ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the cultural significance of 1616—the year of Shakespeare’s death—in light of the larger political and social place held by Shakespeare and the field of early modern studies more broadly. Arguing that 1616 must be contextualized alongside 1623 (the date of the First Folio), 2016 (the quadricentenary of Shakespeare’s death), and, most importantly, 1619 (the year that the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia), this chapter explores the ways in which 1616 as a temporal and cultural marker has been used to promote the exceptionalism of Shakespeare, his work, and his legacy, as well as the ways by which it conversely comprises a generative temporal and intellectual nexus which allows us to think through the meaning of politics and race, then and now. Reflecting on the afterlives of 1616, this chapter argues, allows us to unfold the work of whiteness that periodization undertakes more broadly; yet it ends by cautioning readers against conscripting that work in the service of white property.
