Editing Othello (section)

==Performance history==
[[File:Thomas Keene in Othello 1884 Poster.JPG|thumb|Poster for an 1884 American production starring [[Thomas W. Keene]]]]

=== Shakespeare's day to the Interregnum ===
''Othello'' was written for and performed by the [[King's Men (playing company)|King's Men]], the playing company to which [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] belonged, and the 1622 Quarto notes on its title page that the play was "Diuerse times acted at [[Globe Theatre|the Globe]], and at [[Blackfriars Theatre#Second theatre|Black-Friers]], by his Maiesties seruants".{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=67}} These two theatres had very different features—the former a large outdoor theatre accommodating an audience of 3,000; the latter a private indoor theatre that sat around 700, paying higher prices—and the style of playing would have adapted to these different conditions.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=67}} The play was performed at [[Royal court|Court]] by the King's Men on 1 November 1604, and again in 1612-13 as part of the celebrations for the [[Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate]].{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=67}}

The title role was originally played by [[Richard Burbage]], whose eulogies reveal that he was admired in the role.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=28}}<ref>Taylor, Gary "Shakespeare Plays on Renaissance Stages" in Wells, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage", Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.&nbsp;1–20 at p.&nbsp;4.</ref> Moorish characters were conventionally played in turbans, with long white gowns and red trousers, with the actor's face darkened with lampblack or coal.<ref>Gurr, Andrew and Ichikawa, Mariko "Oxford Shakespeare Topics: Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres" Oxford University Press, 2000, p.&nbsp;55.</ref> The original Iago was likely [[John Lowin]].<ref>Taylor, 2002, p.&nbsp;5.</ref>{{sfn|Bate|Rasmussen|2009|p=149}}

=== Restoration and 18th century ===

All theatres were closed down by the [[Puritan]] government on 6 September 1642. Upon the [[English Restoration|restoration]] of the monarchy in 1660, two [[patent theatre|patent companies]] (the [[King's Company]] and the [[Duke's Company]]) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them: ''Othello'' being allocated to the King's Company's repertoire.<ref>Marsden, Jean I "Improving Shakespeare: from the Restoration to Garrick" in Wells, Stanley and Siddons, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage", Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.&nbsp;21–36, at p.&nbsp;21.</ref> These patents stated that "all the women's parts to be acted in either of the said two companies for the time to come may be performed by women". The first professional acting appearance by a woman on the English stage was that of Desdemona in ''Othello'' on 8 December 1660, although history does not record who took the role.<ref>Brown, John Russell "The Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre", Oxford University Press, 1995, pp.&nbsp;206–207.</ref><ref>Gay, Penny "Women and Shakespearean Performance" in Wells, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage" Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.&nbsp;155–173, at p.&nbsp;157.</ref> [[Margaret Hughes]] is the first woman known to have played Desdemona.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=68}}

In Restoration theatres, it was common for Shakespeare's plays to be adapted or rewritten.<ref>Marsden, p.&nbsp;21. For examples see Wikipedia's articles on [[The Tempest#Restoration and 18th century|The Tempest]], [[Macbeth#Restoration and eighteenth century|Macbeth]] and [[King Lear#17th century|King Lear]].</ref> ''Othello'' was not adapted in this way, although it has often been cut to conform to current ideas of decorum or refinement.{{sfn|Honigmann|1997|p=90}} These cuts were not limited to removing violent, religious or sexual content, but extended on different occasions to removing references to eavesdropping, to Othello's fit, to Othello's tears, to the first 200 lines of the fourth act, or to the entire role of Bianca.{{sfn|Honigmann|1997|pp=90-92}}

Among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century actors praised for expressing the nobility of the Moor—and fully exploring the degrading passions which lead to the brutal murder he commits—were [[Thomas Betterton]] and [[Spranger Barry]].{{sfn|Muir|McAlindon|2015|pp=lxvi-lxvii}} A review of the latter by John Bernard expressed how Barry's Othello "looked a few seconds in Desdemona's face, as if to read her feelings and disprove his suspicions; then, turning away, as the adverse conviction gathered in his heart, he spoke falteringly, and gushed into tears."<ref>John Bernard in ''The Theatrical Review'' (1772) cited by McAlindon, 2005, p.lxvii.</ref>

The first professional performances of the play in North America are likely to have been those of the [[Old American Company|Hallam Company]]: Robert Upton ([[William Hallam (theatre manager)|William Hallam]]'s advance man) performed ''Othello'' at a makeshift theatre in New York on 26 December 1751; and religious objections to theatre led the Hallam Company to perform ''Othello'' as a series of "moral dialogues" at Rhode Island in 1761.<ref>Morrison, Michael A. "Shakespeare in North America" in Wells, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage", Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.&nbsp;230–258, at pp.&nbsp;231-232.</ref>

Although not performed in Portugal until the nineteenth century, the play holds of the distinction of being the first of Shakespeare's works to have reached a Portuguese-speaking country, possibly at the request of a Portuguese reader, in 1765.<ref>Stone, John (March 2024). "''Othello'' Goes to Lisbon, 1765". ''Notes and Queries''. https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjae022</ref>

=== 19th century ===

Paul Robeson's iconic performance (see 20th Century, below) was not the first professional performance of the title role by a black actor: the first known is [[James Hewlett (actor)|James Hewlett]] at the [[African Grove|African Grove Theatre]], New York, in 1822.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=77-78}} And Hewlett's protégé [[Ira Aldridge]] (billed as "The African [[Quintus Roscius Gallus|Roscius]]") played many Shakespearean roles across Europe for forty years, including Othello at the [[Royalty Theatre]], London, in 1825.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=78-79}}

There are stories of extravagant audience reactions to the play. One of the most extreme is related by French novelist [[Stendhal]] who reports that at the [[Holliday Street Theater|Baltimore Theatre]] in 1822 a soldier interrupted the performance just before Desdemona's murder, shouting "It will never be said that in my presence a confounded Negro has killed a white woman!" The soldier fired his gun, breaking the arm of the actor playing Othello.{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=8}}

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Othello was regarded as the most demanding of Shakespeare's roles: it is considered a part of theatre legend that [[Edmund Kean]] collapsed while playing the role, and died two months after.<ref>Gillies, John "Stanislavski, ''Othello'', and the Motives of Eloquence" in Hodgson, Barbara and Worthen, W. B. (eds.) "A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance", Blackwell Publishing Limited 2008, pp.&nbsp;267–284, at p.&nbsp;267.</ref> [[Leigh Hunt]] saw Kean's Othello in 1819, describing his performance in ''The Examiner'' as "the masterpiece of the living stage".<ref>Welles, 2000, pp.&nbsp;55–57.</ref> Before Kean, the leading exponent of the role had been [[John Philip Kemble]] who played a "neoclassical hero". In contrast, Kean presented Othello as a man of romantic temperament, and uncontrollable passion.<ref>Moody, Jane "Romantic Shakespeare" in Welles, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage", Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.&nbsp;37–57, at p.&nbsp;53.</ref> It was also Kean who initiated the so-called "Bronze Age of Othello" by insisting that "it was a gross error to make Othello either a negro or a black"<ref>Kean's biographer F. W. Hawkins in {{harvnb|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=32}}</ref> and thereby commencing a stage tradition of using lighter makeup rather than blackface.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=31-32;71-72}} An advantage of this change was that the actor's facial expressions could be more clearly seen.{{sfn|Bate|Rasmussen|2009|p=152}}

Critics have naturally focused on the two central male roles. But Emilia becomes a powerful role in the final act. Indeed [[Charlotte Cushman]]'s Emilia was said to upstage [[Edwin Forrest]]'s Othello in 1845.{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=102}} And when [[Fanny Kemble]] played Desdemona in 1848 she changed the performance tradition. Previously, Desdemonas had (in her words) "always appeared to me to acquiesce with wonderful equanimity in their assassination" but Kemble, a passionate [[Feminism|feminist]] and [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]], decided "I shall make a desperate fight for it, for I feel horribly at the idea of being murdered in my bed."<ref>[[Fanny Kemble]]'s 1882 ''Records of Later Life'' in {{harvnb|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=93}}</ref>

In 1848, ''Othello'' was produced by Barry Lewis at the [[Sans Souci Theatre (Calcutta)|Sans Souci Theatre]] in Calcutta. The casting of the white "Mrs. Anderson" opposite the dark-skinned Indian Baishnav Charan Auddy led to controversy, to polarized reviews, and to a fiasco on the opening night when half of the cast, military men, were prohibited from leaving barracks by order of the Brigadier of [[Dum Dum]].<ref>Gillies, Minami, Li and Trivedi, 2002, pp.273-274.</ref>

For [[Tommaso Salvini]] and [[Edwin Booth]] the role of Othello was a career-length project.<ref>Gillies, p.&nbsp;267.</ref> Salvini always played the role in Italian, even when acting alongside a company performing in English.<ref>Wells, Stanley (ed.) "Oxford Shakespeare Topics: Shakespeare in the Theatre{{snd}} An Anthology of Criticism", Oxford University Press, 2000, pp.&nbsp;112–113.</ref> His conception of the role was of a barbarian with savage and passionate instincts concealed by a thick veneer of civilisation.<ref>Joseph Knight's 1875 "Theatrical Notes" cited in Welles, 2000, p.&nbsp;113.</ref> [[Konstantin Stanislavski]] admired, and was greatly influenced by, Salvini's Othello, which he saw in 1882. In ''[[My Life in Art]]'', Stanislavski recalls Salvini's scene before the Senate, saying that the actor "grasped all of us in his palm, and held us there as if we were ants or flies".<ref>Gillies, 2008, pp.&nbsp;269–270 (in turn citing the 1982 reprint of ''[[My Life in Art]]'', p.&nbsp;266).</ref> Booth, in complete contrast, played Othello as a restrained gentleman. When [[Ellen Terry]] played Desdemona she commented on how much Booth's style helped her: "It is difficult to preserve the simple, heroic blindness of Desdemona to the fact that her lord mistrusts her, if her lord is raving and stamping under her nose. Booth was gentle with Desdemona."<ref>[[Ellen Terry]]'s  ''The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections'' in {{harvnb|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=75-77}}</ref>

Booth was also an acclaimed Iago, and his advice to actors of the role was: "to portray Iago properly you must seem to be what all the characters think and say you are, not what the spectators know you to be; try to win even ''them'' by your sincerity. Don't ''act'' the villain."<ref>Edwin Booth, cited by McAlindon, 2005, p.lxix.</ref>

Stanislavski himself first played Othello in 1896. He was dissatisfied with his own performance, later recalling "I was able to reach nothing more than insane strain, spiritual and physical impotence, and the squeezing of tragic emotion out of myself."<ref>Gillies, 2008, p.&nbsp;271 (in turn citing the 1982 reprint of ''[[My Life in Art]]'').</ref>

=== 20th century ===


''Othello'' was performed in the [[Shinpa|Shimpa]] style in Japan in 1903 by [[Kawakami Otojirō|Otojiro Kawakami]], resetting the location Cyprus to Taiwan, which was then a Japanese colony.<!-- Spellings in the piped links in this paragraph taken from the source --><ref>Gillies, John; Minami, Ryuta; Li, Ruru and Trivedi, Poonam "Shakespeare on the Stages of Asia" in Wells, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage", Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.259-283 at pp.260-261.</ref>

In 1930 [[Konstantin Stanislavski|Stanislavski]] directed a production of Othello for the [[Moscow Art Theatre]], which was influential in the development of his [[Stanislavski's system|system]]. The performance was directed remotely, by letter, while Stanislavski recovered from illness in France.<ref>Gillies, 2008, pp.272-273.</ref>

The most significant theatre production in [[World War II|wartime]] America featured [[Paul Robeson]] as Othello.<ref>Morrison, 2002, p.251.</ref> Robeson had previously played the role in London in 1930 with a cast including [[Peggy Ashcroft]], [[Sybil Thorndike]] and [[Ralph Richardson]], and would later take the role for the [[Royal Shakespeare Company|RSC]] in 1959 at Stratford-Upon-Avon.<ref>Morrison, 2002, p.251-252.</ref> [[Margaret Webster]]'s 1943 Broadway production was considered a theatrical landmark, with Robeson (in the words of Howard Barnes) "making the Moor the great and terrible figure of tragedy which he has so rarely been on the stage."<ref>Howard Barnes in the ''Herald Tribune'' 20 October 1943, cited by Morrison, 2002, p.252.</ref> [[José Ferrer]] played Iago and [[Uta Hagen]] Desdemona. Taking the Broadway run with its subsequent tour, the show was seen by over half a million people.<ref>Morrison, 2002, p.252</ref> [[Earle Hyman]] saw the production numerous times when he was 17 and later recalled "this tremendous excitement - the first African-American onstage to be playing this role ... to all the blacks, he ''represented'' us. It was a moment of great pride."<ref>Earle Hyman interviewed by Michael A. Morrison 9 April 1999 cited in Morrison, 2002, p.252.</ref>

In 1947, [[Kenneth Tynan]] saw [[Frederick Valk]] and [[Donald Wolfit]] play Othello and Iago respectively, and described the experience as equivalent to witnessing the [[Great Chicago Fire|Chicago Fire]], the [[1935 Quetta earthquake|Quetta Earthquake]] or the [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|Hiroshima Bomb]].<!-- although personally I expect he was exaggerating --><ref>Welles, 2000, p.239.</ref>

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 |quote     = "Black all over my body, Max Factor 2880, then a lighter brown, then Negro Number 2, a stronger brown. Brown on black to give a rich mahogany. Then the great trick: that glorious half yard of chiffon with which I polished myself all over until I shone... The lips blueberry, the tight curled wig, the white of the eyes, whiter than ever, and the black, black sheen that covered my flesh and bones, glistening in the dressing-room lights."
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When [[Laurence Olivier]] performed Othello at the [[Royal National Theatre|National]] in 1964,{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=80}} his sense of "being black", in his words, required him "to be beautiful" with a voice "dark violet - velvet stuff" and a walk "like a soft black leopard".<ref>Taylor, Neil "National and Racial Stereotypes in Shakespeare Films" in Jackson, Russell (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film" Cambridge University Press, 2000 pp.261-273 at p.269, in turn quoting Olivier's "On Acting".</ref> (The filmed version of this production is discussed under "Screen" below.)

The play was extremely popular in Ethiopia, running for three years in the mid-1980s at the City Hall Theatre, [[Addis Ababa]], in [[Tsegaye Gabre-Medhin]]'s translation – performed in a static and declamatory style.<ref>Banham, Martin; Mooneeram, Roshni and Plastow, Jane "Shakespeare in Africa" in Wells, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage", Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.284-299 at pp.288-289.</ref> When [[Janet Suzman]] directed the play in South Africa during [[Apartheid]] in 1988, the performance was passionately politicised, with the racism of several characters—and especially Iago (modelled on [[Eugène Terre'Blanche]])—foregrounded.<ref>McAlindon, 2005, p.lxxiii.</ref> The play was highly controversial—the physical contact between the black [[John Kani]] and the white Joanna Weinburg provoking walk-outs and a pile-up of hate mail.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=97-98}}<!-- Noting here (without changing the text) that the sources of this paragraph disagree about the year this opened: McAlindon says 1988, Thompson 1987. -->

White actors continued to dominate the role until the 1980s.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=80}} [[Willard White]] in 1989 was the first black actor to play Othello at Stratford since Paul Robeson thirty years earlier.<ref>Robert Smallwood writing for ''Shakespeare Quarterly'' in 1990, quoted by Welles, 2000, pp.307-313 at p.311.</ref>

A "singular and idiosyncratic"<ref>Albanese, 2001, p.226.</ref> performance of a white actor in the central role was [[Jude Kelly]]'s "[[Race-reversed casting|photonegative]]" production for the [[Shakespeare Theatre Company]] in Washington, D.C. in 1997, in  which [[Patrick Stewart]] played Othello as white, while almost all other speaking parts were played by actors of African descent.<ref>Albanese, Denise "Black and White and Dread All Over: The Shakespeare Theatre's "Photonegative" Othello and the Body of Desdemona" in Callaghan, Dympna (ed.) "A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare" Blackwell Publishers Limited, 2001, pp.226-247 at p.226.</ref> The script remained unchanged as regards the character's race, so the white Othello was, throughout, referred to as black.<ref>Taylor, 2000, p.271.</ref>

=== 21st century ===

At the turn of the century, performances at the [[Royal Shakespeare Company|RSC]] were dominated by their Iagos. [[Richard McCabe]] followed [[Simon Russell Beale]] in portraying misogynistic, embittered [[Non-commissioned officer|NCO]]s, older than their respective Othellos:{{sfn|Neill|2008|pp=99-100}}

Singaporean director [[Ong Keng Sen]] produced an [[Interculturalism|intercultural]] version of the play in 2000: his ''Desdemona'' featured actors, musicians, designers and artists from India, Korea, Myanmar, Indonesia and Singapore, performing in a range of different traditional Asian styles.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=98-99}}

[[Cathy Downes]]' 2001 production at the [[Court Theatre (New Zealand)|Court Theatre]] in Christchurch, New Zealand made effective use of a trope (which had had racist overtones when used by earlier European directors) of Othello reverting to his native culture: setting the action in the [[Invasion of the Waikato|Waikato Land Wars]], Othello was a British-adopted general leading forces against his own people, until finally bursting into a "terrifying [[Wero (Māori)|wero]]" (a warrior's challenge) before exacting his revenge on Desdemona.{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=69}}

A radically different approach was taken in Jette Steckel's 2009 German language production for the [[Deutsches Theater (Berlin)|Deutsches Theater Berlin]]. Although the translation consistently used the word "Schwarze" for "Moor" in the original, Othello was played by the white German actress [[Susanne Wolff]] in a range of different costumes and disguises, including a gorilla suit for part of Act 4—creating a performance in which everything is (in [[Ayanna Thompson]]'s words) "conveyed through representational metaphors which render Othello's race less of a stable physical marker and more of a fractured and performative one."{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=100-101}}

A common theme of modern productions of the play is an emphasis on military life. When [[Adrian Lester]] played the role in [[Nicholas Hytner]]'s 2013 [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]] production, a retired army veteran was employed to teach the cast about ranks, comportment and off-duty behaviours.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=83}} Another 21st century trend exemplified by that performance is to reduce the focus of the play on Othello's race by having other parts played by actors of colour also.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=90}} And a third is an increasing focus on Desdemona's youth and innocence, at the expense of her strength of character.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=96}}

In 21st century productions, more emphasis has been given to the theme of [[domestic violence]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/killing-desdemona-the-domestic-violence-in-othello-20161024-gs98kg.html | title=Killing Desdemona: The domestic violence in Othello | date=24 October 2016 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/dec/01/othello-review-clint-dyer-national-theatre | title=Othello review – Clint Dyer makes this tragedy feel utterly new | newspaper=The Guardian | date=December 2022 | last1=Akbar | first1=Arifa }}</ref>

Othello's "difference" has been tested in ways other than race. A rare example is [[Stein Winge]]'s 2015 casting of a white American actor, [[Bill Pullman]], as an American Navy man adrift in Norway.{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|pp=83-84}}

The play has provided opportunities for breakout roles for rising black stars, such as [[Chiwetel Ejiofor]] who played Othello at the [[Donmar Warehouse]] in 2008, and for a change of direction for other established stars: [[Willard White]] (see "20th century", above) was better known as an opera singer and [[Lenny Henry]] (see "True Identity" under "Screen" below), who played Othello for [[Northern Broadsides]] in 2009, was better known as a stand-up comedian.{{sfn|Bate|Rasmussen|2009|p=159}}

When [[Antony Sher]] played Iago for the [[Royal Shakespeare Company|RSC]],{{when|date=May 2024}} the final moment of the play, before a snap blackout, was for him to look up and stare at the audience. Director [[Gregory Doran|Greg Doran]] intended this to be strange, enigmatic, open to interpretation. But Sher later wrote that he was always clear about it: in his head the question which always rang out was:

{{Blockquote|"You saw what was happening - why didn't you stop it?"<ref>Maguire, Laurie "''Othello'', Theatre Boundaries, and Audience Cognition" in Orlin, Lena Cowen (ed.) "Othello - The State of Play" The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, pp.17-43 at p.34.</ref>}}