianus to marry. Mahomet quells the rebellion by publicly stabbing a slave who is dressed as Irena and allows the true Irena to escape Turkish territory. This is a change from the original story, in which the Sultan kills Irena to win back the support of his troops, which the author explains in his preface: "I judging that Action too Barbarous towards one to whom he has before shown so much love, thought fit to introduce the feign'd Story of the Slave". 

Dealing as they do with the popular versus autocratic will and the conflict between public and private 'affairs', these plays are also intensely politicised. It has been suggested that the 1664 play was a veiled critique of Charles II's weakness for mistresses and their murky involvement in state politics. 

Sotheby's is grateful to Dr Matthew Birchwood of Kingston University for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.