Imperial Concerns in Early Modern Drama

Imperial Concerns in Early Modern Drama: Anti-Imperialism and Race offers a compelling reassessment of how major Renaissance playwrights, including William Shakespeare, engaged with early discourses of empire. Challenging narratives that align early modern drama with emergent imperial ambitions, this book argues that these dramatists approached calls for British expansion into the Americas with deep skepticism. Through representations of established imperial powers such as Rome, the Ottoman Empire, and the Spanish Mediterranean, the plays expose the moral, political, and structural failures of empire. At the same time, this volume confronts the enduring presence of racial hierarchies in these works, contending that any robust anti-imperial reading must also grapple with the plays’ complicity in white supremacist thought. This text positions early modern drama as a critical site for interrogating the entangled legacies of imperialism and racism, both then and now.