"[F]rom the late 1580s the Elizabethan theater was full of Turks, Moors, Persians, and Saracens. Between 1579 and 1624, at least 62 plays emerged with Islamic characters, themes or settings. Many of these appear in some of the most influential plays of the period: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, which includes burning the Koran onstage; Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, with its evil, scheming Moor, Aaron; the noble, melancholic Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice; and of course, Othello. The enduring ambivalence audiences still feel toward the tortured Moor of Venice is a sign of the deliberate ambiguity that Shakespeare and other dramatists exploited in the portrayal of such characters."