Shakespeare, Race, and Spain

Abstract

Scholars have long recognized the centrality of Spain to representations of race in Shakespeare’s plays. Spain’s status as a site of racial difference in the English imaginary has largely been attributed to two factors: its ‘pure blood statutes’, and anti-Spanish ‘Black Legend’ propaganda. At times, however, an exclusive focus on racialized religious difference has occluded Spain’s significance to other forms of racial discourse. This chapter begins by surveying scholarship on purity of blood in The Merchant of Venice and Othello, then lays out two new avenues for studies of Shakespeare, race, and Spain. The first of these focuses on the history of the Afro-Iberian slave trade, arguing that references to Spain in early modern English drama evoke not only the pure blood statutes but also an emergent discourse linking Blackness with enslavement. The second draws attention to anxieties about Spanish imperial might in two of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies.