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= Othello =
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Introduction
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'The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice', often shortened to
'Othello' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare around 1603.
Set in Venice and Cyprus, the play depicts the Moorish military
commander Othello as he is manipulated by his ensign, Iago, into
suspecting his wife Desdemona of infidelity. 'Othello' is widely
considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works and is usually
classified among his major tragedies alongside 'Macbeth', 'King Lear',
and 'Hamlet'. Unpublished in the author's life, the play survives in
one quarto edition from 1622 and in the First Folio.
'Othello' has been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, both among
playgoers and literary critics, since its first performance, spawning
numerous stage, screen, and operatic adaptations. Among actors, the
roles of Othello, Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia (Iago's wife) are
regarded as highly demanding and desirable. Critical attention has
focused on the nature of the play's tragedy, its unusual mechanics,
its treatment of race, and on the motivations of Iago and his
relationship to Othello. Originally performed by white actors in dark
makeup, the role of Othello began to be played by black actors in the
19th century.
Shakespeare's major source for the play was a novella by Cinthio, the
plot of which Shakespeare borrowed and reworked substantially. Though
not among Shakespeare's longest plays, it contains two of his four
longest roles in Othello and Iago.
Characters
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* Othello - General in the Venetian military, a noble Moor
* Desdemona - Othello's wife; daughter of Brabantio
* Iago - Othello's trusted, but jealous and traitorous ensign
* Cassio - Othello's loyal and most beloved captain
* Emilia - Iago's wife and Desdemona's maidservant
* Bianca - Cassio's lover
* Brabantio - Venetian senator and Desdemona's father (can also be
called Brabanzio)
* Roderigo - dissolute Venetian, in love with Desdemona
* Duke of Venice
* Gratiano - Brabantio's brother
* Lodovico - Brabantio's kinsman and Desdemona's cousin
* Montano - Othello's Venetian predecessor in the government of Cyprus
* Clown - servant
* Senators
* Sailor
* Officers, Gentlemen, Messenger, Herald, Attendants, Musicians, etc.
Act I
=======
Roderigo, a wealthy and dissolute gentleman, complains to his friend
Iago, an ensign, that Iago has not told him about the recent secret
marriage between Desdemona, the daughter of Brabantio, a senator, and
Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. Roderigo is upset
because he loves Desdemona and had asked her father, Brabantio, for
her hand in marriage, which Brabantio denied him.
Iago hates Othello for promoting an aristocrat named Cassio above him,
whom Iago considers a less capable soldier than himself. Iago tells
Roderigo that he plans to exploit Othello for his own advantage and
convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio and tell him about his daughter's
elopement. Meanwhile, Iago sneaks away to find Othello and warns him
that Brabantio is coming for him.
Brabantio, provoked by Roderigo, is enraged and seeks to confront
Othello, but he finds Othello accompanied by the Duke of Venice's
guards, who prevent violence. News has arrived in Venice that the
Turks are going to attack Cyprus, and Othello is therefore summoned to
advise the senators. Brabantio has no option but to accompany Othello
to the Duke's residence, where he accuses Othello of seducing
Desdemona by witchcraft.
Othello defends himself before the Duke of Venice, Brabantio's kinsmen
Lodovico and Gratiano, and various senators. Othello explains that,
while he was invited to Brabantio's home, Desdemona became enamoured
of him for the sad and compelling stories he told of his life before
Venice, not because of any witchcraft. The senate is satisfied once
Desdemona confirms that she loves Othello, but Brabantio leaves,
saying that Desdemona will betray Othello: "Look to her, Moor, if thou
hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee" (Act I,
Sc 3). Iago, still in the room, takes note of Brabantio's remark. By
order of the Duke, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian
armies against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus, accompanied by
his new wife, his new lieutenant Cassio, his ensign Iago, and Iago's
wife, Emilia, as Desdemona's attendant.
Act II
========
The party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the
Turkish fleet. Othello orders a general celebration and leaves to
consummate his marriage with Desdemona. In his absence, Iago gets
Cassio drunk and then persuades Roderigo to draw Cassio into a fight.
Montano tries to calm down an angry and drunk Cassio. This leads to
their fighting one another and Montano's being injured. Othello
arrives and questions the men as to what happened. Othello blames
Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank. Cassio,
distraught, is then persuaded by Iago to ask Desdemona to persuade her
husband to reinstate him.
Act III
=========
Iago persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona's
relationship. When Desdemona drops a handkerchief (the first gift
given to her by Othello), Emilia finds it and gives it to Iago at his
request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello appears and,
then being convinced by Iago of his wife's unfaithfulness with his
captain, vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after
which he makes Iago his lieutenant.
Act IV
========
Iago plants the handkerchief in Cassio's lodgings, then tells Othello
to watch Cassio's reactions while Iago questions him. Iago goads
Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca, a local courtesan, but
whispers her name so quietly that Othello believes the two men are
talking about Desdemona. Later, Bianca accuses Cassio of giving her a
second-hand gift which he had received from another lover. Othello
sees this, and Iago convinces him that Cassio received the
handkerchief from Desdemona.
Enraged and hurt, Othello resolves to kill his wife and tells Iago to
kill Cassio. Othello proceeds to make Desdemona's life miserable and
strikes her in front of visiting Venetian nobles. Meanwhile, Roderigo
complains that he has received no results from Iago in return for his
money and efforts to win Desdemona, but Iago convinces him to kill
Cassio.
Act V
=======
Roderigo unsuccessfully attacks Cassio in the street after Cassio
leaves Bianca's lodgings, as Cassio wounds Roderigo. During the
scuffle, Iago comes from behind Cassio and badly cuts his leg. In the
darkness, Iago manages to hide his identity, and when Lodovico and
Gratiano hear Cassio's cries for help, Iago joins them. When Cassio
identifies Roderigo as one of his attackers, Iago secretly stabs
Roderigo to death to stop him from revealing the plot. Iago then
accuses Bianca of the failed conspiracy to kill Cassio.
Othello confronts a sleeping Desdemona. She denies being unfaithful,
but he smothers her. Emilia arrives, and Desdemona defends her husband
before dying, and Othello accuses Desdemona of adultery. Emilia calls
for help. The former governor Montano arrives with Gratiano and Iago.
When Othello mentions the handkerchief as proof, Emilia realizes what
Iago has done, and she exposes him. Othello, belatedly realising
Desdemona's innocence, stabs Iago (but not fatally), saying that Iago
is a devil, but not before the latter stabs Emilia to death in the
scuffle.
Iago refuses to explain his motives, vowing to remain silent from that
moment on. Lodovico apprehends both Iago and Othello for the murders
of Roderigo, Emilia, and Desdemona, but Othello commits suicide.
Lodovico appoints Cassio as Othello's successor and exhorts him to
punish Iago justly. He then denounces Iago for his actions and leaves
to tell the others what has happened.
Shakespeare's sources
=======================
Shakespeare's primary source for the plot was the story of a Moorish
Captain (third decade, story seven) in 'Gli Hecatommithi' by Cinthio
(Giovanni Battista Giraldi), a collection of one hundred novellas
about love, grouped into ten "decades" by theme. The third decade
deals with marital infidelity. Of Cinthio's characters, only Disdemona
(the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona - her name means
"ill-omened" in Italian) is named - the others are simply called the
Moor (the equivalent of Othello), the Ensign (Iago), the Corporal
(Cassio) and similar descriptions. In its story the Ensign falls in
love with the Moor's wife Disdemona, but her indifference turns his
love to hate and in revenge he persuades the Moor that Disdemona has
been unfaithful. The Moor and the Ensign murder Disdemona with socks
filled with sand, and bring down the ceiling of her bedchamber to make
it appear an accident. The story continues until the Ensign is
tortured to death for unrelated reasons and the Moor is killed by
Disdemona's family.
Shakespeare's direct sources for the story do not include any threat
of warfare: it seems to have been Shakespeare's innovation to set the
story at the time of a threatened Turkish invasion of
Cyprus--apparently fixing it in the events of 1570. Those historical
events would however have been well known to Shakespeare's original
audience, who would therefore have been aware that--contrary to the
action of the play--the Turks took Cyprus, and still held it.
Scholars have identified many other influences on 'Othello'. Works
which are not themselves sources but whose impact on Shakespeare can
be identified in the play include Virgil's 'Aeneid', Ovid's
'Metamorphoses', both 'The Merchant's Tale' and 'The Miller's Tale'
from Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales', Geoffrey Fenton's 'Certaine
Tragicall Discourses', Kyd's 'The Spanish Tragedy', George Peele's
'The Battle of Alcazar', the anonymous 'Arden of Faversham', Marlowe's
'Doctor Faustus', and Heywood's 'A Woman Killed with Kindness'.
Influences also include Shakespeare's own earlier plays 'Much Ado
About Nothing', in which a similar plot was used in a comedy, 'The
Merchant of Venice' with its high-born, Moorish, Prince of Morocco,
and 'Titus Andronicus', in which a Moor, Aaron, was a prominent
villain, and as such was a forerunner of both Othello and Iago.
One such influence is not a literary work at all. In 1600, London was
visited for "half a year" by the Moorish ambassador of the King of
Barbary, whose entourage caused a stir in the city. Shakespeare's
company is known to have played at court during the time of the visit,
and so would have encountered the foreign visitors at first hand.
Among Shakespeare's non-fiction, or partly-fictionalised, sources were
Gasparo Contarini's 'Commonwealth and Government of Venice' and Leo
Africanus's 'A Geographical Historie of Africa'. Himself a Moor from
Barbary, Leo said of his own people "they are so credulous they will
beleeue matters impossible, which are told them" and "no nation in the
world is so subject vnto iealousie; for they will rather [lose] their
liues than put vp any disgrace in the behalfe of their women"--both
traits seen in Shakespeare's Othello. And from Leo's own life story
Shakespeare took a well-born, educated African finding a place at the
height of a white European power. From Philemon Holland's translation
of Pliny's 'Natural History' Shakespeare took the references to the
Pontic Sea, to Arabian trees with their medicinable gum, and to the
"Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders",
elements which also featured in the fantastic 'The Travels of Sir John
Mandeville'.
Date
======
The 'terminus ad quem' for 'Othello' (that is, the latest year in
which the play could have been written) is 1604, since a performance
of the play in that year is mentioned in the accounts book of Sir
Edmund Tilney, then Master of the Revels.
A 'terminus a quo' (i.e. the earliest year in which it could have been
written) is given by the fact that one of its sources, Holland's
translation of Pliny's 'Natural History', was published in 1601.
Within this range, scholars have tended to date the play 1603-1604,
within the reign of James I, since the play appears to have elements
designed to appeal to the new king, who had written a poem about the
defeat of the Turkish navy at Lepanto, and to the new queen, Anne of
Denmark, in whose circle there was an interest in the blackface
exoticism also reflected in Ben Jonson's 'The Masque of Blackness', in
which the queen and her ladies appeared as "daughters of Niger". That
dating is supported by similarities to 'Measure for Measure', another
of Shakespeare's plays often dated around 1604, and which, like
'Othello', draws its plot from Cinthio's 'Gli Hecatommithi'. This date
is also supported by the possibility that Shakespeare may have
consulted Richard Knolles' 1603 'The Generall Historie of the Turkes'.
However, evidence of an earlier date, 1601-1602, is provided by the
so-called bad quarto of Shakespeare's play 'Hamlet', published in
1603. The theory is that the bad quarto is a memorial reconstruction
of 'Hamlet', made by some of its actors: so where there are
unintentional echoes of 'Othello' in the bad quarto (for example "to
my vnfolding / Lend thy listning eare" in the bad quarto and "To my
unfolding lend your prosperous ear" in 'Othello'--and a number of
others) it suggests that the actors must have been performing
'Othello', at the latest, in the season preceding the bad quarto's
publication.
Early editions
================
'Othello' was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime. The first
published version of the play was a quarto in 1622 (usually
abbreviated to "Q"), which was followed a year later by the play's
appearance in the 'First Folio' (usually abbreviated to "F").
There are significant differences between the two early editions, the
most prominent of which are:
*F contains about 160 lines which are not in Q, sometimes in passages
which are quite extended and well-known, such as Othello's "Pontic
Sea" speech and Desdemona's "Willow Song".
*Q has fuller and more elaborate stage directions than F.
*Q has 63 oaths or profanities which do not appear in F, suggesting
the possibility that F was based on a manuscript which had been edited
to conform with the 1606 Act of Abuses.
*There are over a thousand variations in wording, lineation, spelling
and punctuation.
There is no scholarly consensus to account for the differences between
Q and F:
*E. K. Chambers in 1930 argued that Q derived from a scribal
manuscript, and F from the author's holograph.
*Alice Walker in 1952 argued that F was printed from a corrected copy
of Q.
*W. W. Greg in 1955 argued that Q's copy must have been a
difficult-to-read transcript of Shakespeare's "foul papers" (i.e.
first drafts).
*M. R. Ridley in 1958, rejecting Walker's argument and accepting
Greg's, argued that Q had greater authority and rejected F's changes
as "memorial contamination" from a theatre prompt book or as
"sophistications" by the editors of F.
*Nevill Coghill in 1964 argued that the changes in F were improvements
made by the author, who might have taken advantage of the need to
revise the play in consequence of the Act of Abuses to make other
changes.
*Gary Taylor in 1983 agreed with Coghill that F incorporated the
author's own improvements to Q, but argued that another scribal hand
had also made intervening changes to F.
*E. A. J. Honigmann in 1996 partly revived Walker's theory, by arguing
that the scribe responsible for preparing the manuscript for F had
consulted Q whenever the copy was illegible. He also argues that
sequences in F but not in Q, such as the 'Willow Song', may have been
cuts from the original made for the manuscript of Q, rather than later
additions made for the manuscript of F.
As 'The Oxford Shakespeare' editor Michael Neill summarises things:
"The textual mystery of 'Othello' is unlikely ever to be resolved to
general satisfaction."
Jealousy
==========
The influential early twentieth-century Shakespeare critic A. C.
Bradley defined Othello's tragic flaw as a sexual jealousy so intense
that it "converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in
man ... the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in
naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it
entrance, grasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding
relief only in a bestial thirst for blood."
This jealousy is symbolized in the play through animal imagery. In the
early acts of the play it is Iago who mentions ass, daws, flies, ram,
jennet, guinea-hen, baboon, wild-cat, snipe, monkeys, monster and
wolves. But from the third act onwards Othello catches this line of
imagery from Iago as his irrational jealousy takes hold. The same
occurs with "diabolical" imagery (i.e. images of hell and devils) of
which Iago uses 14 of his 16 diabolical images in the first two acts,
yet Othello uses 25 of his 26 in the last three acts.
Not only Othello, but also Iago is consumed by jealousy: his is a kind
of envy, which contemporary scholar Francis Bacon called "the vilest
affection, and the most depraved; for which cause, it is the proper
attribute of the Devil... As it always cometh to pass, that envy
worketh subtilly, and in the dark; and to the prejudice of good
things."
Sometimes critics have struggled to define the kind of jealousy
Othello suffers, or to deny it as a motive (for example, those who
claim that in Russia between 1945 and 1957 only one actor portrayed
Othello as obsessed by jealousy). In fact jealousy is a wide-ranging
emotion and encompasses the spectrum from lust to spiritual
disillusionment within which Othello's obsession must fall. And he
displays many accepted aspects of jealousy: an eagerness to snatch at
proofs, indulging degrading images of the jealousy's object, snatching
at ambiguities to ease the mind, dread of vulgar ridicule, and a
spirit of vindictiveness.
Race
======
As Ben Okri has said:
Or, as the Oxford editor Professor Michael Neill summarises it:
In plot terms, Othello's race serves to mark him as "other". As both a
Christian and a black African, Othello is (as scholar Tom McAlindon
puts it) both of, and not of, Venice. And actor Paul Robeson
considered Othello's colour as essentially secondary, as a way of
emphasizing his cultural difference and consequent vulnerability in a
society he does not fully understand.
In the world of the play itself, Jyotsna Singh argues that
Brabantio's--and others'--objection to Othello, a decorated and
respected general, as a suitable husband for Desdemona, a senator's
daughter, only makes sense in racist terms: reinforced by the bestial
imagery used by Iago in delivering the news. The racist slurs used by
Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio in the play suggest that Shakespeare
conceived of Othello as a black African: "thicklips"; "an old black
ram is tupping your white ewe"; "you'll have your daughter covered
with a Barbary horse"; "the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou"--as
do things Othello says of himself: "haply for I am black"; or
"begrimed and black as mine own face".
There is critical divide over Othello's ethnic origin. A "Moor"
broadly refers to someone from northwest Africa, especially if Muslim,
but in Shakespeare's England "Moor" was used with broader
connotations: sometimes referring to Africans of all regions,
sometimes to Arabic or Islamic peoples beyond Africa, such as those of
Turkey and the Middle East, and sometimes to Muslims of any race or
location.
Racism
========
In Shakespeare's main source, Cinthio's 'Gli Hecatommithi', the
character Disdemona (the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona) says
"I know not what to say of the Moor; he used to be all love towards
me; but within these few days he has become another man; and much I
fear that I shall prove a warning to young girls not to marry against
the wishes of their parents, and that the Italian ladies may learn
from me not to wed a man whose nature and habitude of life estrange
from us".
Similar wording was used in one of the earliest, and most negative,
critiques of the play: Thomas Rymer writing in his 1693 'A Short View
of Tragedy' suggested that one of the play's morals was "a caution to
all Maidens of Quality how, without their Parents consent, they run
away with Blackamoors." Rymer, however, dryly observed that another
such moral might be "a warning to all good Wives, that they look well
to their Linnen" - as such his comments should be read within the
context of his overarching criticism of the play, as unrealistic and
lacking in obvious moral conclusions.
In the nineteenth century, such well-known writers as Samuel Taylor
Coleridge and Charles Lamb questioned whether the play could even be
called a "true tragedy" when it dramatized the inviolable taboo of a
white woman in a relationship with a black man. Coleridge, writing in
1818, argued that Othello could not have been conceived as black:
"Can we imagine [Shakespeare] so utterly ignorant as to make a
barbarous negro plead royal birth--at a time, too, when negroes were
not known except as slaves? ... and most surely as an English audience
was disposed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be
something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling
in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a disproportionateness,
a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to
have in the least contemplated."
These sentiments were instrumental in ushering in the so-called
"bronze age of Othello" (discussed further under "19th century"
below).
Martin Orkin's 1987 essay 'Othello and the "Plain Face" of Racism'
acknowledges the racist sentiments in the play; but vindicates
Shakespeare who confines these views to discredited characters such as
Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio. He concludes that "in its fine scrutiny
of the mechanisms underlying Iago's use of racism, and in its
rejection of human pigmentation as a means of identifying human worth,
the play, as it always has done, continues to oppose racism."
The critical approach to racial issues in the play changed direction
with the publication in 1996 by Howard University Press of 'Othello:
New Essays by Black Writers' edited by Mythili Kaul, which made clear
that black readers and audience members may be experiencing a
different play from white ones. Questions about whether 'Othello' is
among Shakespeare's greatest plays are rendered irrelevant in the
context of discussions about how the play illuminates the racial
thinking of Shakespeare's time, and of the present day.
The Nigerian poet Ben Okri in his 1997 'A Way of Being Free' included
several "meditations" on 'Othello', arguing that because "it is
possible that Othello actually is a blackened white man" he is not a
fully formed character with a psychology but a "white myth or
stereotype of black masculinity". Even with that knowledge, Okri
writes, "The black person's response to 'Othello' is more secret, and
much more anguished, than can be imagined. It makes you unbearably
lonely to know that you can empathise with [white people], but they
will rarely empathise with you. It hurts to watch 'Othello'."
From the 1980s, Othello became a role that only black actors
performed. However, in 1998 black actor Hugh Quarshie questioned
whether the central role in 'Othello' should be played by a black
actor, saying:
Scholar Virginia Vaughan made a related point in 2005:
|url=
http://art.thewalters.org/detail/9022
Patriarchy
============
At Brabantio's first appearance towards the end of the first scene, he
asks whether sinister "charms" may have abused "the property of youth
and maidenhood" of Desdemona. For him, Desdemona denying her father's
right to choose her husband, and choosing a black man for herself, can
only be explained by black magic.
The notion of women as property pervades the play. Even after her
death, Othello says of Desdemona: "Had she been true, / If heaven
would make me such another world / Of one entire and perfect
chrysolite, / I'd not have sold her for it." Also pervasive is the
male fear of female sexuality.
The word "whore" appears 14 times in 'Othello', more often than in any
other work by Shakespeare, often used (in Kay Stanton's words) as a
"male-initiated inscription onto the female as scapegoat." And it is
one of only two of the plays (alongside 'Timon of Athens') in which
the word "whore" is used with specific reference to every named female
character. In the world of the play, 'whorishness' is understood as
the true and essential nature of women--yet this is constantly shown
to be a projection of male imaginations, completely unrelated to the
women's perceptions of themselves or to their behavior.
Towards the end of the play, Desdemona's goodness increasingly becomes
represented by long-suffering martyrdom, perceived as a longstanding
sign of acceptable femininity. In place of the headstrong heroine of
the opening acts, Desdemona, increasingly stripped of agency, endures
her husband's anger and humiliations--even his striking her in
public--and eventually, while dying, tries to exonerate him for his
murder of her. Others perceive Desdemona's reaction as one of strength
and dignity, not passivity.
In contrast, Emilia ("the only real grown-up in the play", in the
words of stage director Michael Attenborough) revolts against
misogyny, defying her husband Iago's demands three times in the final
scene.
The handkerchief
==================
The over-reliance of the plot of 'Othello' upon a trivial prop, the
handkerchief, was noted in the play's earliest criticism. The same
Thomas Rymer quoted above, in his 1693 'A Short View of Tragedy',
suggested that the play should better have been called '"The Tragedy
of the Handkerchief"', arguing "the handkerchief is so remote a
trifle, no booby on this side Mauritania could make any consequence
from it."
In spite of Othello's protestations in the first act that no magic was
used in his wooing of Desdemona, he later claims magical properties
for the handkerchief, his first gift to her. A question which has
interested critics is whether he himself believes these stories or is
using them to pressure or test Desdemona. There is certainly a
contradiction between Othello's assertion--linked to its supposed
magical properties--that his mother received the handkerchief from an
Egyptian charmer in Act 3 Scene 4, and his later assertion that his
father gave it to his mother, made in Act 4 Scene 2. Are we, the
audience, intended to believe in the handkerchief's magical
properties?
The handkerchief provides many examples of how chance operates in
support of Iago's plots: Desdemona loses it just when Iago is in need
of evidence of the invented affair; Cassio fails to recognise that it
is hers; Cassio gives it to Bianca to copy, who throws it back at him
at the very moment when Othello is eavesdropping.
Symbolically the handkerchief represents the bond between Othello and
Desdemona, and its loss the breaking of that bond: Othello blames
Desdemona for its loss when in fact he casts it aside while she is
trying to use it to help him. The whiteness of the handkerchief is
often taken to represent Desdemona's purity; and the red strawberries
blood from her hymen symbolising her virgin marriage. In contrast,
professor Ian Smith argues that a handkerchief "dyed in mummy" would
not be white but black, and therefore symbolic of Othello.
In a 1997 production at the Royal National Theatre, the handkerchief
fell to the ground immediately before the interval and remained
onstage throughout it, as if--as the reviewer Richard Butler put
it--"challenging one of us to pick it up and prevent a tragedy."
Othello and Iago
==================
Othello and Iago are two of the five longest parts in the Shakespeare
canon. At 1097 lines, Iago's is the larger of the two: only Hamlet (in
'Hamlet') and Richard (in 'Richard III') are longer.
Genre
=======
'Othello'--although a tragedy--takes elements from other genres,
including comedy. For example, there are similarities between Egeus'
complaint about his daughter Hermia's lover Lysander, in the first Act
of Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream':
With cunning hast thou filched my daughter's heart Turned her
obedience which is due to me To stubborn harshness.
And Brabantio's complaint to the Duke in Act 1 of 'Othello' in which
he asks Desdemona:
Do you perceive, in all this noble company, Where most you owe
obedience?
Iago's motivation
===================
The word "honest" is used more than 40 times in the play, sometimes
with reference to Desdemona's chastity, but in almost all other cases
with reference to Iago, where it has a double meaning--as a
condescending term for a social inferior, and as a reference to his
supposed truthfulness.
Iago's role is (in Robert Watson's words) "overdetermined in
renaissance dramatic convention": he is partly the scheming Machiavel
of Renaissance tragedy, partly the vengeful malcontent of revenge
tragedy, partly the instigator of jealousy in domestic tragedy and
partly the devil incarnate of morality plays.
The character's own motives are never made clear, because Iago himself
expresses too many motives:
*He hates the Moor: often with reference to Othello's race.
*He is angry that Cassio has been promoted to Lieutenant, over
himself.
*He suspects Othello of having slept with Emilia.
*He suspects Cassio of having slept with Emilia.
*He himself is in love with Desdemona.
*He envies Cassio's virtues.
These led Samuel Taylor Coleridge to refer to Iago's "motive-hunting
of motive-less Malignity".
Some critics have suggested other motives: psychologist Ernest Jones's
suggestion that Iago may be motivated by a repressed homosexual desire
for Othello has been influential in subsequent performances of the
role.
As Robert Watson summarises it: "The seemingly endless critical debate
about Iago's motivation reflects a truth, rather than a confusion,
about the play. ... If it is disturbing to suspect that a devil may be
lurking around us in human form, perhaps within our most trusted
friend, it is even more disturbing to realize that this devil may be
... a reflection of our own destructive tendencies."
Ultimately Iago provides no answer--refusing, at the end of the play,
to reveal his motive: "Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.
From this time forth I never will speak word."
Double time scheme
====================
'Othello' has a double time scheme--meaning that the timeframe of the
play does not contain enough time for its action. Its action is
continuous from Othello and Desdemona's wedding night, except for the
voyage from Venice to Cyprus (during which Cassio and Desdemona are
not together) and the time in Cyprus covers an estimated 33 hours. Yet
this short timeframe does not allow any time for the supposed affair
between Desdemona and Cassio to have happened. In support of the short
time scheme is the continuous nature of the action: the fleet arrives
in Cyprus in the afternoon and the plot against Cassio proceeds that
evening into the early morning; Cassio resolves to seek Desdemona's
help the following morning, and does so, commencing the long
"temptation scene" by the end of which Othello has resolved to kill
Desdemona and has ordered Iago to attempt to kill Cassio, all of which
happens that same night. And this urgency is underlined by the text:
in particular's Iago's concern that if Othello compares notes with
anyone else it will become clear that Iago is playing one character
against another.
But there is also a long time scheme. Iago persuades Othello that
Desdemona and Cassio have "the act of shame a thousand times
committed"; Emilia says Iago "hath a hundred times" asked her to steal
the handkerchief; Bianca complains Cassio has been away from her "a
week"; news of the Turkish defeat needs time to reach Venice then
Lodovico needs time to reach Cyprus; and by Act 4 Roderigo (who sold
all his land at the end of Act 1) has already squandered all his
money.
Shakespeare's source story in Cinthio takes place entirely in the long
time scheme: Shakespeare appears to have introduced the shorter time
scheme to increase dramatic tension, while also introducing moments
where Iago's plot could fall apart--for example if Emilia had given an
honest answer to Desdemona's "Where should I lose that handkerchief?"
or if Roderigo had chosen to denounce Iago.
The discovery of a double time scheme has been ascribed to articles
written by John Wilson in 'Blackwood's Magazine' in 1849 and 1850,
although references to the problem predate that. The whole question is
sometimes rejected as "academic nit-picking". (Director Michael
Attenborough, asked about it in an interview, replied "I strongly
suspect Shakespeare didn't think about it very much.") And as Michael
Neill points out, many of the problems disappear if one supposes that
Othello believed Cassio and Desdemona's affair had commenced prior to
Othello and Desdemona's elopement. Neill summarises the issue as "no
more than a particularly striking side-effect of the general
indifference to naturalistic handling of time and space that
Shakespeare shared with other dramatists of the period."
Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum
======================================
'Othello' was written for and performed by the King's Men, the playing
company to which Shakespeare belonged, and the 1622 Quarto notes on
its title page that the play was "Diuerse times acted at the Globe,
and at Black-Friers, by his Maiesties seruants". These two theatres
had very different features--the former a large outdoor theatre
accommodating an audience of 3,000; the latter a private indoor
theatre that sat around 700, paying higher prices--and the style of
playing would have adapted to these different conditions. The play was
performed at Court by the King's Men on 1 November 1604, and again in
1612-13 as part of the celebrations for the Wedding of Princess
Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate.
The title role was originally played by Richard Burbage, whose
eulogies reveal that he was admired in the role. Moorish characters
were conventionally played in turbans, with long white gowns and red
trousers, with the actor's face darkened with lampblack or coal. The
original Iago was likely John Lowin.
Restoration and 18th century
==============================
All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September
1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent
companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were
established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between
them: 'Othello' being allocated to the King's Company's repertoire.
These patents stated that "all the women's parts to be acted in either
of the said two companies for the time to come may be performed by
women". The first professional acting appearance by a woman on the
English stage was that of Desdemona in 'Othello' on 8 December 1660,
although history does not record who took the role. Margaret Hughes is
the first woman known to have played Desdemona.
In Restoration theatres, it was common for Shakespeare's plays to be
adapted or rewritten. 'Othello' was not adapted in this way, although
it has often been cut to conform to current ideas of decorum or
refinement. These cuts were not limited to removing violent, religious
or sexual content, but extended on different occasions to removing
references to eavesdropping, to Othello's fit, to Othello's tears, to
the first 200 lines of the fourth act, or to the entire role of
Bianca.
Among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century actors praised for
expressing the nobility of the Moor--and fully exploring the degrading
passions which lead to the brutal murder he commits--were Thomas
Betterton and Spranger Barry. A review of the latter by John Bernard
expressed how Barry's Othello "looked a few seconds in Desdemona's
face, as if to read her feelings and disprove his suspicions; then,
turning away, as the adverse conviction gathered in his heart, he
spoke falteringly, and gushed into tears."
The first professional performances of the play in North America are
likely to have been those of the Hallam Company: Robert Upton (William
Hallam's advance man) performed 'Othello' at a makeshift theatre in
New York on 26 December 1751; and religious objections to theatre led
the Hallam Company to perform 'Othello' as a series of "moral
dialogues" at Rhode Island in 1761.
Although not performed in Portugal until the nineteenth century, the
play holds of the distinction of being the first of Shakespeare's
works to have reached a Portuguese-speaking country, possibly at the
request of a Portuguese reader, in 1765.
19th century
==============
Paul Robeson's iconic performance (see 20th Century, below) was not
the first professional performance of the title role by a black actor:
the first known is James Hewlett at the African Grove Theatre, New
York, in 1822. And Hewlett's protégé Ira Aldridge (billed as "The
African Roscius") played many Shakespearean roles across Europe for
forty years, including Othello at the Royalty Theatre, London, in
1825.
There are stories of extravagant audience reactions to the play. One
of the most extreme is related by French novelist Stendhal who reports
that at the Baltimore Theatre in 1822 a soldier interrupted the
performance just before Desdemona's murder, shouting "It will never be
said that in my presence a confounded Negro has killed a white woman!"
The soldier fired his gun, breaking the arm of the actor playing
Othello.
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Othello was
regarded as the most demanding of Shakespeare's roles: it is
considered a part of theatre legend that Edmund Kean collapsed while
playing the role, and died two months after. Leigh Hunt saw Kean's
Othello in 1819, describing his performance in 'The Examiner' as "the
masterpiece of the living stage". Before Kean, the leading exponent of
the role had been John Philip Kemble who played a "neoclassical hero".
In contrast, Kean presented Othello as a man of romantic temperament,
and uncontrollable passion. It was also Kean who initiated the
so-called "Bronze Age of Othello" by insisting that "it was a gross
error to make Othello either a negro or a black" and thereby
commencing a stage tradition of using lighter makeup rather than
blackface. An advantage of this change was that the actor's facial
expressions could be more clearly seen.
Critics have naturally focused on the two central male roles. But
Emilia becomes a powerful role in the final act. Indeed Charlotte
Cushman's Emilia was said to upstage Edwin Forrest's Othello in 1845.
And when Fanny Kemble played Desdemona in 1848 she changed the
performance tradition. Previously, Desdemonas had (in her words)
"always appeared to me to acquiesce with wonderful equanimity in their
assassination" but Kemble, a passionate feminist and abolitionist,
decided "I shall make a desperate fight for it, for I feel horribly at
the idea of being murdered in my bed."
In 1848, 'Othello' was produced by Barry Lewis at the Sans Souci
Theatre in Calcutta. The casting of the white "Mrs. Anderson" opposite
the dark-skinned Indian Baishnav Charan Auddy led to controversy, to
polarized reviews, and to a fiasco on the opening night when half of
the cast, military men, were prohibited from leaving barracks by order
of the Brigadier of Dum Dum.
For Tommaso Salvini and Edwin Booth the role of Othello was a
career-length project. Salvini always played the role in Italian, even
when acting alongside a company performing in English. His conception
of the role was of a barbarian with savage and passionate instincts
concealed by a thick veneer of civilisation. Konstantin Stanislavski
admired, and was greatly influenced by, Salvini's Othello, which he
saw in 1882. In 'My Life in Art', Stanislavski recalls Salvini's scene
before the Senate, saying that the actor "grasped all of us in his
palm, and held us there as if we were ants or flies". Booth, in
complete contrast, played Othello as a restrained gentleman. When
Ellen Terry played Desdemona she commented on how much Booth's style
helped her: "It is difficult to preserve the simple, heroic blindness
of Desdemona to the fact that her lord mistrusts her, if her lord is
raving and stamping under her nose. Booth was gentle with Desdemona."
Booth was also an acclaimed Iago, and his advice to actors of the role
was: "to portray Iago properly you must seem to be what all the
characters think and say you are, not what the spectators know you to
be; try to win even 'them' by your sincerity. Don't 'act' the
villain."
Stanislavski himself first played Othello in 1896. He was dissatisfied
with his own performance, later recalling "I was able to reach nothing
more than insane strain, spiritual and physical impotence, and the
squeezing of tragic emotion out of myself."
20th century
==============
'Othello' was performed in the Shimpa style in Japan in 1903 by
Otojiro Kawakami, resetting the location Cyprus to Taiwan, which was
then a Japanese colony.
In 1930 Stanislavski directed a production of Othello for the Moscow
Art Theatre, which was influential in the development of his system.
The performance was directed remotely, by letter, while Stanislavski
recovered from illness in France.
The most significant theatre production in wartime America featured
Paul Robeson as Othello. Robeson had previously played the role in
London in 1930 with a cast including Peggy Ashcroft, Sybil Thorndike
and Ralph Richardson, and would later take the role for the RSC in
1959 at Stratford-Upon-Avon. Margaret Webster's 1943 Broadway
production was considered a theatrical landmark, with Robeson (in the
words of Howard Barnes) "making the Moor the great and terrible figure
of tragedy which he has so rarely been on the stage." José Ferrer
played Iago and Uta Hagen Desdemona. Taking the Broadway run with its
subsequent tour, the show was seen by over half a million people.
Earle Hyman saw the production numerous times when he was 17 and later
recalled "this tremendous excitement - the first African-American
onstage to be playing this role ... to all the blacks, he
'represented' us. It was a moment of great pride."
In 1947, Kenneth Tynan saw Frederick Valk and Donald Wolfit play
Othello and Iago respectively, and described the experience as
equivalent to witnessing the Chicago Fire, the Quetta Earthquake or
the Hiroshima Bomb.
When Laurence Olivier performed Othello at the National in 1964, his
sense of "being black", in his words, required him "to be beautiful"
with a voice "dark violet - velvet stuff" and a walk "like a soft
black leopard". (The filmed version of this production is discussed
under "Screen" below.)
The play was extremely popular in Ethiopia, running for three years in
the mid-1980s at the City Hall Theatre, Addis Ababa, in Tsegaye
Gabre-Medhin's translation - performed in a static and declamatory
style. When Janet Suzman directed the play in South Africa during
Apartheid in 1988, the performance was passionately politicised, with
the racism of several characters--and especially Iago (modelled on
Eugène Terre'Blanche)--foregrounded. The play was highly
controversial--the physical contact between the black John Kani and
the white Joanna Weinburg provoking walk-outs and a pile-up of hate
mail.
White actors continued to dominate the role until the 1980s. Willard
White in 1989 was the first black actor to play Othello at Stratford
since Paul Robeson thirty years earlier.
A "singular and idiosyncratic" performance of a white actor in the
central role was Jude Kelly's "photonegative" production for the
Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. in 1997, in which
Patrick Stewart played Othello as white, while almost all other
speaking parts were played by actors of African descent. The script
remained unchanged as regards the character's race, so the white
Othello was, throughout, referred to as black.
21st century
==============
At the turn of the century, performances at the RSC were dominated by
their Iagos. Richard McCabe followed Simon Russell Beale in portraying
misogynistic, embittered NCOs, older than their respective Othellos:
Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen produced an intercultural version of
the play in 2000: his 'Desdemona' featured actors, musicians,
designers and artists from India, Korea, Myanmar, Indonesia and
Singapore, performing in a range of different traditional Asian
styles.
Cathy Downes' 2001 production at the Court Theatre in Christchurch,
New Zealand made effective use of a trope (which had had racist
overtones when used by earlier European directors) of Othello
reverting to his native culture: setting the action in the Waikato
Land Wars, Othello was a British-adopted general leading forces
against his own people, until finally bursting into a "terrifying
wero" (a warrior's challenge) before exacting his revenge on
Desdemona.
A radically different approach was taken in Jette Steckel's 2009
German language production for the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Although
the translation consistently used the word "Schwarze" for "Moor" in
the original, Othello was played by the white German actress Susanne
Wolff in a range of different costumes and disguises, including a
gorilla suit for part of Act 4--creating a performance in which
everything is (in Ayanna Thompson's words) "conveyed through
representational metaphors which render Othello's race less of a
stable physical marker and more of a fractured and performative one."
A common theme of modern productions of the play is an emphasis on
military life. When Adrian Lester played the role in Nicholas Hytner's
2013 National Theatre production, a retired army veteran was employed
to teach the cast about ranks, comportment and off-duty behaviours.
Another 21st century trend exemplified by that performance is to
reduce the focus of the play on Othello's race by having other parts
played by actors of colour also. And a third is an increasing focus on
Desdemona's youth and innocence, at the expense of her strength of
character.
In 21st century productions, more emphasis has been given to the theme
of domestic violence.
Othello's "difference" has been tested in ways other than race. A rare
example is Stein Winge's 2015 casting of a white American actor, Bill
Pullman, as an American Navy man adrift in Norway.
The play has provided opportunities for breakout roles for rising
black stars, such as Chiwetel Ejiofor who played Othello at the Donmar
Warehouse in 2008, and for a change of direction for other established
stars: Willard White (see "20th century", above) was better known as
an opera singer and Lenny Henry (see "True Identity" under "Screen"
below), who played Othello for Northern Broadsides in 2009, was better
known as a stand-up comedian.
When Antony Sher played Iago for the RSC, the final moment of the
play, before a snap blackout, was for him to look up and stare at the
audience. Director Greg Doran intended this to be strange, enigmatic,
open to interpretation. But Sher later wrote that he was always clear
about it: in his head the question which always rang out was:
Screen
======================================================================
'Othello' has influenced many film makers, and often the results are
adaptations, rather than performances of Shakespeare's text. The UK's
'National Film and Television Archive' holds over 25 20th-Century
films containing performances, adaptations or extracts from 'Othello'
including Anson Dyer's 1920 animated 'Othello', 1921's 'Carnival' and
its 1932 remake, the 1922 German film 'Othello', the 1936 'Men Are Not
Gods', 1941's 'East of Piccadilly', George Cukor's 1947 'A Double
Life', Orson Welles' 'Othello', Sergei Yutkevich's Russian language
'Othello' discussed below, two productions for BBC Television
(including Jonathan Miller's for the BBC Television Shakespeare
series, discussed below), Basil Dearden's 'All Night Long', a 1988
South African TV screening of Janet Suzman's 'Othello', a film of
Trevor Nunn's RSC production with Willard White and Ian McKellen in
the central roles, and 'True Identity'--a crime caper in which Lenny
Henry's character Miles lands the role of understudy to James Earl
Jones (playing himself) in a production of 'Othello'. 'Carnival', 'Men
Are Not Gods' and 'A Double Life' all feature the plot of an actor
playing the title role in Shakespeare's 'Othello' developing murderous
jealousy for their Desdemonas. This plot is also shared by the very
first 'Othello'-influenced film: the 18-minute Danish 1911
'Desdemona'. 'All Night Long' reframes the story in a jazz milieu.
Richard Eyre's 'Stage Beauty' depicts a restoration performance of the
play.
The filming of Orson Welles' 'Othello' was plagued by chaos. A pattern
emerged where Welles would collect his cast and crew for filming, then
after four or five weeks his money would run out and filming would
cease: Welles would then appear in another movie, and using his acting
fee would reconvene filming. Scenes in the final movie were sometimes
spliced together from one actor filmed in Italy in one year, and
another actor filmed in Morocco the next. Welles uses shadows, extreme
camera angles and discordant piano music to force the audience to feel
Othello's disorientated view of Desdemona. Cages, grilles and bars are
frequent images. And the text is heavily cut: Othello's first words
are his speech to the Senators from Act 1 Scene 3. The film was
critically panned on its 1955 release (headlines included "Mr Welles
Murders Shakespeare in the Dark" and "The Boor of Venice") but was
acclaimed as a classic upon its re-release in a restored version in
1992.
Sergei Yutkevich's Russian film, with a screenplay by Boris Pasternak,
was an attempt to make Shakespeare accessible to "the working man".
Yutkevitch had begun his career as a painter and then as a set
designer, and his film was widely praised for its pictorial beauty.
The director saw his film as an opposite of Welles': where Welles
began his film with a sequence from the end of the story, highlighting
fate, Yutkevitch began with his Othello's back-story, thereby
highlighting his characters' free will.
Laurence Olivier said that the role of Othello demanded "enormously
big" acting, and he incorporated what The Spectator described as his
"outsize, elaborate, overwhelming" performance into the film of his
National Theatre production. The effect to modern audiences is (in the
words of Daniel Rosenthal) "laughably over-the-top"--in keeping with
its nature as a filmed stage performance, rather than a performance
designed for the screen. The film was a financial success, and earned
Oscar nominations for each of Olivier as Othello, Maggie Smith as
Desdemona, Frank Finlay as Iago and Joyce Redman as Emilia. Subsequent
critics have been less sympathetic to Olivier's performance than his
contemporary audience had been, tending to read it as racist. As
Barbara Hodgdon expresses it: "Oliver's Othello confirms an absolute
fidelity to white stereotypes of blackness."
The last of the screen versions to portray Othello in blackface was
Jonathan Miller's for the BBC Television Shakespeare series, with
Anthony Hopkins in the title role. Miller is said to have commented
that "the play is about jealousy, not race." The TV film of Willard
White's performance as 'Othello' (discussed under 20th Century
performances above) has been described by Carol Chillington Rutter as
"The one [screen] 'Othello' where the women's stories get fully told",
particularly praising the dynamic between Imogen Stubbs' Desdemona and
Zoë Wanamaker's Emilia.
Oliver Parker's 1995 'Othello' was trailed as an "erotic thriller",
including a ritualized love scene between Othello and Desdemona, and,
most memorably, Othello's jealous fantasies of encounters between
Desdemona and Cassio. Swiss actress Irène Jacob as Desdemona struggled
with the verse, as did Laurence Fishburne as Othello. Iago was Kenneth
Branagh in his first outing as a screen villain. The overall effect
was to create, in Douglas Brode's words "the tragedy of Iago"--a
performance in which Iago's dominance is such that Othello is a foil
to him, not the other way around. The film was described as a "fair
stab at turning the Bard into a decent night at the multiplex" but
failed to achieve success at the box office.
Other adaptations of Shakespeare's story to be filmed include Franco
Zeffirelli's 1986 film of Verdi's 'Otello' and the 1956 'Jubal' which
resets the story as a Western, centered on the Cassio character. The
play was abridged to 30 minutes by Leon Garfield, and produced with
cel animation for the TV series 'Shakespeare: The Animated Tales'. Tim
Blake Nelson's basketball-themed teen drama 'O' reset the story at an
elite boarding school. The similarity of the film's ending to the
Columbine massacre, which happened while the film was being edited,
delayed its release for over two years, until August 2001. A British
TV adaptation by Andrew Davies, screened in 2001, re-set the story
among senior officers of the Metropolitan Police. And the first decade
of the 21st-Century saw two non-English language film adaptations:
Alexander Abela's French 'Souli' set the story in a modern-day
Madagascan fishing village, and Vishal Bhardwaj's Hindi 'Omkara'
amidst political violence in modern Uttar Pradesh. The 1997 Malayalam
film 'Kaliyattam' is an adaptation set against the backdrop of Theyyam
artform of Kerala.The 2023 Malayalam film 'Iru' is an adaptation set
against a campus political love story in Kerala. The 2024 Bengali
film 'Athhoi' is an adaptation set against a fictional town of Vinsura
in West Bengal.
Stage adaptations
===================
Adaptations of--or borrowings from--Shakespeare's 'Othello' began
shortly after it first appeared, including Middleton & Rowley's
1622 'The Changeling', John Ford's 1632 'Love's Sacrifice', Thomas
Porter's 1662 'The Villain' and Henry Nevil Payne's 1673 'The Fatal
Jealousy'. Edward Young's 1721 play 'The Revenge' reversed the racial
roles, featuring the "swagger part" of a black villain called Zanga
whose victim was a white man.
Voltaire's 1732 French play 'Zaïre' was a "neoclassical refurbishment"
of Shakespeare's "barbarous" work. And across continental Europe
through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the play was
better known than Shakespeare's in Jean-François Ducis' adaptation and
its subsequent translations, in which a heroine renamed Hédelmone is
stabbed to death by Othello.
Part of the explosion of the Romantic movement in France was a fashion
for re-writing English plays as melodrama, including Alfred de Vigny's
1829 'Othello' adaptation 'Le More de Venise'.
After the Restoration, London Theatres other than the patent companies
got around the illegality of performing Shakespeare by allusion and
parody, such as Charles Westmacott's 'Othello The Moor of Fleet
Street' at the Adelphi in 1833.
In the 19th-Century United States, 'Othello' was often used in parody,
sometimes allied with minstrel shows: with the contrast between
Shakespearean verse and African-American dialect a source of racist
humour. Indeed, racist parodies were common in the aftermath of the
abolition of the slave trade in the UK and, later, in the US: for
example Maurice Dowling's 1834 'Othello Travestie', George W H
Griffin's 1870 'Othello (Ethiopian Burlesque)', the anonymous
'Desdemonum An Ethiopian Burlesque' of 1874 and the anonymous 'Dar's
de Money (Othello Burlesque)' of 1880.
The Black Arts Movement appropriated 'Othello' in an entirely
different vein. Amiri Baraka's twinned 1964 plays 'Dutchman' and
'Slave' are said to "represent the ultimate African American revision
of 'Othello'", especially in 'Dutchman's' murder of Clay, a black man,
by Lulu, a white woman.
The 'Othello' story became the rock opera 'Catch My Soul' in 1968,
depicting Othello as a charismatic religious cult leader, Desdemona as
a naive convert, and Iago as a malcontent cult member who thinks
himself to be Satan. In Murray Carlin's 1969 'Not Now Sweet Desdemona'
the protagonist says of Shakespeare's play that it was "the first play
of the Age of Imperialism ... 'Othello' is about colour and nothing
but colour." Charles Marowitz's 1974 'An Othello' reworked the play in
the context of the Black Power movement. C. Bernard Jackson's 1979
'Iago' made Iago himself a Moor and a victim of racism. And Caleen
Sinnette Jennings' 1999 'Casting Othello' is a metadrama about a
performance of Shakespeare's play, and the racial tensions it evokes.
Roysten Abel's 'Othello - A Play in Black and White' is set among a
group of Indian actors rehearsing a Kathakali version of 'Othello'
whose own story begins to mirror the play's plot: with Iago's
seduction of Othello played as a guru-disciple relationship.
Among feminist appropriations of the 'Othello' story, Paula Vogel's
1994 'Desdemona, A Play about a Handkerchief' sets the story in a
kitchen in Cyprus, where only Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca appear. In
Djanet Sears' 1998 'Harlem Duet', Othello's lover challenges his
subservient passion: "...why you trying to please her? ... I'm so
tired of pleasing White folks." And Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré's
2012 'Desdemona' sets its story in a timeless afterlife of the
characters, in which Othello and Desdemona have leisure to talk
through all facets of their relationship, and in which Desdemona is
reunited with her former maid Barbary, whose actual name is Sa'ran.
'Othello' is parodied in the form of a rap song in the stage show 'The
Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)'. In 2012, the Q
Brothers debuted 'Othello: The Remix', a 90-minute hip-hop version of
'Othello' that was part of the Globe to Globe Festival and World
Shakespeare Festival. It was one of the few sold-out shows during the
festival and went on to have several successful international tours.
Audio
=======
One of the first full-length plays to be released on vinyl was the
Broadway production starring Paul Robeson, José Ferrer and Uta Hagen,
issued in 1944. 'Othello' has been performed on at least twelve
separate occasions on BBC Radio.
Music
=======
'The Willow Song', sung by Desdemona in Act 4 Scene 3, is not an
original creation of Shakespeare's, but was already a well-known
ballad. As such it has surviving arrangements from both before and
after Shakespeare's time. The version of it thought to be most
authentic, because it closely matches the lyric given by Shakespeare,
is known as "The Poore Soule Sate Sighing" and is one of the most
performed pieces of early modern English music.
The two other songs sung in the play are the drinking songs in Act 2
Scene 3. The first of these, "And Let Me The Cannikin Clink", has no
surviving arrangement, although it fits to several extant popular
tunes. The other, "King Stephen Was a Worthy Peer", is the seventh of
the eight stanzas of the existing ballad "Take Thy Old Cloak About
Thee".
The play has been a popular source for opera. Rossini's 1816 'Otello,
ossia il Moro di Venezia' made Desdemona its focus, and was followed
by numerous translations and adaptations, including one with a happy
ending. But the most notable version, considered a masterpiece with a
power equivalent to that of the play, is Verdi's 1887 'Otello', for
which Arrigo Boito's libretto marked a return to faithfulness to the
original plot, including the reappearance of the pillow as the murder
weapon, rather than Ducis' dagger.
'Othello' was, with 'Antony and Cleopatra', one of the two plays which
most influenced Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's jazz suite 'Such
Sweet Thunder'. Its opening track (itself titled 'Such Sweet Thunder',
a quotation from Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream') came to
stand for Othello telling his tales of travel and adventure to
Desdemona, as reported in the play's first act.
Sometimes the order of the play influencing a composer is reversed, as
in the appropriations of classical music by filmmakers retelling
Othello's story: for example in the film 'O', in which excerpts from
Verdi's 'Otello' are used as a theme for Odin (the Othello character)
while modern rap and hip-hop are more associated with the white
college students around him.
Bob Dylan's song Po' Boy features lyrics in which Desdemona turns the
tables on Othello, borrowing the idea of using poisoned wine from the
final act of 'Hamlet'.
Literature
============
Aphra Behn's 1688 novel 'Oroonoko', and its subsequent dramatisation
by Thomas Southerne, reset Othello's enslavement in the context of the
then-current Atlantic triangle.
In addition to his theatrical performances noted above, the play was
also central to Konstantin Stanislavski's writings, and to the
development of his "system". In particular, the part of Othello is a
main subject of his book Creating a Role. In it, the characters of
Tortzov, the director, and Kostya, the young actor - both partly
autobiographical - rehearse the role of Othello in the opening act.
A plot-line in Farrukh Dhondy's novel 'Black Swan' involves the
central character Lazarus, a freed slave, travelling to London in the
time of Shakespeare and authoring many of the plays attributed to
Shakespeare, including 'Othello', in a production of which Lazarus
plays the title character, and kills himself. The narrative voice of
Caryl Phillips 1997 novel 'The Nature of Blood' harangues Othello as a
sexual and political sell-out. And in Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih's
retelling of the 'Othello' story, 'Season of Migration to the North',
the central character Mustafa Sa'eed, on trial for the murder of his
white mistress, refuses to be judged by the standards of the play,
declaring:
See also
======================================================================
* List of idioms attributed to Shakespeare
Notes and references
======================================================================
;Notes
;References
*Except where otherwise stated, references to the play 'Othello' are
to .
*Except where otherwise stated, references to other works by
Shakespeare are to .
External links
======================================================================
*
*
* [
http://www.shakespeare-navigators.com/othello/ 'Othello' Navigator]
- Includes the annotated text, a search engine, and scene summaries.
*
* - lists numerous productions.
* [
http://www.bl.uk/works/othello 'Othello'] at the British Library
* [
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Wc8KcIHIFHgC/page/n327/mode/2up
Hecatommithi, Deca Terza, Novella VII: "Un Capitano Moro", di Giovan
Battista Giraldi Cinthio] (1574), on archive.org
*
[
https://archive.org/details/gliecatommitiov00giragoog/page/n417/mode/2up
Gli Ecatommiti, Deca Terza, Novella VII: "Un Capitano Moro", di Giovan
Battista Giraldi] (1853), on archive.org
*
[
https://archive.org/details/gliecatommiti00unkngoog/page/n68/mode/2up
Gli Ecatommiti, Deca Terza, Novella VII: "Un Capitano Moro", di Giovan
Battista Giraldi] (1853), on archive.org
License
=========
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License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othello
