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For centuries, plays like Othello and The Tempest have spoken about 'race' to audiences whose lives have been, and continue to be, enormously affected by the racial question. But are concepts such as `race' or 'racism', 'xenophobia', 'ethnicity', or even 'nation' appropriate for analysing communities and identities in early modern Europe? Did skin colour matter to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, or was religious difference more important to them? This book examines how Shakespeare's plays contribute to, and are themselves crafted from, contemporary ideas about social and cultural difference.