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Professor Farah Karim-Cooper examines the racial meanings behind the language of light/dark and white/black used in Shakespeare’s England

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Professor Farah Karim-Cooper examines the racial meanings behind the language of light/dark and white/black used in Shakespeare's England

This May, instead of sitting in our homes waiting for a global pandemic to run its unrelenting course, we should have been hosting a third Shakespeare and Race symposium at Shakespeare's Globe.

In 2018 we curated a festival devoted to the topic which inaugurated our commitment to racial justice in the fields of academia and performance and to investigating attitudes towards race in Shakespeare's time and what it means to us now. Even though we are unable to welcome speakers from around the country and from the US to have these important conversations, I felt it was important to remind our audiences that the issues that would have been discussed at the symposium are still present in our minds. Some of the questions that we wanted to explore include: how does Shakespeare's work engage with race, racism and people of colour? What was the early modern experience of race? How do modern productions tackle this topic, if at all?

How does Shakespeare's work engage with race, racism and people of colour? What was the early modern experience of race? How do modern productions tackle this topic, if at all?

The topic of race in Shakespeare and pre-modern studies is vast and fraught with its own politics related to lack of diversity in the field of premodern literature and drama and the marginalisation of scholars of colour. It is why a group of scholars of colour formed a consortium and series of conferences called RaceB4Race, led by Professor Ayanna Thompson, Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. This forum consists of scholars who study the medieval as well as the early modern periods and provides a safe space to discuss the latest research into a wide range of topics striving to make the discipline anti-racist, to discussions on early modern writers and their preoccupation with the language that constructed a sense of difference that still governs some of the ways we talk and think about race today.

When writing about Shakespeare and race as a scholar of colour there are various challenges that perhaps white scholars don't face. The two main challenges are, first, the realisation that the poems and plays that were written in the early modern period were largely written for a white readership/audience, so a scholar of colour might come to it with an imposed sense of alienation; the second is the grief and hurt caused when reading racist language about people of colour. It's hard, people. Whether it is Iago's racist language in Othello or the seemingly out of place racist slurs Lysander throws at Hermia when he rejects her after being bewitched by the flower: 'Ethiope'; 'Tawny Tartar' in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Each time a scholar of colour encounters such language it stings; it has to be quickly shaken off so that the analysis can take place in spite of this confrontation.

So let's focus on language in order to see how words matter across time and space not just in the moment. 'Words, words, words', as Hamlet says, are the first thing we encounter when reading or listening to Shakespeare. In her ground-breaking study Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, Kim F. Hall points to the 'polarity of dark and light' created by words in Renaissance texts. She says that:

Descriptions of dark and light, rather than being mere indications of Elizabethan beauty standards or markers of moral categories, became in the early modern period the conduit through which the English began to formulate the notions of "self" and "other" so well known in Anglo-American discourse.

It is a little odd but not perplexing that for years white scholars refused to or did not see the racial meanings behind the language of light and dark or white and black. In Renaissance texts related to beauty, behaviour and courtesy, whiteness is figured as an ideal in interior as well as exterior terms. In the imaginations of Shakespeare's contemporaries, whiteness was linked to a group of qualities associated with virtue and everything that is good. This influenced the ways in which the English began to consider difference. How one appeared in their demeanour, behaviour and physical complexion would have been viewed as a reflection of the inner self. This appears to have been a moment in history when whiteness was being emphatically placed above blackness for all sorts of reasons, skin colour being one tangible way of understanding difference.

How one appeared in their demeanour, behaviour and physical complexion would have been viewed as a reflection of the inner self.

The early moderns would have inherited their ideas about the values of white and black from a range of sources: artists manuals that describe the nature and symbolism of colour; poetry of the classical and medieval periods that praised ideals of whiteness; sermons that talked about death and damnation using the language and imagery of blackness and darkness; and religious painting - portraits and frescoes - that emphasised the shimmering divine light of God or Christ and the darkened complexions of devils, demons and death. Kim Hall talks specifically about Royal portraits of the Tudors which showcase the relationship between whiteness and power. Elizabeth I's portraits in particular often show her with a glowing whitened face - cosmetically enhanced in person - meant to remind the viewer of her virgin purity, Christian grace and monarchical supremacy. Many sonnets that Shakespeare would have read and certainly some of the poetry he wrote tended to use imagery associated with whiteness to describe female beauty:

The Lily in the field,
That glories in his white:
For pureness now must yield,
And render up his right:
Heaven pictured in her face,
Doth promise joy and grace.
Fair Cynthia's silver light [the light of the moon that is!]
Compares not with her white...

This anonymous poem dated around 1593 compares a beautiful English woman to a lily and the moon, suggesting both would be fairly jealous of the lady who is much whiter and shinier than they are - the shine was an important feature since it reflected God's light, showing the lady to have a perfect soul. You get the picture.

If white was considered virtuous then does that mean black was considered bad? Not in every context of course; there was a great appreciation of night by poets (Romeo and Juliet often praise night), even while there was a fear in this period of the palpable darkness of and the 'terrors' of the night, to allude to a pamphlet written by Elizabethan author Thomas Nashe. There was also an appreciation of the melancholy spirit which was produced, according to the ancient theory of the four humours, by a substance in the body known as black bile. Melancholy could be positive- if it was a state of mind held by poets and thinkers in moderation; but it could also be negatively viewed because too much black bile could make an individual excessively melancholic, which, in whacky early modern theory could lead to idleness, villainy or 'madness', characteristics often associated with Black Africans or 'Moors' at the time. Either way it's fairly clear how these concepts are racialised and disturbing to consider the destructive force such language can have.

From looking closely and more deliberately at the language in Shakespeare's England particularly in his own work we can see how binaries of black and white helped create or contributed to concepts of race; we gain a deeper understanding of racial difference today and therefore a deeper awareness of what we are up against in the fight against racism. I think this is one of the chief values of studying Shakespeare and race.

FINIS.

#SuchStuff s1 e4: Shakespeare and Race

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Anti-racist Shakespeare | Blogs & features

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Professor Farah Karim-Cooper examines the racial meanings behind the language of light/dark and white/black used in Shakespeare's England This May, instead of sitting in our homes waiting for a global pandemic to run its unrelenting course, we should have been hosting a third Shakespeare and Race symposium at Shakespeare's Globe.

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An article from The British Library

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The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games- Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

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The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games- Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

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the dark fantastic: race and the imagination from harry potter to the hunger games: 13 (postmillennial pop)

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literary criticism / american / african american & black

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literary criticism/american - african american & black

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The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games: 13 (Postmillennial Pop)

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#SuchStuff Podcast: Shakespeare and Race

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#SuchStuff Podcast: Shakespeare and Race

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This podcast asks: what does it mean to be a person of colour and study, teach, perform and read Shakespeare?

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Transcript

[Music plays]

Imogen Greenberg: Hello, I'm Imogen Greenberg and welcome to another episode of Such Stuff, the podcast from Shakespeare's Globe. This summer, Shakespeare's Globe played host to our first ever Shakespeare and Race festival, convened by our very own Head of Higher Education and Research - and podcast co-presenter - Dr Farah Karim Cooper. Including performances, panel discussions and a scholarly symposium, it was an opportunity to hear from scholars and artists of colour on how they engage with questions around Shakespeare and Race. Here's Farah on why she convened the festival, and why now was the moment to do it...

Dr Farah Karim-Cooper: The reason we had a Shakespeare and Race festival here is because there was a real need to examine, particularly in the times we're living in, the role of racial diversity in scholarship, in teaching and in theatre productions, and so we wanted to examine, for example, questions around colour blind casting. Should we be casting all roles colour blind or should we be thinking more racially attentively about casting? These are questions we wanted to put to scholars and to actors of colour themselves. And another reason we wanted to do it is to think about what race studies is. What does it mean to study Shakespeare and race? Is it to examine only plays like Othello or The Merchant of Venice or Titus Andronicus with Aaron the Moor, or is to think more globally and more sort of broadly about race and race studies. I think largely too, we wanted to make sure that we had scholars of colour presenting their work at the Globe, which is something that we haven't done enough of in the past.

IG: As the festival was going on, the Globe itself was playing host to a production of Othello, and this threw up all sorts of conversations about the question of race in the play.

Here's Farah...

FK-C: I think it's been really fascinating to have scholars here during the Shakespeare and Race festival when we had a production of Othello running at the same time, because one of the major contentious plays in race scholarship is Othello, and questions were being asked about what the effect of playing Othello is. And there are critical race scholars who suggest that that play shouldn't be performed anymore, or suggest that actually it should be performed by a white actor in black face, which is a really controversial thing to suggest, but it says something about the way in which that play keeps getting done. So yeah, there were some really interesting moments during the festival because we had a live, current production of Othello going on at the same time.

IG: We didn't want the conversation to stop there... so this week on the podcast, we'll be hearing from academics and actors of colour on what it means to be a person of colour and study, teach, perform and read Shakespeare, as well as taking a closer look at Othello and how modern Shakespeare productions tackle the question of race.

Stick with us as we ask whether Othello is an irredeemable play that shouldn't be performed again, and look at some of the contentions around casting classical drama.

First up, Farah sat down with Professor Ayanna Thompson, director of the Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Arizona State University, to talk about Ayanna's views on colour blind versus colour conscious casting, and her controversial suggestion that we should consider never performing Othello again.

FK-C: Er, so Ayanna, I know that you've written a lot about colour blind casting, so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what some of the issues are with colour blind casting.

Ayanna Thompson: I guess I would start by saying the impetus behind colour blind casting when it started as a kind of named entity in the 1950s, at least in the US, was there are all these amazing actors of colour and of course these stories are universal so we should be able to employ as diverse a cast as possible. I think that type of casting practice which is casting without regards to race, and it's supposed to be a true meritocracy, the best actor for the best part, has really taken hold in the UK. I will say in the US, in small regional theatres, that is still the main casting practice. But in the major theatre centres, that type of non-traditional casting has been eschewed for the most part. And its precisely because what started as this good impetus, slowly kind of warped into 'well, right, does that mean my race, my ethnicity, my body has nothing to bear. Like I can't bring any of that to bear to the role whereas my actors counterparts can, right?' They're going to bring the full impact of their body to the role and you're supposed to read that in. So it became this weird kind of imbalance. And for many kind of more, I would say, activist leaning actors, they want their bodies to be read in the full complexity of cultural history but also their own personal histories, and if you're doing a colour blind version that kind of gets erased out.

One of the biggest holes in our research right now, is that we don't have significant data about how audiences actually make sense of non-traditional casting.

FK-C: Yeah, 'cause that's what I was going to ask you about, is how are audiences making sense of this, but we don't actually have any statistics?

AT: No, we don't have any statistics.

FK-C: What do you think are the key differences between the theatre communities in the UK and the US on this topic?

AT: Well I think the theatre audience in the US does not believe that anyone is colour blind, like that narrative doesn't really exist anymore in the US. The discourse that I hear most often in the UK is 'Oh, you know, we don't have the baggage that you have in the US of slavery' and so that means...

FK-C: Really?

AT: We don't have to, we don't see race in the same way you do. I'm like 'OK, I get that you don't see race in the same way, but you still see it!

FK-C: Yes, I mean the relationship to race is very different in the UK, but there is a relationship and a long history of racism in this country.

AT: Absolutely.

FK-C: And I think that's a cop out.

AT: I think so too.

FK-C: Does that suggest then that in the UK we're not able to be colour blind?

AT: I don't think human beings...

FK-C: ... can be colour blind.

AT: Yeah. I think that's an unrealistic expectation. We naturally categorise people in various different ways and one of the ways that we categorise people and make sense of people is about their bodies, um, for good and ill effect. But that's sort of natural, I don't think there's anything unnatural about that so, so I think asking people to then go against what is part of kind of human make up is very strange. And I think also one of the, also the other impetus behind colour blind casting back in the 1950s, the ideal was that we would have a world in which race wouldn't matter. Which is great, right, that's a good ideal. But part of that where race doesn't matter is, and we don't have to talk about it and we don't have to see it, which is really a cop out. So actually I would love it if race didn't matter, but we can only get there really if we do the hard work of talking about what you actually see, what kind of emotional, cultural, historical baggage you put on to that specific kind of body.

FK-C: If a theatre company wants to produce Hamlet, and a black actor auditions for Hamlet and gets the part, how does one do that without necessarily casting everybody black?

AT: I have really discovered in my own theatre going and in my own research that I just think colour conscious casting makes more sense. So if you are going to have an open cast for Hamlet, and you have a black actor who is the best, like he's just knocking it out of the park for the role, then I think you have to have a concept around why you've got a black Prince of Denmark. Are we still in Denmark, are we somewhere else? What colour is the ghost father? What colour is the mother? What colour is Claudius?

FK-C: Can I ask then, what if you are setting this production in the 16th century and you've got doublet and hose, and obviously we know that actors in the 16th century on the commercial stages were mostly, were all white...

AT: And men...

FK-C: And men, yes. So what do you suggest for the set design and costume design?

AT: I think it's actually a tricky proposition because I do think this is precisely what gets into what I call the mixed bag, that you're sending different semiotic messages to the audience and you're asking them to navigate between them seamlessly. So on the one hand you're saying 'we are producing the plays the way we think they were produced in the 17th century' except they're not all white and they're not all men. OK, so already you're like well it's not really original. So, OK, what if you want it to be a 17th century style production but you want to have a diverse cast. I still think the concept of the family relationship has to be worked out, so it could be some royal family that it looks like they're vaguely western in dress. But the family line needs to look like they're related... I think. Because I think then you're really asking the audience to turn too many semiotic levers and then not offering them a place to talk about if it works or not. That's what I think frustrates me about a lot of theatre companies that are employing these different types of models together is that they never go to their audience and say 'Did it work?'

FK-C: Yes, yeah.

AT: [Laughter] You know what I mean? And in fact the dominant narrative from classical theatre companies is 'Oh our audiences don't care about that'. And I'm like 'Really? Have you asked them?'

FK-C: So moving to another hot potato, I thought we could talk a little bit about Othello. I've heard you quoted saying that you don't think this play should ever be performed again.

AT: [Laughs].

FK-C: I wonder if you could talk about the hot potato-ness of this play?

AT: I think people constantly strive to recuperate the play so that it is not necessarily a production that is about the demonization of black masculinity, but is instead a critique of a culture that demonizes black masculinity. But I think that recuperative stance is almost impossible to achieve with Othello for a whole host of complex reasons. Part of it is just the text itself. Part of it is our production history, the weird production history in which minstrelsy, the American tradition of having white actors black up to mimic black masculinity and to debase it, came out of a production of Othello. So American minstrelsy and Othello are intimately tied together and its almost impossible to uncouple that history. So I feel that while there are all these really great efforts to recuperate the play so that it is not constantly vilifying black masculinity again but is instead a critique of a culture that wants to vilify black masculinity, just ends up vilifying black masculinity. It's kind of a toxic play, and I think Othello's not alone in being one of Shakespeare's toxic plays. I do think The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew...

FK-C: Absolutely.

AT: ...have the exact same problems and they are unique in Shakespeare's canon in that people want to recuperate them, and they just resist, those plays resist that recuperation.

FK-C: Why do you think Othello resists that recuperation?

AT: I think because of the structure of the play. It has a comic structure which is unusual in Shakespeare's tragedies where the set-up is very comedic. An older man marries a younger woman and she potentially has an affair on him. Or it is a girl who's running away from her father to marry someone he doesn't approve of, that's another comic structure. And the comic structure of Iago being the interlocutor with the audience...

FK-C: Yes.

AT: ... and who's like 'hey I'm going to let you in on something' and so the audience knows more than the titular character Othello. So those comic structures are part of what makes it so that the play resists, it resists becoming recuperative and instead the audience ends up having to be in this weird complicit role with Iago. It's an uncomfortable stance and it is entirely unique in Shakespeare's tragedies. We don't have that kind of structure set up in any of Shakespeare's other tragedies.

If we were to acknowledge that this is a toxic play, and that part of it is just the structure of the play itself, part of it is the weird history as I said before, it might make sense to have white actors play the part so that you could have dialogues about fantasies of black masculinity. This is not a real black man. Othello is not a real black man, right? This is a fantasy of black masculinity and what happens when that fantasy gets trotted out over and over and over again, it's toxic, right? So you could potentially have a production that does that well, and so I think if there is a way for a theatre company that's really woke... [laughter]... then it would be possible to have a white actor play that part but again it wouldn't be about 'oh this is a great part of a white actor', it would be about 'this is about a fantasy of black masculinity and what happens when we take ownership of the fact this is a fantasy'. It would be interesting. But the theatre company would have to have... like it's not enough to do that kind of production. You need to scaffold it, right?Like, so you need to have printed materials about the history of minstrelsy, about fantasies of black masculinity, about all the different types of... like and then you'd need to have post show discussions. And these are things... you know, great, right? In my fantasy world every theatre company has oodles of money and they can do all of this. In reality, a lot of theatre companies are strapped. They don't have enough money for anything let alone scaffolding this controversial production. So I realise what I'm asking for is a huge ask. But then I would just say don't do Othello!

[Laughs]

AT: Maybe stay away from that one...

FK-C: Well on that note, we should end there. Thank you so much.

AT: Thank you.

IG: As part of the Shakespeare and Race festival, Keith Hamilton-Cobb performed his incredible solo play American Moor. In it, his character examines the experience and perspective of black men in America through the metaphor of Shakespeare's Othello, a play with which he has a complex relationship. His performance highlights some of the issues and provocations Ayanna proposed, and examines the American relationship to race and Othello. Here's Keith Hamilton-Cobb with an extract from American Moor.

[Extract from American Moor].

Keith Hamilton-Cobb: Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. In matters of race, throughout my American life, whenever some white person, well-meaning or otherwise, has asked me to be open, they have invariably mean, see it my way and in this instance, in this play, that is unacceptable. You think I want to you your Othello, and god bless you, you have every right to think that. But it's your first mistake. And you're not alone. It's Brabantio's too. Man, I have got so much to talk to you about. Put down your little brief authority as you are certainly most ignorant of what you are most assured and talk with me. Tell me what scares you. Tell me what hurts you. Tell me what makes you aroused. Go deep. Engage me even though you think it might be a huge mistake. Have the fearlessness to challenge me with your beliefs. But also the valour it takes to have those beliefs challenged. Forget all that is familiar to you. Look at me. Listen to me. I might know.

IG: So, is Othello an unperformable play? Well, Farah sat down with Aaron Pierre, who is playing Cassio in our current production of Othello, to ask about his experience of performing to Globe audiences, and his interpretation of Cassio.

FK-C: Can you talk to us a little bit about your experience of performing Othello in the Globe space, what is it like to work with that audience?

Aaron Pierre: Firstly, you know, it's just been a massive honour to be working on that stage, which has been something that I've really wanted to do for a very long time. And what's increased the enjoyment of working on that space is working on a play which is as rich as Othello is. I think all of Shakespeare's works are timeless and they all somehow, although they were written hundreds of years ago, have a comment on today, somehow. I think that's definitely one of the most beautiful things about Shakespeare. But you know, in terms of this play specifically, you know it's been a real, a real joy to perform that. And you know really, really invest in the story and engage with the audience on a level that I've never had the opportunity to do before. There is no fourth wall at the Globe. You know, you can really see the whites of everybody's eye and they can see yours. You know, there is nowhere to hide, there's no place to pretend, almost. You know, the audience, every day, you can't come off stage without them letting you know whether you've told them the truth or not.

FK-C: This, this play is very much a play about race, isn't it? I mean I think there's some controversies around that, I think a lot of directors will say 'ok, that's one element of the play'. But do you think that the Globe audience is particularly sensitive to that issue in this play and the way in which you guys are staging it?

AP: Personally, I like to think that the people who come to the Globe and watch the shows that are put on at the Globe are very aware of what's happening socially and globally. So it has been exciting to take this play to an audience which I believe is very aware and is very conscious, you know obviously, you know, you can't speak to everybody after the show, once they've seen it. But from people that I know who've come to see the show, they've been very touched by the performance, especially with the dynamics that the characters have created, which is testament to Claire [Van Kampen], who's directed it, as well as the company. Andre [Holland]'s Othello is such a, it's full of such grace and intelligence as well as tragedy at the end. You know, he really manages to capture this dignity of the role which I think is really beneficial to the way we tell this story.

FK-C: Now you're playing Cassio. It's really fascinating that there is a multi-racial cast in this production. I'm wondering how you feel that playing Cassio as a black man, how is that being injected into your role, what are you inferring from the play itself by that particular casting mode?

AP: I think, I think that's... I've always wanted to play the role of Cassio actually, and I'm not sure if that's a thing that people have ever really wanted to play. Maybe so. But for me it's always been a thing, and I think the reason that I've always wanted to play Cassio is because he's, he's so poetic in the way he articulates himself and it's such an effortless poetry, you know, it doesn't feel as though it's forced. The way he speaks is so eloquent but it's as if he's making general conversation, it doesn't seem difficult for him. So that's always been a character I wanted to play. And in regards to being a black man playing Cassio, I definitely feel as though it brings additional layers to the story itself, the themes and an example of that is at the end when Othello takes his own life, after the tragedy of the story, the man replacing him is very similar. And although it's, you know, an ambiguous ending, I think that gives a lot of room for thought.

FK-C: Yes.

AP: And I think the play does that anyway but you know, having this situation which we're presented with and the audience is presented with our version, I think it definitely opens more questions and you wonder whether, you wonder what Cassio may do different.

FK-C: As you know, the Globe is paying a lot of attention to the topic of race as it applies to Shakespeare and Shakespeare's moment, but also to how we cast Shakespeare now and how we want, particularly at the Globe, for our productions to reflect our audiences, right? This is the world we live in, we are a multiracial society. Why do you think the topic of Shakespeare and race is such an urgent topic at this moment?

AP: I think it's an urgent topic because we're in a place in 2018 where you know, sadly, we are not in a place where there is 100% acceptance, there is not 100% understanding. We're working towards it, I feel that we are working towards it. However, you know, we still have a long way to go and that is the reason I would say this is such an urgent conversation, because what it does is brings to the forefront, at least the topic in the creative industry, of how do we reflect our society and how do we make it as inclusive as possible? Because art does influence reality, they influence one another and if we can make art something that is very inclusive and doesn't look down on anybody, doesn't judge anybody, I feel like that'll definitely contribute to us making progress in leaps and bounds.

FK-C: There is one more question that I want to ask which I'm curious about. As an actor of colour, do you feel like theatrically in film and television that the world is your oyster as you come into this profession, do you feel like there are lots of opportunities?

AP: I feel as though, like I said before in regards to one of your other questions, I do feel as though, you know, we are making progress. We are, and I do feel, I do genuinely feel this togetherness and this motivation to move forward and to really reflect our society as it exists internationally and to make it as inclusive as possible. However, you know, we do have a way to go and hopefully that gap between where we are now and where we should be won't be too long before that comes together and um, um, everybody feels as though they're represented.

[Extract from American Moor]

KH-C: Her father loved me, oft invited me, still questioned me the story of my life. First up, a little white man is asking me, if I have any questions about being a large black man, enacting the role of a large black man, in a famous Shakespeare play about a large black man, which for the last fifty, sixty years or so, has been more or less wholly the province of large black men.

[Laughter].

No. I aint got no questions. But you should.

IG: For actors performing in classical drama, their experiences begin long before they hit the professional stage, and go all the way back to school and training.

Farah sat down with Leaphia Darko, who was performing in our production of Love's Labour's Lost, to talk about some of her experiences in drama school, and what it means to be an actor of colour studying and performing Shakespeare and classical drama.

FK-C: As you know, we recently had a festival on Shakespeare and Race where we looked at questions around how artists and scholars and students of colour are engaging Shakespeare and classical drama, and I wonder if you can talk a little bit about your experience of classical drama either as a drama student or as a professional actor of colour?

Leaphia Darko: So as a drama student, there's a lot of things going on where you're mostly doing really technical, like breath work and stuff like that, before you get to have a go at classical texts. I would sometimes feel a bit unsure about how to approach it, but the reasons I found it hard to approach as an actor of colour were the same as any piece of classical theatre which is until you get more sure of who you are as an artist, it's hard to know whether you're playing a white person or playing a character. Because often you've only ever seen it staged with a white person in the role, you know it was written by a white person for white people, and I was fortunate to have many amazing teachers at school but there weren't really any teachers of colour. So the people teaching me were really great at the technical side of things, but essentially I think one big sort of change at drama school is people talk about truth a lot, and you're going what is that, and essentially, you're sort of discovering it's various shades of being yourself. Which sounds a bit like the opposite of what you want to do to play a character, you want to not be yourself, and there is a certain element of that. But there is a really crucial part of playing someone who isn't you which involves linking it to something really personal about you, and so sometimes I felt as a drama student of colour, that was slightly in conflict for me with the idea of say, doing a Chekhov and being Nina in it, because in my imagination Nina is like a blonde, white girl. And I'm like 'that's not me'. So how do I contribute a bit of myself to this whilst I feel that either because I've misinterpreted the exercise, or because I don't have any role models to see people of colour playing Nina, for example, or the staff don't know the vocabulary to use when teaching classical work to actors of colour. But I feel like I can't possibly play a white person without... I mean... I don't... you can't do it, how would you do it? But I felt that was the same with Shakespeare, there is a certain... maybe, imposter syndrome or a sense of 'we all know this is ridiculous but I'm only doing this because it's a drama school exercise and I get in the real world, it would be silly for me to play Juliet' thing? It was a thing I used to impose on the work before I'd then get to grips with the work. And whether or not anyone else in the room was thinking that, and probably they weren't, you know, my colleagues in my year or the staff, I was thinking that because I didn't have any other reference, I didn't have the vocabulary to talk about it, the staff I don't think necessarily had the vocabulary to talk about it. But it was something I need to discuss in order to have that off of my mind and to be able to go at the work. Obviously my white colleagues wouldn't have had to wrestle with that. As a drama student, it was a case of 'Who am I?'. Am I me in all my blackness, and my working classness and whatever as Juliet, or am I supposed to be playing a white person in which case, oh my god, how's that work? Often times, even if I felt that the conversation could be had, it was time that I wasn' spent becoming better at acting, it was time spent worrying about things that weren't about the scene and the character and who am I and why am I there.

FK-C: The craft.

LD: Yes, and little technical things about where you can sort of cadence in the line and the iambs and the stresses and all that kind of thing is what you want to be getting better at and instead, you're sweating in the corner thinking oh god, how do I do this? And often when you do a project, there's often like a mood board. People put pictures up of the inspiration behind the piece. And I found often at school, all of the people on the mood board were white, which I never questioned. We did a sort of movement exercise to music around that time, of let's find a portrait from the 1700s and be the person in the portrait and it suddenly occurred to me that when I was googling, it was all like white people in the portraits and I thought, there's a huge imaginative leap that I'll have to make or not engage with it at all. And so I started to assemble a Pinterest of black people in history and portraiture and photographs because I felt I was sort of cleaving myself apart trying to be true to myself in Chekhov but feeling like Chekhov was for white people because black people weren't invented yet, sort of thing. And to my complete amazement, very, very quickly on Pinterest, I just typed 'black, Russians, 1800s', tons of pictures came up of these black Cossacks with afros in full regalia and I learnt about Hannibal and so I was like, why are the people teaching me Chekhov either aware of but feel it's a bit off topic to bring it into the room, or, as I suspect, are unaware of it but are teaching me as a student of colour that material of that period. Another thing that I found hard as well in training, and trying to find my way through what acting is for me, sort of thing, is that you're learning less externally focused. You're learning to not worry so much about how you look, and to just play the scene but race is an external thing in a lot of ways, and so when you're worried about race, you can't sit in the scene because you're looking at yourself from the outside in. And so you're trying to do that and speak in verse at the same time, and in a way that makes that person seem like a real person of now, and I think there is a way of doing Shakespeare that makes it a bit rose-tinted. As in, wasn't it great then? And I think there is a way to play it where it's like, ah it's still so visceral now and you kind of want to be doing that, and that's demanding enough. So to then not be able to have 100% of yourself concentrating on that, which is where the fun is, and to have to sort of siphon off part of your energy and part of your brain and your resources to worrying about will people that come and see this see me and then not believe it. Because that's you looking at yourself from the outside. Looking at myself from the outside and going, oh, I'm a black person. To me, it's like I know I'm a black person, but black to me doesn't mean... I mean I've of mixed heritage. But for me the black people in my family, we listen to like classical music, and we eat maybe a bit of Ghanaian food, but we also like spaghetti Bolognese. Do you know what I mean? And I feel like if you read certain newspapers...

FK-C: I'm a Pakistani who listens to country music... [laughs]

LD: Yeah. And it's like... so even like doing that, I have to then try and imagine what blackness means if you don't encounter black people much or you read certain newspapers or whatever that imagination is that is imposing something on my skin shade that has actually nothing to do with me. And then worry about that imagined idea of blackness is anything to do with Juliet and then whether... it's just such a...

FK-C: It's a mental gymnastics.

LD: Yeah. And none of that helps me play that. You know I'm an old Hollywood fan, which is a lot of fun but also as a person of colour also very painful. It's kind of an odd thing. I'm very much aware of the people that came before me in entertainment and it's just not as hard for me as it was for them. So as much as I've had to wrestle with these things, Hattie McDaniel didn't get to do what I get to do. I get to do this because a ton of other people, probably infinitely more talented than me, spent their whole careers playing maids and the only way to right that is for me to do me, instead of sort of deciding what I think my casting is, or um, worrying about whether people are quote unquote ready to see someone with my melanin levels speak in verse or playing a classical part.

IG: That's it from this year's Shakespeare and Race festival, but the conversation doesn't stop here. Here's Farah...

FK-C: We wanted to do a Shakespeare and Race festival to highlight some of the major questions that we have about race in performance and in scholarship. But we didn't want to do just a one off event, right? This was a week-long event, some really important conversations were happening during that week, we don't want it to stop there, we want to continue engaging with this topic, working with a diverse range of scholars and practitioners, and so we'd like to have more conversations, we want to invite more people to come here and engage with us on this topic so this podcast is really one way of achieving that, but also we want to have another event next year, and the year after that, so this is really just the beginning.

IG: The Shakespeare and Race Festival was part of a summer season which looked at all aspects of casting, programming and representation on our stages, and the conversation continues... In the next few seasons there'll be plenty more provocations and experiments around how we can stage classical drama to reflect our contemporary society. Coming up in the winter season will be Richard II, the first ever company of women of colour in a Shakespeare play on a major UK stage... And alongside our season of shows, we hold q and a's and panel discussions which scaffold these productions and offer you a chance to have your say. Working with artists, scholars and audience members we must make sure we continue to interrogate and debate these vital issues of race, casting and representation. We'd love to see you there.

You can catch Othello in the Globe theatre until 13 October.

This episode was presented by me, Imogen Greenberg, and Dr Farah Karim-Cooper. Our theme music is from the album Mali in Oak and was recorded in our very own Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. To find out more about Shakespeare's Globe and what's on, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We'll be back with more stories from Shakespeare's Globe so subscribe wherever you got this podcast from.

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#SuchStuff season 1 episode 4: Shakespeare and Race | Blogs & features

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Music plays] Imogen Greenberg: Hello, I'm Imogen Greenberg and welcome to another episode of Such Stuff, the podcast from Shakespeare's Globe. This summer, Shakespeare's Globe played host to our first ever Shakespeare and Race festival, convened by our very own Head of Higher Education and Research - and podcast co-presenter - Dr Farah Karim Cooper.

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An article from The British Library: Hugh Quarshie describes his reservations about Othello, and how he used these to shape the production in which he played the title role.

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Hugh Quarshie describes his reservations about Othello, and how he used these to shape the production in which he played the title role.

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Othello: the role that entices and enrages actors of all skin colours

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Othello: the role that entices and enrages actors of all skin colours

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An article from The British Library: Andrew Dickson explores how different actors have struggled with the character of Othello and the play's depiction of race.

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Othello: the role that entices and enrages actors of all skin colours

Andrew Dickson explores how different actors have struggled with the character of Othello and the play's depiction of race.

'Of all the parts in the canon, perhaps Othello is the one which should most definitely not be played by a black actor,' wrote the British-Ghanaian actor Hugh Quarshie in a lecture published in 1998. Doing so risked legitimising - in fact condoning - the racist stereotype of a black man who loses his wits, then resorts to killing his white wife in a fit of crazed jealousy, Quarshie argued.

Seventeen years later, Quarshie - who cut his teeth at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1980s and 90s in a number of high-profile roles - has played the Moor of Venice in the RSC's new production of . When we talk after a long day of rehearsals, he is at pains to point out that things are more complex than his earlier argument suggests. He wasn't saying that no black performer should ever play Othello; rather, that black performers should think long and hard about doing battle not just with the play, but the context from which it springs. 'Only by black actors playing the role,' he says, 'can we address some of the racist traditions and assumptions that the play is based on'.

Photograph of Hugh Quarshie and Lucian Msamati in Othello, 2015

In the RSC's 2015 production of Othello, the lead role was played by Hugh Quarshie and Iago was played by Lucian Msamati.

Quarshie was joined on stage by Lucian Msamati, who will make theatrical history as the first black actor to play Iago at the RSC, and one of only a handful worldwide. The casting of the British-Tanzanian actor has thrown up tantalising questions about the dynamics of this most complex and controversial of plays. Does it matter that Msamati's Iago is black? Can he be that, and also an out-and-out racist? Is the play itself even about race?

For much of its history, Othello has provided nourishing fodder for racists: from the queasy arguments of Samuel Taylor Coleridge that it would be 'something monstrous' to conceive of Desdemona 'falling in love with a veritable negro', to the grim parodies that circulated in 19th-century South Africa.

Coleridge's annotated copy of Shakespeare

In his hand-written notes on Othello (c. 1818-19), Samuel Taylor Coleridge makes a racist distinction between different types of African - the 'Moor' and the 'Negro'.

The tragedy doesn't make that easy, however. 'I see it as two halves, almost,' says Quarshie. 'The more successful you are in depicting the first Othello, this man who is wise, astute, mature, magnanimous, the harder it is to show a man who is persuaded that his wife has committed adultery, and who turns into an obsessive, compulsive, murderous maniac.'

Boydell's Collection of Prints illustrating Shakespeare's works

A Bedchamber - Othello threatens Desdemona while she sleeps, convinced that she has been unfaithful. Othello, Act 5, Scene 2 by John Graham.

It is difficult to know what the play's author might have made of the question. The number of non-white men and women living in early modern London was tiny, perhaps less than one per cent of the population. Black performers were not unknown - John Blanke, perhaps of North African heritage, played the trumpet at the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII - but seem not to have appeared on the public stage.

It's all but certain that Shakespeare's first Othello was Richard Burbage, a white Londoner. It's even more likely that Burbage would have worn dark makeup, as actors in Britain did until the late 1980s (Michael Gambon was one of the last, at Scarborough in 1990).

Portrait of Richard Burbage

17th-century portrait of the actor, Richard Burbage, probably the first man to play Othello. He played the part wearing black make-up and a wig made of black lamb's wool.

Usage terms © By Permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.

How should the play be interpreted?

Shakespeare's play is both fascinating and perplexing in determining how Othello should be interpreted. On the one hand, there was a strong tradition on the Elizabethan stage of black characters being played as snarling villains, as in the anonymous revenge tragedy Lust's Dominion and the playwright's own Titus Andronicus; anxiety about black immigration into Britain was such that Elizabeth I issued several proclamations ordering the expulsion of 'blackamoores' from her realm.

Draft proclamation on the expulsion of 'Negroes and Blackamoors', 1601

A draft proclamation of 1601 asked for the deportation of black people from England.

Usage terms Reproduced courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House

On the other, the Moor of Venice is the hero of the play, a decorated general in the service of the Venetian state. The villain of the piece is the white racist who plots Othello's downfall. 'When a Moor appeared on stage, it was like the Red Indian in an American western,' says Quarshie. 'There was a convention where you expect trouble to follow. And Shakespeare goes against the grain'.

Ira Aldridge and Paul Robeson

There is also an alternative history of Othello, in which the role has been interpreted as an act of out-and-out emancipation. The great African-American actor Ira Aldridge was unable to make a career on stage in his homeland because of segregationist limits on black performers. Criss-crossing Europe from the 1830s to the 1860s, the 'African Roscius' specialised in parts, notably Othello, that emphasised his African heritage (Aldridge liked to put about the story that he'd been born in Senegal rather than New York City).

Playbill advertising Ira Aldridge's appearance as Othello in Northampton, 1831

The great American actor, Ira Alridge, was known as the 'African Roscius' after a celebrated Roman actor who had been born a slave.

The actor-activist Paul Robeson identified closely with his great forebear and was said to have taken acting lessons from Aldridge's daughter. When he first played the Moor in London in 1930, the reviews were disparaging, with many in the audience outraged by the sight of Robeson kissing Peggy Ashcroft, but Robeson felt it was his destiny to play what he termed a 'tragedy of racial conflict'.

Paul Robeson as Othello and Uta Hagen as Desdemona in New York, 1943-44

When Paul Robeson played Othello in New York in 1943, it ran for 296 performances - still the longest Shakespearean run in Broadway history.

Usage terms © Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

When he returned to the role on Broadway in 1943, one reviewer declared that 'no white man should ever dare play the part again'. With the notable exception of Patrick Stewart, who played Othello as part of an otherwise African-American cast in a 'photonegative' production in Washington DC in 1997, most actors in Britain and America have heeded the advice.

Perhaps this is the lesson to draw from Othello, Quarshie suggests: that the play's history on stage uncovers as much about the societies in which it appears as the play itself.

Sometimes, as when John Kani played Othello at the Markettheatre in Johannesburg in 1987 in the midst of apartheid, only the second black South African actor in history to do so, the play can seem as if it's about nothing other than race. At others, such as Adrian Lester's modern-dress performance at the National Theatre in 2012, the colour of the hero's skin can seem almost incidental; the play's tragedy primarily one of jealousy.

'What we make of it tells us more about ourselves than it does about Shakespeare,' says Quarshie. He laughs: 'I'm sure our production will be no different.'

This article was originally published in the Guardian newspaper in June 2015

Andrew Dickson is an author, journalist and critic. A former arts editor at the Guardian in London, he writes regularly for the paper and appears as a broadcaster for the BBC and elsewhere. His book about Shakespeare's global influence, Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare's Globe, is out now in paperback. He lives in London, and his website is andrewjdickson.com.

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othello the role that entices and enrages actors of all skin colours

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Othello: the role that entices and enrages actors of all skin colours | The British Library

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Andrew Dickson explores how different actors have struggled with the character of Othello and the play's depiction of race.

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An article from The British Library: Post-colonial readings of The Tempest were inspired by the decolonisation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. Jyotsna Singh describes how these readings challenge more traditional interpretations of the play, questioning Prospero's ownership of the island and rethinking the role of Caliban.

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An article from the British Library: There have been numerous interpretations of Othello over the last 400 years. Virginia Mason Vaughan discusses four recent critical approaches: feminist, new historicist, marxist and post-colonial

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There have been numerous interpretations of Othello over the last 400 years. Virginia Mason Vaughan discusses four recent critical approaches: feminist, new historicist, marxist and post-colonial.

was crafted at the dawn of the 17th century, shaped by complex social and geopolitical issues that new historicist critics, who seek to place literary works within a historical framework, have recently sought to unravel. Yet from its first staging to the present, Othello has also been among the few Shakespearean plays to be repeatedly staged to enthusiastic audiences, not only in England, but across the globe. This continuing appeal suggests that the tragedy transcends the time and location in which it was written, provoking new interpretations from generation to generation, place to place. In order to fully appreciate Othello, we need to see it in its multifaceted historical context - then - and consider the myriad ways it speaks to audiences now.

Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi, an Italian source for Othello and Measure for Measure

Shakespeare took the idea for Othello from a tale of doomed mixed-race marriage in Cinthio's De Gli Hecatommithi, 1565.

Postcolonial reading: 'something from Cyprus'

Postcolonial readings focus on the play's representation of Ottoman Turks. Shakespeare derived Othello's plot from a short narrative in Giraldi Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi (1565), but set his play within the context of Venice's struggle during the 1570s with the Ottoman Empire for control of Cyprus, the eastern Mediterranean island that overlooked the shipping lanes between Europe and trading centres in the East. Venice owned Cyprus from 1470 to 1569, but in 1571 Turkish forces seized the island. Later that year an alliance of Christian powers defeated the Turk in the famous naval battle of Lepanto. As a young man, James VI of Scotland (James I of England in 1603) celebrated that battle, fought 'Betwixt the baptiz'd race, / And circumcised Turband Turkes'. References throughout Othello to 'the Turk' or 'turning Turk' evoke the intermittent conflict between Europe's Christian powers and the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which was as much an economic competition as a clash of religions. In sermons and treatises, English writers like Richard Knolles, who published The General Historie of the Turks (1603), demonised the Ottoman Empire as barbaric and cruel, even as they admired its military success and bureaucratic structure.

Description of the Battle of Lepanto in Knolles's History of the Turks

Richard Knolles' General Historie of the Turks (1603) demonizes the lion-like Turks but admires their military power.

Shakespeare draws upon the Christian-Turkish binary but also undercuts it by making the play's most villainous character a Venetian and its hero an outsider. Fearful of vesting military power in one of its own citizens, Venice's republican government contracted with foreign mercenaries who could easily be dismissed once the crisis was over (as Othello is in Act 5). Although Othello has been chosen by the Venetian government to lead its army, 'the Moor' (a term that originally referred to practitioners of Islam) remains an alien in Venice. Like the liminal island of Cyprus, he is caught in the middle, neither European nor Turk yet embodying both, and in his suicide he highlights his service as a Christian hero by killing the 'turbaned Turk' within, who 'beat a Venetian and traduced the state' (5.2.352-53).

Othello 's geopolitical impact is not limited, however, to conflicts between Venice and the Ottoman Empire. Othello's blackness and his background as a foreign mercenary prefigures the hybridity postcolonial theorists have identified in colonial subjects. Brabantio and Desdemona are fascinated by his strange stories of cannibals and anthropophagi; Othello's first gift to her is a handkerchief given to him by an Egyptian charmer, 'dyed in mummy [a black liquid distilled from corpses] and steeped in the ancient lore of charmers, sibyls and magic'. The Moor's stories allow Desdemona to experience the exotic/erotic delight found by many early modern readers in travel narratives that described the 'antres vast' of unexplored territories in Africa, the East and the New World.

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville

Headless men and men with mouths behind their shoulders: these are some of the wondrous creatures depicted in The Travels of John Mandeville, a book still hugely popular in Shakespeare's day.

New historicist reading: 'far more fair than black'

New historicist critics often debate whether or not race was a factor in early modern representations of non-English peoples. Although Othello's racial identity is clearly a factor in Shakespeare's text, when the play was first performed the audience would not have seen it as squarely focussed on race as we do. As editor Michael Neill observes, 'to talk about race in Othello is inevitably to fall into some degree of anachronism, while to ignore it is to efface something fundamental to the tragedy.' As a result, Shakespeare's Othello has been appropriated worldwide as a vehicle for the exploration of racial and ethnic tensions.

In the opening scene Iago refers to Othello as 'the thick-lips' (1.1.66) and later he raises a toast to 'the health of black Othello' (2.2.29). Through these and other comments we learn that Othello is a black African of sub-Saharan origin. In 1604 England was not yet formally immersed in the slave trade, but as early as 1565 English privateers had bought captured Africans, and Shakespeare may well have known some of them or other people of African heritage. Contemporary conceptions of race and racism, influenced by the history of racial slavery and 18th-century pseudo-science, are often based on hard and fast racial categories that were only incipient in Shakespeare's England. While Iago's and Brabantio's remarks in Act 1 exude what is today accepted as racism, the Duke's pronouncement that Othello is 'far more fair than black' and Montano's claim that 'the man commands / Like a full soldier' (2.1.36-37) indicate the high esteem others have for him. Nevertheless, references to Othello as black and a Moor, as well as his lack of understanding of Venetian customs, establish his liminal position in Venetian society.

16th-century costume guide

A wealthy Moor, 1598: In his guide to global fashions, Cesare Vecellio shows the fluid meaning of the word 'Moor' at the time Shakespeare was writing.

In Shakespeare's time Othello was performed by Richard Burbage, a white actor who wore black make-up and a wig of black lamb's wool. (Burbage's powerful cross-racial performance should not be confused with the caricatured blackface used in 19th-century minstrel shows.) Still, by the early 19th century, a truly black Othello was no longer tenable in England and America. The English actor Edmund Kean chose instead to appear as a North African in light brown make-up, suggesting an African from the Mediterranean rim rather than a sub-Saharan. With the exception of Ira Aldridge, a black actor who portrayed Othello throughout northern Europe in the 19th century, the role was taken by white actors in various shades of make-up until the African-American actor Paul Robeson undertook the role in London (1930) and New York (1943). Since then, black actors have usually impersonated Shakespeare's Moor.

Portrait of Richard Burbage

17th-century portrait of the actor, Richard Burbage, probably the first man to play Othello. He played the part wearing black make-up and a wig made of black lamb's wool.

Usage terms © By Permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.

Paul Robeson as Othello and Uta Hagen as Desdemona in New York, 1943-44

When Paul Robeson played Othello in New York in 1943, it ran for 296 performances - still the longest Shakespearean run in Broadway history.

Usage terms © Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

Feminist reading: 'a maiden never bold'

Feminist critics highlight the ways Shakespeare portrays gender roles. In Act 1, Scene 3, Brabantio describes his daughter Desdemona as 'a maiden never bold', yet in choosing a foreigner she has violated the Venetian norm of arranged endogamous marriages (the practice of marrying within a local community or ethnic group) and rejected her father's authority. Still, she honours the patriarchal dictum that, once married, the wife owes her husband the same respect and duty she had shown her father. Emilia, too, defers to her husband Iago's wishes. Even after she realises the full extent of his villainy, she admits, ''Tis proper I obey him, but not now' (5.2.194). At the same time, romances, poems and plays often countered patriarchal authority in favour of romantic love. Just as the Duke overrules Brabantio's demands in Act 1, Scene 3, in fictional narratives the blocking father figure cannot prevail and young lovers marry. If Othello ended after Act 1, it would be, as many commentators have observed, a romantic comedy.

Alas, Desdemona and Othello's love is no match for Iago's plots and the green-eyed monster jealousy. Infidelity was the ultimate marital crime in early modern England. The prospect of illegitimate children subverted the bedrock of the era's social and economic system, the inheritance of property from father to son. In a speech that is often described as 'proto-feminist', Emilia argues that a wife's infidelity is a response to the husband's behaviour:

Say they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant of former having in despite -
. . .
Yet have we some revenge. (4.4.82-88)

Desdemona rejects this reasoning, promising 'Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend' (4.4.100). As she nears death in the play's final moments, she exonerates Othello by claiming no one has murdered her except herself.

From the play's earliest performances, audiences responded sympathetically to Desdemona's plight. After a 1610 production at Oxford, Henry Jackson recalled that Desdemona 'entreated the pity of the spectators by her very countenance'. That changed in the late 20th century, however, when feminist critics underscored Desdemona's initial independence and Emilia's eventual strength, and outlined the ways both women - as well as the courtesan Bianca - were constrained by the male characters' patriarchal suppositions. From a feminist perspective, early modern England's preoccupation with cuckoldry demonstrates a basic male insecurity about women's sexuality.

Broadside ballad on cuckolds

This 17th-century ballad, 'Cuckolds Haven', shows the early modern obsession with cuckolds - men who were depicted with animal horns as a sign that their wives had been unfaithful.

Marxist reading: ''Tis the curse of service'

Marxist critics are concerned with the economic and psychological impact of early modern England's hierarchical social system. In 1604 James I took Shakespeare's acting company under his patronage, making Shakespeare a 'servant' of the king. Indeed, service to someone in a higher position was expected from the lowest kitchen maid to the lords and ladies of the king's court. The pecking order in Othello is clear. The Duke and aristocratic members of the Venetian Senate give orders to Othello, who in turn commands his Lieutenant Cassio. Ensign Iago is subordinate to both. All three ostensibly serve out of loyalty to the state and for the status their military position brings, but they can be dismissed at the pleasure of their superiors. Iago resents Cassio, a man with 'a daily beauty in his life' (5.1.19), hates being tied to Othello's service and yearns for preferment.

The different gradations of status embedded in the text are often represented in military terms, with Iago presented as a rough-speaking non-commissioned officer, resentful of Cassio's rank and courtly manners. But the play's exploration of rank and class go beyond the military. Iago's repeated advice, 'Put money in thy purse', suggests that a new economic model has replaced the feudal obligations of service, which had been based on a bond of loyalty and duty between servant and master. As a 'servant' of the king, Shakespeare - who applied for a coat of arms to be named a 'gentleman' but was also an entrepreneur who loaned money and invested in land and rents - was implicated in both models.

Photograph of Hugh Quarshie and Lucian Msamati in Othello, 2015

In the RSC's 2015 production of Othello, the lead role was played by Hugh Quarshie and Iago was played by Lucian Msamati.

'O bloody period!'

Shakespeare wove the contradictory discourses of his age into Othello's tangled web, whether it be the conflict between women's self-rule and patriarchal marriage, western society's fascination with and fear of the Islamic or African other, or the resentment caused by shifting economic parameters. 400 years later the discourses have changed, but as contemporary appropriations of Othello remind us, the issues have only intensified.

Footnotes

[1] James VI of Scotland, 'Lepanto', in The Poems of James VI of Scotland, ed. by James Craigie (Edinburgh: William Blackwood for the Scottish Text Society, 3rd series, no. XXII, 1955), p. 202.

[2] Ian Smith, 'Othello's Black Handkerchief', in Othello: The State of Play, ed. by Lena Cowan Orlin (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 95-120 (p. 103).

[3] Michael Neill, 'Introduction', Othello (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 125.

[4] See Neill, p. 9.

[5] See Neill, p. 161.

Written byVirginia Mason Vaughan

Virginia Mason Vaughan is Research Professor and Professor Emerita of English at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts where she taught for thirty-eight years. She is the author of Othello: A Contextual History (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and The Tempest for Manchester University Press's 'Shakespeare in Performance' series (2011). With Alden T. Vaughan she also co-authored Shakespeare's Caliban: A Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, 1991) and Shakespeare in America (Oxford Shakespeare Topics, 2012) and co-edited The Tempest for the Third Arden Series (1999; rev. ed. 2011). She is also a co-editor of Women Making Shakespeare (with Gordon McMullan and Lena Cowen Orlin [Arden Shakespeare, 2014]). Her textual edition of Antony and Cleopatra for the Norton Shakespeare 3 was published this year, as was the monograph, Antony and Cleopatra: Language and Writing, for Arden Shakespeare.

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Critical approaches to Othello | The British Library

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There have been numerous interpretations of Othello over the last 400 years. Virginia Mason Vaughan discusses four recent critical approaches: feminist, new historicist, marxist and post-colonial.

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The Tempest and the Literature of Wonder

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The Tempest and the Literature of Wonder

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An article from the British Library: Martin Butler shows how Renaissance travel, trade and colonisation shaped the portrayal of Caliban and the Italians in The Tempest.

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Martin Butler shows how Renaissance travel, trade and colonisation shaped the portrayal of Caliban and the Italians in The Tempest.

The Tempest is Shakespeare 's travel drama, a play responding to the enlarged geographical and mental horizons created by European exploration into distant places. It stages the disconcerting effects of surprise and estrangement provoked by the burgeoning literature of global discovery, with its reports of new and wonderful lands. Set on an island lying somewhere between North Africa and Italy, the play's action takes place amidst the increasingly busy shipping lanes which criss-crossed the Mediterranean, through which exotic goods from Asia and the Middle East were pouring into Europe. The North African ports mentioned in the dialogue, Tunis and Algiers (2.1.72, 1.2.265), were places where European traders encountered representatives of other nations and felt the disturbance involved in crossing cultural divides. When Trinculo and Antonio meet Caliban, they react like profit-hungry merchants, weighing up his value as a commodity, a 'strange fish' that would be 'marketable' at home (2.2.27, 5.1.266). But other characters respond to the island with astonishment, experiencing its marvels as a challenge to their inbuilt habits and assumptions. The island makes them confront the way they live as if from an alien perspective, reappraising the familiar from the standpoint of the world's margins.

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Trans-Atlantic discovery: 'O brave new world'

Shakespeare's perspective in The Tempest stretches far beyond the Mediterranean, for his imagination was caught by stories of trans-Atlantic discovery. The 'nimble marmoset' (2.2.170) which inhabits the island is one of those creatures brought back to Europe by Portuguese explorers in South America. Caliban's name suggests 'cannibal', a practice found amongst the native peoples discovered in Brazil, and depicted in gruesome images by the Belgian artist Theodor de Bry. Caliban's mother worships a Patagonian god called Setebos (1.2.373), a deity that Shakespeare found in the account of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe anthologised in Richard Eden's travel collection, Decades of the New World or West India (1555). When Gonzalo muses about making 'plantation' of the island (2.1.144), he is using language associated with the English colonial settlements in Virginia, and Ariel remembers fetching dew 'from the still-vexed Bermudas' (1.2.229), stormy islands which lay en route to the new English colony at Jamestown. Fittingly, Miranda's naïve but resonant phrase, 'O brave new world' (5.1.183), has come to symbolise the mix of promises and disappointments in Europe's discovery of the Americas. Ironically, however, she is not addressing persons from the New World but from the Old, the Europeans that she has never previously met. Shakespeare upsets our assumptions by presenting the colonial encounter as if from the point of view of the soon-to-be disenchanted native. ''Tis new to thee', Prospero wearily replies.

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Shipwreck

One recent incident associated with Virginia probably provided the impetus for the plot, for in 1609 an English fleet heading there was caught in a three-day tempest and broken up. A report by the colonist William Strachey (not printed until 1625, but accessible to Shakespeare in manuscript) describes how his ship, the Sea Venture, was overwhelmed by the storm. He recounts the mariners' helplessness and terror, and notes the seemingly supernatural phenomenon of St Elmo's fire - which, in the play, Ariel imitates by running along the masts in the form of a flame (1.2.196-201). Eventually the colonists were cast ashore in the Bermudas, uninhabited islands reputed to be the home of devils but which turned out to be unexpectedly hospitable. With his narrative see-sawing between moments of desperate catastrophe and miraculous redemption, Strachey presents these events as mysteriously determined by Providence: 'It pleased our merciful God', he says, 'to make even this hideous and hated place both the place of our safety and means of our deliverance'. Shakespeare's characters are similarly haunted by a sense of supernatural forces over which they have no control, though spectators of the play have a different view, as we can see that much of the mystery is created not by God's hand but by Prospero's.

Strachey's 'A true reportory of the wreck' in Bermuda

William Strachey's dramatic account of a shipwreck off Bermuda in 1609 was probably a source for Shakespeare's play, The Tempest.

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Coloured engravings of Native Americans and Picts bound with Strachey's New World 'Dictionary' and 'History'

William Strachey wrote a manuscript account of colonial life in Virginia and a dictionary of the indigenous Powhatan language. It is bound with hand-coloured versions of de Bry's engravings of Virginians.

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Caliban

The issues raised by global discovery are brought into focus in the relationship between Prospero and Caliban, the European intellectual and his 'savage' foster-child ('savage' being Miranda's word for him: 1.2.355). The representation of Caliban raises difficult questions about how members of colonised cultures are perceived by those who find them, and on what basis a colonising culture justifies wielding power over them. Shakespeare is careful to leave Caliban's appearance and origins enigmatic. Prospero says he is the child of an Algerian witch and the devil, but we never learn quite what he looks like or where he comes from, and he cannot easily be pigeonholed. Although the play does not associate him directly with the New World, the combination of fear and fascination which he inspires echoes at a distance the public reaction to the trickle of American natives being brought to Europe as curiosities - the most famous being Pocahontas, who married an Englishman and arrived in London with a dozen fellow Algonquians in 1616. Caliban's fishy smell perhaps links him with the Inuit brought back from Baffin Island by Martin Frobisher in 1577, whose clothes were made of sealskin. Other figures he recalls include the native peoples of Roanoke painted by the colonist John White in 1585, and engraved by Theodor de Bry for the second edition of Thomas Hariot's A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590). For the play's Europeans, Caliban's determining factor is his strangeness, which they take as a licence to treat him as little more than an animal. But by foregrounding his category-defying identity, the play forces us to reflect on where, and to what effect, the imagined boundary line between human and non-human is being drawn.

Paintings of London in the friendship album of Michael van Meer, c. 1614-1615

A small number of Native Americans were brought to England by explorers and exhibited as curiosities. This miniature painting shows a Virginian man in St James's Park, c. 1614-15.

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Montaigne

The most influential response to New World visitors came from the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who saw Tupinamba Indians from Brazil at Rouen in 1562. This encounter inspired his essay 'Of the Cannibals', which Shakespeare read in John Florio's English translation (1603). For Montaigne, the strangeness of the Tupinamba did not confirm the supposed superiority of European culture but called it into question. Far from seeming savage, they struck him as dignified and intelligent. He was impressed that they had their own customs, language and even poetry, and he admired the harmonious natural simplicity of their lives, which (he thought) put to shame the false sophistication of contemporary Europe, torn apart as it was by violence and greed. Montaigne came to suppose that the Tupinamba retained a state of Edenic plainness which Europe had lost: 'We have so much by our inventions surcharged the beauties and riches of [Nature's] works, that we have altogether over-choked her; yet wherever her purity shineth, she makes our vain and frivolous enterprises wonderfully ashamed'. Shakespeare ventriloquises similar sentiments, with direct echoes from Montaigne, when he has Gonzalo speculate about how he might create a perfect state on the island, free from the corruptions of 'civilised' society (2.1.144-69). Of course, to the other courtiers Gonzalo's ideas seem sentimental and unrealistic, and, crucially, Caliban, for all his delight in music, is no noble savage. However, the Europeans' repulsive behaviour, their ambition, conspiracy, drunkenness and exploitation of others, prevents us from taking for granted the idea that they have a God-given superiority to the 'native'.

Montaigne's Essays translated by Florio

Gonzalo's speech has clear echoes of Michel de Montaigne's essay 'Of the Cannibals', first translated into English by John Florio in 1603.

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Prospero

Against this, Prospero's claims to rule the island rest on his cultural advantage, the intellectual and moral pre-eminence which underwrites his authority. Being a learned European, he has a civility which automatically subordinates Caliban, who can see how much Prospero's supremacy depends on his knowledge: 'Burn but his books', he urges Stephano (3.2.95). The play's shorthand for Prospero's pre-eminence is his 'Art', the magic which gives him ideological heft and practical power. Prospero is a 'magus' - that is, a wise man expert in the most esoteric forms of learning, often of a hermetic or obscurely philosophical cast. The famous English magus was John Dee (1527-1609), an astronomer, mathematician and astrologer who was renowned for his scientific and technological skill. Dee was an early advocate for overseas exploration, and his General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation (1577) is the first printed book to imagine the idea of a 'British empire' - something that would have seemed fanciful to most readers at the time, given how undeveloped England's overseas trade still was. Dee's scientific interests also extended into occult fields, such as alchemy and angelology, for he believed the pursuit of knowledge should encompass the supernatural as well as natural sphere. He practised divination with spirits, by 'scrying' or gazing into an obsidian disk (probably a trophy brought back to Europe from Mexico), and he had magic seals of wax through which he tried to communicate with the archangels Michael and Uriel. Dee's varied interests demonstrate how porous the borderline was at this time between science and magic, and suggest the anxieties that modern technological advances could provoke amongst those who feared and misunderstood them. A more negative image of a scientist/conjurer rather like him can be seen in Christopher Marlowe's tragedy Doctor Faustus, in which the title-character's knowledge and pride lead him to dabble with devils. Interestingly, the names Prospero and Faustus both mean the same thing: 'fortunate'.

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Prospero's magic raises questions about his intentions and power, but what it particularly does to the play's design is prevent us from taking anything for the reality that it purports to be. The double vision that it creates is evident from the spectacularly deceitful opening. The storm scene does all it can to promote an impression of realism. No other play begins with quite such a coup de théâtre, plunging us without preparation into violent action which is at once pitiful and terrifying. The emphasis is on authenticity and believability. Shakespeare ransacked the glossaries of seamanship to ensure that his sailors spoke the language of nautical life and that the events seemed technically convincing. Yet within an instant the weather clears and it becomes evident that all this menace has been merely an illusion. After this opening, in which apparently tragic circumstances turn out to be a magician's charm, we can never be quite sure where the reality ends and theatre begins. It makes the whole play provisional, an act of imaginative collusion, in which whatever resolutions are achieved will always be understood on one level as effects of art.

The masque

Prospero's claim to the island may be problematic, but his magic echoes at one remove the technological advantages that Europeans took to the New World. It evokes the compasses, navigational tools and gunpowder that helped them to conquer. On another level, it gestures towards the utopian idea of the philosopher-king, who aspired to make his court a centre of learning and a beacon of culture. The play's projection of this is yet another species of wonder: the masque in Act 4. Here Prospero conjures up a marvellous operatic festival of the kind that was frequently performed at the contemporary English court, with song and dance, performers dressed as deities, magnificent costumes and stage wizardry such as flying effects or sudden magical transformations. Such masques, danced by courtiers in honour of the prince, were home-grown examples of the political power of wonder, adapting modern technology to celebrate the dignity of the state. Masques publicised the court's claims to civility, its wealth, learning and pomp, and they underwrote the power of monarchy by projecting the illusion of a world under perfect sovereign control. But in The Tempest, the world beyond bites back: Prospero suddenly plunges into anxiety, the masque is cut off, and his family is left troubled at this unexpected turn of events. In the famous set-piece speech, 'Our revels now are ended' (4.1.166), Prospero reflects on the limits of his art and the evanescence of the world of power over which he presides. In the final act, he will abjure his magic, resume normal clothes, and go back to life as an ordinary man in Milan, where 'every third thought shall be my grave' (5.1.312). The world to which he returns is stripped of its illusions, and is a less magical place. Nonetheless, he and everyone else are changed, their identities enlarged by their temporary exposure to wonder.

Written by Martin Butler

Martin Butler is Professor of English Renaissance Drama at the University of Leeds. He has edited The Tempest for the Penguin Shakespeare (2007).

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the tempest and the wonder of literature

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The Tempest and the literature of wonder

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Martin Butler shows how Renaissance travel, trade and colonisation shaped the portrayal of Caliban and the Italians in The Tempest. The Tempest is Shakespeare 's travel drama, a play responding to the enlarged geographical and mental horizons created by European exploration into distant places.

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A Jewish Reading of the Merchant of Venice

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A Jewish Reading of the Merchant of Venice

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An article from the British Library: From Antonio spitting on Shylock's 'Jewish gabardine' to the moneylender's famous speech, 'If you prick us, do we not bleed?': Dr Aviva Dautch responds to The Merchant of Venice as a Jewish reader.

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a jewish reading of the merchant of venice

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A Jewish reading of The Merchant of Venice

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From Antonio spitting on Shylock's 'Jewish gabardine' to the moneylender's famous speech, 'If you prick us, do we not bleed?': Dr Aviva Dautch responds to The Merchant of Venice as a Jewish reader.

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How were the Jews regarded in 16th-century England?

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How were the Jews regarded in 16th-century England?

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An article from the British Library: Jews in 16th-century England practised their religion secretly, and many of those raised in the Jewish faith either converted to Christianity or pretended to have done so. James Shapiro considers Elizabethan prejudices and paranoia about Jews, putting Shakespeare's Shylock in context.

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5 Ways To Tackle English Literature's Lack of Diversity

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5 Ways To Tackle English Literature's Lack of Diversity

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An article from TES

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The coronavirus pandemic has - rather than being the "great leveller" it was first hailed to be - highlighted in our society.

The death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots and have underlined the extent of racial oppression and disparity that prevails in the developed world.

For one, we can no longer sit back in the UK thinking that we are doing enough to combat discrimination.

I'm currently writing a Year 9 non-fiction unit to prepare students for GCSE English language and attempting to look for other voices than those of white male writers, which are not always easy to source due to historic bias - especially finding diverse writers to fulfil the 19th-ce ntury/early 20th-century requirement.

, find and engage with diverse voices outside your normal sphere, and thus model curiosity over prejudice.

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5 ways to tackle English Literature's lack of diversity

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The coronavirus pandemic has - rather than being the "great leveller" it was first hailed to be - highlighted in our society. The death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots and have underlined the extent of racial oppression and disparity that prevails in the developed world.

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An article from the British Library: Carol Atherton explores the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre through ideas of the ‘Other’, Charlotte Brontë’s narrative doubling and 19th-century attitudes towards madness and ethnicity.

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The figure of Bertha Mason

Carol Atherton explores the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre through ideas of the 'Other', Charlotte Brontë's narrative doubling and 19th-century attitudes towards madness and ethnicity.

Professor John Bowen explores the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, revealing the depths of her character and the context in which Charlotte Brontë created her. Filmed at the Brontë Parsonage, Haworth.

Read transcript of this video

Before we actually find out about Bertha Mason's existence, we are aware of her as an uneasy and even threatening presence. She is the source of the mysterious, mocking laugh that Jane hears as she stands on the battlements of Thornfield Hall, desperate for freedom from domestic routine: she is responsible for setting fire to Mr Rochester's bed, attacking Mr Mason, and tearing Jane's veil on the eve of her wedding. When we finally meet her, she is depicted in language that degrades and dehumanises: she is a 'clothed hyena', a 'figure', described using the neutral pronoun 'it' (ch. 26). Nevertheless, her plight - that of the 'madwoman in the attic', the character behind the title of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's famous study of 19th-century women writers - means that she is an object of sympathy as well as of fear.

Fair copy manuscript of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre

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Page from the original Jane Eyre manuscript featuring Bertha, 1847.

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The 'Other'

The narrative strategies used by Charlotte Brontë clearly designate Bertha as 'Other'. She is the obstacle that stands in the way of Jane's marriage to Rochester: she is surrounded by a web of Gothic imagery, described as a 'goblin' and a 'vampire' who threatens to 'drain [Mason's] heart' (ch. 20). Yet critics have seen this 'Othering' of Bertha as highly problematic. One particularly troubling aspect of Bertha is her psychological instability. Rochester clearly sees her as responsible for her own situation. He tells Jane that Bertha 'came of a mad family', with a mother who was 'a madwoman and a drunkard', but also that, 'like a dutiful child, she copied her parent in both points' - implying a degree of choice (ch. 26). Brontë's depiction of Bertha drew on contemporary descriptions of mental illness, such as those she found in the family's medical encyclopaedia: this volume of Modern Domestic Medicine, which survives, is well-thumbed and clearly frequently consulted.

Charlotte Brontë was familiar with James Cowle Prichard's theory of 'moral insanity' from A Treatise on Insanity, 1835.

Demonising illustration of Bertha Mason by Edmund Garrett, 1897.

Opinions of the times

It would be easy to see Rochester's lack of sympathy as representative of general attitudes towards mental illness in 19th-century society. However, as Mia Iwana has pointed out, these attitudes were changing. In a review of the 1844 report by the Metropolitan Commissioners on Lunacy, the Westminster Review reported that the 'disposition of the public' towards the mentally ill was becoming 'more enlightened and benevolent'. The review promoted the idea that patients in mental asylums ought to be given 'the benefit of a cheerful look-out on a pleasing prospect', and that those responsible for their care should 'avoid everything which might give to the patient the impression he is in prison'. Was Charlotte Brontë aware of these changes? If so, what might this suggest for our interpretation of Rochester?

Report on the treatment of mental illness in 1844

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This Westminster Review article from 1844 reveals the emergence of 'more enlightened' attitudes towards the mentally ill.

Ambiguous ethnicity

Another source of complexity is Bertha's ethnicity. She is a Creole, the daughter of a white European settler in the West Indies. Brontë leaves the precise nature of her ethnicity ambiguous, but references to her 'dark' hair and 'discoloured', 'black' face - plus the fact that her parents wanted her to marry Rochester because he was 'of a good race' - have led to speculation as to her racial identity, and the implications of this for Brontë's portrayal of her as unstable, dangerous and threatening (chs. 25; 27). It is interesting to note that even as a white Creole, Bertha would have been seen as 'alien'. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many European writers in the West Indies sought to associate Creoles with the native Caribbean population, as a way of distancing them from 'civilised' Europeans. This was particularly the case for Creole women, who were often depicted as self-willed, decadent and untrustworthy - the very essence of Rochester's description of Bertha.

Two 'bad animals'?

Perhaps the most problematic aspect of Bertha, however, is the fact that the other 'bad animal' in Jane Eyre is, of course, Jane herself. Bertha, in many ways Jane's polar opposite, has been described by Gilbert and Gubar as Jane's 'truest and darkest double'. Her early appearances occur when Jane is troubled, tense or desperate for freedom (it is no coincidence that the wedding-veil that Bertha tears is one that Jane feels she has been 'cheated' into accepting). Her confinement in the attic mirrors Jane's imprisonment in the Red Room at Gateshead, a punishment for her anger and lack of conformity. This doubling - a common Gothic motif - makes Bertha's role within the novel much more complex, and means that any analysis of her character must take account of her relationship with Jane.

Bertha's legacy

It is striking that Bertha is never allowed to speak for herself. In her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys redresses the balance, writing a prequel to Jane Eyre that focuses on Bertha's story and features Bertha - here renamed Antoinette Cosway - as one of its narrators. In Rhys's novel, Rochester's decision to call Antoinette 'Bertha' is just one of the acts of violence, both actual and metaphorical, that the character suffers. She is both the victim of oppression and a woman who (like Jane) has needs, dreams and desires: she is rejected by Rochester and treated as a 'white cockroach' by her family's black servants. Rhys's complex, fascinating novel, which explores themes of fragmentation and instability, is evidence of the fact that whatever Rochester might have wanted, Bertha simply will not stay hidden: nearly 200 years after her creation, she continues to disturb and intrigue.

Carol Atherton is Head of English at Spalding Grammar School in Lincolnshire. She has worked with a number of organisations, including NATE, the British Library, the Poetry Archive and the British Council, and was made a Fellow of the English Association in 2009. A specialist in literary theory and pedagogy, she has written widely on the teaching of English Literature, curricular reform and the nature of disciplinary knowledge.

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The figure of Bertha Mason | The British Library

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By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies. For more details of these cookies and how to disable them, see our cookie policy. The figure of Bertha Mason Carol Atherton explores the character of Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre through ideas of the 'Other', Charlotte Brontë's narrative doubling and 19th-century attitudes towards madness and ethnicity.

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Teaching Resource: The Figure of Bertha Mason

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Teaching Resource: The Figure of Bertha Mason

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Resource from The British Library

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Lesson rationale

This activity will encourage students to explore the character of Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester's first wife, through the lens of medical history. They will compare Charlotte Brontë's presentation of the character with the perspectives offered by contemporary medical textbooks and reports; considering the extent to which Rochester's treatment of Bertha reflects 19th-century developments in the treatment of the mentally ill. Students will go on to explore connections between Rochester's treatment of Bertha and the story of Bluebeard.
Key questions in this lesson:

How does Brontë depict Bertha Mason?

In what ways does Brontë's presentation of Bertha reflect 19th-century thinking on the causes, symptoms and treatment of mental illness?

How is our interpretation of Mr Rochester influenced by the insights we gain from learning about 19th-century attitudes to mental illness?

What does a reading of the Bluebeard story contribute to our interpretation of Mr Rochester?

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Bronte's Jane Eyre: The Figure of Bertha Mason

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This activity will encourage students to explore the character of Bertha Mason, Mr Rochester's first wife, through the lens of medical history. They will compare Charlotte Brontë's presentation of the character with the perspectives offered by contemporary medical textbooks and reports; considering the extent to which Rochester's treatment of Bertha reflects 19th-century developments in the treatment of the mentally ill.

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Racism, Misogyny and Motiveless Malignity in Othello

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Racism, Misogyny and Motiveless Malignity in Othello

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An article from The British Library: The causes of the tragedy of Othello are more complex and disturbing than they might at first appear, Kiernan Ryan contends.

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Racism, misogyny and 'motiveless malignity' in Othello

The causes of the tragedy of Othello are more complex and disturbing than they might at first appear, Kiernan Ryan contends.

A play for today

Anyone who doubts that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies were written from an imaginative standpoint far ahead of his time need only think of . The basic idea of the play is so well known that it's easy to forget the startling boldness of Shakespeare's decision to take Cinthio's brief tale of a doomed mixed-race marriage and transform it into a heart-breaking tragedy. In a country where few people outside London would ever have seen a black person, and centuries before the problems that fuel the tragedy became as ubiquitous and pressing as they are today, Shakespeare produced in Othello a searing critique of racial and sexual injustice, which is more powerful now in the 21st century than it could ever have been at the dawn of the 17th.

Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi, an Italian source for Othello and Measure for Measure

Shakespeare took the idea for Othello from a tale of doomed mixed-race marriage in Cinthio's De Gli Hecatommithi, 1565.

The tragic sequence of events is triggered by the elopement of Othello and Desdemona. The fact that they are obliged to elope makes the illicit nature of their relationship in the eyes of Venice immediately clear. But in their eyes and in Shakespeare's there's nothing illicit about their love, to which they regard themselves, and the play regards them, as fully entitled. Undeterred by the paternal wrath and widespread disapproval they are bound to incur, Othello and Desdemona act as if a black man from Africa and an upper-class white woman from Venice have every right to fall in love, marry and be left to live happily together. They act, in other words, as if they were already free citizens of a truly civilized future, instead of prisoners of a time when racial prejudice and sexual inequality are so ingrained that even their heroic hearts are tainted by them.

Draft proclamation on the expulsion of 'Negroes and Blackamoors', 1601

A draft proclamation of 1601 asked for the deportation of black people from England.

Usage terms Reproduced courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House

'Haply, for I am black'

As a result, Othello and Desdemona find unleashed upon them, in the shape of Iago, the venomous rage of a society whose foundations are rocked by the mere fact of their marriage. 'For if such actions may have passage free,' Brabantio warns the Venetian Senate, 'Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be' (1.2.98-9). Brabantio perceives at once that there's much more at stake in this interracial union than the violation of his honour as Desdemona's father. If we turn a blind eye to this outrage, Brabantio argues in effect, we're treating our inferiors as our equals, which means there's nothing to stop the subhuman underclass or the heathen outcasts of society taking our place and having power over us. Shakespeare makes it plain from the start that it's not just Iago the newly-weds are up against, but the status quo and a view of the world which Iago merely embodies in its most lethal form.

For it's not just Iago whose speech is infected with contempt for 'the Moor' (as he repeatedly refers to Othello), though the intensity of his loathing is unrivalled. 'Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe' (1.1.88-9), he cries to Brabantio in the opening scene. Roderigo derides Othello too as 'the thick-lips' (1.1.66), while Brabantio, in his public confrontation with Othello, finds it inconceivable that his daughter should desire to 'Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou' (1.2.70-1) without being drugged or bewitched. In a vain attempt to placate Brabantio, the Duke assures him that 'If virtue no delighted beauty lack, / Your son-in-law is far more fair than black' (1.3.289-90). So endemic to Venetian culture are such attitudes that Othello and Desdemona can't help absorbing them too: 'I saw Othello's visage in his mind' (1.3.252), Desdemona declares to the Senate, oblivious to the unintended insult that brave declaration implies. When Othello's faith in Desdemona's love for him begins to crumble, his complexion is the first thing he blames: 'Haply, for I am black, / And have not those soft parts of conversation / That chamberers have' (3.3.263-5). And he instinctively employs his own blackness as a metaphor for his wife's alleged depravity: 'Her name, that was as fresh / As Dian's visage, is now begrim'd and black / As mine own face' (3.3.386-8)

Painting of Ira Aldridge as Othello

This painting, A Moor by James Northcote (1826), shows Ira Alridge as Othello. He was 17 when he first played the role in 1825 - the first black actor to do so in Britain.

Usage terms © Bridgeman Art Library / Manchester Art Gallery

'the green-eyed monster'

The grounds of the tragedy can't be fully explained, however, by pointing to the deep-seated racism that poisons the Venetian view of Othello and even Othello's view of himself. The colour of Othello's skin is obviously a crucial factor in his downfall, because his visibly alien racial identity makes him and his bride far more vulnerable to the machinations of Iago than if he were an equally accomplished and indispensable white man. Their defiance of the Venetian taboo against such marriages locks them from the outset into a defensive posture, which predisposes Othello to the insecurity and doubt that grip him so swiftly at Iago's prompting. But Othello's vulnerability as a black outsider, who unconsciously shares the white perception of his blackness, is inseparable from his thraldom to a patriarchal concept of masculinity and a misogynistic concept of marriage that are just as endemic as racism in Venetian culture, and that play an equally crucial role in sealing both Desdemona's fate and his own.

Niccholes's Discourse of Marriage and Wiving

Niccholes' Discourse of Marriage and Wiving (1620) gives man-to-man advice about how to deal with women. It warns against putting your trust in friends or giving into 'idle jelousie'.

Thus sexual jealousy is shown to be the rule in Venice rather than an exceptional emotional disorder to which Othello is especially prone to succumb. Roderigo's infatuation with Desdemona makes him intensely jealous of both Othello and Cassio. The same emotion flares up in Bianca, when Cassio gives her Desdemona's handkerchief: 'You are jealous now', says Cassio, 'That this is from some mistress, some remembrance' (3.4.185-6). Above all, Iago himself betrays the same toxic disposition, when he fastens automatically on sexual jealousy as a pretext for provoking it in Othello and revenging himself on Cassio: 'I do suspect the lusty Moor / Hath leap'd into my seat; the thought whereof / Doth (like a poisonous mineral), gnaw my inwards'; 'I fear Cassio with my night-cap too' (2.1.295-7, 307). Although none of them is as consumed by jealousy as Othello, all these characters fall prey like him to 'the green-eyed monster' (3.3.166) that stalks any society in which the sexual desire of one human being is regarded as the property of another.

As the handkerchief, the 'ocular proof' (3.3.360) of infidelity, passes from Othello to Desdemona to Emilia to Iago to Cassio to the courtesan Bianca, it links the three couples together to highlight what they have in common. It draws an implicit parallel between the despised kept woman Bianca and the respectable wives Desdemona and Emilia, revealing the true nature of the married woman's role by erasing the distinction between them. And it underscores the fact that Othello's proprietorial relationship with Desdemona as husband and wife is typical - that it's extraordinary only in the fatal consequences it leads to in this particular case, not in its essential character.

Friendship album of Moyses Walens

A blindfolded man is led into a bedroom by a courtesan, from Moyses Walen's friendship album, 1605-15.

Italian handkerchief

Fine linen Italian handkerchief, c. 1600. In this period, handkerchiefs were exchanged as lovers' gifts and displayed as fashion accessories.

Usage terms © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Held by© Victoria and Albert Museum

Iago: 'What you know, you know'

Othello's dread of cuckoldry and the misogyny that feeds it are perfectly in tune with the patriarchal culture of a city where his colour makes him feel like an alien, but where he's entirely at home as a man. The reason why Iago is so quickly and spectacularly successful in persuading Othello to swallow the vile tale he spins round Desdemona is that Othello is primed to believe it by the warped view of women and female sexuality that he shares not only with Iago but with other men. When Iago reminds Othello that Desdemona 'did deceive her father, marrying you' (3.3.206) as proof of her capacity to hoodwink her husband too, he's merely echoing the parting words with which Brabantio sought to sow the same seeds of suspicion in Othello's mind in Act 1: 'Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see; / She has deceived her father, and may thee' (1.3.292-3).

Iago differs from his fellow Venetians only in the ferocity with which he espouses their values and the deadly extremes to which he resorts to vindicate them. His devious stratagem works so well because it works by reflecting his victims' own beliefs, by confirming their suspicions and fulfilling their expectations. When Emilia begs him to deny that he duped Othello into murdering Desdemona, Iago replies: 'I told him what I thought, and told no more / Than what he found himself was apt and true' (5.2.176-7). And when Othello asks Cassio to 'demand that demi-devil / Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body', Iago brusquely interjects: 'Demand me nothing; what you know, you know' (5.2.301-3). In other words: 'Don't ask me why, ask yourselves, because you know as well as I do'.

Painting of 'Santiago the Moor-slayer'

15th-century Spanish painting of 'Santiago the Moor-slayer', mounted triumphantly on a white horse and trampling the heads of men beneath him.

Usage terms Altarpiece with St. James in the central panel. Chapel of the Alcazar of Segovia. Spain. / Photo © Tarker / Bridgeman Images

Much has been made of Iago's ostensibly 'motiveless malignity' ever since Coleridge coined his famous phrase 200 years ago. But there's surely no great mystery about what makes this villain tick. As Iago sees it, a black African has had the gall to court and marry a white Venetian beauty as if he were the equal of a man of her class and colour. And she has had the gall to prefer 'a lascivious Moor' (1.1.126) to her own kind and defiantly proclaim her love for this 'erring barbarian' (1.3.355-6) in public. As if being passed over for promotion by the Moor in favour of Cassio - in contempt of loyal service and the right of precedence, of 'old gradation' (1.1.37) - wasn't outrageous and insulting enough! Othello and Desdemona have made a mockery of the principles of social, sexual and racial hierarchy on which Iago's very identity and sense of self-worth depend. So he hatches a plot and tells a tale designed to put them in their place: to turn 'The divine Desdemona' (2.1.73) into the 'subtle whore' (4.2.21) he thinks every woman really is, and to turn the noble, eloquent Othello into a deranged wife-killer, who proves the racist's worst fears fully justified.

The really disturbing thing about Iago is not that he's an unfathomable psychopath, but that he's pathologically normal and theatrically irresistible. Although he initiates and engineers its catastrophe, Iago is not the fundamental or sole cause of the tragedy, which could plainly have erupted in a similar form for the same reasons without his intervention. To grasp that fact is to pluck out the heart of Iago's mystery, which is dispelled by the realisation that his malignity is not a monstrous deviation from the Venetian norm but its mirror image. The patriarchal, racist universe of Othello confronts in 'damned Iago', the 'inhuman dog' (5.1.62), not its demonic antithesis but its grotesque epitome.

Shakespeare has no intention of letting the audience off the hook either. Iago talks directly to us throughout the play and takes us into his confidence, assuming that we share his views, understand his reasoning and admire his ingenuity. Othello, in marked contrast, is kept at a distance from us by Shakespeare, who denies his tragic protagonist the profound rapport with the audience that Hamlet and Macbeth forge through their soliloquies. Iago exploits his devilish charisma and seductive intimacy with the audience to make us complicit with him, to implicate us in his hatred and entrapment of Othello, whether we like it or not. So when he retorts unfazed in his final speech 'Demand me nothing; what you know, you know', refusing point blank to explain his malevolence, we can be sure every word of that barbed line is addressed, disconcertingly, to us too.

Kiernan Ryan is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, an Emeritus Fellow of Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of Shakespeare (3rd edition, 2002), Shakespeare's Comedies (2009), Shakespeare's Universality: Here's Fine Revolution (2015) and the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of King Lear (2015). His next book, Shakespearean Tragedy, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

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racism misogny and motivelss malignity in othello

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Racism, misogyny and 'motiveless malignity' in Othello | The British Library

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The causes of the tragedy of Othello are more complex and disturbing than they might at first appear, Kiernan Ryan contends.

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An article from The British Library. Includes a section on Imperialism in Jane Eyre

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By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies. For more details of these cookies and how to disable them, see our cookie policy.

Exoticism in 19th-century literature

Exoticism is concerned with the perception and description of difference, or 'otherness'. Examining One Thousand and One Nights, Jane Eyre and Heart of Darkness, Dr Julia Kuehn discusses the Victorian fascination with literary depictions of the exotic.

Today, we use the term casually - 'exotic fruits', 'exotic hobbies', 'exotic dancers' - but exoticism is actually a complex philosophical, historical and representational issue. Exoticism is concerned with the perception and description of difference, or 'otherness'. The first philosophical enquiry of 1908-18 remained unfinished: French writer Victor Segalen criticised his contemporaries' 'reductive' understanding of exoticism through geography (tropicalism) and history/ politics (colonialism), but he stopped short of offering a conceptual alternative.[1] It was only from the 1970s, in so-called postcolonial theory, that a fuller philosophy of exoticism would be offered.

One Thousand and One Nights

But Segalen was on to something. Exoticism in 19th-century literature was primarily understood through geographic remoteness and Europe's (scholarly and political) interests in foreign nations. In Britain, the stories of One Thousand and One Nights - or The Arabian Nights, as the work has also become known after the first anonymous English translation of 1706 - were an example of the concurrent scholarly preoccupation with 'Arabia', an intensifying political interest, and the simple desire for good stories. The tales with which Sheherazade entertains the Persian King Shahryar to postpone her pending execution - including those of Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Sinbad the Sailor - were incredibly popular with 19th-century readers. They offered fantastic characters (genies, mermaids, talking serpents and trees), curious tools (magic carpets and lamps) and a wide range of narrative genres (horror, crime, fantasy and even science fiction). For Romantic and Victorian writers like Coleridge, de Quincey, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Collins, Gaskell and Conan Doyle, The Arabian Nights thus stood for the wonderful against the mundane, and the imaginative against the prosaic and rational. On the other hand, the stories referenced real people and a real geography: many readers were thus led to believe that Sheherazade's tales actually gave a faithful account of the Orient.

Imperialism in Jane Eyre

Europe's colonial ambitions and activities were ongoing in the 19th century, and even Charlotte Brontë in the Yorkshire hinterland would have been 'extraordinarily well aware of th[is] fact', as postcolonial critic Edward Said has argued in Orientalism (1978), with 'definite views on race and imperialism' materialising in her novels.[2] In Jane Eyre (1848), the title heroine learns on her wedding day that, 15 years earlier, her intended husband Mr Rochester was married in Jamaica. His first wife's West Indies (sugar plantation) background is ideologically linked with notions of an exotic-erotic, primitive colonial otherness: Bertha Mason, who is of mixed European and Caribbean heritage, not only turns out to be 'gross, impure, depraved' and of a 'common mind' but her initial passion and sensuousness become, after her marriage, the irrational ravings of a 'lunatic' and 'demon' so that Rochester locks her away in the attic of his estate Thornfield (Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter XXVII). Another exotic background in the novel concerns Madeira, off the western coast of Africa, where Jane's uncle John Eyre works as an agent for a Jamaican wine manufacturer. When he dies, he leaves £20,000 to his niece, and there is the unspoken implication that this money was probably tangled up with the slave trade. Hence a colonial mind-set plays a central part in Jane Eyre, as does the missionary project. At the end of the novel, with Jane legally married to widower Rochester, and mother of his children, Jane's cousin, St John Rivers, is dying in India: his attempts to convert and 'civilise' the Indians left their mark on him. Faraway exotic colonies and activities provide for Jane, almost destroy Rochester, treat Bertha cruelly and kill St John - in a novel that is only on the surface extremely English.

Depictions of the exotic in Heart of Darkness

Jane Eyre's backdrop of exoticism is moved to the forefront of the action and of critical contemplation in Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness (1899). Here, Englishman Charles Marlow enters the services of a Belgian trading company in (although never explicitly identified) the Belgian Congo. Told to take a ship upriver and bring back the company's most successful but now sick trader, Mr Kurtz, as well as the ivory he has accumulated through 'trade' with the natives, Marlow learns of Kurtz's depraved practices, his tyrannical rule over the natives, and his relationship with an African woman. Kurtz's perhaps initial faith in the western 'civilising mission' in the 'dark' places of the world (see St. John Rivers) has degenerated into self-aggrandisement, greed, a hatred of the Africans and a diseased mind and soul. Marlow is shocked to see 'The horror! The horror!' of colonial reality, but unable to do anything about it (Conrad, 178). 19th-century readers struggled to pinpoint the novella's complex morals: Kurtz's descent into corrupt colonial practices is both despicable and tragic, the 'good guy' Marlow lies to Kurtz's fiancée about the extent of colonial evil, and author Conrad employs several layers of textual framing, perspectives and narrative (un)reliability to obscure his personal attitude towards colonialism. African writer Chinua Achebe was clearer when he, in a 1975 lecture, denounced Conrad and the novella. To him, Conrad's portrayal was dehumanising and degrading as the colonised Africans are seen as animalistic and devoid of speech, and are de-individualised and lumped together into one dark group in the story's jungle background.

Heart of Darkness, as first published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

View images from this item (3)

Heart of Darkness - the 1899 novella about a merchant boat in the Congo - is an exploration of colonialism and racism.

Achebe's intervention is an important reminder of how 19th-century exoticism worked on the whole, namely 'for a purpose, according to a tendency, in a specific historical, intellectual, and even economic setting' (Said, 273). Exotic representations rarely give the 'truth' or 'reality' about a foreign culture but are aesthetic, subjective utterances produced in a specific historical - in the 19th century, colonial - context.

Footnotes

[1] Victor Segalen, Essay on Exoticism: An aesthetics of diversity (first published 1978, written 1904-18).

[2] Edward Said, Orientalism (1978), p. 14.

Further Reading

Chinua Achebe, 'An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness' in Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Texts, Backgrounds and Source Criticism. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbaugh (New York: Norton, 1988): 251-62.

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre. Ed. Michael Mason (London: Penguin, 1996).

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. Ed. Cedric Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1978).

Victor, Segalen, Essay on Exoticism: An Aesthetics of Diversity. Trans. and ed. Yaël Rachel Schlick (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002).

Julia Kuehn is Associate Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century literature and culture. She has published widely on women's, popular and Empire fiction, as well as on travel writing.

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Exoticism in 19th-century literature | The British Library

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By using this site, you agree we can set and use cookies. For more details of these cookies and how to disable them, see our cookie policy. Exoticism in 19th-century literature Exoticism is concerned with the perception and description of difference, or 'otherness'.

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Diversity in Children's and YA Literature

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Diversity in Children's and YA Literature

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A padlet of articles, videos and reports to support CPD/learning about diversity in children's lit.

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Black literature timeline from the British Library

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Black literature timeline from the British Library

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This literary timeline explores the history of Black literature and writing in Britain through around 50 texts. It includes works by writers living and working in Britain, as well as titles first published here and authored by people who were born in former British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and Americas.

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The Lit in Colour report focuses on diversity within the English curriculum. There are sections on teaching canonical literature in a multicultural context, eg interrogating the colonial legacy in The SIgn of Four.

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Lit in Colour | Supporting inclusive reading in schools

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It's vital that the books we read in our formative years reflect the rich diversity of the society we live in. That's why we at Penguin have joined forces with The Runnymede Trust to explore how to support schools to make the teaching and learning of English literature more inclusive.

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Burnt Sugar- KS4 English Language Resource (unseen fiction text)

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Burnt Sugar- KS4 English Language Resource (unseen fiction text)

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The four activities in this resource pack give KS4 students opportunities to engage with an unseen fiction text. They include activities for comprehension and critical analysis, structuring ideas and looking for descriptive and narrative techniques, using evidence. A practice GCSE English Language exam paper is also included, using an extract from the book. The resource pack can be downloaded below.

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In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, took a hapless artist for a lover, rebelled against every social expectation of a good Indian woman - all with her young child in tow. Years on, she is an old woman with a fading memory, mixing up her maid's wages and leaving the gas on all night, and her grown-up daughter is faced with the task of caring for a mother who never seemed to care for her.

This is a poisoned love story. But not between lovers - between mother and daughter. Sharp as a blade and laced with caustic wit, Burnt Sugar gradually untangles the knot of memory and myth that bind two women together, revealing the truth that lies beneath. Burnt Sugar was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize in 2020.
'Beautifully written with startling imagery - emotionally wrenching and poignant in equal measure.' The Booker Prize Judges 2020

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In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her arranged marriage to join an ashram, took a hapless artist for a lover, rebelled against every social expectation of a good Indian woman - all with her young child in tow.

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Minty Alley- KS4 English Language Resource (unseen fiction text)

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Minty Alley- KS4 English Language Resource (unseen fiction text)

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Age: Key Stage 4

Subject: English Language

Fiction Text: Minty Alley

Author: C. L. R. James

The four activities in this Minty Alley resource pack give KS4 students opportunities to engage with an unseen fiction text. They include activities for comprehension and critical analysis, structuring ideas and looking for descriptive and narrative techniques, using evidence. A practice GCSE English Language exam paper is also included, using an extract from the book. The resource pack can be downloaded below.

The activities in the resource pack are designed to be used alongside the videos of author and curator of the Black Britain Writing Back series, Bernardine Evaristo, who reads aloud the extract and also talks briefly about the book to provide context.

The resources can be used as standalone activities, or used consecutively over the course of a lesson (approx. 1 hour 30 mins in total.)

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Age: Key Stage 4 Subject: English Language Fiction Text: Minty Alley Author: C. L. R. James The four activities in this Minty Alley resource pack give KS4 students opportunities to engage with an unseen fiction text. They include activities for comprehension and critical analysis, structuring ideas and looking for descriptive and narrative techniques, using evidence.

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Do we need to dismantle the literary canon? Jeffrey Boakye article

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Do we need to dismantle the literary canon? Jeffrey Boakye article

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The big idea: do we need to dismantle the literary canon?

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The temptation to chuck out the old is strong, but can only be part of the answer

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We're giving GCSE and A-level Drama students access to a more diverse range of texts by adding four new plays by writers from ethnic minority backgrounds to our courses.

From September, GCSE Drama students will be able to study The Great Wave by Francis Turnly and The Empress by Tanika Gupta - and A-level Drama students will be able to study The Convert by Danai Gurira and Three Sisters by Inua Ellams.

The Great Waveis based on the true story of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean regime in the 1970s and '80s and echoes the experience of Megumi Yokota, who was just 13 when she went missing.

In The Empress, Rani Das and Abdul Karim step ashore onto London's Tilbury Docks in 1887 after a long voyage from India. Rani has to battle a society who deems her a second class citizen, while Abdul forges an entanglement with the ageing Queen who finds herself enchanted by stories of an India she rules but has never seen.

The Convertis the story of a young Shona girl, who escapes an arranged marriage by converting to Christianity and becoming a servant and student to an African Evangelical.

Three Sisters is a new production of Chekhov's play, which sees the iconic characters relocated to 1960s Owerri, Nigeria where the country is poised on the brink of the Nigerian Civil War - a conflict which saw the eastern region of Nigeria temporarily declared as a new republic called Biafra.

In addition to the newly-added plays, the stage adaptation of Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses has featured in our Drama GCSE since it launched in 2016. The play reverses traditional racial stereotypes and shows racial prejudice from a different perspective.

To help drama teachers to introduce the new plays, we're also providing a range of resources including specimen questions, the key social and historical backgrounds of each of the plays and free training.

The free, online training events have been developed in collaboration with mezze eade and Romana Flello of the London Theatre Consortium (LTC), who will also be delivering the events. They will introduce the new texts, give teachers a practical toolkit for preparation and teaching, and cover topics such as stereotypes, accents and casting, as well as working with students' own identities. They will also look at how to teach the current texts with a focus on equality, diversity and inclusion.

The updates are part of a broader range of revisions and reviews we're carrying out across all of our qualifications to ensure they better reflect the diverse range of communities, teachers and students they serve.

Last year AQA added the study of the campaigning work on social and race issues by footballer Marcus Rashford to its Media Studies GCSE.

We've also established an equality, diversity and inclusion expert group to consider representation in the curriculum and assessment - and to ensure that decisions are informed by people who represent the full diversity of society.

Sandra Allan, AQA's Head of Curriculum for Creative Arts, said:

"We've chosen these plays because of the rich opportunities they'll offer our teachers and students to explore a diverse range of themes including race and social issues.

"However, we know that just adding new plays won't bring about greater diversity in the curriculum by itself, so we can't just stop there - we need to make it as easy as possible for schools to start teaching these plays.

"That's why we're providing lots of new support and resources and we really hope teachers and students will enjoy these new additions to our drama qualifications."

mezze eade and Romana Flello said:

"We welcome the addition of texts by writers of the global majority to the AQA GCSE and A level Drama specifications.

"We are delighted to work in partnership with AQA to support their commitment to ensure that all young people feel represented in the drama curriculum and can engage with cultures and ethnicities from within the UK and around the world.

"These changes are essential to ensure young people maintain a sense of dignity and belonging in their schools and communities and to inspire future audiences and the next generation of workforces in the creative industries.

These resources will be ready for first teaching in September 2022. You can find more details on our specification pages for GCSE Drama and A-level Drama and Theatre.

All the plays that currently feature in our drama qualifications will still be available to teach.
See all updates

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Four new plays bring greater diversity to AQA drama qualifications

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We're giving GCSE and A-level Drama students access to a more diverse range of texts by adding four new plays by writers from ethnic minority backgrounds to our courses.

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We're proud to be supporting the Lit in Colour initiative. Launched by Penguin Random House, alongside race equality think tank The Runnymede Trust, Lit in Colour aims to support schools in diversifying the teaching of English and to increase students' access to texts by writers of colour and from minority ethnic backgrounds. Read more about the initiative.

Our established play portfolio and playwright relationships, under our Methuen Drama imprint supports and expands the Lit in Colour initiative by introducing new plays that create a representative and inclusive drama experience within the English curriculum.

To support us in this initiative we are pleased to welcome mezze eade, Pooja Ghai and Hannah Khalil as our Advisory Board panel to help guide and shape our play text offering and resources for teachers and students.
Read more about Bloomsbury's support for the campaign.
Our participation in Lit in Colour so far
We are also supporting Pearson's Lit in Colour Pioneers programme, helping schools to diversify their GCSE and A Level English Literature curriculum, with donated copies of the chosen set texts which include The Empress by Tanika Gupta, Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah, adapted by Lemn Sissay, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and Home Fire by Kamile Shamsie.

We also publish the set text play editions chosen as part of the Pearson Edexcel GCSE Drama Component 3 options to increase representation across their performance play texts. These include Tanika Gupta's of A Doll's House, Roy William's adaptation of Antigone, The Free9 by In-Sook Chappell and Gone Too Far! by Bola Agbaje.

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We're proud to be supporting the Lit in Colour initiative. Launched by Penguin Random House, alongside race equality think tank The Runnymede Trust, Lit in Colour aims to support schools in diversifying the teaching of English and to increase students' access to texts by writers of colour and from minority ethnic backgrounds.

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Race in the English Classroom- NATE Report

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Race in the English Classroom- NATE Report

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Shakespeare, Race and Performance: a lecture from Professor Farah Karim-Cooper

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Shakespeare, Race and Performance: a lecture from Professor Farah Karim-Cooper

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Interesting lecture to watch as part of CPD

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Monster She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction (Non-Fiction Book)

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Monster She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction (Non-Fiction Book)

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A fantastic non-fiction book about women writing horror and speculative fiction: includes Octavia Butler, Helen Oyeyemi

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Lisa Kroeger (Author), Melanie Anderson (Author)

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Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction

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Buy Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction Illustrated by Lisa Kroeger, Melanie Anderson (ISBN: 9781683691389) from Amazon’s Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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A really great set of essays on Shakespeare's plays exploring attitudes of the time and how we read the plays now. The Othello essay looks at the spaces and gaps in the text that allow for different interpretations and focuses this on the concept of race.

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This Is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright (Pelican Books)

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Buy This Is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright (Pelican Books) by Smith, Emma (ISBN: 9780241361634) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Lit Legacies: SOW for Princess and The Hustler by Chinonyerem Odimba

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Lit Legacies: SOW for Princess and The Hustler by Chinonyerem Odimba

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Lit Legacies have created a SOW and resources for Princess and The Hustler by Chinonyerem Odimba (AQA GCSE syllabus).

https://twitter.com/litlegacies2023

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Teaching 'Princess & The Hustler' by Chinonyerem Odimba