Othello

An American Tragedy

AvJames Shapiro

Inbunden, Engelska, 2027

Del i serien Black Lives

352 kr

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Beskrivning

The story of Othello’s American life, showing that the hero’s tragedy is America’s own—from a best-selling writer and expert scholarWhile Shakespeare’s Othello, with a Black man as its tragic hero, was first staged in 1604, over two hundred years would pass before anyone other than a White actor in blackface played him. And it wasn’t until Paul Robeson’s star turn in 1943 that a Black actor played Othello on Broadway. Othello’s American life has long been intertwined with that of the nation, a journey marked by slavery, judicial lynching, Jim Crow, and the ongoing struggle for Black equality—a past that some would prefer to whitewash.In this deeply researched book, James Shapiro retraces Othello’s American afterlife and challenges those sanitizing efforts. Othello was the name of a slave ship that sailed from Rhode Island. It was the name of an enslaved man executed for allegedly participating in a slave uprising in colonial New York. And it was the name Benjamin Franklin chose to call a child he had enslaved. Othello’s American life is a story of triumph as well as tragedy, embodied in the performances of such exceptional Black actors as Ira Aldridge, Paul Robeson, and Denzel Washington.Drawing on literary, social, political, and theater history, Shapiro shows that Othello’s tragedy is inseparable from America’s own, reminding us of all that remains unresolved in the nation’s history.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2027-04-13
Mått:140 x 216 x undefined mm
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Black Lives
Antal sidor:224
Förlag:Yale University Press
ISBN:9780300267709

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James Shapiro has taught at Columbia University since 1985 and serves as Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theater. His books include 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare and Shakespeare in a Divided America. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Cullman Center fellowships. He lives in New York City.

Recensioner i media

“James Shapiro takes his reader on another extraordinary and surprising journey through the lens of one of Shakespeare’s most heartbreaking plays. Othello: An American Tragedy traces the presence of Othello through a rich series of stories that go right to the beating heart of American history and the magnitudinous place of race in that history. It is essential, transformational reading because it acknowledges what is at the heart of Shakespeare’s work, that history is not really behind us if we remain uncomfortable talking about it.”—Farah Karim-Cooper, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library"What’s in a name? James Shapiro’s Othello: An American Tragedy is a brilliant, searing, and at times unbearably painful answer to that question. In a succession of richly detailed and compelling accounts, ranging from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, Shapiro demonstrates how profoundly the black hero of Shakespeare’s great tragedy has probed and tested and illuminated the troubled race history of the United States."—Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare"Othello is thrilling, a combination of extraordinary research, piercing insight, and breathtaking imagination. Anyone who cares about Shakespeare and America must read this book.”—Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater“A fascinating tandem to Shakespeare’s namesake, bringing new perspective to the play's historical and cultural significance in the American psyche. There’s magic in the web of it.”—John Douglas Thompson