This volume draws together thirteen important essays on the concept of race in Shakespeare"s drama. The authors, who themselves reflect racial and geographical diversity, explore issues of ethnography, politics, religion, identity, nationalism, and the distribution of power in Shakespeare"s plays. They write from a variety of perspectives, drawing on Elizabethan and Jacobean historical studies and recent critical theory, attending to performances of the plays, as well as to the text. An introductory essay sets the context for the ensuing chapters, most of which are reprinted from volumes of Shakespeare Survey.