EnglishHistory, the outlines of the African nations, like the cultures of the in-
habitants themselves, change with the times, requiring additions and revisions
that are at once extra and essential.
Ultimately, then, there is no Moor within this text. The Historytells the
story neither of the historical al-Wazzan nor of “the Moor,” if we mean by that
a singular, essentialized ethnic subject who can stand for all Moors. Criticism
now routinely cites Africanus’s disclaimer that “for mine owne part, when I
heare the Africans euill spoken of, I wil affirme my selfe to be one of Granada:
and when I perceiue the nation of Granada to be discommended, then will I
professe my selfe to be an African” as the crux of his—and/or al-Wazzan’s—
biography (Africanus, 190 ).^39 Here, in a nutshell, is the self-authorizing Moor,
uniquely “moored” in Africa, using a hybrid self-construction to cross—or
cross in and out of—Europe. Yet if we consider what it means to be an
“African” or a “stranger” across this text that, tellingly, never uses the word
“European,” these poles of identity do not simply merge into a sincerely or
strategically constructed hybrid self. Rather, each unravels into myriad partic-
ulars, exposing the variety within, not just between, these otherwise general
terms. Even in the rare glimpses Africanus does provide of himself, there is no
clear line between what marks him as “African,” and what as a “meere
stranger” (Africanus, 303 ). We see him engaging with Africa’s peoples and they
with him in a number of different ways, each contingent on the moment. He
is “louingly entertained,” fed, schooled, enlisted to arbitrate civil disputes,
willing to give money and aid to the natives, as circumstance allows or de-
mands (Africanus, 234 ).^40 And when he speaks of Africa through the images
of Europe—comparing the “cloath-garment” made and worn by the people
of Hea to “those couerlets or blankets which the Italians lay vpon their beds”
(Africanus 227 ), or the “certaine garment with wide sleeues” worn by the
“doctores and ancient gentleman” of Fez to the dress of “the gentlemen of
Venice” (Africanus, 446 ), or the “little round spot” Barbary’s women paint
“on the bals of their cheecks” to a “French crowne” (Africanus, 159 )—he gives
us Hea, ancient Fez, and Barbary instead of Africa, and Italy, Venice, and
France instead of Europe.
In four years Shakespeare will create a Moor who connects himself to the
ancient and modern cultures of Egypt, Judea, Arabia, and Turkey as well as to
an exoticized Africanesque terrain, and who is at home, at least at the start, in
both Venice and Cyprus. Shakespeare will create a Moor, that is, who is de-
cidedly not “of ” any one place inside or outside Africa, who is surrounded but
not confined by a constricting discourse of “blackness,” endorsed by some,
Cultural Traffic 153