Shakespeare and race
An Invitation from a Black Shakespearean
Note from Folger Education: Now more than ever we need to ask the big questions, confront the issues that both unite and divide us. Today we share an essay written for the CrossTalk: DC Reflects on Identity and Difference project…
![Roxi Victorian as Hero (center) with the cast of Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Timothy Douglas, Folger Theatre, 2009.](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2015/11/ShakespeareUnlimited_MuchAdoAboutNothing_Caribbean.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Shakespeare in the Caribbean
Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 35 Shakespeare and his plays are woven deeply into the culture of the Caribbean, both white and black. Even after centuries of British colonial rule came to an end, Shakespeare endured. There’s a long tradition in the…
![Ira Aldridge as Othello. 1854 print from Germany. Folger Shakespeare Library. ART File A365.5 no.4 (size S).](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2015/02/007523_cropped.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
African Americans and Shakespeare
African American engagement with Shakespeare goes back a long way—maybe even farther than you’d imagine. And like so much else surrounding American race relations, African American performance of Shakespeare is inextricably linked to the experiences of…
![001132_webBanner22](https://images.folger.edu/uploads/2015/01/001132_webBanner22.jpg?fit=10%2C10)
Shakespeare in Black and White
In the second of two episodes about Black Americans and Shakespeare, we talk with scholars Marvin MacAllister and Ayanna Thompson about the period between the end of the Civil War and the 1950s: from Reconstruction, through the period of Jim Crow segregation, and into the Civil Rights Era.