but not all, in Venice, and whose presence within Venice revises rather than
fulfills the axis of difference through which all (not just his) cultural identities
are read. We cannot say that the publication of The Historyin 1600 or the
popularization of its embedded Moor made all of this difference. What we
can say, however, is that at the turn of the century, when the English (as well
as the Spanish) state was officially endorsing discrimination against Moors
and “blackamoors,” the account of Africa that is most widely and enthusias-
tically acclaimed is one that exposes both the diversity of Africa’s histories and
peoples and the contingency of its terms. After the emergence of The History,
it may not have been inevitable that Shakespeare would imagine a Moor,
complexly, as “an extravagant and wheeling stranger / Of here and every-
where”—a phrase that unmoors the Moor provocatively, at precisely the
moment that its speaker (Roderigo) works to amplify and decry his “strange-
ness.” But given The History’s preeminence among the available texts on
Africa, neither would it have been surprising. For despite his own Christian
biases, Pory produces “the best moderne” vision of Africa for his own time—
one where Moors come in “sundry colours,” religions, “nations,” and places,
where “Africans” and “strangers” continually interact and intersect, and where
cross-cultural traffic and transformation make all the difference.
154 chapter six