14 Othello’s Apprenticeship in the Theatre of Passion „epistemological gap“ in einen „Theaterraum“. Dort inszeniert er Desdemonas Ehebruch und stellt dadurch den Glauben Othellos auf die Probe. http://www.shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/seminar/ausgabe<strong>2003</strong>
IMPOSSIBLE PASSIONS – SHAKESPEARE AND PARKER: OTHELLO 1 BY SYLVIA MIESZKOWSKI According to the Oxford English Dictionary, The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice 2 may itself be called “a passion” 3 , since it is definitely “a literary composition marked by strong emotion”. “Suffering”, “affection”, and “affliction”, given as synonyms for “passion” by the OED, are, moreover, being produced and displayed by most of the play’s characters. “Painful disorder” is being staged in its social dimension – both political and domestic – as well as on the level of subjective identity – that is in its physical and its psychological components. Othello’s jealousy, the predominant, yet far from only passion of the drama, is, as “an emotion” or “a mental state”, well described as “a violent attack of disease” or, indeed, dis-ease. Moreover, Othello is certainly “affected or acted upon [by] the external agency” of Iago, whose manipulation causes first “a fit or outburst of anger or rage”, then the eruption of “strong, barely controllable emotion” and finally brings about the smothering of Desdemona as the prototypical “crime of passion”. The racist discourse 4 of the Early Modern Period seems to pre-determine the black man as passion’s typical prey, since his blackness 5 , heavily charged with prejudice, was commonly associated with sensuality, irrationality and violence. 6 Following this logic, Othello – until far into the twentieth century 7 – appears as the man on stage/screen who is, qua race, most likely to be “eaten up with passion” 8 . Yet, within the religious discourse of the time, the so-called ‘passions of the mind’ were also considered “expressions of [...] the imperfection in man’s nature that both caused the 1 I would like to thank Torsten Graff for his contributions in the planning phase of this paper. 2 rd All quotations are taken from the 3 edition of the Arden <strong>Shakespeare</strong>: William <strong>Shakespeare</strong>, Othello, ed. E. A. J. Honnigman (Walton-on-Thames: Arden, 1999). 3 This and all otherwise unmarked quotations are taken from the entry for ‘passion’ in the OED. 4 Cf. Virginia Mason Vaughan, “Racial discourse: black and white”, in Othello. A contextual history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 51–70. 5 Cf. Diann L. Baecker, “Tracing the History of a Metaphor: All is Not Black and White in Othello” in: Comitatus 30 (1999), 113–129. 6 Cf. Maristella de Panizza Lorch, “Honest Iago and the Lusty Moor: the Humanistic Drama of Honestas/ Voluptas in a <strong>Shakespeare</strong>an Context”, in J.R. Mulryne/Margaret Shewring eds., Theatre of the English and Italian Renaissance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 204–220. 7 For an enlightening analysis of the interplay of race and Othellonian passion displayed by white and black actors on stage cf. Elise Marks, “‘Othello/me’: Racial Drag and the Pleasures of Boundary- Crossing with Othello” in: Comparative Drama 35.1 (2001), 101–123. 8 Oth 3.3.394. http://www.shakespeare-gesellschaft.de/seminar/ausgabe<strong>2003</strong>
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