Course description

This seminar explores the representation and fashioning of race in 16th and 17th century drama from England, Spain, and France. In 16th century Europe, race was a complex system of power distribution that relied primarily on religious or rank-based difference. With the development of colonization and color-based slavery in the Atlantic world, the early modern racial matrix produced a new paradigm: Europeans started thinking about physiological difference—for which skin color was a shorthand—in racial terms too.

This course asks the questions: How were those various racial paradigms (religion, rank, skin color) represented in one of the most important mass media of the time—theatre? How did those paradigms interact in one given play or one given national culture? Did they reinforce or work against one another? Which features were specific to nationally defined racial epistemes? Which features circulated across national borders? How did the translation and mistranslation of racial notions from one culture into another shape a sense of shared whiteness in early modern Europe? Which performance techniques did actors use to impersonate racial others, and what effect did those techniques have on spectators? In short, how did early modern theatre participate in the making of race?

To answer those questions, we will focus on a rich corpus of plays staging “Jews,” “Moors” and “Blackamoors,” New World “Indians,” “Gypsies,” and “Turks.” We will read plays and masques by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Molière, Marc Lescarbot, Robert Daborne, and Diego Ximénez de Enciso in conversation with secondary readings drawn from the field of critical race studies.  

Learning objectives

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Discuss major literary figures of the early modern period such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Molière.
• Contrast and compare the esthetics, economies, and structures of English, Spanish, and French theatrical cultures in the early modern period.
• Explain key concepts from critical race theory.
• Diagram the racial matrix in early modern England (how did race in early modern England work?) and locate that diagram both transnationally (how did race in early modern England relate/differ from race in the rest of early modern Europe?) and transhistorically (how did race in early modern England relate/differ from race here and now?).
• Pinpoint the unique contribution of theater to the development of the racial matrix.
• Mobilize this knowledge to explain early modern plays and texts that you have not studied in class, by identifying and contextualizing the specific intervention of those new texts.

Course sequence

1. Setting the stage with Marlowe  

• Marlowe, Christopher. The Jew of Malta (recommended edition: Broadview Press, 2011):
  
  • “Introduction,” pp. 14-28.
  • “Appendix A: Jewishness in Marlowe’s England”: John Foxe; Holinshed, pp. 191-196.
  • Sir Thomas Browne. pp. 219-226.
    
• Heng, Geraldine. “Reinventing Race, Colonization, and Globalisms Across Deep Time: Lessons from the Longue Durée.” PMLA, Vol. 130, No. 2 (2015): pp. 358-366.

• Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. “Racial Formations.” Racial Formation in the United States (Routledge, 2015): pp. 9-15.

2. Jews in Spanish theater

• de Vega, Lope. The Holy Innocent Child of La Guardia (recommended edition: translation by Michaele Jacobs, Oberon Books, 2001).
• Nirenberg, David. “The Case of Spain and Its Jews.” Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires (University of Chicago Press, 2008): pp. 71-88.  
• Beusterien, John. “The Blood Libel as Play.” An Eye on Race: Perspective from the Theater in Imperial Spain (Bucknell University Press, 2006): pp. 86-88.  
• de la Haza, José María Ruano. “The World as a Stage: Politics, Imperialism and Spain’s Seventeenth-Century Theatre.” A History of Theatre in Spain (Cambridge University Press, 2012): pp. 57-78.

3. Shakespeare and the Jews

• Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice.

4. Performing Shylock  

• Berek, Peter. “‘Looking Jewish’ on the Early Modern Stage.” Religion and Drama on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2011): pp. 55-70.  
• Watch: RSC 1984, Playing Shylock (50’).
• Shapiro, James. “The Pound of Flesh.” Shakespeare and the Jews (Columbia University Press, 2016): pp. 113-130.

5. Shakespeare and Blackness

• Shakespeare, William. Othello (recommended edition: Othello: Texts and Contexts, The Bedford Shakespeare Library, edited by Kim F. Hall).  
  
  • “Blackness and Moors,” pp. 177-203.
• Feerick, Jean. “Bloodwork.” Strangers in Blood: Relocating Race in the Renaissance (University of Toronto Press, 2010): pp. 3-24.

6. Performing Othello  

• Callaghan, Dympna. “Othello Was a White Man: Properties of Race on Shakespeare’s Stage.” Alternative Shakespeares II (Routledge, 1996): pp. 75-96.
• Watch: Orson Welles’ Othello (3’).
• Watch: David Harewood on blackface Othello (from 19’25 to 26’14).
• Watch: RSC Othello 2015 (3’).
• Listen: Hugh Quarshie’s Othello (14’).
• Cooper, Michael. “Is blackface Othello dead?” The New York Times (2015).

7. Playing Black after Shakespeare

• Hamilton Cobb, Keith. American Moor (Methuen Drama, 2020).
• Hall, Kim F. “Othello Was My Grandfather.” Shakespeare Anniversary Lecture Series, presented by the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC ,June 27, 2016.
• Listen: “Keith Hamilton Cobb on American Moor.” Shakespeare Unlimited, Folger Shakespeare Library (2016).

8. “Oh Super-Black”: Blackness in Spanish theater  

• de Enciso, Diego Ximénez. The Famous Drama of Juan Latino: pp. 69-202.
• Beusterien, John. “Skin Displays: Seeing the Black.” An Eye on Race: Perspective from the Theater in Imperial Spain (Bucknell University Press, 2006): pp. 101-114.
• Wright, Elizabeth. “Juan Latino: A Lost Portrait and a Forgotten Name.” The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2016): pp. 3-18.  

9. “A Spanish Ottoman”: Turks in Cervantes’s theater

• de Cervantes, Miguel. The Great Sultana (recommended edition: "The Bagnios of Algiers" and "The Great Sultana": Two Plays of Captivity, edited by Barbara Fuchs and Aaron J. Ilika, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
  
  • “Introduction:” pp. ix-xxviii  
  • “Passing Pleasures: La Gran Sultana:” pp. 63-65 and 80-86.
• Balibar, Etienne. “Racism and Nationalism.” Nations and Nationalism: A Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 2005): pp. 37-67.
• Fuchs, Barbara. “The Spanish Race.” Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires (University of Chicago Press, 2008): pp. 88-99.

10. Turning Turk on the English stage

• Daborne, Robert. A Christian Turn’d Turk.
• Vitkus, Daniel J. Three Turk Plays From Early Modern England (Columbia University Press, 1999): pp. 1-16, 23-39, 43-45.
• Degenhardt, Jane Hwang. “Introduction: Seduction, Resistance, and Redemption: Turning Turk.” Islamic Conversion and Christian Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (Edinburgh University Press, 2010): pp. 1-31.

11. Lope de Vega and New World Indians

• de Vega, Lope. The Discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.‍
• Shannon, Robert. “Introduction.” Visions of the New World in the Drama of Lope de Vega (American University Studies, 11.67): pp. 1-15, 27-32.  
• de Las Casas, Bartolome. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (Penguin Classics, 1992).
• Burns, Kathryn. “Unfixing Race.” Histories of Race and Racism: The Andes and Mesoamerica from Colonial Times to the Present (Duke University Press, 2012): pp. 188-203.

12. New World Indians in French theater

• Lescarbot, Marc. The Theatre of Neptune in New France: pp. 73-81.
• Wasserman, Jerry. Marc Lescarbot and the Spectacle of Empire (Talonbooks, 2006): pp. 13-46.
• Melzer, Sara E. “France’s Colonial History: from Sauvages into Civilized French Catholics.” Colonizer or Colonized: The Hidden Stories of Early Modern French Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011): pp. 91-121.
• Aubert, Guillaume. “The Blood of France: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World.” The William and Mary Quarterly (July 2004): pp. 439-460.

13. How beauteous mankind is!  

• Shakespeare, William. The Tempest.

14. O brave new world that has such people in it!

• Hall, Kim F. “Marriages of State.” Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Cornell University Press, 1996): pp. 141-153.
• Watch: The Tempest, directed by Julie Taymor (110’).
• Goldberg, David Theo. “The Comparative and the Relational: Meditations on Racial Method.” A Companion to Comparative Literature (Blackwell Publishing, 2011): pp. 357-168.  

15. Spanish Gypsies

• de Cervantes, Miguel. The Little Gypsy Girl: pp. 3-70.
• Charnon-Deutsch, Lou. “Cervantes, Precious Jewel of Love.” The Spanish Gypsy: The History of a European Obsession (Penn State University Press, 2004): pp. 17-44.

16. Gypsies on the English stage

• Jonson, Ben. The Gypsies Metamorphos’d.
• Cressy, David. “Trouble with Gypsies in Early Modern England.” The Historical Journal, 59.1 (March 2016): pp. 45-70.

17. French Gypsies

• Molière, The Scams of Scapin (recommended edition: Scapin & Don Juan: The Actor's Moliere - Volume 3, translated by Albert Bermel): pp. 2-55.
• Newman, Karen. “La Gitanilla in France, From Page to Stage.” Republics of Letters, 4.2 (2015): pp. 1-10.  
• Taylor, Becky. “Breaking Bodies, Banishing Bodies.” Another Darkness, Another Dawn: A History of Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (Reaktion, 2014): pp. 65-86.  
• Stoler, Ann Laura. “Racial Histories and their Regimes of Truth.” Duress: Imperial Durabilities in our Times (Duke University Press, 2016): pp. 369-391.  

18. Concluding play presentations  

• Erickson, Peter and Kim F. Hall, “‘A New Scholarly Song’: Rereading Early Modern Race.” Shakespeare Quarterly 67.1 (2016): pp. 1-13.

This syllabus draws on the expertise of many colleagues including Chris Warren, Nicole Wallack, Aaron Ritzenberg, Julie Stone Peters, and the consultants of the Eberly Center.

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