【正文】 C, ). In fact, Cleopatra is repeatedly called a strumpet or a whore. In The Tempest, then, Caliban is called a “savage” and said to have attempted to violate the honor of Miranda. A colored person is also often connected with sorcery. We have mentioned Pompey’s reference to Cleopatra’s witchcraft. In fact, when Antony suspects her, he also says, “The witch shall die ...” (Aamp。 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。C, ). To be sure, Othello is also said to have thick lips while Caliban is characterized as a deformed monster rather than a colored person, yet to Shakespeare’s Elizabethans the Moors, the Egyptians, or the Algerians—all those African people were distinctly colored people. Besides skin color, however, religion was another important characteristic for Shakespeare’s Europeans to discriminate between themselves and aliens. It happened that Moors were usually Moslems. It followed, therefore, that Moslems were associated with colored people and a foreign race in Europe. But Moslemism was not the only religion to suggest religious difference to Christians. Judaism was another religion that made the Europeans differ from Jews. To be sure, no religion is ever conspicuously written on anyone’s face: Moslemism or Judaism is a cultural manifestation, not a physical appearance. Yet, even though a white cannot easily tell himself apart from a Jew (who is not as colored as a Moor), he can observe a Jew’s practice of Judaism and then find the needed difference to form his racialism. It is for this reason, perhaps, that in The Merchant of Venice the Christians as well as Shylock apparently equate the Jew’s religion to his race and his nation. So far we have established the fact that in Shakespeare the Jew and the Moor are the two prominent figures bearing on problems of race, owing to their nurture (religious practice) and/or nature (such physical appearance as skin color). But racialism or racism is not just a matter of the “racial personae.” It is to even much greater a degree a matter of those who live with the “darkskinned people” or with the “nonChristian unbelievers.” In his “Race and Racism,” Tzvetan Todorov says, “Racism is a matter of behavior, usually a manifestation of hatred or contempt for individuals who have welldefined physical characteristics different from our own” (64). This statement does not apply very well to the case of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, for Shylock is not identified in the play as a person with any particular skin color, hair type, or facial feature, but as a person with Jewish belief and Jewish behavior. So, through Shylock Shakespeare seems to suggest that racism does not necessarily arise from “welldefined physical characteristics” only: there are cases in which racism es from different social conduct (. Shylock’s Jewish usury). Yet, Todorov’s statement still holds true in that the Christians as well as Shylock do reveal their racism in their behavior, in their hatred or contempt for individuals who have nurture or nature different from their own. Accordingly, when we discuss any particular case of racism, we should take into consideration both sides: the side that has the visible differences and the side that sees or makes the differences, that is, the side of “the other” and the side of “the self.” And, more often than not, we may find that the former side is the minority while the latter side is the majority in the society in which they live together. In Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, Venice is where the Jews and the Moors appear and live with the native Venetians or Italians, but the Jews and the Moors are the minority side of “the other” that has the visible differences, whereas the whites or the Christians are the majority side of “the self” that sees and makes the differences. That is why W. H. Auden can say: “Shylock is a Jew living in a predominantly Christian society, just as Othello is a Negro living in a predominantly white society” (232). Since it takes both sides to consider any racism, any list of racial personae should contain not only those characters who are the minority others with visible differences but also those characters who are the majority selves seeing or making the differences. Consequently, Shakespeare’s racial personae theoretically prise not only the eleven characters we have just mentioned above。 in The Merchant of Venice, the Prince of Morocco asks Portia not to dislike him “for my plexion” which is like the “shadowed livery of the burnished sun” (MV, )。 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 appa