Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the contours and contradictions of England's racialized discourse of conduct through the rhetoric of conduct literature and the language of plays that stage cultivation as beneficial to self, community, and nation. It demonstrates the relationship between one form of conduct literature and a dramatic work: ars apodemica treatises and Othello; domestic manuals and The Comedy of Errors; hunting handbooks and A Midsummer Night's Dream; and husbandry manuals and The Tempest. The book focuses on the play in which two sets of twins experience the benefits as well as pitfalls of mistaken identity, revealing the ease with which individuals may be grouped with others who merely share the same somatic markers, and the ease with which somatic markers may be stigmatized. It traces two linked and highly symbolic behaviors, hunting and entertainment.