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‘These bastard signs of fair’: Literary whiteness in Shakespeare’s sonnets

Abstract / Excerpt

While not much is known about the presence of certain ethnic and religious minorities in England, one can say with some certainty and (only slightly facetiously) that England was inhabited by a large population that came to be seen as ‘white’ and yet we have not uncovered ways of discussing this as a factor in English identity formation. Even as scholars examine the social, political and imaginative construction of whiteness, whiteness still becomes normative so long as we assume that its viability as a racial signifier is self-evident.

About the Author

Kim F. Hall

‘These bastard signs of fair’: Literary whiteness in Shakespeare’s sonnets

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‘These bastard signs of fair’: Literary whiteness in Shakespeare’s sonnets

Kim F. Hall

Routledge/Taylor & Francis

Whiteness, fairness, poetry, Shakespeare

Chapter

20 pages

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Link for Non-BC/CU ID Holders (chapter preview)

Post-Colonial Shakespeares

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

books.google.com

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Citation “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, BC '24