Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800 (review)

Vaughan's book does not treat the history of black performers; rather, it concerns the history of white actors in blackface roles and how their performance conventions influenced English audience's concepts of African races. "The black characters that populated early modern theatres tell us little about actual black Africans; they are the projections of imaginations that capitalize on the assumptions, fantasies, fears, and anxieties of England's pale-complexioned audiences" (5–6). In medieval religious plays, (chapter 2), blacking up signified evil as well as an exotic paganism. A black face indicated that the bearer was cast away from God's grace, hence the devil's face was always darkened. In plays of Lucifer's fall, he has a pale face in Heaven but gains a black one as he descends. Black villains often boast that they cannot blush, which meant that this unblushing face of the bearer could perform evil deeds with no shame. Vaughan lists several quotations from Shakespeare that show that blackness was a common signifier for damnation. I would have liked to see her include examples from other playwrights as well.

During the 1500s, travel narratives and the slave trade made the English more aware of black Africans. Thus chapter 3 presents three plays from the late 1500s in which Moorish characters become more humanized while still retaining the stereotypic demonic signifiers of the medieval plays. Because Europeans were appalled at Africans' nakedness, they equated blacks with lust, promiscuity, and bestiality. Plots were no longer limited to the Bible and saints' lives, but included contemporary events and literary sources. In George Peele's The Battle of Alcazar, founded upon a battle fought in North Africa in 1578, the opposition of white and black kings clearly symbolizes the struggle between good and evil. Yet the role of the cruel Muly Mahamet is humanized by including domestic scenes with his wife.

Visits from Moroccan dignitaries and traders in the period following the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588) influenced additional presentations of Moors on the public stages and in court masques, their darkness setting off the fair complexions of English beauties (chapter 4). Moorish figures were also used to illustrate the dominance of the European Christian culture over the pagan African one.

In chapter 5, Vaughan analyzes the "bed trick," a plot device in which a black bedmate is substituted for an intended white one. Thus a fantasy of sex with a forbidden exotic "other" and fears of racial pollution are aroused in the audience. Interestingly, while the fear of miscegenation is raised, Vaughan finds that it is not actualized on the stage. Of the seven plays she discusses, in four of them the substitute is discovered in time and the duped one flees, crying "a devil!" (91), thus reiterating the association of blackness with Satan. In the other three, the audience is aware that the person in bed is really a white character in disguise.

While Shakespeare's audience imposed upon Othello (chapter 6) all the earlier conventions, they also saw a black character who was unique. Vaughan, who has written three earlier books on Othello, makes the point that it is not the black character in Othello who represents the demonic and reveals his maniacal plans to the audience, but the white character Iago. The author feels that "a major ingredient in the audience's fascination with the Moor is the pleasure of seeing the white actor personate a black man" (97). When a black actor plays Othello, Vaughan feels that the meta-theatrical elements written in the role by a white author for a white actor to play and for white audiences to see are lost. When a black man playing the role is seen in uncontrollable rage and murdering his wife, he "risks making racial stereotypes seem legitimate" (104). Othello is not about a black man, but rather a white man's idea of a black man.

Chapter 7 considers the device of the white character who disguises him...