KATHLEEN: But I didn’t get the message from Owen yet.
Okay. We are live, Ian [LAUGH].
Welcome, everybody, to another live session
in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s
day-long series of sessions and events and activities
and invitations to participate. This is all
part of our virtual open house for Shakespeare’s
birthday. I’m Kathleen Lynch, Executive
Director of the Folger Institute, and I’m
here this afternoon to talk with Professor
Ian Smith. Ian is a professor of English at
Lafayette College and the Sell Chair in the
Humanities there. Professor Smith was going
to have delivered the annual Shakespeare’s
Birthday lecture for us this year. That has
been postponed, along with so much else—so
many other massive interruptions in your daily
lives and in our institutional work, in our
professional work. His topic was “Reading
Shakespeare While White.” We look forward
to rescheduling that lecture as soon as we
can. And, of course, Ian, I think you know
too, as well as I do, it would’ve been tonight.
So we’re missing that again freshly today.
Missing that opportunity.
We’ll reschedule as soon as we can safely,
and please pay attention to all of the channels
by which we promote our activities, including
the website, folger.edu. There is a really
long tradition of the Birthday Lecture at
the Folger. In fact, the very first one was
delivered on the opening day, as part of the
opening ceremonies, of the library in 1932.
As far as I can tell, the only sustained interruption
to the pattern of the annual Birthday Lecture
was World War II.
And, in fact, there’s actually much richer
mythology about the lecture in the history
of the Folger Library because anybody who
works at the Folger can tell you the story
of Henry Folger having attended a lecture
by Ralph Waldo Emerson when he was an undergraduate
at Amherst College. He was so inspired by
Emerson that he went on to read more of Emerson’s
essays and his lifelong passion for Shakespeare
was ignited by reading Emerson on Shakespeare.
So the history of the Folger and the Birthday
Lecture, in particular, so deeply embedded
in the American response to Shakespeare. In
any given one of these lectures, you get a
really deep dive into a scholar’s work in
progress and you get a sense of the craftsmanship
of scholarship too. It’s one of the things
we so appreciate and enjoy about the lecture.
But, also, when you think about them as a
tradition, you see waves and trends and you
see how scholarship builds over time.
And sometimes it’s very incrementally and
sometimes there are dramatic changes in direction.
So, all of that is to say, Ian, you would’ve
been presenting us—and you will when we
get to it—be presenting us with one of those
dramatic shifts in understanding and a real
challenging of some assumptions, some unexamined
assumptions. Today, we’re just going to
step back from the lecture itself and have
a conversation about the way you think through
your research and, you know, the conceptual
frame you have for it.
The perspective that you’re offering us
is one that, especially today, with this key
word of “whiteness,” its a perspective
that challenges an exclusive association of
race with blackness. You’re inviting us
and, again, challenging, even testing us,
to understand whiteness as a racial concept
or category. And now, let me say to those
of you who have joined in, as we’re talking
and as you have questions, please use the
chat function and we will leave time at the
end—
We’ve given ourselves about a half an hour
this afternoon—We’ll have time to take
a few questions. But, Ian, let’s go back
to that key word of whiteness. Obviously,
you’re not starting with a superficial observation
about anybody’s color of skin, but what
is it? How do you unpack that term of whiteness
for us?
IAN SMITH: Thank you and thank you for inviting
me to be here today to have a conversation
with you, Kathleen. I’m thinking of whiteness
that it does have something to do with skin
color, to some degree.
Insofar as a culture, we tend to read bodies
in particular ways and assign value and values
to those bodies as a culture, and historically,
we have done so. So I don’t want us to lose
sight of that because that is important as
a way of understanding what identity and identification
might mean in our conversation today, as well.
But you’re right, beyond that, there is
a question of really an ideology, a way of
thinking, a pervasive set of attitudes about
Shakespeare.
SMITH: That has been associated with a certain
class, a certain—gatekeepers, who have been
responsible for the creation of what you may
call the Shakespeare industry, the maintenance
of that industry and, indeed, the continued
livelihood of that industry to some degree.
So I am, in fact, talking about whiteness
in both those senses because I think one is
contingent on the other, certainly in the
way we live our lives if not in abstract philosophical
sense. We live our lives as if the whiteness
of one’s body does have value because that,
in fact, has been a historical fact and reality.
So we don’t want to overlook that at all.
Now, you mentioned the history of the Birthday
Lecture. In a sense, what I am suggesting,
in the broader sense, is that the history
of the Birthday Lecture might, in fact, stand
as a kind of representative of the kind of
issue that we’re talking about here, which
is: to what degree have we not talked about,
first, race in Shakespeare and taking it seriously
at the core of Shakespeare’s studies? That
is to say, I still believe, and I still sense
when we get questions or responses from audiences
when our work is presented, that there is
still a lingering skepticism, one might say,
about this notion of race and Shakespeare.
So on the one hand, part of that skepticism
has been about, let us say, blackness in Shakespeare,
in both senses, i.e., the physical black body
or bodies in history, as well as the ideology
of blackness as produced, by the way, by a
white culture.
That is what is in particularly here. But
blackness, as we have understood it, certainly
in history for the most part, blackness has
been produced by white culture. So then, what
we have had to do is rethink and address that
notion of what that construct of blackness
and explore and expose it for its limits and
limitations placed on real people of color
in history and society even today. So, historically
then, we have talked about race in Shakespeare
and historically have had to do the kind of
work which I would call the empirical work.
That is to say, we’ve had to find the evidence,
establish the field. Think, “Is there a
black presence in England?—Was there a black
presence,” sorry, “in the early modern
period? What about transmitted to England
trade and exchange and culture and diplomacy
and economic transaction?” We have to think
about, “What are the statuses of blacks
in England and in Europe? Were they simply
servants and did servanthood mean something
else? Did servanthood have a particular status
akin to slavery as well?” All those kinds
of questions one has to do work, in addition
to the work, of thinking about nationalism,
imperialism, colonialism in the period as,
sort of, the big framing political questions
that would engage questions of race. So that
sort of work had to be done. So, in a way,
that’s part of it.
KATHLEEN: Right. So you really are talking
about the movement over time, and the building
of a new field of studies within and around
expanding Shakespeare studies, interrupting
Shakespeare studies.
Where do you think we’ve gotten now in scholarly
discourse about these questions and this understanding
of how race actually functioned in the early
modern period?
SMITH: Yeah, that is the second part of what
I was about to say.
KATHLEEN: Okay. Okay.
SMITH: Oh, no, thank you. So, in fact, that
is, let’s say, phase one of the work that
had to be done. Phase two, in a way, now is:
What about the other half of the equation?
That is to say, blackness doesn’t exist
on its own, as I suggested. Blackness is,
in fact, a construct of whiteness.
So then, we have to ask ourselves the question
that perhaps we had not given that much attention
to explicitly for a long time and ask, “Well,
what about whiteness? What role has whiteness
played in this sort of construction of blackness?
What is that whiteness in construction of
Shakespeare?” So, there are two concepts
I’d sort of like to underscore. One is that
whiteness has, in the field of Shakespeare
studies, has had two sort of consequential
effects.
One is that because the practitioners in the
Shakespeare industry have been predominantly
white, I argue that there is a real sense
in which there has been a refusal then to
read race in Shakespeare because reading race
would put that identity, that racial identity,
that racial ideology, on the map and up for
question, if you see what I’m saying. So,
it is not just now a matter of, “Well, we
didn’t want to think about race as in blackness.”
That skepticism then can be rewritten and
be reintroduced as a different sort of question,
which is “What about protectionism?” That
is, as long as we don’t talk about race,
we don’t have to speak about whiteness in
Shakespeare, the whiteness and the white identity
of the practitioners and the white ideology
that then one practices consciously or unconsciously.
So that’s one thing. Which means then white
invisibility, let us say, becomes something
that one has protected over a long period
of time in Shakespeare studies and it prevents
one from being seen.
It’s a strategic move then to somehow dismiss
race from Shakespeare with its blackness or
whiteness because it’s a way to not having
to account for one’s role in whiteness itself.
KATHLEEN: Right. Okay. Can I pause right here?
I’ve been asked to do a little bit of station
identification.
SMITH: Okay.
KATHLEEN: That is to say, we are here talking
with Ian Smith, Professor of English at Lafayette
College, and we’re talking about whiteness
in Shakespeare studies and whiteness studies.
What are the charges, Ian? It has traditionally
been that its anachronistic to talk about
race as we understand it in the early modern
period. I don’t know if this is something
you were about to address or if you’re interested
in addressing that charge.
SMITH: Well, in fact, I think I was just addressing
that charge. That is to say, I just argued
that the charge of illegitimacy of the field,
which is what anachronism is about, is a defensive
posture which means that one does not then
have to think about race, which means one
doesn’t have to think about one’s own
race and one’s own whiteness, and what that
has meant to the constitution of the field.
It’s a political strategy of avoidance.
Second point: as I was going to say, whiteness—now
there’s something else—It prevents one
from being seen, but whiteness also prevents
one from seeing, which is what I call racial
blind spots. That is to say, I’m arguing
that because of our whiteness and because
in, you know, as a field, we have, as a field,
sort of wandered away from, avoided, evaded
talking about whiteness, that we have created
blind spots around race in the Shakespeare
text that then makes us poor and impoverished
readers of Shakespeare.
KATHLEEN: It is these blind spots that you
wanna unpack a little bit further today. What
changes, when you take the blinders off our
eyes and we look at whiteness everywhere,
invisible but everywhere operative, and race
more generally, everywhere operative in Shakespeare’s
plays, what do we see freshly and what do
we see differently?
SMITH: Well, it makes us aware, as I was saying,
it makes us sort of that much more aware.
It gives us a sort of broader text to read,
that there’s more to understand, right?
There’s more to see, as I’m suggesting.
Because unblinded, then there’s more to
see and talk about. But then, beyond that,
it invites us to, and we can talk in more
specific details about what kinds of text
we can see. But just to make a sort of broader
point, it does something else for us I think.
It allows us then to be in a position to refashion
or reformulate the question about, why Shakespeare
now? And in thinking about why Shakespeare
now—and if, indeed, we’re speaking from
this perspective of race and whiteness—
then it means that we can have a different
kind of conversation about the urgency of
race now.
So often we have talked about the relevance
of Shakespeare to the contemporary field or
contemporary times. I wanted to go just beyond
mere relevance to talk about the urgency.
Today, as we are speaking, what are we doing?
We’re speaking, in fact, in this format
because there is a pandemic. And one of the
things this pandemic has, I think, revealed
for us and laid bare is, in fact, the continued
inequities in our culture which are completely
connected to and derived from race, right?
This is what we’ve been seeing. We’ve
read this in the various articles. We’ve
heard this in the various journalistic responses.
That is something that we’ve come to realize.
So, for example, we now know that certainly
in the last few months, we have seen that
the inequities in terms of healthcare, education,
for example, in terms of housing, these are
all matters that have sort of bubbled up around
this pandemic.
And so, what we have seen is, if we didn’t
know this before, we are now in a position
to not deny any longer that race is, in fact,
so deeply woven into the fabric of American
culture in ways that continue to disempower
and make people’s lives unhealthy, make
people’s lives, in fact, a lot more vulnerable.
But if we can’t see that now, then when?
And so, in terms of Shakespeare, we have to
ask ourselves, after this, can we go back
to Shakespeare as normal, right? Shakespeare
as status quo?
Do we have to then consider Shakespeare if,
in fact, we’re going to use this moment
and not let it sort of run over us roughshod,
but use this moment to speak about what have
we learned and if anything we have learned.
Scholars have been calling for this for years.
But in this moment, what we have understood
is that we’re all isolated in our homes—at
least that’s what we’re being asked to
do and many of us have tried to do that. Some
of us can’t because of the contingencies
of our job, et cetera.
But those who have been able to isolate, one
of the things we need to understand is that
how, in fact, we’ve isolated race from our
conversations and isolated Shakespeare from
race for a long time. Why do we do that?
KATHLEEN: Right. Now, okay, so yes, this powerful
experience that we’re all having right now
of isolation, of retreat into our personal
space, actually makes it more difficult maybe,
or maybe it presents new opportunities for
us to come back out, recreate community, come
back into and inhabit these different kinds
of spaces, some of them once familiar but
they will be newly strange again and the spaces,
of course, that our scholarly community inhabit
all the time on a daily basis is the classroom.
And we encounter, at the Folger Institute,
our scholars in their research mode, but we
know that you’re working hard to use the
opportunities you have to bring research directly
into the classroom, and to work with that
community to deal with these very difficult
issues. Can you talk a little bit about your
approach as a teacher to opening up these
very difficult and painful issues in our contemporary
society?
SMITH: I’d be happy to. Number one, I approach
teaching race in the classroom not as something
that is going to be so painful for all of
us, but as something that is about opening
the door, so that we can all sit at the table
and have a conversation that has always been
long overdue. When we do that, one of the
outcomes I’m looking for is what I call
racial literacy.
That is to say, I imagine, you know, when
students graduate in, let’s say, whatever
their majors are, but let’s say in English,
it’s not as if potential employers are looking
for people who say well I can read Lawrence
or Shakespeare. They’re looking for the
traditional things that we talk about, right?
Critical reading skills, comprehension skills,
et cetera. But one other thing I’d like
to add to that list is what I call racial
literacy. That is to say, in a culture that
has evolved to the point where we are now,
we cannot graduate students from college who
are racially illiterate.
The classroom then has to become a space where
we can use Shakespeare to open up conversations
about history, about reading text, about understanding
the dynamics of race, race as, I would argue,
is not just a noun, race as a verb. That is
to say, race is about a dynamic relationship
among and between people. It’s an active
thing. How do we get students to understand
why that is and to engage that in an active
way and to take that forward into their professional
lives?
That’s what I want to do in the classroom.
And that is an important consequence of reading
race in Shakespeare. It can’t be just about,
“I read literature.” It must be about,
“What skills have I acquired in the process
of reading literature?”
KATHLEEN: Yeah. That’s a wonderful concept
for all of us to be developing, not just in
the classroom but in our daily lives.
Now one of your articles that I was hoping
you would address a little bit is one that
I found so affecting, and that’s the article,
or the essay on “We Are Othello” in a
special issue of Shakespeare Quarterly, 2-2016,
I think it was, that grew out of a conversation
in a Shakespeare Association of America seminar.
And this was, as an issue, one of the points
where I saw the profession gathering strength,
this new field of studies emerging strongly
and insistantly, interrupting business as
usual in Shakespeare studies.
But your essay, this is just one example of
my feeling that I was achieving a moment of
enhanced racial literacy through an example
that you brought to mind and that was that
Othello, like Hamlet, at the end of the play,
asks for someone to “Speak of him as he
was.” He asks, that is, for someone to bear
witness to his life and his experience.
And, of course, Hamlet has his trusty friend
Horatio right there by his side who is going
to do that job, and those of us who are reading
who have inherited that same tradition and
culture are going to do that job. We have
been doing that job for Hamlet. But your calling
attention to the fact that Othello does not
have that job—does not have that friend
standing by to tell his story—was, as I
said, just this moment of insight for me of
not having recognized that parallel situation.
SMITH: Thank you for saying that. And this
brings us back again to the idea of isolation.
Even in that moment of death, where someone
like Hamlet has a friend and he’s not alone
and he gets all the trappings of a princely
and military funeral at the end—seemingly
totally unearned by the way. White privilege
if you ask me, right?
KATHLEEN: Didn’t the whole play make a point
that he was not a military man of action?
SMITH: He gets this wonderful military funeral.
KATHLEEN: Yeah.
SMITH: So that’s privilege. And on the other
hand, we have Othello, who doesn’t have
that and you’re quite right. One of the
points that they say was to then say we now
are challenged as readers, as scholars, as
students to think where will we stand with
Othello, and really we stand in that sense
of that history of racial isolation. Do we
simply continue that or do we engage it in
a way to dismantle that as best we can?
And so, let me give you then, quickly, since
you gave me that example, let me give you
another example from that play then today,
a sort of semi-newish one. Early in the play,
Othello we hear is at the “Sagittary.”
Interesting, right? And because—we hear
he’s at this inn. And so, the question is
what is that inn about? Is this a Black inn?
Is it a place relegated for Black people only?
We don’t know. But in a way, we do know
this, that the Sagittary, of course, with
the sign of the centaur, is very much connected
to Othello because we’ve heard in the first
scene of the play all these metaphors about
him being half man and half beast.
So the place he’s at, indeed, becomes a
racially marked place. So it is a kind of
black space as the play begins. So he’s
marked. This goes back to an earlier point
about what is blackness and what is race?
Is it just an ideology? Well, it’s both
here again. It’s a marked space for him.
It refers to his marked body. It also refers
to the marked ideology. Sort of exclusive
space that identifies him in this very material
way.
By contrast, we have Iago. What do we hear
about Iago? He speaks very clearly about his
body being a tool, a device that he can use,
he says, to mask his genuine feelings about
Othello. We hear that early in the play, right?
He says if I should ever speak my truth then,
you know, call me foolish. “I wear my heart
on my sleeve for the birds to peck on.”
And so, what we have here is somebody who
can use his skin, i.e., his whiteness, as
a mask and to manipulate and to create pockets
of power for himself. And on the other hand,
here’s Othello, who comes into the play
the first time we see him and he’s already
marked and grafted in some way and stamped
in place. These are two very different approaches.
One has the flexibility, the mobility, of
using his whiteness in any way he can and
he wishes. The other one is already stamped
for life.
KATHLEEN: And, of course, Iago refuses to
explain himself at the end. So his opportunities
include that privilege of not explaining.
SMITH: Sure
KATHLEEN: Now I did say that we would leave
some time for questions. Do we have some coming
in? I know that our colleague, Owen, was going
to give us some questions. But I know we need,
let’s see, I might need to go to email to
find those.
Okay. Here are some questions coming in. Wait
a minute.
No, actually, Owen, I’m just going
to ask you to unmask yourself and ask us some questions.
OWEN WILLIAMS [off-screen]: Okay. Here I am.
KATHLEEN: Thank you.
WILLIAMS [off-screen]: Let’s see. So Victoria, from Facebook,
asks if we could get some specific examples
of a way to look at race in Shakespearean
text?
SMITH: Sure. Several. Well, let’s just start
with sonnets, for example. Sonnet 1, line
1: “From fairest creatures we desire increase.”
What does that mean? Is it just about beauty?
No. It’s about whiteness. And so, we have
a sonnet set aside that begins by celebrating
this idea that we want whiteness as the most
desirable thing and we want more of it. If
we read the sonnets, at least the first, the
sort of young man’s sonnets in that way,
then you have a very different look I think
and understanding of how we can read those
sonnets.
Because then, suddenly, what happens is not
only do we have to then understand what whiteness
is and think that through, but it means that
the Shakespeare persona is then constructed
as black, in that configuration. And so, we
have, for example, in Sonnet 111, that persona
saying, basically, you know, describes the
light of the dyers hand. What does the dyer’s
hand look like? Well, the dyer’s hand looks
like a hand that is stained dark. That’s
a white body or a fair-skinned body that is
darkened in some way. What is that? That is
also the way, by the way, that white actors
performed black roles on the early modern
stage.
It’s not that surprising that Shakespeare
used such a metaphor to evoke the Shakespeare
persona as a black figure who then has to
navigate the world of whiteness in the sonnet.
Margreta de Grazia talked about the scandal
of the sonnets being blackness in the “Dark
Lady” sonnets. Well, I can offer today the
scandal of the sonnets being whiteness in
the “Young Man” sonnets. That’s what
we really need to talk about, as well. That’s
one quick example.
KATHLEEN: Okay.
SMITH: Hope that works.
KATHLEEN: Yep.
WILLIAMS [off-screen]: Another question from Kurt on YouTube.
What differences are there in the way you
teach race in Shakespeare to students depending
on the racial makeup of your class?
Do different points resonate differently based
on audience in your experience?
SMITH: I think that’s true. I think that
could be true to some degree. But the other
question is largely this. That is to say,
we’re all so socialized to read Shakespeare
as a white object that I think most students
come in with that hurdle to cross anyway.
So when I teach my Shakespeare class, the
last two years, I call it “Black Shakespeare”
to signal, of course, that Shakespeare has
been traditionally read as white Shakespeare.
So right from the beginning, we are thinking,
well, what does Black Shakespeare mean? And
so, then we go through that process. So it
may be that the sort of demographics of the
class might affect certain students’ experiences
and one’s facility, let us say, with the
subject in some degree. But I do think that
we’re so socialized in that way, and that’s
important, by the way, because what I’m
getting at, is that we are all taught to read
historically in this country as white readers,
which is partly what I will be talking about
in our fall lecture, or next spring, whenever
it is, right?
That is to say, Toni Morrison’s said a wonderful
phrase in “Playing the Dark” when she
says as readers of American fiction, we’re
virtually all positioned as white. That point,
which I think is so critical to understanding,
how we teach in the classroom, and, I feel
like, Shakespeare, we’re all positioned
as white so that the sort of demographics
that question suggests may be true… but
there’s something much more ideologically
important. Our white positioning is what we
have to really navigate in the classroom with
students.
KATHLEEN: Okay. Maybe one more, Owen.
WILLIAMS [off-screen]: So, there are two questions that
involve casting and race. And one question
was from Meredith. Can you talk about casting
live performances? Is it important or helpful
for characters to be racially accurate? And
another similar question was along those lines.
How would casting and interpretation of that
casting need to be changed in order to make
race visible?
SMITH: Well, the first question, I’d say
it depends. I mean, you know, one doesn’t
want to be prescriptive. I think that there
are any number of productions that might want
to think of how one casts actors for this
to be sort of, you know, what we call sort
race blind casting. You could do that. Or
more relevant to the second question perhaps,
a conceptual casting where one does want to,
in fact, have, let us say, a black actor in
a role to bring up particular issues of race.
So it depends on what I think the director
and the actors of the company have in mind.
I don’t think one can be prescriptive. One
wants to see a variety of different kinds
of productions. But it can be done.
KATHLEEN: Okay. So we have been around the
world, from the classroom to the library,
the reading room at the Folger to the stage,
with our last questions, and I really appreciate
this solid re-introduction to Shakespeare
studies that you have given us, Ian, and this
really challenging re-introduction to Shakespeare
studies.
And these may be issues that some of us are
not particularly comfortable—I mean, clearly
they are issues that could have been addressed,
as you said earlier, at any point along the
way. It is now our responsibility to make
sure that they are addressed and that they
are addressed meaningfully. And in addressing
these questions, we activate and live up to
the values that we have, certainly as an institution
at the Folger, as the academy, as a multi-cultural
society.
So thank you. Out of this moment of isolation
and challenge and its own set of difficulties,
thank you for walking us through some really
provocative things that you’re leaving us
to think about.
SMITH: Thank you, Kathleen. It is my pleasure
to be here.
KATHLEEN: Yes, we really appreciate your helping
us create this opportunity. As I’ve said
before, we will be announcing the rescheduled
Birthday Lecture when we understand when we’ll
be able to return to that.
KATHLEEN: In the meantime, those of you who
are with us, if you want to hear more from
Ian Smith, there is a Shakespeare Unlimited
episode of the podcast on Othello and Blackface
with Ian Smith and Ayanna Thompson. If you
want to learn more about the whole tradition
of Birthday Lectures at the Folger, they’re
all listed on Folgerpedia at Folger.edu. And
there are audio recordings of a number of
them in the last dozen years or more.
KATHLEEN: Finally, for those of you who are
with us here, if you’re in a position to
do so, we hope you’ll consider making a
gift to the Folger. Ours is an institution
founded on philanthropy, and your philanthropy
helps us continue to support groundbreaking
research like this that we’ve been presenting
today and to bring it to wider more capacious,
more inclusive, audiences.
KATHLEEN: So, again, thank you, Ian. Thank
you, Owen Williams for being our tech support
and helping us shape these conversations all
along. So take care, everybody.
SMITH: Thank you.
