This article argues that theories of race in the early modern period worked in tandem with national identity. This can be traced not only in the various travel narratives and speculative essays about complexion difference in the period, but also in the dramatic literature through a study of plays like The Battle of Alcazar, Titus Andronicus, and The Masque of Blackness.

This was originally a chapter from my MA thesis (directed by Randall Nakayama and Bruce Avery). At the time I was also taking clinical seminars on psychoanalysis, and thus psychoanalytic thought permeates the essay.