Othello (character)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Othello
Arabia

Othello (

Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio
. There, he is simply referred to as the Moor.

Othello was first mentioned in a Revels account of 1604 when the play was performed on 1 November at

Richard Burton, James Earl Jones, Laurence Fishburne, Laurence Olivier, and Avery Brooks
.

Role

Othello is a Venetian general. After their time in Venice, Othello is appointed general in the

Desdemona is having an affair with his Lieutenant, Michael Cassio
. Othello kills his wife out of jealousy by strangling her, only to realize that his wife was faithful after Emilia reveals the truth, at which point he commits suicide.

Ethnicity

"Othello and Desdemona" by Alexandre-Marie Colin, 1829
Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, sometimes claimed as an inspiration for Othello.[1]
Portrait possibly of Leo Africanus, another possible inspiration for Othello[2]

There is no final consensus over Othello's ethnicity; whether of

Sub-Saharan
African.

E. A. J. Honigmann, the editor of the

Barbary coast inhabited by the "tawny" Moors. Roderigo calls Othello "the thicklips", which seems to refer to European conceptions of Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally.[10]

Michael Neill, editor of the

Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, may have been an inspiration for Othello. He stayed with his retinue in London for several months and occasioned much discussion, and thus might have inspired Shakespeare's play, written only a few years afterwards. The exact date that Othello was written is unknown, though sources indicate that it was written between 1601 and 1610, sometime after the Moorish delegation. However, Honigmann questions the view that ben Messaoud inspired Othello.[12]

Othello and Iago (1901)

Othello is referred to as a "Barbary horse" (1.1.113), a "lascivious Moor" (1.1.127), and "the devil" (1.1.91). In III.III, he denounces Desdemona's supposed sin as being "black as mine own face". Desdemona's physical whiteness is otherwise presented in opposition to Othello's dark skin; V.II "that whiter skin of hers than snow". Iago tells Brabantio that "an old black ram / is tupping your white ewe" (1.1.88). In Elizabethan discourse, the word "black" could suggest various concepts that extended beyond the physical colour of skin, including a wide range of negative connotations.[13][14]

Ira Aldridge pioneered the prominence of black actors in the role, beginning in 1825 in London.[15] Othello was also frequently performed as an Arab Moor during the 19th century. In the past, Othello would often have been portrayed by a white actor in theatrical makeup. Black American actor Paul Robeson played the role from 1930 to 1959. Recent actors who chose to "blacken up" include Laurence Olivier (1965) and Orson Welles. Black English actor Wil Johnson, known for his roles in Waking the Dead and Emmerdale, played Othello on stage in 2004. Since the 1960s it has become commonplace to cast a black actor in the character of Othello, although the casting of the role now can come with a political subtext.[16] Patrick Stewart took the role in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's 1997 staging of the play[17][18] and Thomas Thieme, also white, played Othello in a 2007 Munich Kammerspiele staging at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre; both played without blackface, their performances critically acclaimed.[19][20]

20th-century Othellos

Paul Robeson and Uta Hagen (1943)

The most notable American production may be

Stratford on Avon.[21]

The American actor

Sunday Times "the best Othello of our time",[22] continuing: "nobler than Tearle, more martial than Gielgud, more poetic than Valk. From his first entry, slender and magnificently tall, framed in a high Byzantine arch, clad in white samite, mystic, wonderful, a figure of Arabian romance and grace, to his last plunging of the knife into his stomach, Mr Marshall rode without faltering the play's enormous rhetoric, and at the end the house rose to him."[23] Marshall also played Othello in a jazz musical version, Catch My Soul, with Jerry Lee Lewis as Iago, in Los Angeles in 1968.[24] His Othello was captured on record in 1964 with Jay Robinson as Iago and on video in 1981 with Ron Moody as Iago. The 1982 Broadway staging starred James Earl Jones as Othello and Christopher Plummer
as Iago.

"Othello" (5:05)
James Earl Jones performs Othello's Act I, scene iii speech from Shakespeare Othello at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word on 12 May 2009.
"Othello"
Audio only version
Problems playing these files? See media help.

When

Oscar nominations for acting ever given to a Shakespeare film – Olivier, Finlay, Maggie Smith (as Desdemona) and Joyce Redman (as Emilia, Iago's wife) were all nominated for Academy Awards
.

Actors have alternated the roles of Iago and Othello in productions to stir audience interest since the nineteenth century. Two of the most notable examples of this role swap were

Old Vic Theatre (1955). When Edwin Booth's tour of England in 1880 was not well attended, Henry Irving invited Booth to alternate the roles of Othello and Iago with him in London. The stunt renewed interest in Booth's tour. James O'Neill
also alternated the roles of Othello and Iago with Booth.

White actors have continued to take the role. These include British performers

David Serero took the role in a Moroccan adaptation in New York.[26][27]

Performance history

References

  1. ^ Virginia Mason Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 59.
  2. ^ Tom Verde. "A Man of Two Worlds". Armaco World. Archived from the original on 13 January 2010. Retrieved 11 December 2011.January/February 2008.
  3. ^ Emily C. Bartels, Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashionings of Race.
  4. ^ "Moor, n2", The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edtn.
  5. ^ James Welton Psychology of Education, University of California, 1911, p. 403.
  6. ^ Welton, Psychology of Education (1911), p. 404.
  7. ^ Virginia Mason Vaughan, Othello: A Contextual History, Cambridge University Press: 1996, pp. 51–52.
  8. ^ Leo Africanus, "The inhabitants are extremely black, having great noses and blabber lips." The History and Description of Africa, Robertypony Brown, ed. Trans. John Pory, 3 vols (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1896), p. 830.
  9. ^ E. A. J. Honigmann, ed. Othello. London: Thomas Nelson, 1997, p. 17.
  10. ^ Honigmann, p. 15.
  11. ^ Michael Neill, ed. Othello (Oxford University Press), 2006, pp. 45–47.
  12. ^ Honigmann, pp. 2-3.
  13. ^ Doris Adler, "The Rhetoric of Black and White in Othello", Shakespeare Quartertly, 25 (1974).
  14. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 'Black', 1c.
  15. Gates, Henry Louis (31 March 2014). "Who Was the 1st Black Othello?". The Root. p. 2. Archived from the original
    on 22 April 2016. Retrieved 23 April 2016.
  16. ISBN 978-1-4051-5279-2
    .
  17. ^ a b "The Issue of Race and Othello". Curtain up, DC. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
  18. ^ a b "Othello by William Shakespeare directed by Jude Kelly". The Shakespeare Theatre Company. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 20 September 2008.
  19. ^ Michael Billington, "Black or white? Casting can be a grey area", The Guardian (Theatre blog), 5 April 2007.
  20. ^ Michael Billington, "Othello" (Theatre review), The Guardian, 28 April 2006.
  21. ^ a b Gary Jay Williams, Shakespeare in Sable: A History of Black Shakespearean Actors by Errol Hill (review), Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 276–278; Folger Shakespeare Library and George Washington University.
  22. ^ Jet magazine, 30 June 2003.
  23. ^ The Independent (London), 6 July 2003.
  24. ISBN 0-8154-1041-7
  25. ^ Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor, Simon and Schuster (1982), p. 262.
  26. ^ "DAVID SERERO starring as OTHELLO in a Moroccan Style this June in New York", The Culture News, 3 May 2016.
  27. ^ "Sephardic OTHELLO to Open in June at Center for Jewish History", Broadway World, 17 May 2016.

External links

  • Quotations related to Othello at Wikiquote

[1]

  1. PMID 22456154
    .
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