Birthing a Nation: Jonson’s Black Shakespearean Masque

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.

The Ian Donaldson Memorial Lecture honours the memory of the late Professor Ian Donaldson, who was the world expert on Ben Jonson. The annual lectures reflect topics of interest to Prof. Donaldson, including early modern drama and poetry, literary biography, and textual editing.