"Othello on Stage and Screen"

Although he was the leading Othello of the period and was much praised, the only informative contemporary account of his performance in the role tells us little more than that his "aspect was serious, venerable, and majestic...

Wearing a white wig and the white uniform (including white gloves) of a British officer, he was said to have presented an impressive appearance, but his acting was characterized as statuesque, even stiff, lacking in tenderness, pathos, fire, and any suggestion of inner pain.

Quin was eclipsed in 1745 by David Garrick, whose Othello was quite different: the complaint now was that this Othello lacked dignity.

Kemble, tall and stately, acted in what can be called a classic rather than romantic manner, a style suited more to, say, Brutus than to Othello.

His interpretation of the role was criticized for its superabundance of dignity and for its lack of variety and fire, but not for its blackness.

Most of the Othellos of the rest of the century were tawny, their bronze skin suggesting that they were sons of the desert, but Henry Irving's Othello of 1881 was conspicuously dark (darker than his "bronze" Othello of 1876), and, as we shall see, in the twentieth century dark Othellos have been dominant, especially in our own generation, when American blacks have often played the part.

If Kemble is the paradigm of classical acting, Kean--passionate, even spasmodic--is the paradigm of romantic acting.

Mr. Kean is in general all passion, all energy, all relentless will...

He is too often in the highest key of passion, too uniformly on the verge of extravagance, too constantly on the rack.

From time to time he changed his performance, sometimes working in the violent style associated with Tommaso Salvini, hurling his Iago to the ground, but sometimes he played with restraint--occasionally he even omitted striking Desdemona at IV.i.240--and he was especially praised for his tender passion.

Some Victorians regarded Salvini as too savage, too volcanic, too terrifying to arouse pity--he seized Iago by the throat and hurled him to the floor, and put his foot on Iago's neck, and of course he did not hesitate to strike Desdemona--but most audiences were deeply moved as well as terrified by his performance.

It is impossible to imagine anything more living, more tragic, more suggestive of a tortured soul and of generous, beneficent strength changed to a purpose of destruction.

Thus, when Robeson's Othello said "Silence that dreadful bell! It frights the isle from her propriety" (II.iii.174-75), he showed personal annoyance rather than the "passion for decorum"

Agate found Robeson best in the third and fourth acts, where he captured the jealousy of the part, but weak (lacking in dignity) in the last act, where he failed to perform the murder with a solemn sense of sacrifice.

Far from suggesting that Othello was some sort of desert chief, Olivier emphasized the Negroid aspects, or at least the white man's stock ideas of Negroid aspects.

He rolled his eyes a good deal, and he walked (barefooted and adorned with ankle bracelets) with a sensuous sway.

Othello is not so much a heroic figure--the noble Moor who gains our sympathy despite the terrible deed he performs--as a fatuous simpleton, a man given to egotistical self-dramatizing.

Othello is a pompous, word-spinning, arrogant black general.

Thus, Olivier delivered "Farewell the tranquil mind" (3.3.345)--a speech customarily delivered reflectively--in a frenzy.

It's probably fair to say that the gist of the idea underlying this production is fairly odd: Othello is a barbarian with a thin veneer of civilization.

Thus, the early speeches were delivered with easy confidence because Othello had no understanding of how simple and how volatile he really was.

Olivier said that the backgrounds in the film were minimal because he was concerned with "offering as little visual distraction as possible from the intentions of Shakespeare--or our performance of them."

During the course of this survey it has been easy to notice racist implications in the remarks of certain actors and critics.

Others found that it was distracting for a black to play the part; it brought into the world of Othello irrelevant issues of twentieth-century America.

Many things can be said against this view, for instance that when the white actor Olivier played Othello he expended so much energy impersonating a black that a spectator was far more conscious of the performer's blackness than one is of, say, James Earl Jones's.