Reading Whiteness in Shakespeare

Overview

This conversation from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s virtual open house features Kathleen Lynch and Professor Ian Smith discussing “reading Shakespeare white,” focusing on whiteness as a racial category in Shakespeare studies, its history, and pedagogical implications.

The Tradition and Context

• Folger’s annual Shakespeare birthday lecture has a long history; 2020 lecture postponed.
• Tradition reflects American responses to Shakespeare; lectures show shifts and trends.
• Smith’s planned lecture proposes a dramatic rethinking: centering whiteness in Shakespeare studies.

Defining Whiteness in Shakespeare Studies

• Whiteness includes bodily reading and valuation of skin, and an ideology shaping culture.
• It is linked to class, gatekeeping, and the “Shakespeare industry” and its maintenance.
• Blackness historically constructed by white culture; race is both material and ideological.

Field Development: From Blackness to Whiteness

• Phase 1 work: empirical evidence of race in the period (presence of Black people, trade, diplomacy, servanthood, slavery analogues, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism).
• Phase 2 shift: examine whiteness’s role in constructing blackness and shaping the field.

Consequences of Whiteness in the Field

• Protectionism: avoiding race discussion shields white identity and ideology from scrutiny.
• Whiteness as invisibility: prevents white practitioners from being seen as racialized.
• Racial blind spots: avoidance creates interpretive gaps, producing impoverished readings.

Addressing Anachronism

• The charge of anachronism is a political strategy to avoid race and whiteness.
• Refusing race talk preserves field norms and white positionality.

Why Shakespeare Now: Urgency vs. Relevance

• Removing blinders expands textual evidence and interpretive scope.
• Pandemic reveals enduring racial inequities (healthcare, education, housing).
• Question posed: Can we return to “Shakespeare as normal,” or must we transform practice?

Classroom Approach and Racial Literacy

• Classroom framed as inclusive space for overdue conversation, not solely pain.
• Goal: racial literacy—students understand race as dynamic (race as verb), apply skills.
• Course naming (“Black Shakespeare”) signals intervention in default white reading.
• Most students, regardless of background, are socialized as “white readers” (positioning).

Reading Race in Specific Texts

• Othello’s isolation: lacks a Horatio-like witness; contrasts Hamlet’s privileged ending.
• Othello’s Sagittary: racially marked space; links body marking and ideological exclusion.
• Iago’s whiteness: uses body as mask/tool to manipulate, maintains power, refuses explanation.
• Sonnets: “From fairest creatures” valorizes whiteness; young man sonnets foreground whiteness.
• Sonnet 111: “dyer’s hand” evokes darkened/stained hand; connects to blackface practice on stage.
• Proposed reframing: scandal of the sonnets as whiteness (young man), not only dark lady blackness.

Casting, Performance, and Race

• Casting choices depend on production aims; avoid rigid prescriptions.
• Options range from race-blind casting to conceptual casting highlighting race.
• Interpretation should make racial dynamics visible when aligned with concept.

Key Terms & Definitions

• Whiteness: A racialized identity and ideology that structures value, access, and invisibility.
• Blackness: Historically constructed by white culture; both embodied and ideological.
• Protectionism: Field-level avoidance of race to shield white identity from critique.
• Racial blind spots: Areas obscured by whiteness that limit textual understanding.
• Racial literacy: Capacity to read, discuss, and act on the dynamics of race as an active relation.
• Race as verb: Race as ongoing relational practice, not merely a static category.

Illustrative Examples Table

Action Items / Next Steps

• Re-read Shakespeare with attention to whiteness’s visibility and effects.
• Integrate racial literacy goals into course design and assessment.
• Challenge anachronism claims by foregrounding the politics of avoidance.
• Use production choices to illuminate race when conceptually aligned.
• Engage institutional traditions (lectures, curricula) to address race meaningfully.