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What part did Shakespeare play in the construction of a 'white people' and how has his work been enlisted to define and bolster a white cultural and racial identity?
Since the court of Queen Elizabeth I, through the early modern English theatre to the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, white people have used Shakespeare to define their cultural and racial identity and authority.
White People in Shakespeare unravels this complex cultural history to examine just how crucial Shakespeare's work was to the early modern development of whiteness as an embodied identity, as well as the institutional dissemination of a white Shakespeare in contemporary theatres, politics, classrooms and other key sites of culture.
Featuring contributors from a wide range of disciplines, the collection moves across Shakespeare's plays and poetry and between the early modern and our own time to interrogate these relationships. Split into two parts, 'Shakespeare's White People' and 'White People's Shakespeare', it explores a variety of topics, ranging from the education of the white self in
Hamlet, or affective piety and racial violence in
Measure for Measure, to Shakespearean education and the civil rights era, and interpretations of whiteness in more contemporary work such as
American Moor and
Desdemona.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction: 'Assembling an Aristocracy of Skin'
Arthur L. Little, Jr. (University of California, USA)
Part I: Shakespeare's White People
Chapter 1
'Two loves I have of comfort and despair:' The Circle of Whiteness in the
Sonnets Imtiaz Habib (Old Dominion University, USA)
Chapter 2
Staging the
Blazon: Black and White and Red All Over
Evelyn Gajowski (University of Nevada, USA)
Chapter 3
Red Blood on White Saints: Affective Piety, Racial Violence, and
Measure for MeasureDennis Austin Britton (University of New Hampshire, USA)
Chapter 4
Antonio's White Penis: Category Trading in
The Merchant of VeniceIan Smith (Lafayette College, USA)
Chapter 5
'Envy Pale of Hew': Whiteness and Division in 'Fair Verona'
Kyle Grady (University of California, USA)
Chapter 6
"Shake thou to look on't": Shakespearean White Hands
David Sterling Brown (Binghamton University, SUNY, USA)
Chapter 7
'Pales in the Flood': Blood, Soil, and Whiteness in Shakespeare's
HenriadAndrew Clark Wagner (University of California, USA)
Chapter 8
Disrupting White Genealogies in
CymbelineJoyce MacDonald (University of Kentucky, USA)
Chapter 9
White Freedom, White Property, and White Tears: Classical Racial Paradigms and the Construction of Whiteness in
Julius CaesarKatherine Gillen (Texas A&M University, USA)
Chapter 10
Hamlet and the Education of the White Self
Eric De Barros (American University of Sharjah, UAE)
Chapter 11
'The Blank of What He Was': Dryden, Newton, and the Discipline of Shakespeare's White People
Justin P. Shaw (Clark University, USA)
Part II: White People's Shakespeare
Chapter 12
Can You Be White and Hear This?: The Racial Art of Listening in
American Moor and
DesdemonaKim Hall (Barnard College, USA)
Chapter 13
White Lies: In Conversation
Peter Sellars (UCLA, USA)
and Ayanna Thompson (Arizona State University, USA)
Chapter 14
A Theatre Practice against the Unbearable Whiteness of Shakespeare: In Conversation
Keith Hamilton Cobb (actor, USA)
, Anchuli Felicia King (playwright and screenwriter, AUS)
, and Robin Alfriend Kello (University of California, USA)
Chapter 15
'The soul of a great white poet': Shakespearean Educations and the Civil Rights Era
Jason M. Demeter (Norfolk State University, USA)
Chapter 16
'White Anger: Shakespeare's my Meat'
Ruben Espinosa (Arizona State University, USA)
Chapter 17
'I saw them in my visage': Whiteness, Race Studies, and Early Modern Culture
Margo Hendricks (University of California, USA)
Chapter 18
The White Shakespearean and Daily Practice
Jean E. Howard (Columbia University, USA)
Chapter 19
No Exeunt: The Urgent Work of Critical Whiteness
Peter Erickson (Northwestern University, USA)
Index
About the author
Arthur L. Little, Jr. is Associate Professor at the Department of English, UCLA, USA.
Summary
What part did Shakespeare play in the construction of a ‘white people’ and how has his work been enlisted to define and bolster a white cultural and racial identity?
Since the court of Queen Elizabeth I, through the early modern English theatre to the storming of the United States Capitol on 6 January 2021, white people have used Shakespeare to define their cultural and racial identity and authority. White People in Shakespeare unravels this complex cultural history to examine just how crucial Shakespeare’s work was to the early modern development of whiteness as an embodied identity, as well as the institutional dissemination of a white Shakespeare in contemporary theatres, politics, classrooms and other key sites of culture.
Featuring contributors from a wide range of disciplines, the collection moves across Shakespeare’s plays and poetry and between the early modern and our own time to interrogate these relationships. Split into two parts, ‘Shakespeare’s White People’ and ‘White People’s Shakespeare’, it explores a variety of topics, ranging from the education of the white self in Hamlet, or affective piety and racial violence in Measure for Measure, to Shakespearean education and the civil rights era, and interpretations of whiteness in more contemporary work such as American Moor and Desdemona.
Foreword
An ambitious edited collection that traces white people’s racial identification with Shakespeare from the early modern stage through to the 19th century and present day.
Additional text
This big and provocative gathering of established and new voices gives us much of what Shakespeare had to say, in character and verse, about whiteness, as there were just beginning to be "white people." Its contributors likewise show the troubling reach of Shakespeare's genius in reproducing hegemonic whiteness across generations.
