Masquing Blackness in The Tempest

Shakespeare, Caliban, and Jonson
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-79405-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 194 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern Culture

Combining early modern historiography with critical race and performance studies, Masquing Blackness offers a historically-contextualized examination of the mechanics of blackness in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The book places Shakespeare’s representations of race into conversation both with Jacobean colonialism and with the widespread calls for racially-conscious reform in American theatre that gained national attention in the summer of 2020.

In the period between 2021 and 2022 immediately following the Covid-19 lockdowns, there were 37 professional or academic productions of The Tempest in the United States, making it by far the most produced of Shakespeare’s plays in that period. This volume proposes an intriguing tri-part relationship between The Tempest, Ben Jonson’s “Masque of Blackness” (1605), and Othello (c. 1604). It reveals a shared understanding of race and blackness, one which also shaped Shakespeare's Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale, likely written alongside The Tempest. Throughout, the book explores the presence of masquing in Shakespeare’s work, both textually and in production, ultimately arguing that The Tempest’s particular staging of race in both early modern and twenty-first century American production owes a great debt to the coterie court performances of Jacobean masques.

Given Masquing Blackness’ dual focus on theatre history and contemporary performance, the book appeals to performance scholars and historians as well as theatrical practitioners and students of American critical race theory. It has a home in graduate and undergraduate courses as well as in the libraries of Shakespeare festival producers, artists, and audiences.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gutierrez-Dennehy, Christina

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Dramen und Dramatiker
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Early Modern Blackness in Context

Chapter 1: This Thing of Darkness: the Mechanics of Blackness and Colonialism in The Tempest

Chapter 2: And You the Blacker Devil: Jonson’s Masque of Blackness and Othello

Chapter 3: Masquing Caliban: The Tempest and Masque of Blackness

Chapter 4: This Stain Upon Her: Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest

Chapter 5: Now His Charms are all O’erthrown: The Tempest Post-Lockdown

Coda: The future of The Tempest

Bibliography

Appendices

Über Autor(innen)

Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Western Washington University and a freelance professional director. She is the author of Like a King: Casting Shakespeare’s Histories for Citizens and Subjects (2020) and the editor of Kingship, Madness and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage (2022) as well as numerous articles and book chapters on race and representation in early modern theatre and performance. She is also the Co-Producing Artistic Director of the 7 Towers Theatre Company, based in Austin, Texas.