SOURCE: “Out of the Matrix: Shakespeare and Race-Writing,” in The Yale Journal of Criticism, Vol. 8, No. 2, Fall, 1995, pp. 13-29.

In the following essay, Crewe examines the “racializing potential” of Shakespeare's drama and poetry, arguing that “race is ubiquitous in Shakespeare's work.”

At present, any attempt to discuss “Shakespeare and race-writing” in general will almost certainly appear misconceived. To suppose, for a start, that Shakespeare engages in something we might call race-writing is already to risk begging the question entirely. Even if the term “race” is granted, recent studies have rightly emphasized the heterogeneity and historical specificity of “racial” construction in the early modern period. These inhibiting considerations notwithstanding, I have posed the question of Shakespeare and race-writing in general terms. I have done so because it seems to me that prevailing historicist and/or cultural-studies categories make it difficult to precipitate the issue of “race” in Shakespeare broadly...