Blackness Made Visible: A Survey of Othello In Criticism, On Stage, and On Screen

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

1-11-2013

Department

English

School

Humanities

Abstract

In what must be the most egregious understatement in Othello criticism, William Hazlitt wrote in 1817 that the play “excites our sympathy in an extraordinary degree.” Exceeding Hazlitt’s enthusiasm, A. C. Bradley announced in 1904 that “Of all Shakespeare’s tragedies Othello is the most painfully exciting and terrible” (Shakespearean Tragedy, 140). For centuries, though, the play had been terrifying readers and audiences. Dr. Johnson confessed that he could not bear to read or see the last act performed. Audience responses-like those ofHazlitt, Bradley, and Johnson-are a prolegomenon to any discussion of the critical heritage or stage history ofthe play. Audience reactions crystallize the major anxieties Othello has raised in its 400 year history. At the emotional center of the play-the vortex of its web-are some of the most inflammatory issues confronting early and late modem audiences alike: (a) miscegenation-a black man marrying a white woman; (b) adultery-openly incensing Othello yet based upon Iago’s tissue of flimsy clues; (c) violencedirected toward both women and men; (d) sexuality/desire-narrated through violent fictions but horribly physicalized as well; (e) jealousy-the curse of marriage and military office undermining faith and trust; (f) loss of reputation -for Desdemona, Cassio, Othello; (g) class warfare-Iago, the underdog, Othello, the outsider. Inescapably, Othello is a cultural seismograph, measuring the extent and force of gender, racial, or class upheavals in any society that performs the script.

Publication Title

Othello: New Critical Essays

First Page

1

Last Page

87

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