Friday, 14 October 2016
The first female Desdemona, the first black Othello, and other landmark performances
The Publishing and Performance History of Othello
The play was written between 1601 and 1604. The first printed Quarto (Q) was published in 1622 by Nicholas Okes for Thomas Walkley. It was entered in the Stationers’ Register the previous year, 1621. The First Folio (F) was published in 1623. The second Quarto (Q2) was published in 1630. Q and F contain many differences: for example, the Willow Song appears only in F, but profanities were deleted from F.[1] Modern editions choose readings from both Q and F. [2]
The first recorded performance of Othello was in 1604, by the ‘Kings Maiesties plaiers’ in King James’ Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, according to the account book of the then Master of the Revels. There was a performance by the King’s Men in Oxford in 1610, at which Desdemona’s dying face ‘implored the pity of the spectators’; [3] in contrast, at a performance in 1660, the diarist Samuel Pepys records that a woman in the audience ‘called out, to see Desdemona smothered’. [4] In the Restoration period, the female roles were taken by actresses for the first time: Desdemona was played by an actress in 1660 (possibly Margaret Hughes, who appears on a cast list in 1669). A prologue and epilogue were written by Thomas Jordan for the 1660 production, addressing the issue of whether actresses could perform without being thought to be loose women. Jordan’s epilogue assured the audience that the actress was ‘As far from being what you call a whore,/ As Desdemona injured by the Moor’. Jordan invited women especially to approve the actress playing Desdemona: ‘But ladies, what think you? for if you tax/ Her freedom with dishonour to your sex,/She means to act no more, and this shall be/ No other play, but her own tragedy’. [5]
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the play remained popular, often performed in cut and censored versions, [6] with famous actors of the day taking on the part of Othello, with varying success. Actors tended to emphasise either Othello’s thoughtfulness and introspection, or his explosive passions. [7] The play was turned into the librettos of two nineteenth-century operas, by Rossini and Verdi. Modern performances of Othello have seen the lead acted by Laurence Olivier in 1964 [8] and Anthony Hopkins (for the BBC) in 1981,[9] with famous Iagos including Olivier in 1938 and Richard Burton in 1956. However, as early as the 1960s, some critics found it odd to have a white actor playing Othello in dark makeup, with one complaining of the ‘by-now outrageous impression of a theatrical Negro stereotype’. [10]
The first black actor to play Othello was an American named Ira Aldridge, who performed the role in the late nineteenth century. Aldridge received critical acclaim, but was also the subject of racist attacks in the press: The Times of 11 April 1833 described a performance of Othello ‘by an individual, of Negro origin, as his features sufficiently testify,’ saying that ‘such an exhibition is well enough at Sadler’s Wells, or at Bartholomew Fair, but it certainly is not very creditable to a great national establishment’. Aldridge’s only advantage was that he could play the part ‘in his own native hue, without the need of lampblack’, and the Times writer commented, ‘Well might Desdemona’s father imagine that sorcery, and not nature, had caused his daughter to listen to such a wooer’. However, he had to admit that the performance was ‘extremely well received’. [11]
Another black actor to perform Othello was Paul Robeson, first at the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1930, and later on Broadway in 1943-4. A famous singer, Robeson played the part with dignity and emphasised Othello’s noble qualities. [12] More recently, James Earl Jones played the part on Broadway (1981-2), opposite Christopher Plummer’s Iago; Jones was also a commanding presence, as one critic puts it, ‘doing his Darth Vader voice from Star Wars’, and played Othello with a mixture of vulnerability and ‘military authority’. [13] In 1995 Laurence Fishburne became the first black actor to play Othello in a film version, [14] acting opposite Kenneth Branagh as Iago.
Monday, 10 October 2016
Iago: revenge tragedy's finest?
Here are some features of revenge tragedies. How far does Iago conform to these archetypes?
http://crossref-it.info/textguide/The-White-Devil/32/2269
http://crossref-it.info/textguide/The-White-Devil/32/2269
Thursday, 6 October 2016
HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY DAY!
Caleb Femi has just been named the first Young People’s
Laureate for London. He grew up in Peckham and his aim is to help the youth with a “platform to voice
their concerns and experiences through poetry.”
Read about him:
More videos:
Wednesday, 5 October 2016
Did Shakespeare sell women short?
Did
Shakespeare sell women short?
The RSC
is turning to Jacobean drama in search of better roles for women. So does the
Shakespearean tradition hold actresses back?
Saturday
14 September 2013 13.15 BST
A leading
lady seeking the challenge of a truly great stage role – the equivalent of Lear
or Hamlet – often has to reach back into the ancient world, perhaps for Medea
or Antigone, or to go to Scandinavia for Ibsen's Nora or Hedda Gabler. To
remedy this failing in British theatrical tradition, the Royal Shakespeare
Company has
announced that it is reviving three major female roles from Jacobean drama. The
plays, The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker, the
anonymous Arden of Faversham from 1592 and The White Devil by
John Webster, will be produced partly as a "provocation", according
to deputy artistic director Erica Whyman. She does not aim, she said, to
solve the issue of gender inequality on the stage, but she is "intent on
asking some questions".
Whyman
argues that the time is right to look at these rarely performed works because
gender power today is in flux, as it was when they were written. But her bold
foray into the Jacobean raises a question that sounds almost heretical,
especially coming from the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon: did Shakespeare
short-change women?
The lack
of classic roles for women in English-language theatre is widely acknowledged,
but could it possibly be the Bard's fault? Brigid Larmour, award-winning
artistic director of Watford Palace Theatre, suspects the great playwright is
guilty as charged.
"The
impact of Shakespeare is still inspiring, of course, but it can also be
limiting," she said. "There are huge characters, such as Cleopatra or
Beatrice, that we reference all the time in the rehearsal room. But the problem
is that we have kept the same gender balance in today's theatre because of the
success and genius of his plays. It created a blueprint that means playwrights
do not notice when they have written something for nine men and one
woman."
Larmour,
who has worked to create an even proportion of female and male parts in her Ideal
World season at Watford, understands Whyman's concern. "At Stratford the
other day I heard actresses talking about how few roles for older women there
still are. And these are the actresses who have learned their craft and can
really deliver."
Shakespeare,
despite his confident genius, was unaware of the influence his dramatis personæ
would have down the ages. And the question of his original gender bias is
further complicated by the fact that in his day all parts were played by men.
One
actress who has gone on the record about her disappointment in Shakespeare's
legacy for women is Janet Suzman. She complains: "There are no
soliloquies of any
note, although Cleopatra comes nearest, achieving a Lear-like clarity about her
place in the world after the death of Antony. And none of them earns the
lengthy scholarly analysis accorded the eponymous heroes of the canon."
Suzman regards
Cleopatra, the second-biggest of Shakespeare's female roles, as "the
chiefest among his female creations", while Volumnia, Coriolanus's
persuasive mother, also gets a vote. Lady Macbeth, Hamlet's mother Gertrude and
lost love Ophelia she dismisses for "fizzling out".
Conventionally,
among the most coveted female roles in Shakespeare are the cross-dressing duo
of Rosalind in As You Like It and Viola in Twelfth Night.
Rosalind, with 685 lines, is Shakespeare's biggest female role, while Viola,
despite the warm appeal of her character, comes in tenth. The spiky Beatrice in
Much Ado About Nothing also packs a big dramatic punch with relatively
few lines. But throughout the works the power of a role cannot be measured in
lines alone. Lady Macbeth, who drives the plot by calling on her murderous
husband to "screw his courage to the sticking place", has fewer than
half his lines. Similarly, the voice of Othello's Desdemona, the lyric,
gentle centre of the play, is dwarfed by her jealous groom's 880 lines.
Heroines
such as Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Isabella in Measure for
Measure carry both the weight of their legal arguments, as well as the
play's moral argument, although men get much more airtime. Other roles, such as
the wild Katherina in Taming of the Shrew or the passionate teenage
Juliet, might come close to seeming mere objects of dispute, if deft
characterisation had not ensured that they burn bright.
For 400
years even Shakespeare's minor female roles have been desired by great actresses.
Titania, the fairy queen of A Midsummer Night's Dream, has only 141
lines to speak but in 2010 was played for the second time to acclaim by Judi
Dench, though the part is usually doubled up with that of Hippolyta to give it
bulk.
Young
girls in Shakespeare are full of innocence, yet they are also repositories of
wisdom. Among this line-up, with under 200 lines apiece, appear Hamlet's
Ophelia, Lear's Cordelia and The Tempest's untouched Miranda, the
only female character in her play.
"I
always find it an annoying misinterpretation when these small, key roles are
played at a high emotional pitch," said Whyman. "Ophelia is often
portrayed as if she is a mess. Why don't directors think she means what she is
saying? She has seen everything, more than anyone else, and yet there is
nothing she can do. She is profound and political, as Miranda is at the top of The
Tempest."
While
there are some larger neglected parts, such as Imogen in Cymbeline, many
memorable female characters in Shakespeare might be described as truth-speaking
old dames. The three witches are a clear example, but the nurse in Romeo and
Juliet, Mistress Quickly in Henry IV part I, Paulina in The
Winter's Tale and Emilia in Othello are all also strong in this
field.
So can it
be fair to say there are no Shakespearean roles with real heft for women?
Suzman has no doubt: "There is simply no spiritual, intellectual or
metaphysical equivalent to Lear, the Richards, the Henrys, nor the twin peaks
of Othello and his demonic tempter, Iago – and certainly no woman baddies of
that order. No crazed Timons or Tituses, nor anything like the Everest of
Hamlet, towering above them all."
Larmour
agrees, adding that there are still few of the "arduous, testing parts
like Lear or Hamlet" in the wider repertoire. "Charlotte Keatley
[author of the award-winning My Mother Said I Never Should] is writing
the role of Émilie du Châtelet, the mathematician, for us and that will really
put the actor through their paces. Otherwise, we tend to go to Ibsen, or to
America, or over to Ireland for Shaw or O'Casey."
In
Shakespeare's time, gender politics was a perilous subject, with Elizabeth I's
power waning at the end of her reign. Women were forbidden to appear on stage and this may
well have dampened Shakespeare's enthusiasm for female roles. Larmour suggests
that had this dramatic genius been born later, British theatre would be
different now. "If Shakespeare had been writing during the freer Restoration
era, we would have far more women's parts."
Whyman at
the RSC also believes politics were critical. "The confidence of the
Elizabethan age had faded a bit when Shakespeare was in his prime. People were
anxious about the succession and about the idea that it might not be a man
again," she said. "So although things had fundamentally changed, they
swung back. We see that kind of shape-shifting today, where identities and
roles are not fixed."
In the
past directors have tackled the lack of weighty women's roles in Shakespeare
with gender-blind casting. Larmour would like to see more of this. "When
it comes to colour-blind casting, there is still a long way to go, but there
has been some progress. With gender-blind casting we have not got any further
at all. If anything we have gone back." She applauded last winter's
all-female production of Julius Caesar at the Donmar
Warehouse.
"It was great, but that kind of casting was fairly standard in the
1980s."
Given the
historical context, Whyman is happy to let Shakespeare off the hook:
"While we can say he didn't write as many parts for women of the kind
where you travel with them on a long journey, I do think he thought of them as
people, just like his other characters. The range of women Shakespeare writes
is, I think, second to none."
Whether
or not the Bard qualifies as a feminist, for Whyman the astonishing achievement
is that all his female characters remain so distinct.
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