ABSTRACT
In addition to providing an overview of each chapter, the introduction offers an historical context and theoretical framework for the collection and highlights its role in addressing the oft-neglected sonic color lines that divide the Shakespeare industry. Oral culture and the sonic qualities of the voice mattered in the early modern period, a period when, similar to today, accentism, discrimination on the grounds of how one speaks (part of a larger phenomenon known as “linguicism”) was becoming a part of everyday life with accent functioning as a marker of not just class and ethnicity, but also temperament and intelligence. It is the function of accents as “metasigns,” loaded with meaning and operating on a semiotic plane, in Shakespeare's plays in their original context and in today's global culture with which this collection is considered, and one of the main aims of the introduction is to outline its intervention in current discussions of Shakespeare, race, and performance which has neglected the aural in favor of the ocular. It is also the aim of the introduction to prompt further discussion into topics such as queer, disabled, and gendered voices that also form a critical lacuna within the field.
