{"id":19212,"date":"2018-10-20T11:24:42","date_gmt":"2018-10-20T11:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19212"},"modified":"2018-10-20T11:24:42","modified_gmt":"2018-10-20T11:24:42","slug":"a-portrait-of-othello-as-a-black-muslim-tragic-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=19212","title":{"rendered":"A portrait of Othello as a black Muslim tragic hero"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-140415133408172\" readability=\"217.987862046\">\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><strong>London, England &#8211;<\/strong> A new adaptation of Othello in the UK subtly interrogates the tragic hero&#8217;s religious identity, presenting to audiences the possibility that the Moor of Venice was a closeted, practising Muslim.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Produced by the English Touring Theatre, there is an Arabic recitation in the opening scene and an image of Othello with his hands cupped in what is unmistakably a Muslim prayer.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-embed-title-des article-shaded-blocks article-embedded-card\">\n<h3><em><strong>Highlights<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n<ul readability=\"5\">\n<li class=\"p1\" readability=\"-1\">\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Othello was written around 1604<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\" readability=\"-1\">\n<p><span class=\"s1\">The central themes are jealousy and power<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\" readability=\"-1\">\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Othello is a black convert to Christianity and general of the Venetian army<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\" readability=\"2\">\n<p><span class=\"s1\">In the play, Iago manipulates Othello into believing his wife, Desdemona, is unfaithful<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\" readability=\"-1\">\n<p><span class=\"s1\">Othello is convinced and kills his wife<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\" readability=\"0\">\n<p><span class=\"s1\">After realising Desdemona&#8217;s innocence, Othello kills himself<\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>&#8220;I was very aware of the racism Othello suffers because of his skin colour, but there was a much more insidious and layered thing that was happening to him as an outsider,&#8221; director Richard Twyman told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The biggest thing is within the language, where Othello is constantly called the Moor. We know historically about the Moorish kingdom of Spain (where Spanish Muslims or Moriscos&#8217; were forcibly converted to Christianity in 1492). But I never put it together that Moor might also be referring to Othello&#8217;s spiritual and cultural identity,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><span>It was not until Twyman encountered the research of Jerry Brotton, professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London and author of\u00a0This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World, that it became plausible Islam was intrinsic to Othello&#8217;s identity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Brotton told Al Jazeera: &#8220;A Moor is an inhabitant of Mauritania which is in northwest Africa. It&#8217;s effectively modern-day Morocco. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In this period in the 15th and 16th century, Muslims were referred to as black. There was no word for Muslim. It didn&#8217;t enter the English language until the second decade of the 17th century. But you have all these synonyms &#8211; Turk, Moor, Saracen, Persian, which are an attempt by an English tradition to describe Muslims.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In addition to the opening prayer scene, in which Othello unfurls a prayer mat for him and Desdemona to sit on during their marriage<em> <\/em>ceremony, the play makes other references to his spirituality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In the first line, Othello recites in Arabic the foundational invocation for Muslims: &#8220;In the name of God, the most gracious the most merciful.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s3\">He <\/span><span class=\"s1\">also moves from one religion to another.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A crucifix hangs from his neck throughout the play, but when he is told of his wife&#8217;s alleged infidelity, he raises his prayer beads and shouts in Arabic, &#8220;Ya Akbar&#8221;, &#8220;Oh, Great One&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\">&#8216;Islam was not the enemy&#8217;<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Viewed in the historical context in which it was written,\u00a0Othello\u00a0offers a glimpse into the economic and political anti-Catholic alliance between Elizabethan England and the Muslim world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">&#8220;Spanish Catholicism for Protestant Elizabethan England was the absolute enemy,&#8221; Brotton said. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">&#8220;Islam was not the enemy, and so to ally with Islamic imperial power and northwest African Islamic commercial, military, and naval power, was seen as highly appropriate.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As well as sparking a three-decade correspondence between Elizabeth I and Sultan Murad III, this Anglo-Islamic alliance found its way onto the Elizabethan stage.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"article-quotebox\" readability=\"31\"><p>All those notions of the fear of cosmopolitanism, of people who cross cultures, languages and boundaries, this is the language that has fuelled so much of right-wing discourse of UKIP and Brexit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"blockquote-writer\">Jerry Brotton,\u00a0<span>professor of Renaissance Studies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">From 1579 to 1624, 62 plays with Muslim characters, themes or settings\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/period\/elizabethan\/elizabethan-englands-relationship-with-the-islamic-world\/\" target=\"_blank\">were performed<\/a>, though Shakespeare&#8217;s earlier Muslim characters lacked the complexity of Othello.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In\u00a0Titus Andronicus, Aaron, a &#8220;blackamoor&#8221;, is described as having a soul &#8220;black like his face&#8221;.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The Prince of Morocco, who sought to marry Portia in\u00a0The Merchant of Venice, was said to have the &#8220;complexion of a devil&#8221;.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Othello emerged in contrast as the most nuanced attempt at a Muslim character.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As Anglo-Islamic relations blossomed, the arrival in 1600 of Muhammad Al-Annuri, the Moroccan ambassador to Elizabethan London, is said to have been Shakespeare&#8217;s inspiration for Othello.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Wearing a flowing black robe and white turban, his portrait was painted to commemorate a military alliance between England and Morocco which never came to fruition. It is now the earliest surviving picture of a Muslim painted from life in England.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p2\">Contemporary relevance\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">Othello is an exceptional, loyal and erudite character, but positive associations are attempted to be dashed when Senator Brabantio is informed of his daughter Desdemona&#8217;s relationship with the black Venetian general &#8211; &#8220;an old black ram \/ Is tupping your white ewe.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">He is also described as a man &#8220;of here and everywhere&#8221; who travelled from Cyprus to Aleppo.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">&#8220;All those notions of the fear of cosmopolitanism, of people who cross cultures, languages and boundaries, this is the language that has fuelled so much of right-wing discourse of [far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP)] and Brexit,&#8221; said Brotton. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">For Twyman, Othello was<em>\u00a0<\/em>prescient.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">&#8220;This play is a really sobering, shocking, really quite stark warning about what happens when we &#8216;otherise&#8217; people, about giving into the Iago within us or the Iago in our society,&#8221; he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Victor Oshin, the actor who portrays Othello in the production, said the character&#8217;s experience resonated with his own.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Growing up as a young black man in Dagenham, East London, he said he had to downplay his identity to avoid being stereotyped.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">&#8220;That cautiousness, to always have to be soft, to always have to be on the back-foot, to not have to intimidate has definitely informed my portrayal of Othello,&#8221; he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">&#8220;You lose certain parts of yourself when you have to assimilate. At the end of the play, Othello questions what he has become, what he has lost. It&#8217;s funny to see it being done 400 years ago when even now, even in myself, there are times when I say to myself, &#8216;Is this my true voice?'&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>London, England &#8211; A new adaptation of Othello in the UK subtly interrogates the tragic hero&#8217;s religious identity, presenting to audiences the possibility that the Moor of Venice was a closeted, practising Muslim. Produced by the English Touring Theatre, there is an Arabic recitation in the opening scene and an image of Othello with his&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":19213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}