LAUSR

evidence of unsophisticated minds, rendering their external, acquired differences into immutable and inherent traits. Finally, Caliban is explored with husbandry texts, whereby his upbringing under Prospero becomes a ‘cultivation’: first as that of a son, with nurturing and education, and then after Caliban’s attempted rape of Miranda, through torment and deprivation, as that of a disobedient beast. Prospero’s treatment in his attempts to control and harness his servant leaves visible ‘pinch’ marks on Caliban’s body and further exaggerates his monstrous appearance, such that the Algerian witch’s son can never be redeemed, despite his evident knowledge and mastery of the island he once ruled. Though these plays highlight the norms of social difference, they also emphasize the dissatisfaction of those marginalized, ‘social climbers’ like Iago and Caliban who resent their exclusion from access to advancement, or ‘honest strivers’ like Othello and the Dromios who lament their unjust treatment. In this book, Akhimie makes pioneering use of conduct manuals to bring together multiple categories of social difference under one unifying theory of somatic markings and external conduct. Using classic racial texts Othello and The Tempest alongside new readings of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Comedy of Errors, Akhimie brings together the ‘imbricated’ stigmas associated with differences of race and class. She highlights clearly both the normative and contested nature of the stigmas and social pathways explored in the book. Akhimie’s work promises to be of broad value in many settings, but particularly where status is inverted or challenged. For my own research, for example, this work sheds powerful new light on the confrontation of Barbary captivity, where highand low-status Europeans alike were branded together as slaves, while free middling-sort traders and diplomats went hunting with the Maghrebi elites and ambitious converts achieved advancement impossible at home. For scholars of early modern class or race, of the emerging middling sort, or of social mobility, this work is stimulating reading. Nat cutter, University of Melbourne