The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable.

Ayanna Thompson (Edited by)

9781108710565, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 February 2021

280 pages
15 x 23 x 1.5 cm, 0.45 kg

'Lester's distinctive combination of intellectual engagement and a lifetime of artistic labour complements the expansive spirit of the collection beautifully and evocatively; and it will prove useful to scholars, students, and theatre practitioners alike … this is one collection this happy reader will return to time and again: it sings, elevates, and imagines radically and otherwise.' Mira Assaf Kafantaris, Early Theatre

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race shows teachers and students how and why Shakespeare and race are inseparable. Moving well beyond Othello, the collection invites the reader to understand racialized discourses, rhetoric, and performances in all of Shakespeare's plays, including the comedies and histories. Race is presented through an intersectional approach with chapters that focus on the concepts of sexuality, lineage, nationality, and globalization. The collection helps students to grapple with the unique role performance plays in constructions of race by Shakespeare (and in Shakespearean performances), considering both historical and contemporary actors and directors. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race will be the first book that truly frames Shakespeare studies and early modern race studies for a non-specialist, student audience.

1. Did the concept of race exist for Shakespeare and his contemporaries?: an introduction Ayanna Thompson
2. The materials of race: staging the black and white binary in the early modern theatre Farah Karim-Cooper
3. Barbarian Moors: documenting racial formation in early modern England Ambereen Dadabhoy
4. Racist humor and Shakespearean comedy Patricia Akhimie
5. Race in Shakespeare's histories Andrew Hadfield
6. Race in Shakespeare's tragedies Carol Mejia LaPerle
7. Experimental Othello Matthew Dimmock
8. Flesh and blood: race and religion in The Merchant of Venice Dennis Austin Britton
9. Was sexuality racialized for Shakespeare?: Antony and Cleopatra Melissa E. Sanchez
10. The Tempest and early modern conceptions of race Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan
11. Shakespeare, race, and globalization: Titus Andronicus Noémie Ndiaye
12. How to think like Ira Aldridge Scott Newstok
13. What is the history of actors of color performing in Shakespeare in the UK? Urvashi Chakravarty
14. Actresses of color and Shakespearean performance: the question of reception Joyce Green MacDonald
15. Othello: a performance perspective Adrian Lester
16. Are Shakespeare's plays racially progressive? The answer is in our hands Miles Grier
17. How have post-colonial approaches enriched Shakespeare's works? Sandra Young
18. Is it possible to read Shakespeare through critical white studies? Arthur L. Little.

Subject Areas: Black & Asian studies [JFSL3], Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Shakespeare plays [DDS], Theatre studies [AN]