Othello, Race, and Cultural Memory on Cheers
19
This inextricable tie between the play’s power and Othello’s race becomes a
difficult problem for modem productions and citations that wish to keep the play
in the cultural memory but not endorse its racism. However much “Homicidal
Ham” is trying to ignore the racial implications of Othello, it is also
simultaneously guilty of exploiting them. In doing this, “Homicidal Ham”
illustrates the problems of adapting Othello to fit the tastes of a modem
audience. The various Uncontrollable-Othello narratives seem to reify the idea
that the play’s drama cannot be separated from a stereotypical viewing of
Othello as a dangerous black man. Modem productions and citations which try
to ignore this problem will end up as schizophrenic and confused as “Homicidal
Ham.”
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
David Boyles
Notes
1 See Marvin Rosenberg, The Masks o f Othello (Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1961) for a detailed discussion of Kean’s emotional performances.
2 Howard, Tony. “Shakespeare’s Cinematic Offshoots” The Cambridge Companion to
Shakespeare on Film. 2nd Edition. Ed. Russel Jackson. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2007) pg. 314.
3 See Dympha Callaghan. Shakespeare Without Women: Representing Gender and Race
on the Renaissance Stage (London: Routledge, 2000) and Virginia Mason Vaughan.
Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2005).
4 See Edward Pechter, Othello and In \