Just read Othello for the first time. Fuck, Shakespeare’s great. Anyone protesting his permanent fixture as literature’s greatest ought to take a walk down the M25. The man drips genius.
If only I could figure him out. I must admit that from the beginning of the play I felt suspicious of his intentions. This, of course, was owing to his whiteness (and, equally to my blackness). It was a feeling that lingered throughout and was one I could not dismiss.
There’s something inside of me that can’t seem to rest whenever white people handle matters of race. I do it all the time. I suddenly turn Colombo when reading Conrad (obviously), Lansbury when watching Tarantino (understandable), and as of late Sherlock when listening to Sheeran (really?).
I wonder to what extent my reading is informed by this suspicion, by the act of bringing to the text my/’our’ history of racialisation?
What I found in Othello were many themes touching on what I dislike to, but will for now, call the black experience. Themes that, when enveloped, render a very specific yet I think applicable kind of reading, one centred in the knowledge of black racialisation.
Reading Othello, we are in no doubt that he loves his wife. We are at the same time, however, inspired to believe that a great element of his love lies in admiration for her whiteness. From a particular ‘black perspective’, his adoration of her ‘fairness’ fits into the concept of ‘self-hate’ that the so called black community have become acquainted to, even more so when we consider how Othello seems to view himself.
In Act 3, scene 2, he bemoans his disappointment that her ‘fresh visage’ turns ‘begrimm and black as his own face’. And in another scene he remarks his own iniquity next to that of white people: ‘for haply I am black, and have not those soft parts in conversation that chamberers have’.
Here we can see that Othello esteems Desdemona to a height from which he is left to look down on his own blackness, and for a black reader with a particular history of racialisation this can be an incredible source of antagonism.
A recurrent figure within the ‘black experience’ is that of the Coon or Uncle Tom. Reading Othello, it’s interesting to note the ways in which he can be read to embody these qualities.
Brought before the leaders of state to explain his marriage to Desdemona, upon entering court Othello is here, and throughout, found to be constantly prostrating, pontificating and clambering to white people.
As a black reader conscious of, and even enamoured to the great achievements of this distinguished black man, this degree of reverence hardly seems justified and can come across as somewhat jester-like.
Again, for a reader intimated with the history of antagonism that can be felt by black people having to defend the innocuous, the scornful reaction can be aroused that this man has nothing to apologize or offer explanation for.
Throughout the play, one can receive the impression that as opposed to being an accepted part of the society, he is rather being used like the ‘black ram’ Iago claims him to be, useful only to fight their battles.
And what of Desdemona’s father allowing Othello into his home to make merry, yet ready to kill him once he discovers their courtship? For a black reader does this not evoke memory of modern day reactions in a strikingly similar vein?
The virtue of carrying our racialised experience to text not only raises suspicion, but still further doubt about those suspicions. What I at first read as Othello’s buffoonery towards the state, I second read as political strategy and etiquette of the time.
This kind of reading of course adds a wonderful complexity to text, and in every way speaks to Shakespeare’s skill in that so many meanings can be extrapolated.
The specific ‘black reading’ that I have tried to explain is at present devoid from literary criticism, however is one which I think can contribute an enormous amount to our understanding of text.
Margin Page.
Margins Page is a play on its very words. Stories of black people in Britain, both past and present, have often been relegated to the margins of the British canon. This platform attempts to reconfigure this position, serving as a page to help develop, curate and promote black British literature.
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