POSSIBLE TEXTS:
QUOTED IN ORR, EMPIRE ON THE ENGLISH STAGE:
". . . the complexion, which being most obvious to the sight by which the Notion of things doth seem to be most certainly convey'd to the understanding, is apt to make no slight impression upon minds, already prepared to admit anything for Truth which shall make for Interest."
--1680, Morgan Godwyn, Barbadian evangelist in his pamphlet entitled The Negro's and Indians Advocate (quoted in Orr, Empire, p.21-- Orr notes that "Interest" is used in financial sense, critiquing the privileging of appearance as indicator of difference and tying "sight", "impression", "understanding", and "interest" together.
"These two words, Negro and Slave, being by custom grown Homogeneous and Convertible; even as Negro and Christian, Englishman and Heathen, are by the like currupt Custom and Partiality made Opposites; Thereby as it were implying, that the one could not be Christians, nor the other Infidels."
-- Godwyn (same)
"'Tis granted, a Negro here does seldom rise above a Trumpeter, not often perhaps higher at Venice. But then that precedes from the Vice of Mankind, which is the Poets Duty as he informs us, to correct, and to represent things as they should be, not as they are. Not 'tis certain, there is no reason, in the nature of things, why a Negro of equal Birth and Merit, should not be on an equal bottom, with a German, Hollander, French-man, &c. . . . The Poet [Shakespeare] has therefore well chosen a polite People to cast off this customary Barbarity, of confining Nations, without regard to their Virtue, and Merit, to slavery, and contempt for the meer Accident of their Complexion."
-- Gildon, in an open Letter to Dryden, 1694, responding to Rymer's attack on Shakespeare (quoted in Orr, p. 23)
"Experience tells us, that there's nothing more common than Matches of this kind, where the Whites and Blacks cohabit together, as in both the Indies: and even here at home, Ladys that have not wanted white adorers have indulg'd their Amorous Dalliances with their Sable Lovers, without any of Othello's qualifications, which is proof enough, that Nature and Custom, have not put any such unpassable bar betwixt Creatures of the same kind, because of different colours."
-- Gildon (same)
----------------------------------
quoted in Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence:
Colonists:
"It was now plainly affirmed, both by some in open Council and by the same in private converse, that the people in New England were all slaves, and the only difference between them and slaves is their not being bought and sold."
-- Anonymous, On the Rebellion Against Governor Andros (1689)
"Those that went over were chiefly single men, who had not the encumbrance of wives and children in England. Such as had left wives in England sent for them; but the single men hoped that the plenty in which they lived might invite modest women without any fortune. The first planters were so far from expecting money with a woman that 'twas a common thing for them to buy a deserving wife at the price of ₤100.
-- Robert Beverley (1705--his history of Virginia?)
"I am forced to dig a garden, raise beans, peas, etc., with the assistance of a sorry wench my wife brought with her form England. Men are generally of all trades and women the like within their sphere, except some who have slaves."
-- The Reverend John Urmstone (1711)
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FROM BEDFORD OROONOKO (ancilliary material)
Texts to look at for script material:
Steele's story "Inkle and Yarico" from Tatler No. 11, March 13, 1711 (pp 192-195)
Addison's "On a Slave-Love Triangle" from Spectator No. 215, Nov. 6, 1711:
"When one hears of Negroes, who upon the Death of their Masters, or upon changing their Service, hang themselves upon the next Tree, as it frequently happens in our American Plantations, who can forbear admiring their Fidelity, though it expresses it self in so dreadful a manner? What might not that Savage Greatness of Soul, which appears in these poor Wretches on many Occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what colour of Excuse can there be for the Contempt with which we treat this Part of our Species; That we should not put them upon the common foot of Humanity, that we should only set an insignificant Fine upon the Man who murders them; nay, that we should as much as in us lies, cut them off from the Prospects of Happiness in another World as well as in this, and deny them that which we look upon as the proper Means for attaining it?" (pp. 196-7)
Look at Lord Willoughby's advertisment for colonists to Surinam, pp. 346-348. "Certaine Overtures made by ye Lord Willoughby of Parham unto all such as shall incline to plant in Ye Colonye of Saranam on Ye Continent of Guaiana"
------------------------
Note from Roach's, Cities of the Dead
This is interesting: Roach, talking about the early 18th Century creation of "nationality in the modern sense, as an insular ethnicity organized by the historic fiction of race into an imagined community", quotes Farquhar's call for an English national theatre in Discourse Upon Comedy (1702). "Farquhar presents the English in exceptionalist terms as 'a People not only separated from the rest of the World by Situation, but different also from other Nations as well in the Complexion and Temperament of the natural Body, as in the Constitution of oure Body Politick'" (Roach, 103)
QUOTED IN ORR, EMPIRE ON THE ENGLISH STAGE:
". . . the complexion, which being most obvious to the sight by which the Notion of things doth seem to be most certainly convey'd to the understanding, is apt to make no slight impression upon minds, already prepared to admit anything for Truth which shall make for Interest."
--1680, Morgan Godwyn, Barbadian evangelist in his pamphlet entitled The Negro's and Indians Advocate (quoted in Orr, Empire, p.21-- Orr notes that "Interest" is used in financial sense, critiquing the privileging of appearance as indicator of difference and tying "sight", "impression", "understanding", and "interest" together.
"These two words, Negro and Slave, being by custom grown Homogeneous and Convertible; even as Negro and Christian, Englishman and Heathen, are by the like currupt Custom and Partiality made Opposites; Thereby as it were implying, that the one could not be Christians, nor the other Infidels."
-- Godwyn (same)
"'Tis granted, a Negro here does seldom rise above a Trumpeter, not often perhaps higher at Venice. But then that precedes from the Vice of Mankind, which is the Poets Duty as he informs us, to correct, and to represent things as they should be, not as they are. Not 'tis certain, there is no reason, in the nature of things, why a Negro of equal Birth and Merit, should not be on an equal bottom, with a German, Hollander, French-man, &c. . . . The Poet [Shakespeare] has therefore well chosen a polite People to cast off this customary Barbarity, of confining Nations, without regard to their Virtue, and Merit, to slavery, and contempt for the meer Accident of their Complexion."
-- Gildon, in an open Letter to Dryden, 1694, responding to Rymer's attack on Shakespeare (quoted in Orr, p. 23)
"Experience tells us, that there's nothing more common than Matches of this kind, where the Whites and Blacks cohabit together, as in both the Indies: and even here at home, Ladys that have not wanted white adorers have indulg'd their Amorous Dalliances with their Sable Lovers, without any of Othello's qualifications, which is proof enough, that Nature and Custom, have not put any such unpassable bar betwixt Creatures of the same kind, because of different colours."
-- Gildon (same)
----------------------------------
quoted in Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence:
Colonists:
"It was now plainly affirmed, both by some in open Council and by the same in private converse, that the people in New England were all slaves, and the only difference between them and slaves is their not being bought and sold."
-- Anonymous, On the Rebellion Against Governor Andros (1689)
"Those that went over were chiefly single men, who had not the encumbrance of wives and children in England. Such as had left wives in England sent for them; but the single men hoped that the plenty in which they lived might invite modest women without any fortune. The first planters were so far from expecting money with a woman that 'twas a common thing for them to buy a deserving wife at the price of ₤100.
-- Robert Beverley (1705--his history of Virginia?)
"I am forced to dig a garden, raise beans, peas, etc., with the assistance of a sorry wench my wife brought with her form England. Men are generally of all trades and women the like within their sphere, except some who have slaves."
-- The Reverend John Urmstone (1711)
----------------------------------
FROM BEDFORD OROONOKO (ancilliary material)
Texts to look at for script material:
Steele's story "Inkle and Yarico" from Tatler No. 11, March 13, 1711 (pp 192-195)
Addison's "On a Slave-Love Triangle" from Spectator No. 215, Nov. 6, 1711:
"When one hears of Negroes, who upon the Death of their Masters, or upon changing their Service, hang themselves upon the next Tree, as it frequently happens in our American Plantations, who can forbear admiring their Fidelity, though it expresses it self in so dreadful a manner? What might not that Savage Greatness of Soul, which appears in these poor Wretches on many Occasions, be raised to, were it rightly cultivated? And what colour of Excuse can there be for the Contempt with which we treat this Part of our Species; That we should not put them upon the common foot of Humanity, that we should only set an insignificant Fine upon the Man who murders them; nay, that we should as much as in us lies, cut them off from the Prospects of Happiness in another World as well as in this, and deny them that which we look upon as the proper Means for attaining it?" (pp. 196-7)
Look at Lord Willoughby's advertisment for colonists to Surinam, pp. 346-348. "Certaine Overtures made by ye Lord Willoughby of Parham unto all such as shall incline to plant in Ye Colonye of Saranam on Ye Continent of Guaiana"
------------------------
Note from Roach's, Cities of the Dead
This is interesting: Roach, talking about the early 18th Century creation of "nationality in the modern sense, as an insular ethnicity organized by the historic fiction of race into an imagined community", quotes Farquhar's call for an English national theatre in Discourse Upon Comedy (1702). "Farquhar presents the English in exceptionalist terms as 'a People not only separated from the rest of the World by Situation, but different also from other Nations as well in the Complexion and Temperament of the natural Body, as in the Constitution of oure Body Politick'" (Roach, 103)
posted by Graham at 2:23 AM
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