Charts the development of English anglophone thinking about race between the context of Shakespeare’s plays and the beginnings of English colonial expansion in the 17th century. The book draws upon the ways in which Shakespeare’s stage simultaneously coded experience of non-English social worlds for English viewing audiences while being built upon broader cultural understandings of non-English persons. Loomba argues that scholars should avoid conceptualizing European social worlds through the isolation of European lenses alone. The work builds upon prior conversations in the study of Shakespeare, colonialism, and the beginnings of nationalism.