The Reinventions of Race in Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London

Abstract

his essay will think through the language that we use in narrating histories of race. In doing so, it offers a new way of approaching Thomas t Heywood’s oft-maligned crusade romance, The Four Prentices of London. Heywood’s play is not among those we turn to frequently in our conversations about race, but this essay considers how a narrow canon of early modern “race plays” generates a correspondingly narrow and symbiotically reinforcing understanding of the history of race. Our practice has been to focus on a dozen or so plays featuring a sustained interest in Moors, Jews, and/or characters described as “Black,” or alternatively in figures performing variations of racial masquerade. More often than not, these propensities render Whiteness transparent while locating race almost exclusively aroundmoments of desire and violence. Detached, offhand, or seemingly archaic instances of racial language are dismissed as if there is a kind of threshold that racismmust reach before it is worthy of our attention. This, in turn, contributes to a history of race that obscures the full range of racial thinking and hencemisrepresents the sustainingmodus operandi of racism. In order to recognize the force of everyday racism in early modern drama, we must address the concerns laid out by Peter Erickson and Kim Hall, particularly the necessity to “continue expanding and theorizing the archive of race, seeking out new texts, questions and vocabulary.” At the same time, it is important to