Oteller and Desdemonum: Defining Nineteenth-Century Blackness

{ 176 } \ Oteller and Desdemonum Defining Nineteenth-­ Century Blackness —Andrew Carlson In the September 1921 issue of Theatre Arts Monthly, Earl Barroy rewrites a scene from Shakespeare’s Othello in an article titled “Shakespeare up to Date.” The Desdemona of his adaptation viciously scolds her husband: “You had better look at your own complexion. Just like a fresh shined boot . . . you’re a low-­ down, deceitful nigger.”1 The powerless Othello responds, “Mme. Othello, you forget yourself! I am not a nigger, I am a Moor.”2 Reminiscent of nineteenth-­ century minstrel adaptations of Othello, Barroy’s revision is a reminder that be-­ ing“up to date”about race is specific to its social and historical context.Bar­ roy’s characters were not really articulating a new vision of the play but ­ engaging with a century-­ old question about Othello’s race: Was Othello the same kind of black person as those living in America, or was he a noble Moor with a distinct racial identity? In the nineteenth century, Othello presented a challenge to a Shakespeare-­ adoring white public. While the dominant society understood African Ameri­ cans to be a biologically and culturally inferior race, Shakespeare’s play offered a noble black man engaged in a sexual relationship with a white woman. Despite this challenge, Othello enjoyed great popularity during the mid-­to late century. It lived in various cultural representations, including the professional productions of Edwin Forrest, Edwin Booth, and Tommaso Salvini and the minstrel burlesques of T. D. Rice and George Griffin. Literary critics also agonized over the issue of Othello’s true race throughout the nineteenth century. While the racism of minstrelsy in works such as Desdemonum was blatant, professional performers and literary critics engaged in a subtler form of minstrelsy that also attempted to rob Ameri­ can blacks of their humanity. Each claimed an owner- { 177 } Oteller and Desdemonum ship of racial definitions and used different strategies to achieve a similar goal: the separation of Othello’s nobility from his blackness. Shakespeare’s Othello was a popular source for the minstrel stage because it allowed white Ameri­ cans to combine a love and knowledge of the bard’s works with their racial obsessions. David Roediger writes in Wages of Whiteness that Othello’s content provided “particular opportunities to place sexuality, violence and high art within the nonthreatening confines of sentiment and of a hyper-­ emphasized blackface mask.”3 Numerous minstrel productions of Othello appeared in the nineteenth century, including the anonymously written Desdemo­ num (1854), George Griffin’s Othello; a Burlesque (1866), and Maurice Dowling’s Othello Travestie (1834, later adapted for the Ameri­ can stage by T. D. Rice).4 While each show differed in its focus and language, all insisted that blackness was their property. The traits of the Ameri­ can black man were also seen to be antithetical to those possessed by a noble Shakespearean character. Griffin’s Othello; a Burlesque creates a vision of blackness as subhuman, intellectually inferior, and violent. Published and performed in post–Civil War New York, the play reflects a society negotiating complex racial constructions. Each of the characters is in blackface, but only Othello is referred to as “dark.” Iago is a blackface Irishman in love with Desdemona, whose ethnic slurs about Othello are written in brogue. Throughout the play, he calls Othello a ­ “n-­ a-­ g-­ u-­ r.” Brabantio is a heavy-­ drinking blackface German eager to fatten his daughter Desdemona so that he can sell her to P. T. Barnum. The characters break out into songs set to popular Irish and Ameri­ can tunes; Desdemona and Othello first appear dancing to the theme from “Dixie.” Desdemona sings “With you I’ll sport my figure, away, away— / I’ll love you dearly all my life, / Although you are a nigger.—Away, away, & c.”5 Thus the play in performance would have a white man in blackface playing a woman of German descent who differentiates her race from her black husband. Race is the thematic centerpiece of the play. While Shakespeare’s Iago expresses racist thoughts in scheming plots and monologues, the Iago of Griffin’s burlesque proclaims them loudly in song: When first I Desdemona saw, I...