Chapter 18 - Is It Possible to Read Shakespeare through Critical White Studies?

Summary

Black embodiment has dominated Shakespeare and early modern race research, allowing whiteness too often to go unremarked upon. While the importance of this work cannot be overvalued, this particular focus has not just elided the necessity of thinking about whiteness but has, paradoxically, risked centering whiteness in an uncritical fashion. It’s imperative, however, that we bring critical race and critical white studies to bear on the work of Shakespeare as well as that of his fellow playwrights: The whiteness of humanity as figured in “white people” emerges as one of the most articulated subjects in the early modern period and one that is being fully “discovered” and exploited. It’s critical we understand the white racialization of the early modern stage (especially as the site of embodiment) and Shakespeare’s specific contributions to it, if we seek to understand the making of “white people” in modernity and in our own contemporary moment.