Editing Othello (section)

===Racism===
{{quote box
| width = 20em
| salign = right
| quote = "I think this play is racist, and I think it is not."
| source = Scholar Virginia Vaughan<ref>Virginia Mason Vaughan's "Othello: A Contextual History" in {{harvnb|Neill|2008|pp=122-123}}. The quotation is a parody of ''Othello'' 3.3.387-388.</ref>}}

In Shakespeare's main source, [[Giovanni Battista Giraldi|Cinthio]]'s ''Gli Hecatommithi'', the character Disdemona (the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona) says "I know not what to say of the Moor; he used to be all love towards me; but within these few days he has become another man; and much I fear that I shall prove a warning to young girls not to marry against the wishes of their parents, and that the Italian ladies may learn from me not to wed a man whose nature and habitude of life estrange from us".<ref>Ferraro, Bruno (translator) ''Gli Hecatommithi - Third Decade, Seventh Novella'' in {{harvnb|Neill|2008|p=434-444|location=Appendix C}}</ref>{{sfn|Honigmann|1997|p=60}}

Similar wording was used in one of the earliest, and most negative, critiques of the play: [[Thomas Rymer]] writing in his 1693 ''A Short View of Tragedy'' suggested that one of the play's morals was "a caution to all Maidens of Quality how, without their Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors."<!-- sic, as regards capitalisation throughout --><ref>Honingmann, 1997, p.29, citing [[Thomas Rymer]]'s ''A Short View of Tragedy''.</ref>{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=3}} Rymer, however, dryly observed that another such moral might be "a warning to all good Wives, that they look well to their Linnen" – as such his comments should be read within the context of his overarching criticism of the play, as unrealistic and lacking in obvious moral conclusions.

{{Quote box
 |quote     = "For this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than the features of men, with a singularity rather to be admired than imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black."
 |source    = ''Othello'' in ''[[Tales from Shakespeare]]'' (1807) by [[Charles Lamb|Charles]] and [[Mary Lamb]]<ref>Lamb, Charles and Lamb, Mary "Tales from Shakespeare", 1807, Penguin Popular Classics edition, 1995, p.281.</ref>
 |align     = left
 |width     = 20em
 |salign    = right
}}

In the nineteenth century, such well-known writers as [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] and [[Charles Lamb]] questioned whether the play could even be called a "true tragedy" when it dramatized the inviolable taboo of a white woman in a relationship with a black man.<ref>Singh, 2003, p.494.</ref> Coleridge, writing in 1818, argued that Othello could not have been conceived as black:
<blockquote>"Can we imagine [Shakespeare] so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous negro plead royal birth—at a time, too, when negroes were not known except as slaves? ... and most surely as an English audience was disposed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a disproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to have in the least contemplated."<ref>Samuel Taylor Coleridge's ''Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets'' quoted in {{harvnb|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=29-31}}</ref></blockquote>

These sentiments were instrumental in ushering in the so-called "bronze age of Othello" (discussed further under "19th century" below).{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=32}}

Martin Orkin's 1987 essay ''Othello and the "Plain Face" of Racism'' acknowledges the racist sentiments in the play; but vindicates Shakespeare who confines these views to discredited characters such as Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio.{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=120}} He concludes that "in its fine scrutiny of the mechanisms underlying Iago's use of racism, and in its rejection of human pigmentation as a means of identifying human worth, the play, as it always has done, continues to oppose racism."<ref>Martin Orkin's ''"Othello and the "Plain Face" of Racism"'' in {{harvnb|Neill|2008|p=120}}</ref>

The critical approach to racial issues in the play changed direction with the publication in 1996 by Howard University Press of ''Othello: New Essays by Black Writers'' edited by Mythili Kaul, which made clear that black readers and audience members may be experiencing a different play from white ones.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=62-63}} Questions <!-- like those which end the Jealousy section above and cited to Kenneth Muir -->about whether ''Othello'' is among Shakespeare's greatest plays are rendered irrelevant in the context of discussions about how the play illuminates the racial thinking of Shakespeare's time, and of the present day.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=63}}

The Nigerian poet [[Ben Okri]] in his 1997 ''A Way of Being Free'' included several "meditations" on ''Othello'', arguing that because "it is possible that Othello actually is a blackened white man" he is not a fully formed character with a psychology but a  "white myth or stereotype of black masculinity".{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=63}} Even with that knowledge, Okri writes, "The black person's response to ''Othello'' is more secret, and much more anguished, than can be imagined. It makes you unbearably lonely to know that you can empathise with [white people], but they will rarely empathise with you. It hurts to watch ''Othello''."<ref>[[Ben Okri]]'s ''A Way of Being Free'' quoted in {{harvnb|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=63}}</ref>

From the 1980s, Othello became a role that only black actors performed.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=65}} However, in 1998 black actor [[Hugh Quarshie]] questioned whether the central role in ''Othello'' should be played by a black actor, saying:

{{Blockquote|"If a black actor plays a role written for a white actor does he not risk making racial stereotypes seem legitimate and even true ... does he not encourage the white way, or rather the wrong way, of looking at black men, namely that [they] are over-emotional, excitable and unstable."<!-- No question mark in source, word in square brackets in source --><ref>[[Hugh Quarshie]]'s lecture ''Hesitations on Othello'' in {{harvnb|Neill|2008|p=69-70}}</ref>{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=65-66;87-89}}}}

Scholar Virginia Vaughan made a related point in 2005:

{{Blockquote|"The danger of a black actor in the title role is that with the loss of the reminders that this is ''not'' real but an impersonation, the enactment of Othello's jealous rage and murder of his wife can strike audiences as the embodiment of their own stereotypes of black pathology rather than an actorly performance"<ref>Mowat and Werstine, 2017, p.335, citing Virginia Vaughan's 2005 "Performing Blackness on English Stages 1500-1800".</ref>}}

[[File:William Mulready - Othello - Walters 372629.jpg|left|thumb|Artist [[William Mulready]] portrays American actor [[Ira Aldridge]] as Othello.<ref>{{cite web |publisher= [[Walters Art Museum]]
 |url= http://art.thewalters.org/detail/9022
 |title= Othello}}</ref> The Walters Art Museum.]]