‘These bastard signs of fair’: Literary whiteness in Shakespeare’s sonnets — Kim F. Hall
“While many scholars of Shakespeare’s work thoroughly analyze “themes” such as family, love, power, and virtue, few consider whiteness as a theme and source of power. Hall’s chapter “‘These bastard signs of fair: Literary whiteness in Shakespeare’s sonnets” highlights the Elizabethan England context of whiteness as well as its social, political and cultural implications. Students are often told that Shakespeare’s work is “universal” and are simultaneously expected to implicitly understand that whiteness is the default in Shakespeare’s work. This dynamic “produce[s] the invisibility that fuels white hegemony” (Hall 81). Reading Hall’s chapter before or while engaging with Shakespeare’s work provides historical context like that, “the appearance of references to African blackness suggests that the sense of whiteness is being reconfigured by England’s expanding trade and colonial ambitions” (Hall 66). Hall also presents an example of analyzing Shakespeare’s sonnets through the lens of whiteness, a often-ignored method of analysis. Without understanding the implication that “lyric whiteness a key component of white supremacy” (Hall 66), students and teachers uphold the white supremacy around lyric whiteness, but understanding and analyzing it as Hall does provides complex insights into the role of whiteness in Elizabethan England and, consequently, in society today.” - Eva Scholz-Carlson, Barnard College '24
🟠