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PERFORMING BLACKNESS ON ENGLISH STAGES, 1500-1800. By Virginia Mason Vaughan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005; pp. xiv + 190. $75.00 cloth.
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...