White People in Shakespeare: Essays on Race, Culture and the Elite

✍ Scribed by Arthur L. Little, Jr. (editor)

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 321
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This edited collection looks at how Shakespeare’s early modern stage turned the English masses into ‘white people’ and how white people, especially from the 19th century forward, used Shakespeare to rationalize and aestheticize the privileges granted them as white people.
This collection explores the relationship between Shakespeare and whiteness in the early modern past, the role of Shakespeare in white-nation-making, and the function of white Shakespeare and white Shakespeareans in the academy. White People in Shakespeare argues that early modern English theatre was crucial to the development of whiteness as an embodied identity and that this legacy continues to shape Shakespeare’s reception in many areas of culture. The scholars contributing to this collection have expertise in theater studies, global studies, race studies, white studies, religious studies, feminist studies, presentism, new historicism, and archival studies. The collection moves across most of Shakespeare’s genres, including his poetry, and explores how whiteness affects the reception of Shakespeare’s work and uses made of it in the theater, the classroom, and other key sites of culture.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
CONTENTS
FIGURES
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Introduction
SHAKESPEARE’S WHITE CAPITAL
ASSEMBLING WHITE PEOPLE
CRITICAL RECALIBRATIONS OF EARLY MODERN WHITENESS
THE CHAPTERS: SHAKESPEARE’S WHITE PEOPLE
THE CHAPTERS: WHITE PEOPLE’S SHAKESPEARE
PART ONE Shakespeare’s White People
CHAPTER ONE ‘Two Loves I Have of Comfort and Despair’
CHAPTER TWO Staging the Blazon
THE WHITE/RED NEXUS
THE WHITE/BLACK NEXUS
WHITE DEATH
CODA
CHAPTER THREE Red Blood on White Saints
CHAPTER FOUR Antonio’s White Penis
CHAPTER FIVE ‘Envy Pale of Hew’
THE AHISTORICISM OF WHITE ‘NORMATIVITY’
PHENOTYPIC WHITENESS AND COMMUNITY FORMATION IN ‘FAIR VERONA
DESIRE AND DIVISION
INTRARACIAL RIOTS, INTRARACIAL RECONCILING
CHAPTER SIX ‘Shake Thou to Look on’t’
SHAKESPEARE’S WHITE HANDS
BE(ING) WHITE
OWNING WHITENESS
FAIR WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
CHAPTER SEVEN ‘Pales in the Flood’
CHAPTER EIGHT Disrupting White Genealogies in Cymbeline
CHAPTER NINE White Freedom, White Property, and White Tears
SLAVERY, BARBARISM AND TYRANNY, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF WHITENESS IN JULIUS CAESAR
REWRITING LUCRETIA: SACRIFICE AND THE FORMULATION OF WHITE, IMPERIAL AFFECTS
ANTONY’S RACIAL CONTRACT AND THE PRODUCTION OF WHITENESS AS PROPERTY
RACIAL PURGATION: SHAKESPEAREAN CATHARSIS AND WHITE HUMANISM
CHAPTER TEN Hamlet and the Education of the White Self
CHAPTER ELEVEN ‘The Blank of What He Was’
PART TWO White People’s Shakespeare
CHAPTER TWELVE ‘I Saw Them in My Visage’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN A Theatre Practice against the Unbearable Whiteness of Shakespeare
CHAPTER FOURTEEN White Lies
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Can You Be White and Hear This?
BLACK ACTORS AS WHITE PROPERTY
SONIC WHITENESS
DISRUPTING OTHELLO
CHAPTER SIXTEEN ‘The Soul of a Great White Poet’
SHAKESPEARE AND WHITE AMERICA
WHITENESS AND CITIZENSHIP IN THE US
SHAKESPEARE IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
JULIUS CAESAR AND THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERARY ANTHOLOGY
CAESAR, CITIZENSHIP AND THE WHITE IDEAL
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN White Anger
SHAKESPEARE’S GENTLE WHITE JUSTICE
BORIS JOHNSON SEEING RED
RIOTING WITH STEPHEN BANNON
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The White Shakespearean and Daily Practice
EDITING
TEACHING
WRITING
HIRING
SERVICE
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER NINETEEN No Exeunt
WHITE CHARACTERS NEGOTIATING BLACKNESS
BLACK CHARACTERS NEGOTIATING WHITENESS
NO EXEUNT
INDEX