【正文】 C, ). Caliban’s skin color is not a focus of The Tempest. In the play he is reduced to a monster, a beast or a fish. This “abhorred slave” or representative of a “vile race,” nonetheless, is not without his own pride. He has imagined himself peopling the isle with Calibans. He is at least proud of being able to curse the usurpers of his land in the language they have taught him. If we want to dwell on the topic of racial pride or intrinsic racism, we must understand that Shakespeare’s entire oeuvre is set in a whitedominated culture and a Christian milieu. Therefore, all the nonwhite and nonChristian characters’ racial pride is but a weak trace, pared with the overwhelming pride of the Christian whites that make up the majority of the playwright’s dramatis personae. Think of all those who have expressed contempt for Moors, Jews or other aliens: Demetrius and Chiron。從莎劇中，我們可以看出：莎翁看到種族各異，但主張種族間應(yīng)有自由、平等、博愛，所以他是人道主義者，其宏大的心靈帶來的是不偏不倚的種族見識。 and in Antony and Cleopatra, Philo mentions Cleopatra’s “tawny front” (Aamp。C, ). Caliban, then, is said to be the “hag seed” of the “damned witch Sycorax” from Argier (TT, amp。 in Othello, Othello is said to have a “sooty bosom” and is likened to “an old black ram” (OT, amp。 when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too” (247). This statement seems to explain that what made Shakespeare’s soul prehensive was his ability to grasp “all the images of nature” and render them “l(fā)uckily” and touchingly. Except this apparent explanation Dryden or Neander provides no further explication in this famous essay. In an editorial of 1998, Christopher Flannery says: “When Dryden speaks of Shakespeare’s ‘prehensive soul,’ he means that Shakespeare’s genius plumbs the deepest depths and scales the loftiest heights of human nature and enpasses the broadest reaches of the human condition.” Thus, he goes on to say, “Shakespeare’s themes include virtually every interesting aspect of human life.” However, the Shakespearean themes he mentions are such as “l(fā)ove, revenge, beauty, ambition, virtue, vice, justice, free will, providence, chance, fate, friendship, loyalty, betrayal。 Brabantio, Iago, and Roderigo。 11) also demonstrate his intrinsic racism and his own racial pride. But the Moor that speaks most proudly and impressively for his own race in Shakespearean drama is Aaron. In Act IV of Titus Andronicus we have a moving scene. The Nurse brings to Aaron his black baby (the one Tamora has just been delivered of). She curses it as a devil and a toad. But Aaron retorts, “’Zounds, ye whore! is black so base a hue?” and then calls the baby “Sweet blowse” and “a beauteous blossom” (TA, ). When Demetrius and Chiron threaten to kill the baby, Aaron not only protects it but also defends it, thus: Coalblack is better than another hue In that it scorns to bear another hue, For all the water in the ocean Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white, Although she lave them hourly in the flood. (TA, ) In Antony and Cleopatra, we can also see racial pride. Cleopatra tries to pete with Octavia in height, tone of voice, gait, age, shape of face, and hair color, but not in plexion. She may not have confidence in her tawny color. Yet, she never loses her pride in being “serpent of old Nile” (Aamp。猶太人與摩爾人代表兩種最基本的種族主義：在以基督教和白人為中心的莎劇世界裡，宗教和膚色成為種族歧視的主因。 they should prise all the dramatis personae in the five plays concerned, at least all the characters, white or colored, Christian or nonChristian, who have demonstrated more or less their racial consciousness: for example, Demetrius and Chiron as well as Aaron, Antonio and Portia as well as Shylock and Jessica, Branbantio and Iago as well as Othello, Philo and Octavius as well as Cleopatra, and Prospero and Miranda as well as Caliban. Among the racial personae, however, two figures are undoubtedly most important: namely, Shylock and Othello. They are so important not just because they, through their racial actions and reactions, represent the two basic types of racism (racism owing to nurture and racism owing to nature), but also because their names, as will be clarified below, have special significance in the light of racialism or racism. In Shakespeare, characternaming is indeed “not an entirely random matter”: Shakespeare’s characters often “allude to, or play on, the names of themselves or others”9 By giving the Jew and the Moor each “a local habitation and a name” (to quote a phrase from The Midsummer Night’s Dream), Shakespeare, as we shall see, has not just made concrete two racial stories, but also made meaningful his imaginative understanding of racial III. Pride and Prejudice There is a tendency for scholars to differentiate racialism from racism. Todorov, for instance, refers to racialism as a belief in the existence of races, ., “human groupings whose members possess mon physical characteristics,” just like animal species (6465). Such a belief is a scientific one, and hence neutral in attitude without any racial prejudice. However, racialism often bees racism, a belief not just in inherent biological differences among various human races but also in the superiority of some races to others and thus the justification for hating or despising or even eliminating other For Todorov, “the form of racism that is rooted in racialism produces particularly catastrophic results” (64), as Nazism is that form of racism. Kwame Antony Appiah also uses “racialism” to denote the idea of recognizing the existence of races with certain mon traits and tendencies, or inheritable characteristics called “race essence.” But Appiah assumes that from the basic racialism two types of racism may develop in time. The first type is “extrinsic racism,” which believes that “the racial essence entails certain morally relevant qualities,” and thus, “members of different races differ in respects that warrant the d