On 8/10/22 3:14 AM, Margaret wrote:
On Wednesday, 10 August 2022 at 04:16:14 UTC+1, gggg gggg wrote:
https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Companion-Shakespeare-Companions-Literature/dp/1108710565/ref=sr_1_1?crid=FL67642ZLTMB&keywords=cambridge+shakespeare+race&qid=1660101320&s=books&sprefix=cambridge+shakespeare+race%2Cstripbooks%2C123&sr=1-1
This is likely to be an excellent book but the blurb is not likely to help - opening with "going beyond Othello" when there is already an Othello on the cover. (I'd rather have seen a scene from the RSC black Julius Caesar for instance, or a black
Hamlet with Yorick's skull). The blurb should have been much more open, as I'm sure the essays are, along the lines of how capable Shakespeare was, at a time when race was being constructed, of recognising, reflecting and challenging the assumptions of
the society he wrote for.
The editor is a self-proclaimed "Othello-whisperer" with much interesting experience of how difficult "that" role is for black actors to play. Far from being the pinnacle of their Shakespearean career it is often their most disturbing role.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6TXR6RRsE4
I find that to respond to this, I must learn how to stuff sarcasm into a
Klein bottle, and I’ll be damned if I can do that. But pray, if white
men must not play Othello, and black men can not play Othello, where do
we turn? To Esquimaux?
--
John W. Kennedy
Algernon Burbage, Lord Roderick, Father Martin, Bishop Baldwin,
King Pellinore, Captain Bailey, Merlin -- A Kingdom for a Stage!
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