Select annotated bibliography entry
Hall, Kim F. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Colonization and Miscegenation in The Merchant of Venice.” Renaissance Drama 23 (1992): 87-111.
Using The Merchant of Venice as a vehicle to consider England’s concurrent desire to expand via colonization and anxieties about cross-cultural exchange, this article considers how the fear of miscegenation functions within early modern economic exchange. With pointed attention to Blackness, immigration, and antisemitism, Hall demonstrates how Shakespeare’s play explores the role of racial difference in England’s emerging national and imperial designs.