Publishers Weekly
★ 05/08/2023
In this electrifying study, Karim-Cooper (The Hand on the Shakespearean Stage), a literature professor at King’s College London, analyzes the treatment of race in Shakespeare’s plays, discussing how these depictions have contributed to the development of racial categories and been co-opted for political ends. According to the author, the villainous depiction of Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus equated the character’s Blackness with wickedness, while references to Ethiopians in Romeo and Juliet are meant to contrast them with Juliet’s fair “complexion and virtue.” Karim-Cooper criticizes 18th-century scholars who transformed Shakespeare into a “quasi-religious figure” by holding up his works as exemplars of white “English exceptionalism” to justify Britain’s imperial ambitions. Instead, she argues, the complicated depictions of nonwhite characters in such plays as Antony and Cleopatra and Othello should be seen as opportunities to “interrogate the systems of power” that the characters inhabit. For example, she suggests that The Tempest’s depiction of Prospero as a cruel colonizer and his Indigenous slave Caliban as an attempted rapist “does not allow us to empathise exclusively with either.” The rigorous and nuanced analysis stimulates, and Karim-Cooper’s evenhanded approach refuses to excuse Shakespeare’s racism while insisting that his plays still have much to offer modern audiences. This is a vital contribution to the shelf on Shakespeare. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
CHOSEN AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: TIME, NPR, The New Yorker, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly
"The Great White Bard contributes to an essential discussion on Shakespeare and race, one that must include literary scholars, historians, etymologists, audiences and, yes, even actors. Let us all debate and think critically about the issues Karim-Cooper raises. At the end of the day, such tough love can guide us to truly love Shakespeare.” -- The New York Times
“Although Karim-Cooper’s new book tackles a long-standing scholarly question, it is remarkable for its accessibility, both to nonspecialist readers and to those who find themselves more invested in today’s politics than those of early English modernity.” --The Washington Post
“The rigorous and nuanced analysis stimulates, and Karim-Cooper’s evenhanded approach refuses to excuse Shakespeare’s racism while insisting that his plays still have much to offer modern audiences. This is a vital contribution to the shelf on Shakespeare.” -- Publishers Weekly (starred)
"Karim-Cooper’s candid discussion of more nuanced and informed approaches to interpreting Shakespeare can only help his work endure." -- BookPage (starred)
“This text is essential to understanding the concept of racial identities in Shakespeare’s era, his inclusion of nonwhite and non-Christian characters, and the cultural nostalgia around his work.” -- Booklist (starred)
“Any critic who analyzes Shakespeare from a particular point of view—through the critical lens of race—risks being accused of reductive special pleading. But anyone who has seen more than one or two Shakespearean productions knows that his plays not only accommodate many different interpretations but thrive on them. Each new reading enriches our understanding, and none is the final word on his capacious art. By carefully explicating under-known or disregarded race-inflected language and attitudes in Shakespeare’s texts, The Great White Bard takes crucial steps forward in this never-finished project.” -- American Theatre
"She concludes… “We all have the right to claim the Bard” Amen to that." -- Daily Telegraph (London)
"Her arguments, cumulatively, come to feel essential and should be absorbed by every theatre director, writer, critic, interested in finding new ways into the work" -- The Guardian
“Illuminating both words and performance—an essential addition to Shakespeare studies.” --Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Farah Karim-Cooper has long been at the center of conversations about race in Shakespeare’s plays, drawing on her experiences as a woman of color, co-director of research and education at the Globe Theatre, and Shakespeare professor. The Great White Bard is a powerful and illuminating result of this sustained engagement, grappling with how Shakespeare can be reimagined as a playwright who speaks to (and is spoken by) those excluded from the dominant culture. Historically grounded, engagingly written, richly informed by stage history, and always attuned to the ‘form and pressure’ of our time, The Great White Bard could not be more timely." --James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
"This glorious book… is insightful, passionate, piled with facts and has a warm, infectious love for theatre and Shakespeare running through every chapter. Thank you to Farah Karim-Cooper for underlining the fact that we all have a right to claim Shakespeare’s work.’" -- Adrian Lester CBE, award winning actor, Hustle
"There are plenty of books on Shakespeare: but this one is different. This is Shakespeare as we’ve (most of us) never been willing to see him – and the works emerge from the analysis as newly complicit, powerful and yet recuperative." -- Emma Smith, author of This is Shakespeare
"Farah Karim-Cooper's analysis comes from a wide and fascinating perspective. This is an accessible yet scholarly book guiding the reader through essential questions about race, gender and so much more in Shakespeare’s plays. It is personal, refreshing and necessary. She has helped me reframe and understand Shakespeare in a different way. Read it and learn!’" -- Lolita Chakrabarti OBE, award winning playwright of Life of Pi
"The Great White Bard is essential reading for teachers, students, practitioners and artists. It makes clear why the exploration of Shakespeare’s plays must expose the 400-year-old cultural attitudes contained in them if we are to discover their real relevance and resonance. Farah Karim-Cooper has written an important, illuminating and accessible work that invites our active participation in debate about the plays; to interpret and interrogate them, not to venerate. It belongs in every Shakespeare classroom.’" -- Jacqui O’Hanlon, Director of Learning, Royal Shakespeare Company
"The Great White Bard is conscientiously constructed and vitally important. The book is pitched perfectly for the general reader, and it provides clear and compelling models for how to read Shakespeare with race in mind." -- Ayanna Thompson, author of Blackface
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-05-01
A scholar of Shakespeare comes not to praise him nor to bury him, but instead to complicate him.
At a time when the reverence historically shown to dead White men is being questioned, is the Bard of Avon still relevant? Yes, answers Karim-Cooper, who should know: She teaches Shakespeare at King’s College London and serves as director of education at the Globe Theatre. She’s also a Pakistani American woman who fell for Shakespeare in high school, recognizing in Romeo and Juliet “the archetypal South Asian teenage experience.” Arguing that if “instead of worshipping his words, we contend with them,” she assures modern-day readers and theatergoers that they will find much of relevance to today’s world in Shakespeare. Karim-Cooper begins with a fascinating survey of how Shakespeare has become a “cult figure and secular god,” in large part due to an Enlightenment campaign to cultivate “a unique brand of English white superiority.” The author devotes the bulk of her text to exegeses of what she terms his “race plays”: Titus Andronicus, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest. In these passages, she discusses how Elizabethans might have understood race in words such as barbarous and fair and ruminates on how productions through history have been cast and staged. Karim-Cooper frequently brings modern critical theory to bear, leaning on misogynoir, for instance, to explore the racial construction of Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s time and text—a construction not acknowledged in the casting of British productions until the 1990s. She is careful to remind readers that Shakespeare’s England was not an all-White one, bolstering her assertion that Shakespeare “explores different modes of racial formation” even in plays not commonly associated with race. The author is most convincing when she insists that readers consider “how students…or actors of colour…can get to grips with the excessively valued and quite sublime poetry that just happens to, at times, diminish their own bodies.”
Illuminating both words and performance—an essential addition to Shakespeare studies.
