SOURCE: Loloi, Parvin. “Introduction.” In Two Seventeenth-Century Plays, Volume 1: The Sophy by Sir John Denham, pp. vii-lxxiv. Salzburg: University of Salzburg, 1998.

[In the following excerpt, Loloi examines Denham's only play, The Sophy, exploring issues such as its composition date, initial publication, first performance, historical context, sources, and critical reception.]

The Sophy was Denham's only venture into drama (unless one counts the translation of the fifth act of Corneille's Horace, which he contributed to Katherine Philips's version of the play, published in 1669) and was one of his first publications. The play was entered in the Stationers' Register by Thomas Walkley on the 6th August 1642, and was published in that year. In what seems to be a contradiction of this fact, Anthony à Wood, in Athenæ Oxoniensis says that

In the latter end of the year 1641 he published the tragedy called The Sophy, which took extremely much and was admired by all ingenious men, particularly by Edm. Waller of Beaconsfield, who then said of the author, that he broke out like the Irish rebellion, three score thousand strong, when no body was aware, or in the least suspected it.¹

As G. E. Bentley points out, Wood's comments do not necessarily imply the existence of an earlier edition of the play than that of 1642:

If Wood was using ‘published’ in its usual sense, he was wrong, for the title-page of the first edition bears the date 1642, and it was not entered in the Stationers' Register until August of that year. It is generally assumed, however, that Wood meant performed, and in this he may have been right, though there is no other evidence to support him. If Waller's remark had special point because of the proximity of the two events which it compared, then Denham's play would have been produced in late October or November of 1641. The fact that The Sophy does not appear in the list of plays of the King's company protected from the publishers by the Lord Chamberlain on 7 August 1641 … suggests that on that date the play had not yet come into the possession of the company, or else that they did not value it highly.²

Or, of course, Wood may simply have made an error over the date!

Denham's play was performed, on the evidence of its title-page, by one of the most prestigious of contemporary companies:

As in the previous periods, the London theatre was dominated through the years 1637-42 by the King's Men. They continued to perform at court more frequently than any other troupe; plays especially prepared for court production by amateurs like Sir John Suckling, William Cartwright, Sir William Berkeley, William Habington, Lodowick Carlell and Jasper Mayne generally passed into their repertory after court openings, sometimes, as in the case of Suckling's Aglaura, with sumptuous costumes paid for by the dramatist. They secured the best actors from other companies, men like Michael Bowyer, Theophilus Bird and the comedian William Robbins from Queen Henrietta's company … Until his death in the spring of 1639, Philip Massinger continued as the attached dramatist for the company, revising old pieces in their repertory, preparing new prologues and epilogues, and composing about two new plays each year … After Massinger's death the company lured James Shirley back from Dublin to replace him. Shirley prepared a new spring play and a new autumn play for them in 1640, 1641 and 1642. In addition to these plays by their attached playwrights and special court pieces given to them by the King, the company bought occasional plays from William Davenant, Thomas Killigrew and Sir John Denham.³

An error by T. H.Banks has led to the belief in some quarters that The Sophy was performed at court as well as in the private theatre at Blackfriars. In his 1928 edition of The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham (second edition, 1969), Banks printed two prologues to the play, one headed ‘The Prologue at Court’ and the other ‘The Prologue at the Fryers’, saying that both were to be found “[i]n the 1642 edition, between the dramatis personae and the text of the play” (p.323). In fact these prologues do not appear in The Sophy; they are the twin prologues from William Habington's Queen of Arragon (1640) which was indeed performed by the King's Men at both Blackfriars and the Court. There is no evidence for any court performance of The Sophy and, indeed, for reasons to be discussed, it seems inherently unlikely that the play would have been performed at court.

Denham's play soon gained some admirers. Edmund Waller's testimony to its effect has already been quoted. For one contributor of verses to William Cartwright's Comedies, Tragic-comedies, With other Poems of 1651 (J. Leigh), Denham's play stands out as one of Humphrey Moseley's most important publications. He addresses the publisher:

Setting forth Wits who best knew how to write:
Thou rais'd brave Suckling, gav'st him all his own,
Aglaura else had not been waited on:
Thou gav'st us melting Carew, who so long
Maintain'd the Court with many a charming Song:
Then Waller's Muse for Saccharissa flows,
Yet (for his Life) courts the High Court in Prose;
Beaumont and Fletcher's Volume then stood forth,
And taught the World what English Wits are Worth:
Then came the Sophy deck'd by Denham's Quill
With Flowers as fresh as those on Cooper's Hill[.](4)

Thomas Pestell saw Denham—on the somewhat flimsy evidence of a single play—as one of two figures responsible for a regeneration of the drama:

Beaumont and Fletcher coyn'd a golden Way,
T'expresse, suspend, and passionate a Play.
Nimble and pleasant are all Motions there,
For two Intelligences rul'd the Spheare.
Both Sock and Buskin sunk with Them, and then
Davenant and Denham bouy'd them up agen.(5)

Perhaps most remarkable of all is a passage in the play Andromana, by an unidentified ‘J. S’. published in 1660 (but probably written some time before that). In Act III scene 5, Libacer, serving maid to the eponymous heroine, enquires of her mistress:

                    have you but read the Sophy?
You will find that Haly (Oh how I hug that fellow's name)
Ruin'd great Mirza by his father, and his father by his son.
The great Politician while all the Court
Flam'd round about him, sat secure and laught,
Like those throw fire-works among the waving people,
That have nothing but fire and smoke about them,
And yet not sindg one hair. Indeed he fell at last,
'Tis true, but he was shallow in that part oth' plot.
What have we his example but to learn by it?

The Sophy continued to be remembered as, along with Cooper's Hill, one of Denham's most important works. The anonymous author of ‘A Session of the Poets’ in Poems on Affairs of State, from the time of Oliver Cromwell to the Abdication of King James the Second of 1697 (i.222) remembered Denham in terms of these two works—and his profligacy:

Then in came Denham, that limping old Bard,
          Whose Fame on the Sophy and Cooper's Hill stands;
And brought many Stationers who swore very hard,
          That nothing sold better, except ‘twere his Lands.

Even Samuel Butler's bitingly cruel attack on the elderly Denham—in his mock encomium ‘A Panegyric upon Sir John Denham's Recovery from his Madness’—remembers the poet in terms of Cooper's Hill and what Butler calls his “borrow'd Sophy” (line 16).⁶

If The Sophy was “borrow'd”, to use Butler's epithet, then its main debt was to Thomas Herbert's A Relation of Some Yeares Travaile, Begunne anno 1626, published in 1634. The full title and subtitle of Herbert's book are worthy of reproduction, since they give a very clear idea of the book's scope and approach:

A RELATION OF SOME YEARES TRAVAILE, BEGUNNE Anno 1626.

Into Afrique and the greater Asia, especially the Territories of the Persian Monarchie: and some parts of the Orientall Indies, and Iles adjacent.

Of their Religion, Language, Habit, Discent, Ceremonies, and other matters concerning them.

Together with the proceedings and death of the three late Ambassadours: Sir. D. C. Sir R. S. and the Persian NOGDIBEG:

As also the two great Monarchs, the King of Persia, and the Great MOGOL.

If it was to its indebtedness to Herbert that Butler was alluding by his sneering phrase, then the comment has a peculiar unjustness. Denham does not borrow from his source with anything like the slavishness or dependency of many of his contemporaries. Indeed he treats his source in Herbert with a good deal of independence and creativity. So much so that G. E.Bentley was struck by “the large amount of material” in Denham's play which is not to be found in Herbert, and wondered whether Denham did not perhaps have access to some other version of the story. Since no alternative source has been discovered, it is fairer, in the present state of knowledge, to give some credit to Denham's power of imagination as a dramatist dealing in far more than the merely “borrowed”.

The mainspring of The Sophy's plot is taken from Herbert's account of Shah Abbas, his son Mirza, and the ascent to the throne of his son Soffy. Herbert's narration of events occupies pages 99-104 of the 1634 edition of his Relation:

The King by a Hyrcanian Lady (which Countriwoman the Begoon his mother also was, wife to Mahomet) had two sonnes, Ismaell and another, Mirza. Ismaell died, having not attained twenty yeares, and the yonger brother by right and law of birth and Nations then became heire apparant to his dignities and expectations.

Shaw Abbas his Father by his other Paramours had many children, but this Mirza as endued with prerogatives of yeares and birthright, prevailed more in his Fathers affection, and the establishment of succession, then the other children, obtained by his affabilitie (a vertue of especiall lustre and value with the Persian) courage, bountie, experience in Armes and other Princely Qualities requisite for the place he lived in, the sonne of such a father, and the report hee aimed at, to beget love and admiration amongst his friends, and terrour with his enemies. Whereby hee got leave at sundry times, to command his Fathers ready Armies, men apt for action, and no longer satisfied, then when employed, either to enrich themselves by spoile or other advantages of Warre and Fortune, and by whose skill and his owne valour, he much enlarged the Persian Territories, and got somewhat from the Mogull towards Candahor, from the Arabian neere to Balsora, and the Tartar East of the Hyrcanian Sea. So that this Mirzaes prowesse and good lucke became newes of joy and sorrow to the Persian and their enemies. His friends from secret welwishes breake out into acclamations of prayses and extreme Desarts, and in peculiar fancies elevated him. Some commend his person, some his excellencies and delight in armes, others his eloquence and all his liberalitie and care. In a word they esteemed him without comparison, and left nothing unsaid or undone that could adde either honour or contentment to him, who for all this (not like our common spirits, who upon small advancement or other attributes deifie themselves and suppose all such additions tributary, and under their deservings) stood immoveable, and sorry they accounted him so worthy, in modestie blaming them for doubling his merits, and accusing himselfe of hypocrisie and neglect, to suffer his Acts to be so gilded, and least hee might eclypse the King his Father either in his splendour or content.

And to say truth, his popularitie begot jealousie and contempt in the King his Father, who out of his suspitious nature, grounded on Tyrannie, his feare of the Mirzaes ambitious designes, the inconstancie of the Persians, and irritations of some Cabinet Counsellours (enemies to the Prince) about him, beganne to feare him and desirous (though his sonne) to have him strangled, thus we see how cruell jealousie is, more cruell then the Grave, and the bloud-thirstie degenerating of Tyrants and cruell men from grace, who as they are by Gods Soveraigne pleasure seated in more eminencie then others, to defend and relieve the distrest and wel-deserving, turne it into pride and crueltie, dividing mercie and justice who delight each other, and such appeares in this old Abbas, that so farre forgot repentance, for murthering his eldest brother Emir-hamze-mirza, a Prince so compleatly valiant, victorious, and each way worthy, that though the Turkes (whose scourge he ever was like another Scanderbeg) rejoyced at it, yet it drew flouds of teares and incessant lamentations from the Persians, for the untimely and treacherous downfall, of such a hopefull, beautifull, and delightfull Cedar, and in memory of whom (being all and the utmost revenge they durst to expiate) they solemnized his Funerals with annuall teares, and for many yeares exceedingly hated his Fratricide Abbas, then ruling over them and who by all acts of conquest against their adversaries, and indulgence for their safeties laboured his ingratiating into their love, and by a counterfeit deploring what had beene perpetrated, at length obtained it: the thought of this, and posting his pur-blind Father into Paradice, in time forgotten, especially seeing they enjoyed their severall pleasures in like sort as anciently, and that by Shaugh Abbas his victories against the Turke and Tartars, they became redoubted and feared in most of Asia. So that for many yeares hee governed fortunate and justly, beloved and honoured, and never at a higher pitch attained it, then now, crowning his hostile employments by the victory and bravery of his sonne the admired Mirza (himselfe tumbling in wanton pleasures and varietie of delights.)

The Prince in some attempts into Arabia, heard of, saw, admired, and after some reciprocall favours, espouses an Arabian Princesse to his Wife, a Ladie (if report of a Persian man of note be worth the crediting) endowed with such gifts and ornaments of minde, birth, beautie and loyaltie, as paralleld the best their living, and enstiled the possessor rich and happy. And the rather, because without exceptions, in the quarrelsome opinions of the King his father.

By this Lady he had two children, Soffie and Fatyma: both accounted of, by Parents and Grandsire, and pleasing to the Persians, who honour the issue of such as descend from Ancestors of courage, high birth, beautie and the like, all which flowed into these two Princes.

All terrene joyes are mixt with discontent and periods, and old Abbas, day by day increasing his jealousie and envie to his sonne, intends to hinder his further progresse into glory or other happines. he [sic] durst not banish him, least hee should convert his rage, to affront his unnaturall Father, and when he thought of killing him by treason in his Army (the innocent Prince at that time, sweating in bloud to redeem the honour of his Countrimen against the Turke) that frighted him, lest when his cruelty disclosed it selfe, upon apprehension of the murderer, his men in revenge and detestation of his Tyranny might rebell, or joyning with the enemie, to his irreparable losse of purse and honour. So that he resolved to execute him at the Court, when farre from friends and where he could best faine an invented crime, so without more procrastinations, he sends a shooter or footman to him, and (all excuses set aside) to post to Court: where the businesse should then be tolde him.

The Prince, to forfet their amazement and ill opinion of him, declares the message and assures them of his flying speed thither and backe againe, and without more ceremonie hastens to receive instead of thankes, destruction.

His arrival was quickly knowne to his father Abbas, who sends him word he was not very well, and desired him to repose where they should carry him, and ere long he would come and welcome him.

The credulous Prince, without any suspect of treachery (invincible signes of honestie and a sincere mind) followes the man appointed to shew his lodging, whereinto, (so soone as that servant was departed) enters at a trapdoore, seven great Villaines, deafe and dumbe, armed with Bow-strings and bloudie minds, whose habit and weapons without other Interpreters, assured the amazed Prince that he was betrayed, and sealed to destruction. If oratorie or other submissive signes of entreatie could have begot pitie or intermission from these hel-hounds, but only till he knew the cause of his unnaturall project, he had affoorded it, but knowing they were deafe in bodie and soule, inflamed with rage and sorrow, that hee wanted a Sword or other Weapon to defend himselfe, hee flew upon them all, one after another, offending them by rare force and agilitie, a long time preventing the noozes to fasten on him, which they threw incessantly towards his necke, presenting pale death in their terrible twangs, and armed with integritie and innocence, ere they could strangle him, he sent three of them to the Devill, to receive their recompence, the other four seeing their danger, re-enforced their actions, and at last fastned on him, who quite spent with rage and opposals, fell downe dead, and as craving a cessation of that horrible fight, and that they would not equallize him in the manner of his death, to abject Dogs. But these Canibals continued their cruell cowardize both dead and living, and had surely finisht their villany, had not the King then entred and prevented them (who some say, was a secret spectator of this unparalleld barbarisme) hee forthwith, commands his tired armes to be pinnioned, and ere he had fully recovered his sences, makes a hot flaming steele be drawne afore his eyes, which though giving no great paine, yet tooke away his eyesight: forbidding him for ever any more sight of what hee loved, wife, children, friends, and endeared Souldiers. And by this excessive impietie, Asia lost her chiefest Jewell, Mars his Darling, and Persia her incomparable treasure, now undone, blind, imprisoned, and hopelesse of any joy or honour ever after.

This could not be so secretly committed, but in time, all Persia knew it, and lamented it with teares for him, and imprecations of all mischiefe upon the Authors of it: his Army were of long time implacable, but when they saw it was past remedie, and the King would in time, serve them with like sawce, if they continued refractorie, they retired, and buried in murmure and forced silence, what their hearts fully and freely discourst upon.

So soone as the blinded Prince, perceived himselfe imprisoned (which hee saw with the eyes of griefe and understanding) hee was more then half-distracted, exclaimed upon his bloudie father, curst his birth-day, and vowed the Kings destruction and his Favourites, if it lay in his power to see or touch them: but when he cald to mind his impossible desires, he roared hideously, and in a word, exprest all true symptomes of madnesse and desire of revenge, till his afflicted Kinsmen and companions, flockt about him, and dictated patience: which they bettered, by relating their own quondam greatnesse in bloud and offices, till by the like dislike and mutabilitie of Shaw Abbas his humours, they were digraded, trod upon, mutilated, some their eyes put out, some their ears and noses cut off, and others in other members, here captived and almost famished.

In those discontented times, the King moving like Saturne in the highest Orbe, deliciously tooke his pleasure, and on all sides stood free and firme against stormes or other accidentall causes, able to withstand his quiet.

He surfeited in varietie of pleasures, but none tooke him so much as the beautie and pretie discourse he observed in Fatyma (daughter to his blinded and enraged sonne) which Ladie, though not seven yeares old, in such sort inchanted doting Abbas, that nothing rellisht well without Fatyma, none gave him mirth, save Fatyma, and if inraged against any, no better reconcilement then by Fatyma, so that Court and Kingdome wondred at his love to this wittie Ladie his beloved grand-child, whom when aged two yeares more, he purposed a marriage with an Arabian King.

Nor had King Abbas all the benefit of this little Lady, for though she had all possible delight and pleasure at the Court: yet neglected she no part of dutie, but came very oft into the Cittadell to joy her father and releeve his wants; for that none save her, durst aske the King for their allowances, without apparent danger of displeasure and life withall, if it hapned he was displeased, though in no other matters, whereby the royall (but most miserable) prisoners at sometimes were neere famished, none daring to releeve them, lest the jealous King might have them in suspition.

Thus by this good Lady gained they what formerly they pined for, even food and comfort. But as the Devill is never fild with villany, blood, or horrour, so he exasperates this blinded Prince her father to a strange revenge (sonne of a father both unnaturall) for thirsting after it though never so terrible, in a Devilish apprehension, hearing of his fathers immoderate joy and pleasure he tooke in Fatyma, whom too (revenge excepted which whirld him headlong to perdition) he affected exceedingly the law of Nature, (for wee name not grace in these Catastrophes) her infinite deservings, as loded with admirable beautie, a delicate spirit, sweet behaviour and charitable acts surpassing child-hood, forced him to conceive well of her, and wish he had some meanes to be revenged, but this word revenge he still harpt upon: it was his food, rayment, sleepe and chiefe delight, for all the rest were comprehended in bloud-thirstinesse. Which wicked designe at length he accomplished, for one time when his sad Wife and sonne were sitting by him, prettie Fatyma came in with reliefe unto her father, and by all actions of love and dutie to shew her selfe obedient, such time (cursed time) as this young Princesse plaid about him, the Prince called her, who readily came to be made much of, but see a horred entertainment, for in stead of love and kindnesse, with admirable celeritie and rage, grasping her tender necke with his strong and wrathfull hands, whirling her about, ere shee could begge for pittie or helpe, the cruell father threw starke dead upon the floore his daughter Fatyma, and in her the joy of parents, excessive delight of the aged King, and sole ornament and comfort of all that Kingdome: the poore Princesse strugled and cried out against him, that it was Fatyma, little thinking, hee therefore kild her, because Fatyma. But hee hearing his sonne Soffie was there too, in blind sort pursued him, who to his good fortune escapt downestaires, and some yeares after at his Grand-sires death, was crowned King of Persia at our comming thence.

So soone as old King Abbas heard of this sad accident, hee fell into such passions of rage and sorrow, that each man feared he would become his owne Executioner: and though many pittied him and were sorry for the cause, yet none durst comfort him, fearing his impatient nature, but left it to time and the Kings owne courage and providence to mitigate his dolours.

Yet, to expresse how ill he tooke so foule a murther (hypocritically masquing his former cruelties) sends threats of terrible satisfactions, as famine, strapadoes and other punishments to the inraged Prince his Sonne. Who, by the Messinger retuned [sic] his father many curses, hopes of better revenge and wishes of ten thousand miseries to fall upon him, and in this cholloricke and melancholy temper he spent two sad dayes, and in the third gave a period to his miseries in this World, by supping a delighted cup of extreame poyson, and when his death was told the King, he commanded some Noble men to see him buried, but not where harmelesse Fatyma was entombed.

The sad Princesse his wife, surfeiting with sorrow and discontent mewed her selfe up, and since that time has seldome beene seene to any, so that the certaintie of her life is doubtfull unto many. Except now her sonne Soffie-Shaw, (succeeding his royall Grandsire Abbas, in the Persian dignitie, and crowned at our comming thence) hath since disswaded her from that solitary and unfitting life, and to afford her some joy then, rather then for ever to live without it.

But of what courage, ingenuitie, or inclination King Soffie shewes himselfe, I cannot give the Reader satisfaction in, in that we parted thence, just at his Coronation, and his yeares cannot yet beget discretion in full measure (being not above fifteene) but it appeares partly, that he is truly of the Abasian pedigree, for so soone as he got securitie of the Diademe, hee cut off Mahomet-ally-begs head (his Grandfathers only Favourite) to be heire to his estate, and to content his Guardian Emangoly Chawn, Duke of Shiras, and since has shewed his Guardian such another curtesie, Auno [sic] 1631. by making headlesse the Beglerbeg his eldest sonne, upon smalle ground of reason, except to beget terrour in other his high-minded subjects.

Here Denham found the core of his plot, but he made, as we shall see, some significant changes.

It seems likely that the characterisation of the King's malicious favourite, Haly, in The Sophy owes something to Herbert's presentation of “Mahomet-Aly-beg”. Herbert offers a striking narrative of his duplicity (pp. 123-4):

After some stay in Cazbeen, our Ambassadour, desirous of his dispatch visited Mahomet-Aly-beg, and by him intreated answere of his Letter.

The Pagan in short told him, if hee had any more to possesse the King he should first acquaint him, and consequently have an answer, to which our Ambassadour replyed little, tho discontented much, perceiving by this he should have no further accesse unto the King, but willing to be gone, and loth the Favourite should see him danted, he trusted him with his businesse. Some part the continuation of amity betwixt their Masters, with some words of the Merchants Traffique, and an acknowledgement from the King, that Sir Robert Sherley was his true Ambassadour into Europe.

To the first two Mahomet-Ally-beg undesired, bolted out, that hee knew his Master the King of Persia or Potshaw, stood more affected to no one Prince of the World, then to our King: and that the Trade and Exchange betwixt their Merchants, was both pleasing and profitable to his King: and for Sir Robert Sherley (whose enemy Mahomet ever has [sic]) he knew and had heard the King himselfe say, he cared not for him, and that his Ambassies and Messages to the Princes of Christendome, were frivolous and forged, tis true, quoth hee, the King gave him (as an argument of favour) at the Caspian Sea, a Horse and Garment, but it was more to satisfie the other Ambassadour himselfe, then out of any respect the King has unto him.

And when our Lord Ambassadour told him, Sir Robert Sherley had the Kings Letter of Credence or Firman, to testifie the truth of it, and thats [sic] if he were an Imposture, he were the veriest Foole living, to undertake a journey of that length and danger, knowing with all the Kings severity.

To which the Pagan answered not, but told him, at their next meeting he would give him ampler satisfaction, intreating him for a sight of Sir Roberts Testimoniall Letter, and a Copy of what Sir Robert Sherley had treated about in England, or other places.

Two dayes after, attended by some Gentlemen, he visited Mahomet-Ally-beg againe, and gave him the Copy of what he last desired, and with all shewed him, Sir Roberts Letter of Credence signed by his King Shaw Abbas in Spahawn.

He bid him looke upon it, and tell him if it had the Image of a Counterfeit, the malicious Favourite thought it had, but being uncertaine, craved it to shew the King, which accordingly he did (if we may give credit to an enemy and Infidell) unto the King three dayes after, who (as he told Sir Dodmore Cotton) viewed them, denied them for true, and in rage had burnt them, wishing Sir Robert Sherley to depart his kingdome, as old and troublesome.

He was amazed at it, but knew no remedie.

For my own part I am verily perswaded, the Kings Seales and Phirman were true, and that either Mahomet-Ally-beg jugled with him (for wee had but his word), for all we knew, and never more came in presence of the King) he might forge other Letters to shew the King, else why kept he them two dayes without delivery, or he might have slandered the King, to say hee burnt them, being an act, not worthy so just a Prince as Abbas was reputed for.

This argument may prove his being true Ambassadour, because the King hearing he came in that defence, and to cleere his honour from Nogdi-begs aspersions in England, as the King gave him no apparent satisfaction yet because he never questioned an injury done him (that had he beene an Imposture had beene one) it followes he was guarded with innocencie and truth.

And but that Nogdi-beg had done Sir Robert Sherley injury, wherefore should Shaugh Abbas say, twas well for him hee poysoned himselfe (guiltie of revenge) for had hee come to the Court of Persia, he would have sliced his body into as many parts as there be dayes in a yeare, and burnt them with Dogs Turds, in the open Market place.

Againe, his sonne in our company, durst not come at Court to account for his unluckie Father, till Zenall Chawn the Duke of Tyroan his kinsman enterceded, and bribed for his peace and entrance.

The Truth is Sir Robert Sherley had deserved well from the Persian, but being old and unable for further service, got this recompence, to be slighted in his honour, even then when he hoped for most thanks and other acknowledgements.

[…]

These and the like discontents (casuall to mortall men) so much afflicted him, that immediatly a Fever and Apoplexie over-charged him, so that on the thirteenth day of June, he gave an ultimum vale to this World. And wanting a fitter place of Buriall, was put into the earth at the door of his owne House in Cazbeen where he died.

Elsewhere (pp. 126-7) Herbert gives details of both the rise and fall of “Mahomet-Aly-beg”, in a passage which may also have had some influence on Denham's conception of Shah Abbas himself:

… I shall tell you of Mahomet-Ally-beg, his rising and destruction.

His birth-place was Parthia, (cald so from Parah, to fructifie) and neere Spahawn. His parentage so worshipfull that hee knew no further then his father, a man both meane and poore.

Mahomet, it seemes, had no stomacke for the Warres, and having a large Bulke to maintaine, and no Camelion, his education being simple, he became Costermonger, and by that became wealthy and capable to maintaine himselfe.

In a happy houre, the king (then in the Hippodrome, and in Spahawn) tooke notice of him, viewd him, lik't him and preferd him, so as in small time he became sole Favorite, and then was feared and honoured every where among the Persians, for so shall it still be done to him whom the king honours. Not any Prince, Duke, Sultan or other, who depended upon the Potshaughs smiles, but in an awfull complement sent him yearely some gift or other to cherish his favour, whereby his wealth became wonderfull.

His presence was very good, a good and smiling countenance, big body, great mustachoes, and full eyes (a great beautie among Mahumetans) his yeares under forty, a third part of which age hee lived in Honour and generall account, till to his utter confusion at Cazbeen, Abbas the king (though loth) gave way to Atropos, who could shee have been bribed, might yearely have got large Tribute from now dead Abbas, till hee had out-spun the yeares of old Methusala, so loth are Tyrants to goe to Erebus.

The king was low of stature, aspect quicke, low forehead, fiery eyes, his nose long and hooked, over his eyes he wanted haire, his Mustachoes very long and bending downwards, his chin sharpe, his tongue fluent.

He was king of Heri (neere Tartaria) by birth, but unnaturall ambition (though hee removed father and brother for it) soone made him Monarch of Persia, and a terrour to the Turke, Arabian, Tartar and Mogull.

He dead, his Grand-child Shaugh Soffee is invested with his Diadem, aged sixteene, his courage hopefull.

Emangoly-chawn, the brave Duke of Persæ-polis, is by his Grand-sires will made his Protectour, which Mahomet-Ally-beg (now no Favourite) looking after, for his late ambition and bribes even then was made shorter by the head. His estate was confiscate to the yong king for want of Issue in headlesse Mahomet.

In writing The Sophy, Denham made considerable changes to the main protagonists as they appear in his source and he has surrounded them with additional characters either entirely absent, or only hinted at, in Herbert's Relation.

In Herbert, the King is largely in control of his own actions. His jealousy and suspicion of his son seem largely to be of his own creation, as it were, even if Herbert does allude to the additional “irritations of some Cabinet Counsellors (enemies to the Prince” (p. 100). In Denham's play those anonymous “Cabinet Counsellors” are given vivid dramatic incarnation in the person of Haly, a characterisation probably influenced in large part by what Herbert has to say (though not in the context of Mirza's fate) about Abbas's favourite, Mohamet-Aly-beg. In developing the character of Haly, Denham necessarily implies a rather different Abbas.⁷ In The Sophy, Abbas is an altogether more vulnerable figure, easily manipulated by Haly. In the opening scene of the play Abdall and Morat comment on Abbas's innate tendency to swing from one extreme to another (one is reminded of the language in which, in Cooper's Hill, Denham writes of the constitutional problems of his own time and place):

Hee's a man of that strange composition,
Made up of all the worst extremities
Of youth and age …
And though
He feeles the heats of youth, and colds of age,
Yet neither tempers, nor corrects the other;
As if there were an Ague in his nature
That still inclines to one extreame.

(I.i.31-38)

They comment, too, on how Abbas's knowledge of the world is only such knowledge as those closest to him allow him to have:

MORAT:
Alas, they shew him nothing
But in the glasse of flatterie, if any thing
May beare a shew of glory, fame, or greatnesse,
'Tis multiplyed to an immense quantitie,
And stretch't even to Divinitie:
But if it tend to danger or dishonour,
They turne about the Perspective, and shew it
So little, at such distance, so like nothing,
That he can scarce discerne it.
ABDALL:
'Tis the fate of Princes, that no knowledge
Comes pure to them, but passing through the eyes
And eares of other men, it takes a tincture
From every channell: And still beares a rellish
Of Flatterie, or private ends.

(I.i.41-54)

As such he is easy prey for a schemer as sophisticated as Haly. After he has first planted the seeds of suspicion in the King's mind, Haly tells Mirvan that he

Swallow'd it as greedily
As parched earth drinkes raine.

(II.i.289-90)

Eventually, Haly (in an episode quite without parallel in Herbert) openly asserts his power over Abbas. He tells the astonished Abbas:

Though 'tis too late to learne, yet know
‘Gainst you are King again, what 'tis to let your Subjects
Dispose all offices of trust and power:
The beast obeyes his keeper, and looks up,
Not to his masters, but his feeders hand;
And when you gave me power to dispense
And make your favours mine, in the same houre
You made your selfe my shadow: and 'twas my curtesie
To let you live, and reigne so long.

(V.i.92-100)

Even Abbas comes to the recognition that he has been the victim of his own “deceiv'd credulitie” (V.i.149).

Where Mirza is concerned, Denham's most important alteration of his source involves the fate of Fatyma. In Herbert Mirza kills his daughter. In The Sophy Mirza finds himself “strangely … tempted” (IV.i.525); having been told how much his father now dotes on Fatyma, he sees the murder of her as a kind of revenge. Fatyma asks (IV.i.577) “O father, what meanes the naked knife?” and is told that “'Tis to requite thy Grandsires love”. His daughter's mention of her mother prompts a change of heart, articulated in a soliloquy of some power:

Thy mother? Erythæa? there's something in that name
That shakes my resolution.
Poor Erythæa, how wretched shall I make thee,
To rob thee of a husband and a childe?
…
My father loves thee, so doe's Erythæa:
Whether shall I by justly plaguing
Him whom I hate, be more unjustly cruell
To her I love? or being kinde to her,
Be cruell to my selfe, and leave unsatisfied
My anger and revenge? but Love, thou art
The nobler passion, and to thee I sacrifice
All my ungentle thoughts. Fatyma forgive me,
And seale it with a kisse? What is't I feele?
The spirit of revenge re-inforcing
New arguments[,] flie Fatyma
Fly while thou may'st[.]

(IV.i.584-87; 600-611)

Through the near-murder of his daughter, and the consequent self-analysis, Mirza attains a new conception of revenge, redefined not as the execution of physical retribution (directly or indirectly), but as the assumption of a kind of moral superiority achieved through self-restraint—a conception radically different from anything in Herbert's narrative:

O what a tempest have I scap't, thankes to Heaven,
And Erythæa's love.
No: 'twas a poore, a low revenge, unworthy
My vertues, or my injuries, and
As now my fame, so then my infamie,
Would blot out his, And I instead of his Empire
Shall onely be the heire of all his curses.
No: I'le be still my selfe, and carry with me
My innocence to th'other world, and leave
My fame to this: ‘twill be a barve revenge
To raise my mind to a constancy, so high,
That may looke downe upon his threats, my patience
Shall mocke his furie; nor shall he be so happy
To make me miserable, and my sufferings shall
Erect a prouder Trophie to my name,
Then all my prosperous actions: every Pilot
Can steere the ship in calmes, but he performes
The skilfull part, can manage it in stormes.

(IV.i.614-31)

In making, and maintaining, this reversal, in proving himself more than a merely conventional revenger (unlike Herbert's Mirza), Mirza breaks the chain of retribution. Denham is thus enabled to present a Soffy rather different from Herbert's, to allot to him a rather different function in the narrative's moral scheme. In Herbert, Soffy is said, with grim irony, to show that he is

truly of the Abasian pedigree, for so soone as he got securitie of the Diademe, hee cut off Mahomet-ally-begs head (his Grand-fathers only Favourite) to be heire to his estate, and to content his Guardian Emangoly Chawn, Duke of Shiraz, and since has shewed his guardian such another curtesie, Anno 1631. by making headlesse the Beglerbeg his chief sonne, upon small ground of reason, except to beget terrour in other his high-minded subjects.

(Herbert, A Relation, p. 104)

In Herbert, Soffy fulfils the implications of his “pedigree”, because his father has done so too; the cycle of revenge and violence continues; in The Sophy, however, since Mirza has escaped from that cycle, his son, Soffy, can appear as one of those youthful figures emblematic of social and moral renewal, so commonly encountered at the end of tragedies in this period (such as Malcolm, in Macbeth, or Giovanni in The White Devil). In Denham's play, Soffy takes the action that is needful, but does so with reluctance, rather than glee or casualness:

Now to your teares, deare Madam, and the Ghost
Of my dead father, will I consecrate
The first fruits of my justice: Let such honours
And funerall rites, as to his birth and vertues
Are due, be first performed, then all that were
Actors, or Authors of so black a deed,
Be sacrific'd as Victims to his ghost:
First thou, my holy Devill, that couldst varnish
So foule an act with the faire name of Pietie:
Next thou, th'abuser of thy Princes eare.
          …
‘Twere crueltie to spare ‘em, I am sorrie
I must commence my raigne in bloud, but dutie
And justice to my fathers soule exact
This cruell pietie[.]

(V.i.630-39; 644-47)

In Herbert's narrative Mirza, after murdering his daughter and attempting the murder of his son, spends “two sad dayes” in a “cholericke and melancholy” temper, cursing his father and wishing “ten thousand miseries to fall upon him”, before giving “a period to his miseries in this World, by supping a delighted cup of extreame poyson” (Herbert, A Relation, p. 104). In The Sophy Mirza, having drawn back from the murder of his daughter, is not “cholericke and melancholy”, but conscious, rather, of a new freedom:

                                                                                          Man to himselfe
Is a large prospect, rays'd above the levell
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within my selfe, that world shall be
My Empire; there I'le raigne, commanding freely,
And willingly obey'd, secure from feare
Of forraigne forces, or domestick treasons,
And hold a Monarchie more free, more absolute
Than in my fathers seat; and looking downe
With scorne or pity, on the slipperie state
Of kings, will tread upon the necke of fate.

(V.i.22-32)

These are not sentiments that will lead to suicide; the Mirza of Herbert, defeated and ashamed, half-mad, has been replaced by a Prince raised above the squabble for earthly power and secure in a sense of his own ‘victory’. His death does not come from his own hand; he is poisoned by Haly, but not before a scene (entirely without a source in Herbert, and entirely contrary to the spirit of his narrative) in which Father and Son, Abbas and Mirza, achieve a degree of reconciliation, in which Abbas begs for, and receives, his son's pardon. With a nice irony, it is Abbas who has to declare:[m]y Empire's lost” (V.i.345); his son's “inner” empire endures.

Elsewhere, Denham makes many additions to the dramatic personæ implicit in Herbert's narrative. The figure of the Caliph has, in Denham, a significance and prominence quite beyond anything in A Relation; Mirza's wife, who has no name and little enough character in Herbert, becomes Erythæa, and a figure of some interest and pathos, in Denham's play. Denham places much more emphasis on the Turkish threat than Herbert does; he begins his play, indeed, with Abdall and Morat discussing intelligence reports on the size and disposition of the Turkish forces; he introduces Turkish “bashawes” into the action. Such additions give an additional dimension to the narrative's significance; they suggest that the introversive faction-fighting of the Persian court runs a serious risk of leaving itself vulnerable to external military threat. In the figure of Solyman, “a foolish Lord” who seems on occasion reminiscent of Lear's fool, Denham adds a source of comedy and a means to parodic treatment of some of the play's serious issues and motifs.

Denham, in short, has much changed and expanded his chief source in Herbert. Struck by a vivid story, he has discerned in it dramatic and moral potentials which find forceful expression in a play which is far from being merely “borrow'd” and which testifies, rather, to the intelligence and relative sophistication of Denham's abilities as a dramatist. Given a different set of historical circumstances Denham might well have gone on to make a yet more substantial contribution to the history of English drama.

Critical discussion of The Sophy has not been extensive—and not always very sympathetic. T. H. Banks dismisses it somewhat cursorily:

As a playwright Denham need not detain us long. His only play is The Sophy, an early production, and one of no great importance … Denham's play lacks sufficient complication of plot to make it effective, but it contains numerous well-phrased moral, philosophical and political maxims characteristic of his work, and exhibits a not altogether feeble power of psychological analysis.⁸

At the other extreme are views such as those of F.E. Schelling, who writes that

Sir John Denham's celebrated tragedy … The Sophy, if rhetorical, is a noble and pathetic play; and one of the best of its immediate time, points forward to the vivid and carefully planned tragedies of the Restoration. In a plot not dissimilar to that of Revenge for Honor, Denham contrives to produce a new situation in the pathetic, childish appeal of Mirza's little daughter, Fatyma, to the better nature of that unhappy, maddened, and blinded prince.⁹

Before him, A. W. Ward had also called The Sophy “one of the best tragedies of its time” and, pointing again to similarities with Revenge for Honour, spoken of a certain likeness between Chapman and Denham, evident “in the moral gravity of their political thought”.¹⁰ Later, Alfred Harbage offered some generous praise of the play:

It is one of the most original plays of the Caroline era. Simply and skilfully Denham adapts an episode in contemporary history … The play is simple, dignified, clear, and if notable neither for prosody nor poetic delicacy, yet full of fine thoughts and eloquent lines … Assailing our emotions delicately rather than through mass attack, Denham departs from the usage of his day, his play portending, in its restraint and reality, a type of classic tragedy which in England never materialized.¹¹

More generally, The Sophy has been damned by faint praise or silence. O Hehir is more judicious in his balanced observation that

As a piece of literary dramatic art, The Sophy is neither so good as its seventeenth-century reputation might indicate, nor so bad as it has been judged by more recent critics.¹²

Certainly Denham has that gift for aphoristic expression with which Banks rather grudgingly credits him. The Sophy is studded with reflections of both general and particular application, as when Haly muses

What little Arts governe the world! we need not
An armed enemy, or corrupted friend;
When service but misplac't, or love mistaken,
Performes the work:

(II.i.376-9)

or when Abdall and Morat use cartography and physics (as well as the facts of the natural world) to reflect on the close proximity of seeming opposites:

ABDALL:
I ever fear'd the Princes too much greatnesse
Would make him lesse, the greatest heights are neare
The greatest precipice.
MORAT:
'Tis in worldy accidents
As in the world it selfe, where things most distant
Meet one another: Thus the East, and West,
Upon the Globe, a Mathematick point
Onely divides; Thus happinesse, and miserie,
And all extreames are still contiguous.
ABDALL:
Or, if ‘twixt happinesse, and miserie, there be
A distance; 'tis an Aery Vacuum,
Nothing to moderate, or breake the fall.

(IV.i.1-12)

Many other examples might be cited, but three more must suffice—the opening lines of the Prince's soliloquy in Act IV, after his blinding:

Nature,
How didst thou mocke mankinde to make him free,
And yet to make him feare; or when he lost
That freedome, why did he not lose his feare?
That feare of feares, the feare of what we know not,
While yet we know it is in vaine to feare it:
Death, and what followes death, 'twas that that stamp't
A terrour on the brow of Kings; that gave
Fortune her deity, and Jove his thunder.
Banish but feare of death, those Gyant names
Of majestie, Power, Empire, finding nothing
To be their object, will be nothing too:
Then he dares yet be free that dares to die[.]

(IV.i.199-211)

and, more concisely, Abbas's wry observation that

                                        even in all religions
Their learnedst, and their seeming holiest men, but serve
To worke their masters ends[.]

(III.i.35-37)

and, finally, Haly's shrewd observation that

                                        where Subjects want the priviledge
To speake; there Kings may have the priviledge
To live in ignorance.

(II.i.177-79)

Denham also shows a clear awareness (more surely than many a more practised dramatist) of the necessity, in poetic drama, of an interplay between what the audience sees, and what it hears, so that stage ‘image’ and poetic imagery are fully complementary. To take but a single example: the blinding of the Prince is perhaps the single most startling piece of action in the play. This central ‘fact’ of performance everywhere conditions the language of Denham's play, so that stage event and language take strength and resonance from each other. The blinding of Mirza does not take place until the end of Act Three of The Sophy. But as early as the very first scene images of eyes, of sight and perception, are prominent in the discourse of the play. Morat tells us that where “lusts and pleasures” are concerned the King has an “eye” as “open as the mornings” (I.i.27-8), while more important knowledge comes to him mediated only through the eyes of his counsellors:

'Tis the fate of Princes, that no knowledge
Comes pure to them, but passing through the eyes
And eares of other men, it takes a tincture
From every channell[.]

(I.i.50-53)

In Scene Two it is of Fortune, the “blinde Goddesse” (I.ii.18) that the King and Erythæa speak, and when, later in the same scene Erythæa's manner is subdued on the return of her husband, she explains herself in a speech which twice makes recourse to images of lost sight:

Pardon Sir,
'Tis with our soules
As with our eyes, that after a long darknesse
Are dazled at the approach of sudden light:
When i'th' midst of feares we are surpriz'd
With unexpected happinesse: the first
Degrees of joy are meere astonishment.
And 'twas so lately in a dreadfull dreame
I saw my Lord so neare destruction,
Deprived of his eyes, a wretched Captive;
Then shriekt my selfe awake, then slept againe
And dreamt the same; my ill presaging fancy
Suggesting still 'twas true.

(I.ii.154-66)

The image is reiterated so frequently, at key points in the play, that only a few instances can be considered here; through the language of blindness and (more broadly) of defective ‘seeing’, Denham gives to his play a striking coherence of texture.

Abbas, duped by Haly, believes his son to be “blinded with ambition”; Mirza has, he says, “soar[ed] / like a seel'd Dove” and that, therefore, “his crime shall be his punishment / To be depriv'd of sight” (III.i.259-61). The ironies are complex. The King intends the punishment to be ironically fitting: his son has (he believes), behaved blindly (metaphorically); therefore he shall be literally blinded. But it is Abbas who is blind; blind to the virtues and honesty of his son, blind to the duplicity of Haly. As Mirza himself declares, in the very moment of his blinding, it is his eyes “that still were open, / Or to fore-see, or to prevent his [Abbas] dangers” (III.i.378-9); by his decision to blind his son, on whom his own safety depends (in ways that he is blind to), Abbas is guaranteeing his own downfall, rather than ensuring his security.

The “darkness” into which Mirza will be violently plunged is given a particular force from its ironic relationship to the imagery of light which Denham, in the earlier part of the play, repeatedly uses to characterise the Prince. Abbas tells Mirza:

And as my power resembles that of Joves,
So shall thy glory like high Phœbus shine
As bright and as immortall.

(I.ii.131-33)

Haly complains that

                    I that in his absence
Blaz'd like a starre of the first magnitude,
Now in his brighter sun-shine am not seene

(I.ii.225-27)

and the King, in a pun that has more apposite force here than it sometimes does, refers to Mirza as “the rising sunne” (II.i.245).

Images of eyes and light serve to give a particular poignancy to the tender scenes between Mirza and Erythæa after the Prince's blinding, when, as he says, “darknesse / Dwells in my eyes” (IV.i.435-6). His memory is of

Those happier dayes: when at our eyes our soules
Kindled their mutuall fires, their equall beames
Shot and kindled, till link't, and twin'd in one,
They chain'd our hearts together.

(IV.i.463-6)

What, in another context, might be merely the conventional diction of love poetry is here employed with a special resonance and aptness. “Thinke not that I am blinde”, says Mirza:

Thinke not that I am blinde, but think it night,
A season for our loves; and which to lovers
Ne're seemes too long, and thinke of all our miseries,
But as some melancholy dreame which ha's awak't us,
To the renewing of our joyes.

(IV.i.471-5)

The imagery of blindness, literal and metaphorical, reaches a climax in the Prince's soliloquy which opens Act Five. He dismisses his earlier desire to murder his daughter as “blinde revenge” (V.i.3); happiness, he declares, was not to be found there. Nor, he now realises, need he “thinke it lost, in losse of sight” (V.i.4). He may have lost the power of external sight, but that very loss has enabled a new and greater insight, a new perception of the nature of happiness:

'Tis something sure within us, not subjected
To sence or sight, onely to be discernd
By reason my soules eye, and that still sees
Clearely, and clearer for the want of these;
For gazing through these windowes of the body,
It met such severall, such distracting objects …

(V.i.5-10)

Like the Soul in Marvell's ‘A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body’, Mirza's soul was, before he was robbed of his sight, “blinded with an eye”. Now he can exclaim

O happinesse of blindnesse, now no beauty
Inflames my lust, no others good my envie …
Yet still I see enough.

(V.i.18-22)

Indeed, he might declare, with Gloucester, “I stumbled when I saw”¹³—especially if one remembers the effective theatrical moment of Mirza's entry immediately preceding his blinding:

Enter Prince, stumbles at the entrance.
'Tis ominous, but I will on; destruction
O'retakes as often those that fly, as those that boldly meet it.

(III.i.356-8)

At times the poetry in which Mirza tries to come to terms with his blindness sets up faint anticipations of Milton:

Sleep to these emptie lids
Is growne a stranger, and the day and night,
As undistinguisht by my sleep, as sight.

(V.i.252-4)

This, though, is only one of the patterns of imagery deployed by Denham. Another prominent one, which works to effect distinctions of motive and awareness amongst the characters, is of the difficulty and dangers of a ship on a stormy sea. Again, there are too many instances of variants on this image for them all to be discussed here, but a few examples demand attention. At one extreme of the discriminations effected by Denham's use of this image is the innocence of Fatyma. Erythæa tells Mirza of Fatyma's ability to deal with the “fury” of the King:

She onely can allay it
When 'tis provok't; she
Playes with his rage, and gets above his anger,
As you have seene a little boat
To mount and dance upon the wave, that threatens
To overwhelme it.

(IV.i.497-502)

At the other extreme is Haly. Thinking, perhaps, of the ‘ship of state’, he is a frequent user of the metaphor. He advises Abbas that

                                                            hee's a foolish Sea-man,
That when his shippe is sinking, will not
Unlade his hopes into another bottome

To which Abbas offers only the rejoinder

I understand no Allegories.

(II.i.202-5)

Such “allegories” are, though, a staple of Haly's thought. At his most excessively hubristic, it is to this particular image that he returns:

'Tis done, and 'twas my master-piece, to worke
My safety 'twixt two dangerous extreames;
Now like a skilfull sayler have I past
Scylla and Charybdis, I have scap't the rocke
Of steepe Ambition, and the gulfe of Jealousie,
A danger less avoyded, ‘cause lesss fear'd.

(IV.i.94-99)

When more threats to his position seem (to him) to have been overcome, he again asserts the certainty of his ‘navigational’ touch:

Some unskilfull Pylot had shipwrackt here;
But I not only against sure
And likely ills have made my selfe secure[.]

(V.i.85-87)

It is fitting, then, that as he senses the approach of final defeat, he should address his confidante Mirvan in terms of the very same image:

                                                                                we are lost, fallen from the top
Of all our hopes, and cast away like Saylers,
Who scaping seas, and rocks, and tempests, perish
I'th' verie port[.]

(V.i.481-4)

Mirza, too, articulates his sense of his own condition through this very same image. When most closely tempted to the murder of his daughter, he exclaims

O what a conflict doe I feele! how am I
Tost like a ship ‘twixt two encountring tydes[.]

(IV.i.560-61)

With less hubris than Haly, Mirza sees the remarkable self-control he acquires after resisting this temptation in terms of this recurrent image:

                                                                                                    Every pilot
Can steere the ship in calmes, but he performes
The skilfull part, can manage it in stormes.

(IV.i.629-31)

It is natural, therefore, that he should refer to his own quickly approaching death in this very same metaphor:

          when the ship is sinking,
The winds that wrackt it cease.

(V.i.215-16)

Given the prominence of this image at some of the most emotionally heightened moments in the main plot, there is a sophisticated wit at play in one occurrence of it that might readily go unnoticed. The foolish Lord Solyman suffers, like Mirza, at the hands of Abbas and Haly, his sufferings offering an echo to the main theme of the play. In Act IV he is sent to the rack, for what one of the torturers calls with grim levity “a little stretching” (IV.i.134); he prepares himself by getting drunk:

Here's to you all Gentlemen, and let him that's good
Natur'd in his drinke, pledge me. [Drinkes]
So, me-thinkes I feele it in my joynts already,
It makes ‘em supple. [Drinkes againe.]
Now I feele it in my braines, it makes ‘em swimme,
As if the racke would be a shipwracke.

(IV.i.180-85)

The ‘Tormentor’ comments “You are witty sir”, but there is more than trivial wordplay in the punning of Solyman's last line; it functions as an impressively economical link between main-plot and sub-plot, as an invitation to the reader to compare the responses to suffering of the Prince and the Fool.

One intriguing dimension of The Sophy which remains to be discussed is its relationship to contemporary political events and situations. Albert H. Tricomi believes that the play portrays “a recognizably Caroline set of conditions” and that it is “daringly comprehensive in its reproduction of contemporary circumstances”.¹⁴ Tricomi, who very strangely believes Denham to be the son of Sir George Croke,¹⁵ offers this observation on The Sophy:

Denham portrays King Abbas as flanked by two principal advisors, his ecclesiastical minister, the Caliph, and his preeminent minister of state, Haly. A parallel between this trio and Charles, Laud, and Strafford is, however, of less moment than the fact that Denham constitutes the state in this three-pillared fashion, which embodies so well the situation in Caroline England during the prerogative period.¹⁶

This description of the play is oddly off-centre. It involves a serious exaggeration of the role of the Caliph, who is not presented by Denham as an advisor of the same kind of standing as Haly, but rather as a tool used by Haly. To say, further, that the play “embodies so well the situation in Caroline England during the prerogative period” is to ignore the absence from the play of all but a few of the many factors involved in that complex situation.

The kinds of identification hinted at by Tricomi are unlikely in the extreme. Only the most violent anti-royalist could take seriously Denham's Abbas as an image of Charles I. For Denham to have produced such an image and within two years to be one of Charles advisors himself, and to devote years of his life to the service of the King, services later rewarded at the Restoration, would have involved him in one of the most spectacular political and ideological reversals known to history. The idea that Abbas does in any way “represent” Charles, or Denham's views on Charles, is dismissed (surely correctly) by O Hehir as “fantastically improbable”.¹⁷ Of Denham's views on Strafford we have clear and explicit evidence in his poem on Strafford's death. O Hehir prints (from Bodleian MS Locke e. 17) what is evidently an earlier (and therefore more closely contemporaneous with The Sophy) version of the poem first printed in 1668:

Great Strafford, worthy of that name, though all
Of thee should be forgotten but thy fall.
How great's thy Ruine, when noe lesse a weight
Could serve to crush thee then 3 Kingdoms hate?
Yet (Single) they accounted thee (allthough
Each had an army) as an equal foe.
Thy wisdom such [at] once it did appeare
Three kingdoms wonder, & 3 Kingdoms feare.
Joind with an eloquence soe great, to make
Us heare with greater passion then he spake:
That wee forcd him to pitty us, whilst hee
Seemd more unmov'd and unconcearnd then we.
And made them wish who had his death decreed
Him (rather then their owne discretion) freed!
Soe powerfully it wrought, at once they greive
That he should dye, yet feare to let him live.
          Farwell, great Soule, the glory of thy fall
Outweighs the cause, whome we at once may call,
The Enemy, & Martyr of the State,
Our Nations glory, & our nations hate.(18)

Ambivalent as the poem's conclusion is, there is enough here to suggest a clear admiration of Strafford. It was not, of course, unusual to hold ambivalent views about so complex a figure. Another contemporary, Thomas Roe, wrote of Strafford in 1635

He does great wonders; he has called and managed a Parliament and made a firm understanding and love between the King and his people, besides getting money. He is severe abroad and in business and sweet in private conversation; retired in his friendships, but very firm; a terrible judge and a strong enemy; a servant violently zealous in his master's ends and not negligent in his own; one that will have what he will, and though of great reason, he can make his will greater when it may serve him, affecting glory by a seeming contempt; one that cannot stay long in the middle region of fortune, being entrepenant, but will either be the greatest man in England, or much less than he is.¹⁹

While ambivalence about Strafford is not, then, inherently improbable, it is surely the height of psychological improbability to think that in a private work (a poem circulated only in manuscript until its publication in 1668) Denham should have been generally favourable towards Strafford (“Great Strafford”, “Thy wisdom such [at] once it did appeare / Three kingdoms wonder”, “eloquence so great”, “great Soule”, “Martyr of the State”) while in a public work he should present him as a duplicitous Machiavel.²⁰

It is not then profitable to read The Sophy as a kind of allegorical representation of contemporary personalities, a kind of drama à clef (who does Mirza represent? where is Henrietta Maria?). But Denham was an intelligent young man living through a period of national crisis. That he should have ideas about important contemporary issues was natural and proper; that he should use his literary works to comment on some of those issues was equally natural. Two particular passages of The Sophy stand out in this respect. In Act One Scene Two Abbas declares that new resources will be provided for his army fighting against the Turks:

KING:
Let twenty thousand men be raised.
Let fresh supplyes of victuals, and of money,
Be sent with speed.
LORD:
Sir, your Treasures
Are quite exhausted. the Exchequer's empty.
KING:
Talke not to me of Treasures, or Exchequers,
Send for five hundred of the wealthiest Burgers,
Their shops and ships are my Exchequer.
ABDALL:
[aside] ‘Twere better you could say their hearts.

(I.ii. 47-55)

Any audience at the beginning of the 1640s would inevitably have heard in this an allusion to Charles's attempts to raise money through the imposition of Ship Money (and of the ensuing legal case, in which, as we have seen, the dramatist's father was one of the judges). Tricomi rightly observes that “[t]he passage is memorable for its linking in one felicitous line the grievances of “ship” money and merchants' “shop” money”.²¹ Even here the application is by no means limited to the specific occasion; it is part of the play's larger pattern of thought about political structures. In a later scene (IV.i), the two noble and honest courtiers Abdall and Morat (who had opened the play in an almost choric fashion) discuss the intervention of religious authorities in political matters (prompted by the Caliph's misleading of Abbas through a feigned vision). Abdall comments

Poore Princes, how they are mis-led,
While they, whose sacred office 'tis to bring
Kings to obey their God, and men their King,
By these mysterious linkes to fix and tye
Them to the foot-stoole of the Deity:
Even by these men, Religion, that should be
The curbe, is made the spurre to tyrannie;
They with their double key of conscience binde
The Subjects soules, and leave Kings unconfin'd;
While their poore Vassals sacrifice their blouds
T'Ambition; and to Avarice, their goods;
Blinde with Devotion. They themselves esteeme
Made for themselves, and all the world for them;
While heavens great law, given for their guide, appeares
Just, or unjust, but as it waytes on theirs:
Us'd, but to give the eccho to their words,
Power to their wills, and edges to their swords.
To varnish all their errors, and secure
The ills they act, and all the world endure.
Thus by their arts Kings awe the world, while they,
Religion, as their mistresse, seeme t'obey;
Yet as their slave command her, while they, seeme
To rise to Heaven, they make Heaven stoope to them.

(IV.i. 16-39)

O Hehir very justly comments that

To a reader predisposed to see in the Caliph a portrait of Archbishop Laud the twenty-three lines of Abdall's speech might seem to be a scathing attack upon Laud's supposed Erastianism, but Denham redresses the balance by giving to Morat twenty-eight lines, absolutely unmotivated by anything within the play, on the topic of the equal and contrary perfidy of the clergy who pervert religion to the service of the evil extreme reaction to royal tyranny. If the two speeches taken together make up a discourse on clerical hypocrisy, Abdall's speech has much less direct applicability to the career of William Laud than Morat's has to the fireeating Puritan preachers.²²

Morat's speech, read alongside that by his friend Abdall, constitutes very clear evidence that The Sophy was designed, not merely to take sides in the particular conflict of the moment—Tricomi's description of the play as “courtly but opposition-oriented”²³ is surely too reductive—but to consider larger issues about Church and State:

Nor is this all, where feign'd devotion bends
The highest things, to serve the lowest ends:
For if the many-headed beast hath broke,
Or shaken from his necke the royall yoake,
With popular rage, religion doth conspire,
Flowes into that, and swells the torrent higher;
Then powers first pedigree from force derives,
And calls to minde the old prerogatives
Of free-borne man, and with a saucy eye
Searches the heart, and soule of Majestie;
Then to a strict account, and censure brings
The actions, errors, and the ends of Kings;
Treads on authority, and sacred lawes,
Yet all for God, and his pretended cause,
Acting such things for him, which he in them,
And which themselves in others will condemne;
And thus ingag'd, nor safely can retire,
Nor safely stand, but blindly bold aspire,
Forcing their hopes even through despaire, to climbe
To new attempts; disdaine the present time,
Grow from disdaine to threats, from threats to armes,
While they (though sonnes of peace) still sound th'alarm's:
Thus whether Kings or people seeke extreames,
Still conscience and religion are their Theams:
And whatsoever change the State invades,
The pulpit either forces, or perswades.
Others may give the fewell, or the fire;
But they the breath, that makes the flame inspire.

While one may be unwilling to see The Sophy's concerns as merely (or even primarily) topical, given such speeches it is easy to agree with A. W. Ward that

In the political wisdom which it teaches in one of its most striking scenes, something nobler than party spirit reveals itself; and a lesson is enforced deserving the attention both of Kings and rebels who misuse religion as an instrument or as a pretext.²⁴

Denham's is a play that has ancestors in the serious ethical dramas of Chapman and Fulke Greville (Denham surely knew his Mustapha) and descendants in the most intelligent of the ‘serious dramas’ of the Restoration. Its themes and its relevance are not circumscribed by “party spirit” or by merely contemporary relevance.

The Sophy was published in 1642. Before many years had passed, Robert Baron published his tragedy Mirza. Denham can have been no more than 26 or 27 when he wrote The Sophy. The author of Mirza was even younger, since the author was born in 1630, and there is some debate as to whether Mirza was first published in 1647 or 1655. That two young authors should have made use, in such quick succession, of the very same source to write plays is striking. How differently they made use of their shared materials is discussed in volume two, containing the text of Mirza.

Notes

1. Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, New edition with additions and corrections by Philip Bliss, London, Rivington, 1813-20, III. 824.

2. Gerald Eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1956, III. 277-78.

3. Gerald Eades Bentley, ‘The theatres and the actors’, in The Revels History of Drama in English, Vol. IV: 1613-1660, London, Methuen, 1981, 112-114.

4. Leigh's poem is a fascinating catalogue both of the poets Moseley has already published and those he would like to see him publish; it offers interesting evidence of the tastes of a particular reader with Royalist inclinations. His list includes Suckling, Carew, Waller, Beaumont and Fletcher, Denham, Newcastle, Davenant, Stapylton, Fanshawe, Stanley, Sherburne, Heath, Crashaw, Shirley, Quarles, Benlowes, Mayne, Cleveland, Berkenhead, Cowley, Vincent and Brown. Leigh closes his poem with the lines “So, as poor folkes delight to talk of wealth, / I name good Wits, though I am none my self”.

5. ‘FOR THE AUTHOR, Truly Heroick, by BLOUD, VIRTUE, LEARNING’, in Edward Benlowes, Theophila (1652), xxix.

6. Samuel Butler, Satires and Miscellaneous Poetry and Prose, ed. R. Lamar, Cambridge, C.U.P., 1928, 120.

7. An interesting account of Haly's manipulation of Abbas, in terms of Renaissance psychological ideas, is provided by Anat Feinberg, ‘The Perspective of Fear in Sir John Denham's The Sophy’, Studia Neophilologica, 52, 1980, 311-322.

8. The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham, ed. T. H. Banks, Second edition, n.p., Archon Books, 1969, 45-46.

9. F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama 1558-1642, London, Archibald Constable & Co., 1908, I, 451.

10. A. W. Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature To the Death of Queen Anne, Revised edition, London, Macmillan & Co., 1899, III, 148.

11. Alfred Harbage, Cavalier Drama: An Historical and Critical Supplement To the Study of the Elizabethan and Restoration Stage, New York / London, Modern Language Association of America / Oxford University Press, 1936, 132.

12. Brendan O Hehir, Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1968, 46.

13. King Lear, IV.i.19.

14. Albert H. Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England 1603-1642, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1989, 178, 186.

15. ibid., 178.

16. ibid.

17. Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham, ed. cit., 43.

18. ibid., 36-7.

19. Quoted thus in C. V. Wedgwood, Strafford, London, Jonathan Cape, 1935, 150.

20. Herbert actually uses the word of Mohammet Ally-beg, saying that in him “the matchavillyan motto was approved, a dram of good fortune is better than a pound of vertue” (Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, 1638, 206.

21. Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, ed. cit., 186.

22. Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham, ed. cit., 45.

23. Tricomi, Anticourt Drama in England, ed. cit., 185.

24. A. W. Ward, A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne, Revised edition, London, Macmillan & Co., 1899, III, 148.