Recent criticism of Ben Jonson’s A Masque of Blackness (1605) has generally focused on a racial blackness in early seventeenth-century Britain, but this presentation argues that these readings, while compelling, under-appreciate not only the aesthetics and humanistic politics of Jonson’s white-nation-making but how he interpolates Shakespeare to be a part of it.

Join Professor Arthur L Little, Jr, from University of California at Los Angeles and co-editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, as he re-appreciates these complexities for the 2026 Ian Donaldson Memorial Lecture.

Supported by the Shakespeare400 Trust, the Ian Donaldson Memorial Lecture honours the memory of the late Professor Ian Donaldson, who was the world expert on Ben Jonson, having written an acclaimed biography for Oxford (Ben Jonson: A Life, 2011) and served as General Editor of the seven-volume Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (2012) with David Bevington and Martin Butler. The annual lectures reflect topics of interest to Prof. Donaldson, including early modern drama and poetry, literary biography, and textual editing.

Contact the host of Birthing a Nation: Jonson’s Black Shakespearean Masque

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