I think there is a character in Webster's The Devil's Law Case who
masquerades as a Jew. I remember seeing a production of it a number
of years back and the disguise consisted of Groucho Marx glasses and fake
sidecurls.
Lauren Silberman
At 04:56 PM 9/4/2008, Jean Goodrich wrote:
Jonson's Masque of Blackness
is the one play that comes to mind first.
Another possibility, Sujata Iyengar in Shades of Difference:
Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England, has an interesting
chapter "Blackface and Blushface," linking the cosmetic
"paint" that women could use to hide blushes (read as signs of
innocence or guilt) as equivalent to blackface. The plays discussed are
Much Ado About Nothing, Lusts Dominion, and The White
Devil.
Don't overlook Kim Hall's Things of Darkness, which addresses
Early Modern race in general, but also looks at blackness and
cosmetics.
Hope this helps,
Jean Goodrich
University of Arizona
On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 8:32 AM, Joseph Black
<[log in to unmask]
> wrote:
- 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
