ABSTRACT
At James VI’s marriage to Anne of Denmark in 1589, four young black men danced naked in the snow in front of the royal carriage (Hall 1991:4; 1995:128-41). In 1554 five black men from Guinea were brought to London by traders, and one of the men fathered a child who became the object of intense scrutiny because, even though his mother was English, he was “in all respects as black as his father” (Jordan 1968:6; Tokson 1982:1). In 1577 an “Eskimo” couple captured by Martin Frobisher’s expedition to Meta Incognita were brought to London where they could be found on the banks of the Thames with their English-born child, fishing and hunting swans and ducks by royal license (Mullaney 1988:65). In 1596 Elizabeth (unsuccessfully) issued a warrant ordering that all “blackamoors,” black servants, exotic signs of their masters’ wealth, be rounded up so that Caspar Van Senden, a merchant of Lubeck, could trade them for English prisoners held captive on the Iberian peninsula (Hill 1984:8; Cowhig 1995:6). Between 1585 and 1692, numerous civic pageants, tableaux vivants devoid of action and dialogue, specify the inclusion of “Negroe boys” or “beautiful Raven-black negroes” (not just English people in blackface), sitting astride effigies of lions, camels, griffins and unicorns (Barthelemy 1987:50, 47). These are not representations of racial otherness performed by the English (or, in the first instance, the Norwegians, since the royal couple were
married in Oslo) but rather the display of people from Africa and the New World motivated by curiosity and profit.
