Patricia Akhimie writes about racist humor in Shakespeare’s comedies in this excerpt from her essay in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race.
“It’s no wonder that The Crown — nominated for a record six Golden Globes in this Sunday’s annual awards ceremony — is so successful and popular,” writes Austin Tichenor. “Its depiction of an English monarch struggling to rule Britain while navigating political threats and family tensions is downright Shakespearean.”
Victorian director Henry Irving’s use of a Black page in his production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ shows how forms of race-thinking had been sustained and intensified in the English theatrical imagination.
Elizabeth Boyd, a forgotten 18th-century playwright, probably played an important role in the idea for the monument of Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey.
A spectacular 1936 Federal Theatre Project production of “Macbeth” in New York City employed hundreds of black actors and theater technicians. It was financed by the Federal Theatre Project, a controversial part of the federal government’s New Deal programs to provide jobs for Americans.
Check out innovative online plays and programs in February from the members of the Folger’s Shakespeare Theater Partnership Program.
