In what Norman Sanders has termed [a] now classic study, noted Shakespearean Marvin Rosenberg sets out to discover how the complex, troubled characters of the play have been interpreted by actors and critics from Shakespeare's time to the present.

"LEAR: Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus? / Who is it that can tell me who I am?" "Centuries of critics and actors have tried to tell, but Lear's identity, and the meaning of his action in the play, are still touched with enigma." "This book seeks Shakespeare's intentions in King Lear in new ways. It explores major interpretations of distinguished actors and directors as well as of critics from England, the United States, France, Belgium, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Italy, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Poland. Is the play unsuited for the stage, as Charles Lamb - and others - have declared? How, in fact, has it been staged, and how visualized by critics? Is Lear designed to be a frail and aging old man? A powerful image of authority? Mad, or senile, to begin with? A kindly old father? Everyman? All of these? None? Does the play end with redemption? Unmitigated despair? Is it Christian? Pagan? Mr. Rosenberg confronts these and other questions from the base of his study and personal experience of the play." "To deepen the theatrical side of that experience, he began, as he did in his The Masks of Othello, with an involvement in the staged play: he directed and acted in Othello, and he followed a production of King Lear through two months of rehearsal and performance. One by-product of this intense participation was a discovery of some special qualities in the language of the play." "To achieve a better understanding of these qualities, Mr. Rosenberg put Lear's vocabulary through a computer, and established a concordance of every word both for the play as a whole and for each character. Interesting structural elements in Shakespeare's language become apparent." "Recognizing the difficulty, for a critic, of responding afresh to Shakespeare's craftsmanship in characterization and in arousing expectation, Mr. Rosenberg also arranged to expose the play to spectators who had never seen or read it. The response of this naive audience, after attending performances, was curious and illuminating. The author believes that any critical approach must be used that will increase our understanding of Shakespeare's work."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Lindsey R. Swindall examines the historical and political context of acclaimed African American actor Paul Robeson’s three portrayals of Shakespeare’s Othello in the United Kingdom and the United States. These performances took place in London in 1930, on Broadway in 1943, and in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959. All three of the productions, when considered together, provide an intriguing glimpse into Robeson’s artistry as well as his political activism. The Politics of Paul Robeson’s Othello maintains that Robeson’s development into a politically minded artist explicates the broader issue of the role of the African American artist in times of crisis. Robeson (1898–1976) fervently believed that political engagement was an inherent component of the role of the artist in society, and his performances demonstrate this conviction. In the 1930 production, audiences and critics alike confronted the question: Should a Black actor play Othello in an otherwise all-white cast? In the 1943 production on Broadway, Robeson consciously used the role as a form for questioning theater segregation both onstage and in the seats. In 1959, after he had become well known for his leftist views and sympathies with Communism, his performance in a major Stratford-upon-Avon production called into question whether audiences could accept onstage an African American who held radical—and increasingly unpopular—political views. Swindall thoughtfully uses Robeson’s Othello performances as a collective lens to analyze the actor and activist’s political and intellectual development.

Shakespeare's Othello has exercised a powerful fascination over audiences for centuries with its portrayal of destructive jealousy. This study is a major exercise in the historicisation of Othello in which the author examines contemporary writings and demonstrates how they were embedded in the text of Othello: discourse about conflict between Turk and Venetian treatises on the professionalisation of England's military forces, representations of Africans and blackamoors, and narratives depicting jealous husbands. The second section traces Othello's history in England and the United States from the Restoration to the late 1980s, using illustrations where appropriate. Each chapter highlights a specific historical period, actor or production to demonstrate how and why elements from Shakespeare's text were emphasised or repressed. Othello is revealed as a significant shaper of cultural meaning.

First published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Including twenty-one groundbreaking chapters that examine one of Shakespeare's most complex tragedies. Othello: Critical Essays explores issues of friendship and fealty, love and betrayal, race and gender issues, and much more.

The third New Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's Othello, updated by Christina Luckyj for the contemporary student reader.

This volume, examining the ways in which Shakespeare's plays are designed for hearers as well as spectators, has been prompted by recent explorations of the auditory dimension of early modern drama by such scholars as Andrew Gurr, Bruce Smith, and James Hirsh. To look at the dynamics of hearing in Shakespeare's plays involves a paradigm shift that changes how we understand virtually everything about them, from the architecture of the buildings, to playing spaces, to blocking, and to larger interpretative issues, including our understanding of character based on players' responses to what they hear, mishear, or refuse to hear. Who Hears in Shakespeare? Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen is comprised of three sections on Shakespeare's texts and performance history: "The Poetics of Hearing and the Early Modern Stage"; "Metahearing: Hearing, Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and Off"; and "Transhearing: Hearing, Whispering, Overhearing, and Eavesdropping in Film and Other Media." Chapters by noted scholars explore the complex reactions and interactions of onstage and offstage audiences and show how Shakespearean stagecraft, actualized on stage and adapted on screen, revolves around various situations and conventions of hearing--soliloquies, asides, avesdropping, overhearing, and stage whispers. In short, Who Hears in Shakespeare? enunciates Shakespeare's nuanced, powerful stagecraft of hearing. The volume ends with Stephen Booth's afterword, his inspiring meditation on hearing that considers Shakespearean "audiences" and their responses to what they hear--or don't hear--in Shakespeare's plays.

Everybody’s Shakespeare brings the insights and wisdom of one of the finest Shakespearean scholars of our century to the task of surveying why the Bard continues to flourish in modern times. Mack treats individually seven plays—Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Cesar, and Antony and Cleopatra—and demonstrates in each case how the play has retained its vitality, complexity, and appeal.