A question, asked on behalf of a graduate student working on 'blackface'
disguise in Renaissance drama (characters disguising themselves as Turks, Moors,
etc.): are there instances in Renaissance prose romances of the use of blackface
or other types of racial/cultural cross-dressing for purposes of disguise?
Lots of disguisings come to mind, of course, but mostly cross-gender and
cross-class. Cross-cultural or cross-racial examples don't spring to mind, but
I may very well be missing the obvious. Surely somebody somewhere in those
texts disguises as a Moor, perhaps as a ruse de guerre, or tournament persona?
Thanks!
Joseph Black
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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