Like our own, early modern beliefs about race depended on metaphorical, selective, and contradictory understandings of how membership in groups is determined. Although race took distinctive forms in the past, the fallacies that underlie early modern racial experience generally are precisely-and surprisingly-the same as those in contemporary culture.  Exploring the similar underpinnings of early modern and contemporary ideas of difference, Barbarous Play examines English Renaissance understandings of race as depicted in drama. Reading plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster, and Middleton, Bovilsky offers case studies of how racial meanings are generated by narratives of boundary crossing-especially miscegenation, religious conversion, class transgression, and moral and physical degeneracy. In the process, she reveals deep parallels between the period’s conceptions of race and gender.  Barbarous Play contests the widely held view that race and racism depend on modern science for their existence and argues that understanding just what is false and figurative in past depictions of race, such as those found in Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The White Devil, and The Changeling, can clarify the illogic of present-day racism. Lara Bovilsky is assistant professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

This fully re-edited, modernised play text is accompanied by insightful commentary notes, while its lively introduction explains why Webster’s interests in complex female lead characters and questions of social tension related to sexuality, gender, race, and law and equity – unusual for the play’s time – have led to its increasing relevance for modern audiences and readers. Exploring the challenges of staging this highly melodramatic play, Lara Bovilsky guides you through the most interesting points of its rich performance history, and explores the onslaught of recent productions with race-conscious and regendered casts. Analysing its masterful poetry, she shows how the work can be harnessed to engage debate about the abuse of political and religious authority, the troubling fruits of economic desperation, and personal freedom, and empowers you to do likewise.Supplemented by a plot summary, annotated bibliography, production images, and essential contextual grounding in the court scandals that inspired Webster’s tragedy and Webster’s unusual composition practices, this edition is the most enlightening and engaging you will find.

This fully re-edited, modernised play text is accompanied by insightful commentary notes, while its lively introduction explains why Webster''s interests in complex female lead characters and questions of social tension related to sexuality, gender, race, and law and equity – unusual for the play''s time – have led to its increasing relevance for modern audiences and readers. Exploring the challenges of staging this highly melodramatic play, Lara Bovilsky guides you through the most interesting points of its rich performance history, and explores the onslaught of recent productions with race-conscious and regendered casts. Analysing its masterful poetry, she shows how the work can be harnessed to engage debate about the abuse of political and religious authority, the troubling fruits of economic desperation, and personal freedom, and empowers you to do likewise.Supplemented by a plot summary, annotated bibliography, production images, and essential contextual grounding in the court scandals that inspired Webster''s tragedy and Webster''s unusual composition practices, this edition is the most enlightening and engaging you will find.

Like our own, early modern beliefs about race depended on metaphorical, selective, and contradictory understandings of how membership in groups is determined. Although race took distinctive forms in the past, the fallacies that underlie early modern racial experience generally are precisely-and surprisingly-the same as those in contemporary culture.  Exploring the similar underpinnings of early modern and contemporary ideas of difference, Barbarous Play examines English Renaissance understandings of race as depicted in drama. Reading plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster, and Middleton, Bovilsky offers case studies of how racial meanings are generated by narratives of boundary crossing-especially miscegenation, religious conversion, class transgression, and moral and physical degeneracy. In the process, she reveals deep parallels between the period’s conceptions of race and gender.  Barbarous Play contests the widely held view that race and racism depend on modern science for their existence and argues that understanding just what is false and figurative in past depictions of race, such as those found in Othello, The Merchant of Venice, The White Devil, and The Changeling, can clarify the illogic of present-day racism. Lara Bovilsky is assistant professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

This fully re-edited, modernised play text is accompanied by insightful commentary notes, while its lively introduction explains why Webster’s interests in complex female lead characters and questions of social tension related to sexuality, gender, race, and law and equity – unusual for the play’s time – have led to its increasing relevance for modern audiences and readers. Exploring the challenges of staging this highly melodramatic play, Lara Bovilsky guides you through the most interesting points of its rich performance history, and explores the onslaught of recent productions with race-conscious and regendered casts. Analysing its masterful poetry, she shows how the work can be harnessed to engage debate about the abuse of political and religious authority, the troubling fruits of economic desperation, and personal freedom, and empowers you to do likewise.Supplemented by a plot summary, annotated bibliography, production images, and essential contextual grounding in the court scandals that inspired Webster’s tragedy and Webster’s unusual composition practices, this edition is the most enlightening and engaging you will find.

This fully re-edited, modernised play text is accompanied by insightful commentary notes, while its lively introduction explains why Webster''s interests in complex female lead characters and questions of social tension related to sexuality, gender, race, and law and equity – unusual for the play''s time – have led to its increasing relevance for modern audiences and readers. Exploring the challenges of staging this highly melodramatic play, Lara Bovilsky guides you through the most interesting points of its rich performance history, and explores the onslaught of recent productions with race-conscious and regendered casts. Analysing its masterful poetry, she shows how the work can be harnessed to engage debate about the abuse of political and religious authority, the troubling fruits of economic desperation, and personal freedom, and empowers you to do likewise.Supplemented by a plot summary, annotated bibliography, production images, and essential contextual grounding in the court scandals that inspired Webster''s tragedy and Webster''s unusual composition practices, this edition is the most enlightening and engaging you will find.