Shakespeare Race and Colonialism

mmOXFORD SHAKESPEARE TOPICS
Published and Forthcoming Titles Include:

Oxford Shakespeare Topics
GENERAL
EDITOR~:PETER HOLLAND

Lawrence Danson, Shakespeare's Dramatic Genres

AND STANLEY WELLS

Andrew Gurr and Mariko Ichikawa, Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres
Peter Holland, Shakespeare and Film

Douglas Lanier, Shakespeare. and Modern Popular Culture

Jill L. Levenson, Shakespeare and Modern Drama
Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism Russ McDonald, Shakespeare and the Arts of Language Steven Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible Rohert S. Miola, Shakespeare's Reading Phyllis Radon, Shakespeare and Women Bruce R. Smith, Shakespeare andMasculinity

Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism
ANIALOOMBA

Zdenek Sthbmy, Shakespeare and Eastern Europe Michael Taylor, Shakespeare Criiicism in the Twentieth-Century Stanley Wells, ed., Shakesjeare in the Theatre: An Anthology if Criticism Martin Wiggins, Shakespeare andthe Drama oj his Time

OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Wilderness and Civilization

but he has never talked about exchanging the two children, only that the white child shall be substituted.in the ,place ofmine, To calm this tempest whirling in the court; And lettheEmperor dandle him for his own.
(4,2.158- 60)

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. Othello and the Racial Question

We do not know whether this ever happens but certainly there is no . 'tempest' in the court, no scandal about the empress haviJ1g given birth to a blackchild and no report of a stillborn or dead child. Therefore it is as reasonable to assume that such a substitution has taken place as it is to surmise that Aaron is lying. The news of the black child reaches the Goths and Lucius through Aaron himself, who is overheard by one of them talking to his child, and the Romans learn of its existence from Lucius, but only after Saturninus is dead. Lucius has promised Aaron the child will live, and at the end of the play he does not retract this promise, aithough we do not know what will