#barabas

[artschoolglasses]

Ira Frederick Aldridge, Miklos Barabas, 1853

[doyouknowthisjewishcharacter]

Do you know this Jewish character?

Barabas from The Jew of Malta (play)

I know them

I've heard of them

I don't know them

I know them but didn't know they were Jewish

Voting ended onMar 20, 2024

[i-think-pictures]

[depressedpurgatoryprincess]

Yes, I studied the scriptures

[cassianandfenrysaremyboyos]

Derek really saw Kate and went

[noshitshakespeare]

I would be interested in knowing more of how to understand/approach early modern dramas, Shakespeare especially, but other writers from his time too if you know more about them, fron the angle of race/other. Do you have resources/references on how to approach early modern drama this way? I do realise this might be a broad topic, I'm looking to expand my readings and the way I approach/read Shakespeare as a non-black POC who is very fond of his works.

As you’ve said yourself, this is a really huge topic. And as you may imagine, it’s one that’s been getting more focus now than ever (though it has existed as a topic of interest since at least the 1980s). I don’t think I could do justice to the topic in just Shakespeare, let alone in all early modern drama. But let’s see if I can make a reasonable start. 

Because the term ‘race’ didn’t signify what it does now, and because Shakespeare was living in a time before England established itself as a major centre for slave trade, the first thing to be aware of is the difference of understanding. We can’t unproblematically apply modern standards and notions of race and other any more than we can talk about Shakespeare in terms of our modern understandings of sexuality and sexual identity. This isn’t to say that people didn’t notice colour, as can be seen from the terms like ‘blackamoor’ that were being used, but the question of otherness was, then as now, caught up in the more complex issue of religion, and colonisation. Because the Ottoman empire was one of the greatest powers in the world at the time, and Islam was perceived as a major threat to the European countries, difference in skin colour could also denote a difference in ideology (I talked about this a little in relation to Othello once). But sometimes an equal threat was perceived in those who didn’t look different, but who didn’t hold similar beliefs. 

Given that your question is about otherness in general, this is very relevant, and broadly speaking, we can categorise otherness in terms of 

Those who come from abroad

Those who look different (black, brown, even a slightly different shade of white)

Those who have different belief systems (Jewish people, Islamic people, Catholic people)

Those who look different and have a different belief system. 

What to make of early modern treatments of this difference is very difficult, because there isn’t a homogenous viewpoint. There’s never been a time when everybody thought the same thing, and so one can find all sorts of perspectives on race and otherness in early modern writings. Some are missionary perspectives, seeing difference as a mark of heathenism, and wishing to ‘help’ them by converting them, which went hand in hand with those who considered them subjects to be colonised and ‘civilised’ (see for instance Richard Hakluyt, Reasons for Colonisation, 1585). But there were people even at the time who saw the colonial project for what it was, and denounced the cruelty of the conquistadores (Bartolomé de las Casas’ The Spanish Colonie, translated into English in 1583 is a very interesting read), and even people like Michel de Montaigne, who admired what seemed to be a state of prelapsarian paradise in the people of the new world (see ‘Of Cannibals’). In the other direction, looking from Europe towards the East, the great and far superior power of the Ottoman empire manifests itself in a kind of awe, fear, and Islamophobia, but less in a desire to civilise or convert. Often you’ll even find in military and conduct guides a favourable description of the Ottoman nations to the detriment of European cultures. Part of this might have something to do with the fact that Elizabethan England had treaties with the Ottoman empire, but it might be a tactic to shame to west into better practices too. 

Many scholars now attribute the notion of ‘otherness’ in the early modern period as part of the creation of ideas of ‘nationhood’ in a time when nationalism was really beginning to take shape. It’s an age-old notion and one that Shakespeare points out in Henry V that patriotism and national unity is made stronger by demonisation of others. By contrasting themselves with the Catholics, the Protestants could define their own faithfulness, by contrasting themselves with Jewish and Islam religions, the Christian nations could achieve a more unified identity, and by comparing themselves to the less ‘civilised’. In that sense, sometimes more fears are expressed in relation to those one can’t differentiate easily by physical characteristics, like Jewish people, or, for that matter, Irish people.  In fact, there are some very interesting depictions, for instance in The Merchant of Venice or Marlowe’s Jew of Malta in which the so-called Christians condemn the ‘other’ (Barabas, Shylock) for things they do themselves. Barabas, while playing the stereotypical bogeyman of a Jew, will criticise the Christians for their hypocrisy in the way they quote the bible to steal his money: ‘Will you steal my goods? / Is theft the ground of your religion?’ (I.ii.95-96). Shylock is accused of cruelty for essentially buying Antonio’s flesh, even though the Christians have ‘many a purchased slave / Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, / You use in abject and in slavish parts’ (4.1.89-91). The same applies to more physically different characters. Aaron from Titus Andronicus is a problematic character, almost a cardboard cutout of an evil villain, but though he’s undeniably cruel, so are so many other characters in Titus, and strangely, while internalising the idea that black = moral blackness, he nevertheless shows more love for his child than Titus (who kills his own son), and questions ‘is black so base a hue?’ (4.2.73)

This is all to say that there’s no single approach to studying race and otherness in Shakespeare and other early modern writers. The treatment of the other will differ depending on the writer, the play, and even between characters in the plays, because it wasn’t a straightforward topic then any more than it is now. So the best thing you could do would be to familiarise yourself with the discourse that surrounds the subject without committing yourself too much to one view as being more correct than another (it’s a good scholarly approach to avoid bias as much as possible). Unfortunately, the books on the subject tend to be quite hardcore academic. But here’s a short list if you want to get started on something. 

Miranda Kaufmann,  Black Tudors: The Untold Story 

This is great for a more general readership and helps to break preconceptions about what the early modern period in England was like, but it’s not strictly about Shakespeare or drama

Catherine Alexander and Stanley Wells, Shakespeare and Race 

An essay collection, which is academic, but gives a broader scope than a monograph

Jonathan Gill Harris, Foreign Bodies

Quite hard, but very good for a wider approach to ‘otherness’ rather than being limited to skin colour. Does focus on drama alongside history. 

Ania Loomba,  Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism

A classic. Again quite hard, and somewhat inflected by modern notions, but very useful. 

Miranda Virginia Mason Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800

Good if you’re interested in performance history and the actual presentation of blackness on stage, including blacking up. 

Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England

Hardcore academic stuff, and more history-based about the beginnings of the colonial project and slavery. 

Patricia Akhimie, Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race Conduct and the Early Modern World  

Covers that question of building national identity and deliberate emphasis of race or difference.

Mary Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama

Like the one above, this is broadly about the way English ethnicity is created by othering. 

Sujata Iyengar, Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England

Deals with the ways early modern people understood colour in comparison to our own notions. 

Nabil Matar,  Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery

Looking eastward and southward at the relationship between Europe and the Ottoman empire as well as Africa

Daniel Vitkus,  Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean

Another work on the relation between England and Islam, and deals very well with the British sense of inadequacy in comparison to the Ottoman Empire, as well as their fears about others who don’t have distinctly racial characteristics.

Jerry Brotton,  This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World

A history book that charts the incredible trade and political relationship the court of Elizabeth had with the Ottoman Empire. 

Ayanna Thompson,  Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

Jumping to the present, this is more about how Shakespeare is used in America now, especially focusing on pop culture and the representation of racial issues.

For a more casual approach, and one that’s about as up-to-date as can be, you could check out the #ShakesRace hashtag on Twitter. All the scholars and theatres are using it for discussion, or for advertising new books, new conferences, talks and podcasts on this subject, though the focus is, as you may imagine, more on colour than otherness more generally. 

[thestuffiveread]

Curran: It’s a family thing. Sometimes your father puts your semidead grandmother into a really bad place and is ashamed of it.

Barabas: Yeah, We’ve all been there.

Kate: You two are a riot

[lilithlikesart]

Now will I show myself to have more of the serpent than the dove; that is, more knave than fool

Christopher Marlowe - The Jew Of Malta (Barabas, Act II, scene iii. Marlowe is referencing Jesus, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves," in Matthew 10:16)