Reading Hawaiian Shakespeare: Indigenous Residue Haunting Settler Colonial Racism

Abstract

As scholarly work on race in Shakespeare studies continues to develop, this article examines how important insights from critical Indigenous studies can help us to refine and enhance this work to more fully see historical moments at which Shakespeare's works have been appropriated in response to the oppression of settler colonialism. Taking an 1893 political cartoon from a New York newspaper as a representation of settler violence against Queen Lili‘uokalani of Hawai‘i, this essay traces the uses of Banquo's ghost in Hawaiian newspapers as a figure that haunts the racializing elimination of Native rule.