Epiphany and Balthazar in Shakespeare (Series, part 13)
From a 2023 post [1]: ...Balthazar (the dark-skinned magi of the evolving Epiphany tradition) became a kind of touchstone or symbol of otherness, diversity, and tolerance. And so it is also perhaps no surprise that the name Balthasar occurs five times in Shakespeare’s plays, twice as servants (in Romeo and Juliet, and in The Merchant of Venice), once as a singer in Much Ado About Nothing, once as a merchant in The Comedy of Errors, and once as a lawyer, Portia’s courtroom disguise in The Merchant of Venice, where she is called a "Daniel"; a play in which Portia considers suitors from many lands. Shakespeare also has a play named after the night before the Epiphany, Twelfth Night. The three Magi are outsiders, foreigners, and so are the siblings in Twelfth Night who are shipwrecked on the island of Illyria, the land of their enemies. But by the end of that play, the siblings both marry leading personages from Illyria, contributing to themes of diversity, tolerance, reconcili...