Roxolana in the Spanish Golden Age

Abstract

This paper focuses on a historical figure known in the Western world by the names of Roxolana, Roxelana, Rosa Solimana, Rossa or Rosa and who was the wife of Ottoman sultan Suleyman I. While trying to find her trace in Spanish literary works, the author also attempts to track down the reasons why her name and many of her features, as attributed to her by historical sources, will serve Lope de Vega to create a fictional character whose role will be to play the part of any sultan’s wife. That is, the historical Roxolana will be outlived by a fictional one in the so-called Spanish Golden Age when a wife for a sultan is needed in a play, and so her name will become synonymous with sultana. When later playwrights needed a character to play the role of a 12th-century sultana they drew inspiration from the character created by Lope de Vega in La Santa Liga to embody Sultan Selim’s favorite lover and did not hesitate to use her name and personal features for the character of another sultana who lived four centuries before Hürrem