Shakespeare, Race, and Science

The Study of Nature and/as the Making of Race

Bibliographic Data

ID23619929
AuthorsJennifer Park (0000-0002-1269-739X, University of Glasgow, corresponding author)
Year2024
Pages373-394
Publication date2024-01-23
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueOxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192843050.013.23
OpenAlexW4391275662
ISBN9780192843050
LanguageEN
References cited9

This chapter examines the interconnections between early modern ideas about race and early modern science to interrogate what it meant to pursue, consume, and master ‘knowledge’ in Shakespeare. By exploring science and race together as they weave through Shakespeare’s plays, I argue that the pursuit of knowledge as scientific inquiry was foundational to the formation of English ideas about race and/as hierarchy and mastery, as evidenced in how negotiations with race play out in the scientific epistemologies and practices that Shakespeare engages in his works. This chapter explores these various relationships between science and race in a range of Shakespeare’s plays, from Lavinia’s accusation of Aaron’s and Tamora’s ‘experiments’ in Titus Andronicus to Othello’s famous demand for ‘ocular proof’, from the presumptions that underlie early modern European ‘philosophies’ and knowledge systems in Hamlet to the exploration of alternative authorities of natural knowledge in Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest.

Race (biology) · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History of Medicine Studies · History of Science and Medicine

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