Black Shakespeare

by Ian Smith

Race may dominate everyday speech, media headlines and public policy, yet still questions of racialized blackness and whiteness in Shakespeare are resisted. In his compelling new book Ian Smith addresses the influence of systemic whiteness on the interpretation of Shakespeare's plays. This far-reaching study shows that significant parts of Shakespeare's texts have been elided, misconstrued or otherwise rendered invisible by readers who have ignored the presence of race in early modern England. Bringing the Black American intellectual tradition into fruitful dialogue with European thought, this urgent interdisciplinary work offers a deep, revealing and incisive analysis of individual plays, including Othello, The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. Demonstrating how racial illiteracy inhibits critical practice, Ian Smith provides a necessary anti-racist alternative that will transform the way you read Shakespeare.

Genres: Shakespeare

228 pages, Paperback

Published March 27, 2025

About the author

Librarian's Note: There is more than one author with this name on Goodreads.

Reviews

[T. Tokunaga]

【Three Stars / An Honorable, Meaningful Failure】

I do think that this book is a failure as a scientific study, for the existence of the Chapter 1 and 5. These are basically very sociopolitical preachments from the viewpoint of a black intellectual (that's a natural thing for him considering his own personal issues and themes), but still failure is a failure. He has relied too much on the basis of Toni Morrison, so the doubt is just augmented even more.

However, this book has a lot of magnificent insights in Shakespeare's treatment of black people and racism in a calm, sober way, which is so hard to find. Who can say such a concise thing regarding Shakespearean tragedy:

Othello is an immigrant, and his ambivalent status as a Venetian outsider mirrors the mounting social tensions arising from the substantial influx of foreigners in late sixteenth-century English society. (P59, Black Shakespeare)

The insight about The Merchant of Venice had a little bit of antisemitism in it, but it's great to know that Jewish "non-fairness" is what's driving Shylock to be "cruel" - for the present age, and a pound of flesh was actually a legal term then - and how this white supremacy is affecting the play itself, meanwhile in Hamlet, Hamlet compares himself to Pyrrhus who is "black" - black Hamlet avenges white violence.

This framework itself is absolutely important and definitely interesting, and this book can be the basis for further studies from various viewpoints, from Asian, Hispanic, African, Austronesian, Continental -European, Slavic, etc.