【正文】 C, ). Caliban, then, is said to be the “hag seed” of the “damned witch Sycorax” from Argier (TT, amp。C, ), while Philo is made to plain that Antony “is bee the bellows and the fan/To cool a gipsy’s lust” (Aamp。 Philo, Pompey, and Octavius。 Antonio, Bassanio, and Portia。C, ). What is emphasized in the play is, of course, the Egyptian queen’s personal charms that go with a woman instead of a race. However, deep at her heart Cleopatra is proud enough of her Egyptian charms because she is able to “conquer” the Roman Antony and that “broadfronted Caesar” (Aamp。 3132). These lines imply that Othello has confidence in himself because of his noble birth, good ability, present position and “perfect soul.” But does his “perfect soul” e from his Christian belief? After a brawl in Cyprus, Othello berates his soldiers by asking, “Are we turned Turks, and to ourselves do that/Which heaven has forbid the Ottomites?” This question shows that Othello is ashamed of such “barbarous” tribes as Turks and the Ottomites, which may be linked to his own Moorish race. Besides, he also favors Christianity, for he goes on to say, “For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl” (OT, ). Religion is not a problem with Aaron, Cleopatra, or Caliban, nor is religion a focal point in the three plays in which they are cast. But when Caliban says in an aside that he must obey Prospero because “his Art is of such power./It would control my dam’s god, Setebos,/And make a vassal of him” (TT, ), his statement implies that power may even control a people’s faith. And when at last Caliban promises to “be wise hereafter,/And seek for grace” (TT, ), he is almost like a Jew or a Moor promising to discard his old faith and bee a Christian. Faith is part of one’s nurture, not nature. As such, it is actually not part of one’s racial heritage. Yet, to many people of our time as well as Shakespeare’s, religion almost always seems to bond with race. That is why even today Jews are equated with Judaism and Moors with Moslemism. So far, we have mentioned three of Shakespeare’s characters (Jessica, Othello, and Caliban) who have somehow bee willing to accept the faith or grace of Christianity. Their selfpride, thus, does not cover the pride in their racial religion. To Shylock, however, the “bond” of union between his race and his religion is so strong that he simply cannot bear to break it. After he is forced in court to say he is content to bee a Christian, he immediately asks for leave to “go from hence,” saying “I am not well” (MV, ). To Shylock, in fact, his race, his religion, and his nation are one. He thinks he embodies all Jewish virtues and is proud of his Jewish value. He says he will not eat, drink, nor pray with Christians (MV, ). He argues for the Jewish virtue of thrift (MV, ). He regards “sufferance” as the badge of all his tribe (MV, ). And when the time es, he utters all his racial grievances through the “Hath not a Jew eyes ...” protest (MV, ). If intrinsic racism is to plead for racial solidarity, Shylock’s racism is so intrinsic that it is not only tinged with ethnocentrism (preference for one’s own ethnic group), but also with xenophobia (fear of racial difference). In a sense, then, his dislike of miscegenation (against his daughter’s marriage with a Christian Venetian) is also derived from his intrinsic racism. And in all probability Tubal, another Jew in the play, is the only one left for his trust. In the same play, the Prince of Morocco’s pleading of “Mislike me not for my plexion” and his insistence that “I would not change this hue” (MV, amp。 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 racis