The Masks of Othello: The Search for the Identity of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona by Three Centuries of Actors and CriticsIn what Norman Sanders has termed [a] now classic study, noted Shakespearean Marvin Rosenberg sets out to discover how the complex, troubled characters of the play have been interpreted by actors and critics from Shakespeare's time to the present. |
Contents
| 5 | |
| 16 | |
| 29 | |
| 34 | |
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY | 55 |
Kean | 61 |
Macready Fechter Irving | 70 |
Booth | 80 |
The Modern Othello | 145 |
The Modern Iago | 155 |
OTHELLO AND THE CRITICS | 161 |
In Defense of Iago | 166 |
In Defense of Othello | 185 |
In Defense of Desdemona | 206 |
In Defense of the Play I | 218 |
In Defense of the Play II | 230 |
Forrest | 89 |
Salvini | 102 |
The Victorian Iago | 120 |
The Victorian Desdemona | 135 |
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY | 141 |
A KIND WORD FOR BOWDLER | 244 |
NOTES | 257 |
INDEX | 303 |
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Common terms and phrases
A. C. Bradley acting action actors actress agony Alger Athenaeum audience Booth Bowdler Brabantio Cassio century character Cinthio's critics Cyprus demona Desdemona dignity dramatic edition Edmund Kean Edwin Edwin Booth Elizabethan Ellen Terry Emilia emotion English erotic evil expressed Fanny Kemble Fechter feeling Forrest Garrick Gentleman grief grieved Moor Hazlitt heart Henry Irving hero honest human Iago Iago's Ibid inner interpretation Irving jealousy Kean Kean's Kemble lago language London look Macready mind modern Moor's moral motivation murder nature noble Othello passion performance Peter Fleming physical imagery pity play play's players playwright praise refined Review Robeson Roderigo Rymer Salvini scene seemed sense sexual Shake Shakespeare Smock Alley soliloquies soul Spectator speech stage Stoll suggest tears tenderness theater theatrical Thomas Bowdler thought tion Tommaso Salvini tragedy troubled Variorum Victorian villain violence visual voice whore wife woman words wrote York
Popular passages
Page 22 - The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner ; and all quality. Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war ! And O, you mortal engines, whose rude throats The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, Farewell ! Othello's occupation's gone ! lago.
Page 38 - O curse of marriage, That we can call these delicate creatures ours, And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad, And live upon the vapour of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing I love For others
Page 236 - Oth. I look down towards his feet; but that's a fable. If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee.
Page 96 - Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard, Though that her jesses were my dear heart-strings, I'd whistle her off, and let her down the wind, To prey at fortune.
Page 45 - My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful...
Page 258 - So have I seen, when Caesar would appear, And on the stage at half-sword parley were, Brutus and Cassius, oh how the audience Were ravished! with what wonder they went thence. When some new day they would not brook a line Of tedious, though well laboured, Catiline; Sejanus too was irksome, they prized more Honest lago or the jealous Moor.
Page 84 - Excellent wretch ! Perdition catch my soul, But I do love thee ! and when I love thee not Chaos is come again.
Page 36 - The ordinary method of making an hero is to clap a huge plume of feathers upon his head, which rises so very high that there is often a greater length from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot.
Page 46 - A fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow unmoving finger at ! Yet could I bear that too ; well, very well : But there, where I have garner'd up my heart, Where either I must live, or bear no life...