Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500–1800
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:12th May '05
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
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- Paperback£42.00(9780521102261)
An unusual study of the tradition of blackface in stage performance.
Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500–1800 examines the dynamics of blackface performance by English actors from the cycle plays of the early sixteenth century, through Shakespeare's Aaron and Othello, to the depiction of enslaved African princes in the eighteenth-century theatre.Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500–1800 examines early modern English actors' impersonations of black Africans. Those blackface performances established dynamic theatrical conventions that were repeated from play to play, plot to plot, congealing over time and contributing to English audiences' construction of racial difference. Vaughan discusses non-canonical plays, grouping of scenes, and characters that highlight the most important conventions - appearance, linguistic tropes, speech patterns, plot situations, the use of asides and soliloquies, and other dramatic techniques - that shaped the ways black characters were 'read' by white English audiences. In plays attended by thousands of English men and women from the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth, including Titus Andronicus, Othello and Oroonoko, blackface was a polyphonic signifier that disseminated distorted and contradictory, yet compelling, images of black Africans during the period in which England became increasingly involved in the African slave trade.
Review of the hardback: 'Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' Choice
Review of the hardback: 'Performing Blackness is a welcome remedy to the relative neglect of English theatrical representations of black skin. … is it not possible for a black actor to perform the part of Othello in a manner that resists racialist assumptions? … this book addresses important issues about the performative nature of blackness and racial representation on the early English stage.' Theatre Survey
Review of the hardback: '… the gradual increase of the black population in London over the period covered by the book, … is correlated with a steady 'humanising' of black stage characters, but also with an increasing frequency of themes dealing with anxiety regarding miscegenation. … an illuminating survey of the development of theatrical conventions and cultural attitudes which will be pertinent to anybody interested in early modern conceptions of race.' Notes and Queries
Review of the hardback: '… why, just as chattel slavery takes hold in the colonies, does Restoration theater increasingly depict more humanized Moorish characters in adaptations like Ravenscroft's 1678 production of Titus Andronicus and Behn's 1676 production of Abdelazer: The Moor's Revenge? … [This] book invites us to consider … earlier forms and manifestations and suggests that we still have much to learn about the history of the category of race.' Journal of British Studies
Review of the hardback: '… [Vaughan] is to be congratulated for her brevity and clarity, and her audience of intellectual and religious historians should benefit from reading this book.' Sixteenth Century Journal
ISBN: 9780521845847
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 16mm
Weight: 480g
206 pages