The purpose of this thesis is to examine how Brazilian translations deal with Shakespeare`s black male characters: The Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, Aaron in Titus Andronicus and Othello. The study is based on the assumption that racial prejudice is an ideological construct, mediated by language, and that translation as a discursive mode may play an important role in the reproduction of ideology. The research was conducted in three steps: (i) identification of instances of racist discourse in the source text; (ii) identification in the target text of the translated instances of such racist discourse; (iii) analysis of these translations and the general effect they may have on the different end products, so as to verify whether the Brazilian versions reconstruct, intensify or mitigate the prejudice identified in the original work. The plays examined were The Merchant of Venice, and three Brazilian translations by Carlos Alberto Nunes, Cunha Medeiros/Oscar Mendes, and Barbara Heliodora; Titus Andronicus, in renderings by these same translators; and Othello, as translated by Onestaldo de Pennafort, Carlos Alberto Nunes, Cunha Medeiros/Oscar Mendes, Péricles Eugênio da Silva Ramos, Barbara Heliodora, Beatriz Viegas- Faria, and Jean Melville.