Smith, Ian. "Race in Hamlet: The violent Black man myth." www.throughlines.org/suite-content/race-in-hamlet-the-violent-black-man-myth. [Date accessed].
Race in Hamlet: The violent Black man myth
A dissection of the "violent Black man myth" and its early deployment in Hamlet.
Race in the modern era has seen the circulation of the violent Black man stereotype that has been promoted through his criminalization in the “War on Drugs,” his overrepresentation in mass incarceration, and the deprivation of his life in extrajudicial shootings. Too often the recurrent theme and justification is that the Black man poses a threat, so criminalization, imprisonment, and death are offered as modern prevention strategies. How did we get here? Rather than try to tell a sociological story, we can examine one instance of this racial mythmaking in a widely studied, influential literary forebear: Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Further learning
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Blackness and Shakespeare's sonnets
Shakespeare’s works at large, and early modern literature more broadly, all deal with constructions of race. Shakespeare’s sonnets are especially fruitful for considering how the languages of fairness and darkness are used in nuanced ways to develop particular understandings of race.
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