[By ‘Revisited’ I refer to an earlier essay posted to my Substack page April 20, 2024, Othello in Blackface, which comes highly recommended by its author.]
“To mourn a mischief that is past and gone / Is the next way to draw new mischief on.” (Shakespeare, Othello, Act I, Scene 3)
Shakespeare’s Othello is not about race per se, but uses race as a dramatic device illustrative of ‘otherness’ for which race and color provide elements of stark contrast, a metaphor for the portrayal of the otherness of those not of one’s sense of ‘us’, as opposed to ‘them’ but, as well, the consciousness of the individual self to its essential quality of alien existence. Through his own merit, character, and courage, Othello crosses the barrier of difference, but from his elevation arises his own vulnerability to the envy of others and through pride and the brittleness of his sense of honor, creates the setting for his downfall. Iago (the dark angel) convinced of his own superiority and resentful of being passed over by the advancement of Cassio, finds a route to revenge through Othello’s heightened sense of pride and honor and, by his love for Desdemona.
While consciousness of race is a prominent thread that weaves through the play, the overall theme is one of exploration of both ‘otherness’ and the extent to which that is transcended. Desdemona and Othello’s relationship is born of their proximity resulting from her father’s admiration and affection for Othello, to which the hospitality of his house is frequent and ongoing. His rage is first from a feeling that his friendship and hospitality have been betrayed and his paternal authority dishonored by his friend’s seduction of his daughter and her duplicity in her marriage without his permission. His rage is modulated by the admonition of the Duke, and by the couple’s straightforward declaration of their love for each other. Despite awareness of difference, the rulers and citizens of Cyprus are receptive to Othello on the basis of his character and of his proven courage and qualities of leadership: their savior and bulwark against the Turks. In spite of ethnocentric bias, the Christian Moor is embraced by the community.
By Iago’s manipulation of Othello’s love for Desdemona and sensitivity to threats to his honor, Othello is undone, and in a rage, destroys the object of his soul’s devotion, his life forfeit by sentence of his own judgment, by realization of the monstrosity of his action, by the loss of his twin anchors, the loss both of love and that of honor.
The director of the local production, which I recently enjoyed, though significantly trimmed through judicious editing, one would suppose in deference to the limited attention span of a contemporary audience, saw the reason for Othello’s fall from a contemporary perspective, the tragedy of Othello as having been due to his blackness in a white, inherently racist society. But one may assume that black persons in Elizabethan England, especially those of sub Saharan distinction, to have been comparatively rare and regarded as curiosities rather than as representative of a coherent minority. By contrast the Mediterranean of the play’s setting was still largely a Venetian lake, despite the emergence of new trade routes and sources of wealth by Portuguese and Spanish navigators and incursions by Ottoman Turks. The growth of trade created cross currents of economic development, made relatively stable by Venetian dominance through naval power and the development of Early Modern financial institutions, resulting in an acceleration of the mixing of ethic and cultural populations, the decline of demographic homogeneity, and a resultant gray scale of racial and cultural distinction, especially in the Mediterranean basin and the Near East: a continuation of thousands of years of cross pollination. However, sub Saharan African populations are generally thought to have been almost entirely cut off from those of northern Europe, for a period of roughly 50,000 years, until the establishment of terrestrial trade routes, in the medieval period, by Arabic traders in search primarily of gold and slaves, and, beginning in the 15th century, by Portuguese navigators pushing southward at the dawn of the Age of Discovery. In this world of demographic churn, a Moor would have been seen as of a darker hue, as of an alien culture, as foreign, but not as a curiosity, to members of European Christian communities.
Leo Strauss takes pains to point out, in his essay, Political Philosophy and History (1949), that it is the proper task of the historian to present the past in its own terms, from the perspective of its own time, rather than that of one’s own experiential bubble, shaped significantly as it is by the zeitgeist of one’s own moment in time. We may draw conclusions relevant to our own times by observance of historical relationships of cause and effect in similar situations to those of our own, or by illustration of the continuity of human nature, or the influence of actions in another time on what was then the future, or make judgements of the moral appropriateness of those actions, but only with a historical understanding of the context of those who lived in that time and place. We are at liberty to learn the lessons of history, as informative of our own actions, but not free to rewrite their meaning from the perspective of our own preferences. Though causal entities, we are to a significant extent shaped by our individual and collective histories; the past though is frozen and independent of the influence of the present. Shakespeare wrote from the context of his own time and addressed his observations concerning the relationship of cause to effect in human affairs, and of the continuity of those principles, to an audience of his own time by the fabrication of alternative realities as a devise for the exploration of common elements of human nature. The strength of the appeal of the classic to an audience of current sensibilities is of the degree of its truth to its own time and of the continuing relevance of those principles through time, even to that of our own.
The impact of the theatrical classic to a contemporary audience may best be conveyed by its insistence on being seen in metaphorical terms, of one’s being removed from the confusion of one’s proximate reality, of the moment within which we struggle to establish the meaning of our own existence, by detachment of the observer from one’s immediate perspective for purpose of observation of principles common to human experience. One is forewarned by the Biblical injunction against putting new wine into old skins, illustrative of the inherent contradiction of the juxtaposition of the classic to that of its reinterpretation for a contemporary audience, often resulting in a failure of verisimilitude such as that which might create detachment from the present through the development of a metaphorical state, that as a mirror, might convey the deeper truths and principles of the human condition, subject as it is both to man’s causal nature and to the vagaries of ‘fate’, events beyond one’s control: to wit, mortality and its implications. The appeal of Shakespeare lies in its fidelity as a portrait of Elizabethan ethos, and the invitation to its audience to an active realization of a time and mindset removed from its present, yet of continuity of that which is universally familiar. A didactic presentation, from a perspective assumptive of its own moral authority, may be regarded as condescending and dilutive of dramatic impact, crucially dependent as it is on the verisimilitude of the presentation to that of the author’s vision
One is reminded that the plays themselves are ‘historical’ or by fantasy removed from the proximate environment of their creation and that of the author’s audience. Costume and setting can be employed in the creation of the illusion of having entered another world. The effectiveness of the drama is significantly dependent on the detachment of the viewer from one’s current circumstance and the empathetic realization of the commonality of experience and of subsequent synthesis of contrasting temporal circumstance. While lack of visual aids, in the form of costumes and settings, may present a challenge to audience transcendence of inherent ethnocentric perspective, as such may demand, of necessity, a clarity of presentation that would best convey the playwright’s intent, as well as the active participation of players and members of the audience in the creation of an illusion sufficient to establishment of that which might both entertain and enable insight applicable to one’s own moral development. That the play was likely performed in its own time in contemporary dress would have presumably been due in part to the relatively slow transformation of modes and fashions of dress and of a general absence of historical awareness of material details of such matters compared to that of our own, enhanced as that is by academic development and fictional representation.
The appeal of Shakespeaean drama is inherent within the play itself. Deviation from close approximation of its original form comes often as an effort at revitalization of a vehicle perceived to be obsolete or in need of rejuvenation, or in the creation of the director’s own original by significant alteration of the author’s intent. The originality of presentation of the classic is not in iconoclastic innovation, but rather in the excellence of its reenactment from close reading of the text. Even Shakespeare, being long dead, cannot improve on his creation, sealed as it is by time, and any attempt to improve upon the original, waters of dangerous shoals, ‘reinterpretation’ often coming from fear of the daunting prospect of the play’s direct approachment. Every production, every performance of the original is of itself original by virtue of the nature of live theater. The director’s role, presuming the production not an attempt to create a new work in itself under the guise of the original title, but rather an inspired attempt to bring out, through its reenactment, the full glory of the original, the living fabric brought forward in all of its pomp and subtlety so as to produce a reenactment faithful to the playwright’s intent. One might aspire to the play’s illumination by the excellence of its presentation rather than a reinterpretation in the form of a didactic statement in furtherance of current intellectual fashion, addressed to a dwindling audience of those willing to sit through several hours of condescending celebration of progressive moral enlightenment, as compared to the blinkered biases of past ages, or of those of elevated sensitivity titillated by radical deviation from canonical interpretation, as in a piece by Beethoven performed by a punk rock ensemble.
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