Othello

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For other uses, see Othello (disambiguation).
The seminal Russian actor and theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski as Othello in 1896.

Othello is a tragedy by William Shakespeare written around 1603.

Source

Desdemona by Frederic Leighton.

The plot for Othello was developed from a story in Cinthio's collection, the Hecatommithi, which it follows closely. The only named character in Cinthio's story is "Disdemona", which means "unfortunate" in Greek; the other characters are identified only as "the standard-bearer", "the captain", and "the Moor". In the original, the standard-bearer lusts after Desdemona and is spurred to revenge when she rejects him. Unlike Othello, the Moor in Cinthio's story never repents the murder of his beloved, and both he and the standard-bearer escape Venice and are killed much later. Cinthio also drew a moral (which he placed in the mouth of the lady) that European women are unwise to marry the temperamental males of other nations.

Date and text

Title page of the first quarto edition of Othello, published in 1622

The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on October 6, 1621 by Thomas Walkley, and was first published in quarto format by him in 1622, printed by Nicholas Okes. Its appearance in the First Folio (1623) quickly followed. Later quartos followed in 1630, 1655, 1681, 1695, and 1705; on stage and in print, it was a popular play.

Performance history

Othello possesses an unusually detailed performance record. The first certainly-known performance occurred on November 1, 1604, at Whitehall Palace in London. Subsequent performances took place on Monday, April 30, 1610 at the Globe Theatre; on November 22, 1629; and on May 6, 1635 at the Blackfriars Theatre. Othello was also one of the twenty plays performed by the King's Men during the winter of 1612-13, in celebration of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine.

At the start of the Restoration era, on October 11, 1660, Samuel Pepys saw the play at the Cockpit Theatre. Nicholas Burt played the lead. Soon after, on December 8 1660, Thomas Killigrew's new King's Company acted the play at their Vere Street theatre, with Margaret Hughes as Desdemona—probably the first time a professional actress appeared on a public stage in England.

It may be one index of the play's power that Othello was one of the very few Shakespearean plays that was never adapted and changed during the Restoration and the eighteenth century.[1] Famous nineteenth century Othellos included Edmund Kean, Edwin Forrest, Ira Aldridge, and Tommaso Salvini, and outstanding Iagos were Edwin Booth and Henry Irving.

The 1943 Broadway run of Othello ran 296 performances.

The play has maintained its popularity into the 21st century. The most famous production may Margaret Webster's 1943 production starring Paul Robeson as Othello and Jose Ferrer as Iago. It ran for 296 performances, almost twice as long as any other Shakespearean play ever produced on Broadway. Another famous production was the 1982 Broadway staging with James Earl Jones as Othello and Christopher Plummer as Iago, who became the only actor to receive a Tony Award nomination for a performance in the play. When Laurence Olivier played his legendary performance of Othello at the Royal National Theatre in 1964, he had developed a case of stage fright that was so profound that when he was alone onstage, Frank Finlay (who was playing Iago) would have to stand offstage where Olivier could see him to settle his nerves.[2] When Patrick Stewart played Othello at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington DC, he portrayed the Moor as a white man with the other characters played by black actors.

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 William Charles Macready and Samuel Phelps at Drury Lane (1837} and Richard Burton and John Neville at the 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, with the latter’s complimentary appreciation of O'Neill’s interpretation of the Moor being immortalized in O'Neill’s son Eugene’s play Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Characters

"Desdemona's Death Song" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Persons Represented:

  • Duke of Venice.
  • Brabantio, also written Brabanzio, a Senator, father of Desdemona.
  • Other Senators.
  • Gratiano, Brother to Brabantio.
  • Lodovico, Kinsman to Brabantio.
  • Othello, A noble Moor in the service of Venice.
  • Cassio, Othello's Lieutenant.
  • Iago, his Ancient and ensign (standard bearer), the antagonist of the play
  • Roderigo, a Venetian gentleman. He is very in love with Desdemona.
  • Montano, Othello's predecessor in the government of Cyprus.
  • Clown, Servant to montego.
  • Herald
  • Desdemona, Daughter to Brabantio, and Wife to Othello.
  • Emilia, Iago's wife, maid to Desdemona.
  • Bianca, Cassio's Courtesan.
  • Miscellaneous: Officers, Gentlemen, Messenger, Musicians, Herald, Sailor, Attendants, servants etc.

Synopsis

The Death of Desdemona by Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix.

Fair Desdemona, daughter of Venetian senator Brabantio, has just eloped to be with Othello, a "noble Moor" and a Venetian general, when the play opens. Brabantio accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft, but Othello defends himself successfully before an assembled Senate. 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 lieutenant Cassio, his ensign Iago and Emilia, Iago's wife. When they arrive, they find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet.

Iago, who secretly resents Othello for favoring Cassio, takes this opportunity of stay to manipulate his superiors. He persuades Roderigo, a rich, foolish young man, to engage Cassio in a fight. When Othello discovers Cassio drunk and in a fight, he strips him of his ranks. Masquerading as an "honest man", Iago persuades Cassio to try Desdemona as an intermediary on Othello.

Iago now works on Othello to make him suspicious of Desdemona and Cassio. Desdemona drops a handkerchief that was Othello's first gift to her, and Iago obtains this, deciding to plant it in Cassio's lodgings. He then tells Othello to hide, and goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with the courtesan Bianca, but since Bianca's name is not mentioned Othello thinks him to refer to Desdemona. Enraged, he decides to kill his wife and orders Iago to kill Cassio.

In the night, Othello confronts and then smothers Desdemona in bed out of intense jealousy, before Iago's wife, Emilia, eventually arrives. She reveals Desdemona's "affair" was Iago's invention, and Iago anything but honest. Iago kills Emilia; Othello, realizing he has been toyed with, attacks Iago but is disarmed. Lodovico, a Venetian nobleman, apprehends both Iago and Othello, but Othello commits suicide with a dagger before they could escort him. At the end, it can be assumed, Iago is taken off to be tortured and possibly executed.

Themes and Tropes

Othello's Ethnicity

File:Othellopainting.jpeg
"Othello and Desdemona in Venice" by Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856)

The most common interpretation of Othello is that the title character is a black man. Sub-Saharan Africans had visited the Mediterranean long before the time in which the events of the play are set, and a portrayal of Othello as sub-Saharan adds much to the character's experience of alienation and suspicion as "a stranger in a strange land," making his psychological plight all the more striking. Moreover, Othello's failure to trust in his wife's faithfulness has been interpreted as a symptom of other characters' perception of the couple as from "two different worlds," and that such condititions enable audiences to accept his tragic delusion as more plausible and pitiable. A "white" Arab would be less open to such outsider treatment and therefore less prone to such a violent emotional reaction; he might not be trusted, but he would not be considered an alien by Venetians.

Interpretations of Othello's origins as "black" in the United States were prevalent as far back as at least the 1930s, when a performance of the play was banned in a southern state due to the prejudices against representing an inter-racial marriage. The performance included a middle-age African-American performer.

Others argue that the play is not overly concerned with racial difference and that the protagonist's specific race is not clearly indicated by Shakespeare. Othello is referred to as a "Moor", but for Elizabethan English people, this term could refer either to the Muslim Berbers (or Arabs) of North Africa, or to the people now called "black" (people of sub-Saharan African descent). In his other plays, Shakespeare had previously depicted both a Berber Moor (in The Merchant of Venice) and a black Moor (in Titus Andronicus).

E.A.J. Honigmann, for example, concludes that Othello's race is ambiguous in the Arden edition of the play. Various uses of the word 'black' (for example, "Haply for I am black") are insufficient evidence, Honigmann argues, since 'black' could simply mean 'swarthy' for Elizabethans.[3] Moreover, Iago twice uses the word 'Barbary' or 'Barbarian' to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by the "white" Moors. Roderigo calls Othello 'the thicklips', which seems to refer to African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that since these comments are all insults, they need not be taken literally.[4] Furthermore, Honigmann notes a piece of external evidence: an ambassador of the Arab King of Barbary with his retinue stayed in London in 1600 for several months and occasioned much discussion. Honigmann wonders whether Shakespeare's play, written only a year or two afterwards, might have been inspired by the ambassador.[5] The "real" Othello might be a Berber or Arab (northern-African) rather than of entirely sub-Saharan African ancestry.

Modern-day readers and theatre directors lean towards the "black" interpretation, and "white" Othellos have been rare.[6] One exception is Patrick Stewart, who had wanted to play the title role since the age of 14, so he (along with director Jude Kelly) inverted the play so Othello became a White man in a Black Society.

Iago / Othello

Although the title suggests that the tragedy belongs primarily to Othello, Iago is also an important role, with more lines than the title character. In Othello, it is Iago who manipulates all other characters at will, controlling their movements and trapping them in an intricate net of lies. A. C. Bradley — and more recently Harold Bloom — have been major advocates of this interpretation.

Other critics, most notably in the later twentieth century (after F. R. Leavis), have focused on Othello. Apart from the common question of jealousy, some argue that his honour is his undoing, while others address the hints of instability in his person (in Act IV Scene i, for example, he falls "into an epilepsy").

Furthermore, his inside personality is also shown as responsible for his fate, with an inside combat between "the noble Moor" and the "malignant and turbaned Turk" (act V scene ii), his moorishness brings up in himself. Othello is the victim of two opposite sides fighting inside his body and soul, which would then result in the dramatic ending that takes place.

At the beginning of the 21st Century, several critics inferred that the relationship between the Moor and his Ancient is one of Shakespeare's characteristic subtexts of repressed Most notably David Somerton, Linford S. Haines and JP Doolan-York in their 2006 publication "Notes for Literature Students on the Tragedy of Othello," devote several chapters to arguing the case for ' and Imagery' in the play. They analyze in great depth the play's climax, Act III Scene III, with its oaths, vows and formal, semi-ritualistic declarations of love and commitment as being a dark parody of a heterosexual wedding ceremony; they continue by saying that Iago replaces Desdemona in Othello's affections. It was Iago temptation that made him get attracted to Othello, in the sense that he was the upper, more dominant male.

Somerton, Haines and York-Doolan come to the conclusion that Iago is a pre-Jungian expression of Shakespeare's shadow, his repressed (which remains the subject of much heated debate among today's scholars). This also would explain why the anti-protagonist of this tragedy is so much more appealing and developed as a character than in any of Shakespeare's other plays. The discourse concludes with the speculation that Shakespeare has drawn on the androphilia of Classical society and that Iago's unrequited love for the General is the explanation for his otherwise motiveless but passionate loathing.

It should be stressed that though there are arguments for this reading of the play's central relationship, it is a reading currently adopted only by a minority of critics. It can be concluded that Othello's own actions led to his own downfall. One may argue that it was the diabolical character of Iago that released the "green-eyed monster" in Othello, for he was his right hand man, his "ancient". F.R Leavis accounts for how Othello's "Self-pride became stupidty. A Dangerous stupidity. An insane self-consuming passion".

Critical Analysis

There have been many differing views on the character of Othello over the years. They span from a hero, to an egotistical fool A.C Bradley calls Othello the "most romantic of all of Shakespeare's heroes" and "the greatest poet of them all". On the other hand, F.R Leavis describes Othello as "egotistical". There are those who also take a less critical approach to the character of Othello such as William Helzitt. Helzitt makes a statement saying that "the nature of the moor is noble...but his blood is of the most inflameable kind".

Adaptations and cultural references

Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh as Othello and Iago respectively, in a scene from the 1995 version of Othello.

Opera

Othello is the basis for three operatic versions:

Film

See also Shakespeare on screen (Othello).

There have been several film adaptations of Othello. These include:

File:OmkaraStill.jpg
Still from the film Omkara featuring Saif Ali Khan as Langda Tyagi (Iago) and Ajay Devgan as Omkara 'Omi' Shukla (Othello)

References

  1. ^ F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; pp. 346-47.
  2. ^ Laurence Olivier, Confessions of an Actor, Simon and Shuster (1982) p. 262
  3. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, 'Black', 1c.
  4. ^ E.A.J. Honigmann, ed. Othello. London: Thomas Nelson, 1997, p. 15.
  5. ^ Honigmann, 2-3.
  6. ^ Honigmann, 17.
  7. ^ http://www.daronhagen.com/bandanna/
  8. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013469/
  9. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045251/
  10. ^ See Отелло at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
  11. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059555/
  12. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082861/
  13. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091699/
  14. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114057/
  15. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199669/
  16. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0184791/
  17. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0275577/

External links

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