- Compare Emma Smith, William Shakespeare Othello(Hordon: Northcote House
Publishers, 2004 ), who argues that “A Moor—literally a black man from North Africa—
cannot ever be ‘of ’ Venice” ( 4 ); I like her provocative reading of the ambiguities inherent
in “of ” ( 4 – 5 ). See also Camille Wells Slights, “Slaves and Subjects in Othello,”Shakespeare
Quarterly 48 , no. 4 (Winter 1997 ): 377 – 90 , who allows for the possibility that he can be
(though in a different way from what I suggest below). - On Iago’s multiple inscriptions of race, see Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity,
132 – 60 ; and Burton, Traffic and Turning, esp.250– 54. - Greenblatt, “Psychoanalysis and Renaissance Culture.” Influential studies on the
question of interiority in the early modern period include Elizabeth Hanson, Discovering
the Subject in Renaissance England(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 ), and
Katharine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance(Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1995 ). - Julie Hankey, ed., Plays in Performance: Othello (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press,
1987 ), 10. See also Andrew Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642, 3 rd ed. ( 1992 ; Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 ), 95 – 103 , esp. 99 on “personation,” and 90 on
Muly Mahamet. - Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedie(London: Richard Baldwin, 1693 ), 91 ;
John Quincy Adams, Diary, vol. 2 , ed. David Grayson Allen et al. (Cambridge: Belknap
Press, 1981 ), 84. - Emma Smith, 47. See also Callaghan, 75 – 96.
- Emma Smith is especially attentive to performances; see esp. 45–49. See also Vir-
ginia Vaughan, Othello, 93 – 232 , and Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500–1800
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 ); and Hankey, 1 – 134. On color casting,
see Callaghan, 75 – 96 ; Denise Albanese, “Black and White, and Dread All Over: The
Shakespeare Theatre’s ‘Photonegative’ Othelloand the Body of Desdemona,” in New
CasebooksOthello: Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (New York: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 2004 ), 220 – 49 ; and Ayanna Thompson, ed., Colorblind Shakespeare:
New Perspectives on Race and Performance(New York: Routledge, 2006). On Othelloin
film, see Barbara Hodgdon, “Race-ing Othello, Re-engendering White-Out,” in Shake-
speare, the Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, TV, and Video, ed. Lynda E. Boose and
Richard Burt (London: Routledge, 1997 ), 23 – 44 , and Anthony Davies, “Filming Othello,”
inShakespeare and the Moving Image: The Plays on Film and Television, ed. Anthony
Davies and Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 ), 196 – 210. See
also Lois Potter, Shakespeare in Performance: Othello (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2002 ). - Vaughan, Othello, 181 – 82. On Robeson, see Peter Erickson, Citing Shakespeare:
The Reinterpretation of Race in Contemporary Literature and Art(New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007 , esp. 77–101. - On Welles and Othello, see Scott L. Newstok, “Touchof Shakespeare: Welles Un-
moorsOthello,”Shakespeare Bulletin 23 (Spring 2005 ): 29 – 34. See also Nicholas Jones, “A
Bogus Hero: Welles’s Othelloand the Construction of Race,” Shakespeare Bulletin 23
(Spring 2005 ): 9 – 28.
notes to pages 159–160 221