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Shakespeare & Beyond

Public performances of blackness: The ‘King of Moors’ pageant in the 1616 Lord Mayor’s Show

Lord Mayor's Show pageant
Lord Mayor's Show pageant

Lord Mayor's Show pageant

Colored plate by Henry Shaw (1844), based on a seventeenth-century manuscript drawing of a pageant used in the 1616 Lord Mayor’s Show. [Call # DA681 .N4 (flat)]. Photograph by Maria Shmygol, from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection.

The performance of blackness and racial difference on the professional stage is well documented in scholarship on early modern drama (Hall, Loomba, and Vaughan). Elizabethan and Jacobean theatergoers encountered ‘Moor’ figures in plays such as Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice, to name a few. However, it was also possible to see blackness performed beyond the playhouse stage, publicly on the streets of London.

Comments

[…] Colored plate by Henry Shaw (1844), based on a seventeenth-century manuscript drawing of a pageant used in the 1616 Lord Mayor’s Show. [Call # DA681 .N4 (flat)]. Photograph by Maria Shmygol, from the Folger Shakespeare Library Collection. Used by permission. Source […]

Ep 193: The King of Moors with Maria Schmygol - Cassidy Cash — December 27, 2021