‘Parti-Coloured Lambs'

Recent demographic data demonstrates a marked rise in the number of Americans and Britons identifying as multiracial, even as public discourse often continues to frame identity in binary terms. This chapter examines the construction and representation of mixed identities in Shakespeare&s;s The Merchant of Venice , situating the play within the fields of Premodern Critical Race Studies (PCRS) and Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS). Through historicist analysis, this chapter examines Shakespeare&s;s use of “parti-coloured” imagery and related moments of racial and religious crossing, exploring how the play both gestures toward and resists articulations of interracialism, reflecting broader cultural anxieties around identity, religion, nationhood, and belonging, in a period of rapid change. Arguing for greater engagement with CMRS perspectives in Shakespearean studies, this paper suggests that interrogating neglected representations of interracialism offers fertile ground for rethinking mixedness in scholarship and performance, as well as a means to engage with the persistent, often binary, attitudes toward racial and national identity in both the past and present.