At 8:45 I logged into the Zoom meeting room for my Shakespeare lecture.
Three topics:
Iago's motives; the actor in Shakespeare's time who played the role of Othello; the definition of Moor in his time and why he chose a Moor.
Iago's motive is unclear. He is prolific in statements of his motives but his actions conflict with them. The text makes it impossible to decide. His plans are also unclear. We ask why he decided to destroy Othello. Hate? Professor Lopez suggests it is not clear what his motive was. He didn't necessarily want Othello dead. If we don't know what he is doing it is hard to know why he did it. It is possible to argue for a thing that he wants to achieve and his motives. The text provides lots of material for a plan, but any plan can be contradicted by other material in the text. A production could use emphasis to create a plan but that would sacrifice other parts. There are more plans than we need in a play. Disloyal servant who is performatively loyal whose actions lead to destruction. What motive is unsettleable.
Iago says when he's alone in 1.3.375 “thus do I make a fool my purse.” His motive is to get money from Rodorigo. His main thing in the first act is performing for Rodorigo in order to keep him “ever” on the hook . Then he changes to say “I hate the Moor.” That's essential. Maybe it's about Moorishness. He doesn't need to tell us. It's not essential but practical. Maybe he hates him anyway. Othello might be sleeping with Iago's wife. It's difficult to see if the hatred is caused by gossip. If we view a soldiers camp of the time it is not implausible that a general would sleep with the ensign's wife. It could happen. He says I will treat it like my suspicion is true. Maybe he hates him for that. He thinks I'm loyal so I can fool him.
He's jealous of Cassio for professional reasons. He wants his place as lieutenant. Double knavery with two plans, Cassio's place and Othello and Amelia. Ambiguous pronouns about him being too familiar with his wife. Cassio is too familiar but the suggestion is that Shakespeare will make Othello think that Othello is too familiar with Othello's wife. It is unclear what he is thinking. He's going to make Othello jealous of Cassio but that is not obvious yet. Who is honest? Cassio? It is very difficult to follow. A good actor can slow it down but would have to fight with the text to mould it to something clear. The course is not clear. Is Iago just mischievous? It is engendered. What is? He's thinking out loud. There is a possibility he says that he's got it but we don't know and he doesn't put it together. He provides more uncertainty. He loves Desdemona too but not absolutely. Do you or not? Do you Love love her or just love her? Not lust but sort of lust. Revenge on Cassio and Othello over Cassio. He's upset about adultery now. My goal or motive is my lust for Desdemona. He would sleep with her but doesn't. His plans are uncertain to the point of chaos.
The actor in Shakespeare's time who played Othello was Richard Burbage. He was the leading actor of Shakespeare's company. The professor shows his picture. He played Hamlet and King Lear as well. He probably darkened his face. There were people of colour in England at the time but not many. It was not a homogeneous society and not diverse. Female characters were played by men made up with prosthetics. Also any ethnic character was portrayed with costume as well. Skin darkening has a long history. It was pervasive in the English Renaissance.
Early in Shakespeare's career he's interested in a Moor character. The professor shows a drawing from the time of several figures on the one on the far right is very dark. He is Aaron in Titus Andronicus and he is like Iago. Because English Renaissance drama was interested in tales of violence, travel, warfare, historical events of great sweep, and spectacle. Representations of things outside the audience's experience. They looked for spectacular stories of people of diverse nations such as Moors and exotic spectacles because the audience liked it. Before Shakespeare and after there were plays with Moors.
The meaning is not consistent as to what a “Moor” was. There was darkness of skin and consistently a white actor would darken his skin and put on an exotic costume. This was attractive. It was external to the world of the play but in the middle of the action. The tradition on this was that this was a probable outsider brought into the play. But they usually made them villains or put them in small roles. Othello is the only play with a Moor as a main character. Later in the period the play Fatal Contract had a Moor eunuch as the central character wreaking havoc, but it was revealed later to be a white woman in disguise. Innovative and crazy. Shakespeare tended to try to make things difficult for himself and he was interested in challenging himself to bring a Moor into the centre. Not just an attractive villain but a tragic character in an impossible position. How much sympathy can there be for this character? An essential and performative difference. The Merchant of Venice had a Jewish main character and there was also The Jew of Malta by Marlow. The rhetoric of the Maltese world is that the characters are as bad as possible. One hates everyone and enjoys hating the Jew a little more. Shakespeare makes Shylock potentially sympathetic although unattractive. He had the ambition and innovativeness to challenge the bounds of his medium. Characters different from normal that might be excluded from the audience's experience.
Internet Shakespeare Editions has a pretty good Othello section. Othello is based on an Italian novella from 1565 called Cinthio's Tale. It's the same story with changes. They drew plays from extant written materials that were not necessarily popular. “The Moor” comes from this but Shakespeare gives him a name. “Moor” was a position. Cinthio is taking what “Moor” means for granted.
The definition of Moor has a range of meanings. One can access the OED from the University of Toronto website. Mauritania corresponded to Morocco. Later the word was associated with Muslims of northwest Africa such as the Berbers. Changing meaning. It was associated with skin colour. A kind of Egyptian. Separated from colour of skin. Religious term. Englishman turned Moor by conversion. There is a range of meanings but it's always about difference. Context has to do with understanding.
I weighed 88 kilos before lunch. I think it was 87.8 before breakfast but I forgot to write it down. I had saltines with five year old cheddar and a glass of fruit punch.
I worked on editing my lecture notes.
I took a bike ride in the cloudy and dingy afternoon. It looked like it could rain at any time but it didn't. I rode to Yonge and Bloor and then south. I turned my flashers on at Queen. I took King home as I probably will for the next few weeks. There are some nice old buildings on King but they are not played up as well as on Queen. King Street has kind of been undesigned in a way that does not enhance its finer old features. I weighed 86.8 kilos when I got home at 17:00.
I finished editing my lecture notes at 19:00.
I finished reading "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” by Carson McCullers. It's a bizarre but well written story kind of in that southern grotesque style of Flannery O'Connor but more absurd. Miss Amelia is the richest woman in town. She's big, tough and smart and can do anything. She runs a still that makes the finest whisky and she also serves as an amateur doctor who is more successful than the local doctor and invents her own medicines. She was married once for ten days to a man named Macy who was sent to the penitentiary. She is a loner but one day a little hunchback who claims to be her cousin arrives in town. He moves in with her and they are inseparable. Under his influence she turns the downstairs part of her house into a cafe that becomes the most popular meeting place in town. After a few years, her ex-husband is released from prison and starts coming around. The hunchback begins to follow him around admiringly even though he treats him cruelly. Eventually Macy moves into Amelia's house and they are building up to a showdown. On the day of the fight everyone is there to watch. Miss Amelia has slightly the worst of it until the fistfight turns into a wrestling match and she is winning. She has Macy on his back with her hands around his neck when the hunchback jumps her and helps Macy win. That changes everything. The hunchback and Macy move away together, destroying her still on the way and Amelia becomes weak and old. The cafe closes down.
I started reading the novel Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward but I don't have time to read the whole thing because my essay is due in nine days. I just want to get a feel for all the material before I decide what to write my paper on. I'm trying to read it by just reading the first sentence of each paragraph and I've gotten through the first two but can't make much sense of it. A dog named China has puppies and a woman in the family gets pregnant.
I cooked spiral macaroni with Alfredo sauce and extra old cheddar and had it with a beer while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle.
In this story Gomer's fellow Marine Ken is a nervous wreck because his wife Rosemary is soon having a baby. Gomer and Ken sneak into Sergeant Carter's quarters to use the phone to call to see if she's all right but Carter catches them. The next day he punishes them by making them change the light bulbs on the poles around the base but Gomer falls on top of Ken and breaks his leg. Gomer wants to go to stay with Rosemary to make sure he can help when she goes into labour. Carter gives him a pass but he feels guilty about maybe inadvertently causing Ken's injury and so he drives them even though he's supposed to meet Bunny at an important event for her job. Carter gets involved when Rosemary goes into labour and although he keeps intending on getting away to Bunny he can't help staying to see the baby. Carter misses Bunny's event but she understands.
Rosemary was played by Jackie Joseph who played Audrey in the original “Little Shop of Horrors.”
The nurse was played by Thordis Brandt, who was born in Germany and raised in Canada where she earned a nursing degree in Vancouver. She moved to California to pursue acting but kept nursing on the side and became known as the actor's nurse. She worked as a nurse advisor on “Ben Casey” and sometimes appeared on the show. When she retired from acting she continued nursing. She had a relationship for several years with James Arness of “Gunsmoke.” She has gained cult status for her roles in “Dragnet 1966”, “The Witchmaker” and “Up Your Teddy Bear.”
Ken was played by Warren Berlinger.
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