Othello and Its Rewritings, from Nineteenth-Century Burlesque to Post- Colonial Tragedy

Black Rams and Extravagant Strangers: Shakespeare’s Othello and its Rewritings, from Nineteenth-Century Burlesque to Post- Colonial Tragedy Catherine Ann Rosario Goldsmiths, University of London PhD thesis 1 Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. 2 Acknowledgements Firstly, I want to thank my supervisor John London for his immense generosity, as it is through countless discussions with him that I have been able to crystallise and evolve my ideas. I should also like to thank my family who, as ever, have been so supportive, and my parents, in particular, for engaging with my research, and Ebi for being Ebi. Talking things over with my friends, and getting feedback, has also been very helpful. My particular thanks go to Lucy Jenks, Jay Luxembourg, Carrie Byrne, Corin Depper, Andrew Bryant, Emma Pask, Tony Crowley and Gareth Krisman, and to Rob Lapsley whose brilliant Theory evening classes first inspired me to return to academia. Lastly, I should like to thank all the assistance that I have had from Goldsmiths Library, the British Library, Senate House Library, the Birmingham Shakespeare Collection at Birmingham Central Library, Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust and the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive. 3 Abstract The labyrinthine levels through which Othello moves, as Shakespeare draws on myriad theatrical forms in adapting a bald little tale, gives his characters a scintillating energy, a refusal to be domesticated in language. They remain as Derridian monsters, evading any enclosures, with the tragedy teetering perilously close to farce. Because of this fragility of identity, and Shakespeare’s radical decision to have a black tragic protagonist, Othello has attracted subsequent dramatists caught in their own identity struggles. Nineteenth-century white burlesquers, anxious to bolster their sense of themselves as superior human beings in the face of abolitionist movements that insist on the inhumanity of enslaving Africans, forced the play into the shape of an unambiguous farce, where Othello is an absurd and foolish minstrel, denied the gravitas of death. Since the 1960s, writers throughout Britain’s former empire have, in contrast, retrieved the play’s tragic energy, as part of instating themselves into a history from which they have been excluded. In these later rewritings, a fault-line emerges between ‘race’ and gender, since in Othello a zero sum game operates, where increasing the empathy for Desdemona as a woman cruelly treated undermines the focus on Othello as a tragic black hero. Tragedy distances its characters from what makes us animal, and comedy delights in it, with those who are marginalised traditionally thrust into a comedic identity, while white, male abstract thought is seen as providing transcendence from our bestial state. Hence, the desire for post-colonial writers to adopt the masculine form of tragedy. However, as the value of this form of thinking has been progressively questioned, so this is changing how Othello is approached, which I reflect in my own practice: I explore, in The Turn, how tragedy gives a protagonist pathos through its aesthetic structure, but I then write a form of what I would call tragi-burlesque, Ponte Dell Tette, where I let go a little of the hegemony of the word, push against the borders of logic and linearity, try to keep the characters as untamed monsters. It is my goal to use my research and practice to help me further to walk this tightrope between the power of tragedy and the animal freedom of absurdist comedy. 4 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................. 7 Adapting and Rewriting .......................................................................... 7 Commandeering Shakespeare’s Play: Why Rewrite Othello? .............. 39 Chapter 1 ‘Rich in Black Fun’: Burlesquing Othello……………………59 Introduction ........................................................................................... 59 Othello-Travestie (Anonymous) (1813) ................................................ 81 Othello: The Moor of Fleet Street by Charles Mathews (1833) ............ 87 Othello Travestie by Maurice Dowling (1834) ..................................... 92 Othello or The Moor and his Amour by Henry W. Nicholas (1861) .. 103 Othello: A Burlesque, Griffin and Christy’s Minstrels (1870) ............ 105 Dar’s de Money (Anonymous) [1880] ................................................ 112 Othello the Second: a Burletta by Frank Hudson (1888) .................... 116 The Dying Away of the Burlesque ...................................................... 121 Chapter 2 The Eclipse of White Males? Rewritings of Othello post-1960 ............................................................................................................................. 129 Introduction ......................................................................................... 129 Not Now, Sweet Desdemona by Murray Carlin (1968) ....................... 137 An Othello by Charles Marowitz (1972) ............................................. 144 Cruel Tears by Ken Mitchell (1974) ................................................... 150 Desdemona: a Tale About a Handkerchief by Paula Vogel (1993) .... 156 Harlem Duet by Djanet Sears (1997) .................................................. 165 Otieno by Trevor Michael Georges (2010) ......................................... 174 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 180 Chapter 3 My Own Rewritings of Othello .............................................. 184 5 The Turn .............................................................................................. 184 Ponte dell Tette .................................................................................... 198 Chapter 4 The Turn (playscript) .............................................................. 210 Chapter 5 Ponte Dell Tette (playscript) ................................................... 311 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 324 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 335 6 Introduction In the final scene of Shakespeare’s Othello: The Moor of Venice, believed to have been first performed in November 1604, we see a man under arrest, having killed his wife. An outsider figure and a soldier more at ease on the battlefield than in polite society, he is employed by the state of Venice, but never welcomed into its inner circle; his loyalty can only take him so far. The rich and elegant Florentine Cassio is given the position that should have been his, having already – he believes – cuckolded him. His eloquence is able to overwhelm other characters, but finally this power is lost and he voluntarily silences himself. The State – first and last – re-asserts its power and the upstart is crushed. That this is a description of Othello, but equally could be of his malevolent ensign Iago, touches the heart of this strange tragedy where the characters’ identities are so fragile and at risk of collapsing into each other, or veering into their polar opposite. And it is these oscillating identities in Othello that have made it such a compelling play to rewrite, as I will explore in the rest of this thesis, looking specifically at theatrical rewritings in English, although also drawing comparisons with plays in other languages. Adapting and Rewriting Theatre historically has an in-built advantage over film, or even prose, in that it can be done in its simplest form with limited financial resources. It can also be very responsive to fast-moving ideas; while a film idea might languish for months, on hold until its producers secure funding, a performance can be improvised on a street corner that very night. The result of this is that, as Mark O’Thomas writes: ‘it is theatre rather than film that appears in the vanguard of 7 utilising adaptation as a means of resistance.’1 This may now change, of course, as the making and distribution of films becomes increasingly easy through cheap access to cameras and editing equipment, and burgeoning social media. However, theatre’s far longer history, combined with its potential for political immediacy, makes it the obvious medium for my dissertation, where I want to concentrate on how rewritings of Othello have evolved over an extended period of time in response to diverse zeitgeists. Even though I have restricted this to a detailed analysis of rewritings in English, that still allows for examples from around the globe because of the British colonial legacy. Particularly revealing in these plays is what is and what is not allowed into the territory of laughter, and therefore my key interest is in how the aesthetics of comedy and tragedy are used by these rewriters. My focus will be on how nineteenth-century white men on both sides of the Atlantic, anxious to bolster their sense of self in the face of abolitionist triumphs, forced Shakespeare’s black protagonist into the shape of a comic grotesque, and how writers in the post-colonial period, including myself, have retrieved the play’s tragic aesthetic to channel it towards their own cause. With a bold faith in eternal values, which ironically now appears to be a faith that is welded to his own specific socio-historic context, G. Wilson Knight writes how ‘Othello is essential man in all his prowess and protective strength;

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