Othello: A Contextual History - Softcover

Shakespeare's Othello has exercised a powerful fascination over audiences for centuries with its intense portrayal of passionate love and destructive jealousy. This study is a major exercise in the historicization of Othello. Initially the author examines the early Jacobean context of the play, and the discourses which formed its writing. Circulating simultaneously in late Renaissance London were accounts of Mediterranean clashes between Turks and Venetians, treatises on the professionalization of England's military forces, depictions of North Africans and blackamoors, and narratives of jealous husbands who murdered their wives. In the centuries after 1604, productions of Othello stressed the contextual discourse that best reflected current cultural concerns. The first section examines these four sets of contemporary writings and demonstrates how they were embedded in the text of Othello. The following chapters trace Othello's history on stage or in film in England and the United States from the Restoration to the late 1980s. Each chapter highlights particular productions or performers to demonstrate how and why elements from Shakespeare's text were emphasized or repressed. In the Restoration, for example, Othello was a gentleman and an officer, his characterization shaped by actors who had served in King Charles' army. During the Victorian period, in contrast, the Moor's private role of devoted husband was privileged over his occupation. When Paul Robeson performed Othello in 1930 and 1943-44, race was highlighted as the play's central issue. Othello is thus revealed as a significant shaper and major reflector of cultural meanings, as it participated in a complex negotiation betweenactors, critics, audiences, and the culture at large.

"As a nuanced and selective work of Shakespearian scholarship, Othello: a contextual history is a substantial achievement." Theatre Research International

"Othello: a contextual history represents a genuinely new way of doing Shakespeare studies; a synthesis of performance and context histories that works only because it is so intelligently and compellingly historicised." Meridian

"As dramaturg for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's 1996 production of Othello, I had the opportunity to peruse and use the contents of a full library shelf devoted to Shakespeare's tragedy. None of these works, however, proved more helpful than one that came in the mail shortly before we began rehearsal: Virgina Mason Vaughan's Othello: A Contextual History....this book provides a balanced, insightful, and original contribution to the field of Othello scholarship. What sets it apart from other works in this crowded field is that it also manages to be an invaluable aid for a theatre practitioner, as my dog-eared and much higlighted copy can testify." Geron E. Coale, Theatre Studies

"This eloquently written book offers, a mix of the old and the new....Despite the familiarity of some of its materials and the ease of some of its arguments, Othello: A Contextual History is full of fresh and informative discussion....Anyone interested in the rich web of meanings that Shakespeare's Othello has created and absorbed will want to start here, with Othello: A Contextual History." Emily C. Bartels, Modern Philology