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The widely publicized link between Shakespeare's arguably grimmest tragedy and HBO's popular series Succession provides a window into a topic central to both dramas but only beginning to be addressed in criticism of King Lear: the elusive construct of racial whiteness.1 Building upon foundational scholarship in premodern race studies from the 1990s and early 2000s, in 2013 Benjamin Minor and Ayanna Thompson showed how King Lear functions alongside the "iconic race plays," constructing race via Edgar's adoption of blackface as Poor Tom (153).2 In the current decade, several other scholars have joined the conversation, articulating how Edgar's blackface performance shapes a discourse of white supremacy (Wagner), considering Edmund's bastardy as a racial formation (DiGangi), and examining the "genealogies of whiteness" embedded in King Lear's representation of service (Chakravarty 210). While formal scholarship on Succession, which concluded its fourth and final season in May 2023, is also in an early stage, informal internet articles and commentary afford a valuable alternative archive for considering how this series and its relationship to the Shakespeare canon is being constructed in digital culture.3 Tellingly, however, although various analyses of Succession have separately addressed Shakespeare and race, as of this writing only one—Maya Mathur's discussion of the show's depiction of racialized masculinity—has connected the two. Together Shakespeare and Succession epitomize Richard Dyer's account of the paradox of whiteness: "Whites must be seen to be white, yet whiteness as race resides in invisible properties and whiteness as power is maintained by being unseen" (45).
Like its forbear, Succession is about the intersection of dysfunctional family dynamics and transitions of power at the highest ranks of society. In place of the British monarchy, the series examines the upper echelons of corporate America in the form of the fictional Roy family and their international media and entertainment conglomerate, Waystar Royco. Succession is far from a straightforward retelling of King Lear, however. Among its many Shakespearean references, the series avoids mentioning King Lear directly. Moreover, it intersects thematically with several other Shakespearean dramas involving kingship and succession—most notably Hamlet, Macbeth, and the history plays. Yet Succession's preponderance of "subtle links" to King Lear establish that play as the elderly predecessor with which it most...