SHAKSPER 2001: Re: Black Cleopatra
From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 03/09/01
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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0554 Friday, 9 March 2001
[1] From: Evelyn Gajowski <shakespe@nevada.edu>
Date: Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 08:47:49 -0800 (PST)
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0537 Re: Black Cleopatra
[2] From: Werner Broennimann <Werner.Broennimann@unibas.ch>
Date: Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 16:51:10 +0000
Subj: Black Cleopatra
[3] From: Tom Bishop <tgb2@po.cwru.edu>
Date: Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 13:00:06 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0511 Is Cleopatra Black?
[4] From: W. L. Godshalk <godshawl@email.uc.edu>
Date: Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 15:44:25 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
[5] From: Robert Peters <RobertPeters@t-online.de>
Date: Friday, 09 Mar 2001 00:12:40 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
[6] From: Stephanie Hughes <hopkinshughes@home.com>
Date: Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 21:30:53 -0800
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
[7] From: Scott Oldenburg <sko2@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Date: Friday, 09 Mar 2001 01:29:13 -0800
Subj: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Evelyn Gajowski <shakespe@nevada.edu>
Date: Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 08:47:49 -0800 (PST)
Subject: 12.0537 Re: Black Cleopatra
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0537 Re: Black Cleopatra
To Richard Burt,
I am not aware of analyses of the issue before Janet Adelman's
"Cleopatra's Blackness" in *The Common Liar*, which you've already
mentioned. As you know, she comments that -- at that time (1973) -- "it
is slightly alarming that criticism has not speculated more widely about
the issue of Cleopatra's color" (184).
My sense is that the question of Cleopatra's blackness has become an
issue in the last decade or so with the onset of discourse on
postcolonial and "race" issues in cultures and texts. You've already
mentioned those Shakespeareans who deal with "blackness" and "race" more
generally as well as those who deal with the more specific issue of
Cleopatra's blackness. One of the best of the former is Lynda Boose in
her chapter, "'The getting of a lawful race': Racial discourse in early
modern England and the unrepresentable black woman," in the
Parker/Hendricks collection of essays, *Women, "Race," and Writing in
the Early Modern Period.* If memory serves, though, nothing in that
collection deals with the specific question of Cleopatra.
Under the influence of Edward Said, I deal with the issue in my chapter,
"Cleopatra and Orientalism," in *The Art of Loving: Female Subjectivity
and Male Discursive Traditions in Shakespeare's Tragedies* (1992). The
discussion hinges on Romans as imperialists, Egyptians as colonized, and
Philo's description of Cleopatra's "tawny front" (1.1.6). Because it
emphasizes cultural rather than "racial" difference per se, though, I
cannot pretend to do as thoroughgoing or informed a job as more recent
scholars who more explicitly privilege "race" as a category of analysis.
Evelyn Gajowski
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Werner Broennimann <Werner.Broennimann@unibas.ch>
Date: Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 16:51:10 +0000
Subject: Black Cleopatra
Chaucer's description in "The Legend of Cleopatra" is unambiguous: "she
was fayr as is the rose in May" (613). Or is it? I have not really
done my homework as assigned by Richard Burt, but bluffing my way out of
this embarrassment I think the question of Cleopatra's complexion is
raised by the choric exposition's "tawny front" (l.6), a description
which will be either confirmed or denied by the queen's subsequent
entry. The history of annotation on "tawny" and its interpretation on
stage and in commentaries might in nuce contain the history of critical
problematisation Richard is looking for. Certainly the first quote
given in Variorum is striking, to use a neutral term: White (ed. 1883):
"Cleopatra was a Greek, the daughter of Ptolemy, and was probably fair,
although not with Teutonic fairness." Silence about this question, on
stage or in criticism, seems to be a silence about the issue of
miscegenation.
There are many unanswered questions. Do we really know what "tawny"
means in the context and elsewhere? Can we differentiate between the
colour quality it denotes and the emotive derogation Philo's use
obviously connotes? What precisely is the word's relation to
"blackness", with its own many meanings? Occurrences in Shakespeare are
not as conclusive as we might hope. "Tawny Spain" in LLL 1.1.170 does
to me evoke terra cotta, and thus the Egyptian desert, but is this
adequate? Aaron's address to his newborn son ("tawny slave") is not so
obvious either, because Aaron explicitly refers to his son's mixed
parentage. The subsequent passages to my mind suggest that "tawny" was
a word chosen when the speaker was at a loss for the mot juste:
John Fletcher, "Monsieur Thomas, 1.3.37
If I have Eyes, I have not seen his better.
A handsome brown Complexion.
Mary.
Reasonable,
Inclining to a tawney.
Richard Brome, "The English Moor"
Nat.
It is the handsom'st Rogue
I have ere seen yet of a deed of darkness;
Tawney and russet faces I have dealt with,
But never came so deep in blackness yet.
Dekker/Middleton, "The maginificent entertainment given to King James",
To tell you what cloathes hee had on his backe were to doo him wrong,
for hee had (to say truth) but one suite: homelie it was, yet meete and
fit for a Gardener: In steade of a hat, his browes were bound about with
flowers, out of whose thicke heapes, here and there peeped a queene
apple, a cherie, or a peare, this boon-grace hee made of purpose to
keepe his face from heate, (because he desired to looke louelie) yet the
sunne found him out, and by casting a continuall eye at him, whilst the
old man was dressing his arbours, his cheekes grew tawnie, which colour
for the better grace, he himselfe interpreted blushing.
Werner Brönnimann
Basel University
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tom Bishop <tgb2@po.cwru.edu>
Date: Thursday, 8 Mar 2001 13:00:06 -0500
Subject: 12.0511 Is Cleopatra Black?
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0511 Is Cleopatra Black?
For those who take an interest in such things, a genealogy of the
Ptolemy rulers of Egypt (a relentlessly inbred group of Macedonian
Greeks as you can see) can be found at
http://www.houseofptolemy.org/housegen.htm
This does not, of course, answer Richard Burt's question. Nor the
question of what information would have been available to Shakespeare.
Nor of what he himself made of what was available to him.
A production of Antony and Cleopatra in Cleveland by the Great Lakes
Theater Festival of several years back cast an African-American actor as
Cleopatra. I do not remember her name, but David Evett might.
Tom
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: W. L. Godshalk <godshawl@email.uc.edu>
Date: Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 15:44:25 -0500
Subject: 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
David Schalkwyk asks what's at stake in Cleopatra's skin color. And
that's a good question. Are we dealing here with another Black Athena?
Shakespeare's Cleopatra is surely an African queen. Is it important
that she have characteristics often associated with peoples indigenous
to sub-Saharan Africa? (I'm cribbing from AHD.)
Yours, Bill Godshalk
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Robert Peters <RobertPeters@t-online.de>
Date: Friday, 09 Mar 2001 00:12:40 +0100
Subject: 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
W. L. Godshalk wrote:
>Regarding "black" Cleopatra, there is a parallel passage in the King
>James version of the Bible, Song of Solomon 1.5 (as I recall). I have a
>call into the resident Biblical scholar to find out what word is being
>translated as "black."
Luther translated this for the German bible as "von der Sonne verbrannt"
(burned by the sun).
Robert Peters
robertpeters@t-online.de
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Stephanie Hughes <hopkinshughes@home.com>
Date: Thursday, 08 Mar 2001 21:30:53 -0800
Subject: 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
>And Stephanie Hughes writes:
>
>Does being "Greek" necessarily and absolutely mean she was
>"white"(whatever THAT term means)? I would think there is at
>least a
>possibility that the Ptolemy family may have become blended with
>indigenous Egyptian-African families over time...?
Professor Hildy's response to this was interesting, but I was not the
person who posted the above. (I get enough heat for the things I do
post!) It is true, as he says, that the Greeks were snobs about their
culture, not their skin color. This is clearly shown in the Greek
romances. It is also apparent that there was a great deal more respect
for the central African cultures among the Mediterranean peoples in the
first and second century than there was in Shakespeare's time.
Richard Burt wrote:
> Recent and not so recent criticism . . . have shown that "black"
> meant a number of things in early modern England, including the
> > racial meaning. I take it from her remarks that Stepanie
Highes > has not read any of this criticism. So let me try to ask
my > > > question more clearly? Are there any members of this
>listserv
> interested in the history of Shakespeare criticism (and
>knowledgeable of it) of Cleopatra who can comment on the issue >
> > Cleopatra's blackness? On how and when it became an issue in
> > > criticism?
Please forgive me, Richard Burt, for my response, which must have seemed
rude (and was). I did not understand that you were looking for the
history of the issue among critics, to which I would not have responded
at all (as you say, I know little about it).
As for the issue itself, however, I have read a great deal of early
modern writing, which, as you say, uses the word "black" for a variety
of purposes (as it is used today), but when it was used to indicate
complexion, the range of meanings can go from dark hair and fair skin to
the various shades of skin and hair color of the "Moors," who were not
central Africans, but what we would consider Arabs. (Central Africans
were sometimes referred to as "blackamoors" to distinguish them from the
lighter Arabic Moors.)
Moors were tremendously important in the European Renaissance world view
as they represented the enemy at the gates, much as Americans saw the
Soviet Union during the cold war. There was a great deal of respect for
the Moors, not only because they were a serious threat, but because they
were wealthy, powerful, fierce in combat and, although this factor has
unfortunately been ignored by western historians so that, to all extents
and purposes, it has been lost, the source of much of the culture that
the Renaissance gloried in, science, numbers, distilling, stringed
instruments, etc., as well as the culture of chivalry or courtesy. Thus
the attitude towards them was intense and also ambivalent.
As for the historic Cleopatra's racial characteristics, the issue has
been a hot one among historians as well as literary critics for some
time now. I have followed the arguments as best I could, but from what
I've read so far, nothing has been produced to show that Cleopatra was
anything other than Greek. The Ptolemies intermarried with other noble
Greek families and with each other, not with Egyptian nobility or with
the more southern African royalty, such as the Abyssinians. We have
several images of Cleopatra, a Roman drawing, I believe, and her image
on coins, all of which look like what we think of today as
typically Greek looks.
The Elizabethan writers were liable to call "black" any complexion
darker than the color of new fallen snow. I have handy a quote from a
London sheriff reporting on a disturbance in which the Bassanos were
involved, a family of Court musicians of Italian (and Jewish) origin, in
which two of them were referred to as "black." And had one the time and
energy, dozens of similar examples could be culled from the writings of
the time.
We don't know what Shakespeare thought about Cleopatra's racial origins,
but my guess is that, knowing as much as he did about Roman history,
Shakespeare was well aware that she was Greek.
Stephanie Hughes
[7]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Scott Oldenburg <sko2@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Date: Friday, 09 Mar 2001 01:29:13 -0800
Subject: 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
Comment: Re: SHK 12.0545 Re: Black Cleopatra
Of course, Shakespeare would be under no obligation to represent
Cleopatra as white simply because of what previous texts had said about
her kinship to Ptolemy, et al. Given the tawny and "with Phoebus pinches
black" references, I believe she was played as dark-skinned in part
because she was thought of as Egyptian but also because blackness was
used as a sign of alterity in the period (hence the references to Jews
as black--see the references in Shapiro's book).
Best,
Scott
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