Weyward Macbeth / Signs of Race (PDF)

Scott Newstok is the author of How to Think like Shakespeare and Quoting Death in Early Modern England; editor of Paradise Lost: A Primer; and co-editor of Weyward Macbeth, a collection of essays exploring the intersection of race and performance.







Ayanna Thompson is director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) at Arizona State University. She is the author of Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (2018), Teaching Shakespeare with Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach (2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (2011), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (2008). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden Othello (2016), and is the editor of Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (2006).









AYANNA THOMPSON Arizona State University, USA HEATHER NATHANS University of Maryland, USA BERNTH LINDFORS University of Texas Austin, USA JOHN BRIGGS University of California, Riverside, USA JOYCE GREEN MACDONALD University of Kentucky, USA LISA SIMMONS Independent Filmmaker MARGUERITE RIPPY Marymount University, USA SCOTT NEWSTOK Rhodes College, USA LENWOOD SLOAN Director of Cultural and Heritage Tourism Program Pennsylvania, USA WALLACE CHEATHAM Composer and Musicologist DOUGLAS LANIER University of New Hampshire, USA TODD LANDON BARNES University of California, Irvine, USA PETER ERICKSON Williams College, USA PHILIP KOLIN University of Southern Mississippi, USA CELIA DAILEADER Florida State University, USA AMY SCOTT-DOUGLASS Denison University, USA FRANCESCA ROYSTER DePaul University, USA COURTNEY LEHMANN University of the Pacific, USA HARRY J. LENNIX Actor RICHARD BURT University of Florida, USA NICK MOSCHOVAKIS Reed College, USA ALEXANDER C. Y. HUANG Penn State University, USA ANITA MAYNARD-LOSH Director JOSÉ A. ESQUEA Director WILLIAM C. CARROLL Boston University CHARITA GAINEY-O'TOOLE

"Timely . . . as with the best works of historical scholarship, Newstok and Thompson's collection merges detailed historiography with immediate relevancy, making this a valuable book indeed." - Dan Venning, Theatre History Studies

"There is something for everyone in this worthy volume." - Kevin Wetmore, Jr., CHOICE

"Remarkable." - Jonathan Gil Harris, Studies in English Literature

"Weyward Macbeth is an excellent companion piece for theatre educators looking to enrich classroom instruction or to further students' understanding of fully realized productions. Newstok and Thompson's diverse collection of provocative and enlightening articles serves as a valued addition to Shakespearean scholarship and as a complement to the study of Macbeth." - John Robert Moss, Theatre Topics

"A welcome addition to the scholarship on theatrical history and practice . . . most of the contributors do show the considerable charge that thinking differently, or highlighting and remembering race, can bring to the play . . . most of the authors at some point refer parenthetically to one or more of their fellow contributors, offering a sense of cogency, a wider arc of discussion, than many such collections manage." - Eric Mallin, College Literature

"In this remarkable and ground breaking book, the editors have put together essays that examine the text and spirit of Macbeth from different and, sometimes, startling perspectives." - Clement Ndulute, The Griot: The Journal of African American Studies

"This rich and provocative collection of essays is a compilation of historical, theoretical and interdisciplinary viewpoints on ways in which performances of Macbeth have engaged issues of race . . . Weyward Macbeth leaves a reader strangely unsettled as, of course, does Macbeth. I closed the volume with a new sense of Macbeth's importance to issues of race in the United States, more acutely aware of the ferment and potential