1st Edition

Masquing Blackness in The Tempest Shakespeare, Caliban, and Jonson

By Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy Copyright 2026
168 Pages
by Routledge

168 Pages
by Routledge

168 Pages
by Routledge

Combining early modern historiography with critical race and performance studies, Masquing Blackness offers a historically contextualized examination of the mechanics of blackness in Shakespeare’s The Tempest . The book places Shakespeare’s representations of race into conversation both with Jacobean colonialism and with the widespread calls for racially conscious reform in American theatre... Read more

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: This Thing of Darkness: the Mechanics of Blackness and Colonialism in The Tempest

Chapter 2: And You the Blacker Devil: Jonson’s Masque of Blackness and Othello

Chapter 3: Masquing Caliban: The Tempest and Masque of Blackness  

Chapter 4: This Stain Upon Her: Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest

Chapter 5: Now His Charms are all O’erthrown: The Tempest Post-Lockdown

Coda: The future of The Tempest

Bibliography

Appendices

Biography

Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Western Washington University and a freelance professional director. She is the author of Like a King: Casting Shakespeare’s Histories for Citizens and Subjects (2020) and the editor of Kingship, Madness and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage (2022), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on race and representation in early modern theatre and performance. She is also the Co-Producing Artistic Director of the 7 Towers Theatre Company, based in Austin, Texas.