Shakespeare and Race

This volume draws together thirteen important essays on the concept of race in Shakespeare’s drama. The authors, who themselves reflect racial and geographical diversity, explore issues of ethnography, politics, religion, identity, nationalism, and the distribution of power in Shakespeare’s plays. The authors write from a variety of perspectives, drawing on Elizabethan and Jacobean historical studies and critical theory. They attend to performances of the plays in different ages and places, as well as to the text. An introductory essay sets the context for the ensuing chapters, which reflect shifts in scholarship over the last forty years. Most are reprinted from volumes of Shakespeare Survey. They tackle the ethnic implications of Shakespearean drama in South Africa, the Caribbean, Germany and the Arab world as well as England. A broad range of plays and poems is included, while particular essays focus on Othello, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest.

• Some very big names here: Soyinka, Loomba, Everett, Bate, Hunter • Broad range of coverage and approaches, including performance issues • Consists of 10 reprinted articles from Shakespeare Survey, from as far back as 1958, plus 2 new essays

List of illustrations; List of contributors; Editorial note; 1. Surveying ‘race’ in Shakespeare Margo Hendricks; 2. A portrait of a Moor Bernard Harris; 3. Elizabethans and foreigners G. K. Hunter; 4. ‘Spanish’ Othello: the making of Shakespeare’s Moor Barbara Everett; 5. Shakespeare and the living dramatist Wole Soyinka; 6. Shakespeare in the trenches Balz Engler; 7. Bowdler and Britannia: Shakespeare and the national libido Michael Dobson; 8. \'Shakespur and the Jewbill\' James Shapiro; 9. Wilhelm S and Shylock Laurence Lerner; 10. Cruelty, King Lear and the South African Land Act 1913 Martin Orkin; 11. Caliban and Ariel write back Jonathan Bate; 12. Casting black actors: beyond Othellophilia Celia R. Daileader; 13. ‘Delicious traffick’: racial and religious difference on early modern stages Ania Loomba; Index.

\'This collection of essays is extremely useful to the academic working on issues of ethnicity, difference, or national identity in early modern drama … it is a valuable handbook.\' Journal of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa