In:Othello in European Culture
Edited by Elena Bandín Fuertes, Francesca Rayner and Laura Campillo Arnaiz
[Shakespeare in European Culture 3] 2022
► pp. 29–48
Chapter 1Charles Mathews’s Othello, the Moor of Fleet Street (1833) and Maurice Dowling’s Othello Travestie (1834)
Nineteenth-century Shakespeare burlesques and the question of political correctness
Published online: 25 May 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.3.01dra
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.3.01dra
Abstract
Travesty or burlesque was a popular genre not only in nineteenth-century England; in Austria Othello, der Mohr in Wien, was staged as early as 1806. As a tragedy built on a comic structure, Othello lent itself to a parodic treatment, and basically the same techniques were employed by Charles Mathews and Maurice Dowling. Hitherto unnoticed has been their influence on Dickens’s burlesques, particularly on his O’Thello. The two English travesties are similar in some respects (featuring an emancipated Desdemona), but also radically different: Dowling follows Shakespeare closely, whereas Mathews, in the tradition of The Beggar’s Opera, transfers the action to London’s low life. Such a debasement was unacceptable to nineteenth-century critics, but Dowling’s racist portrayal of Othello received applause for 30 years.
References (35)
Bello, Mercedes Salvador, and Maria Joao da Rocha Afonso. 2001. “Portuguese and Spanish Burlesques of Shakespeare’s Plays: From the 18th Century to Our Days.” In proceedings of I Congreso International de Estudios Anglo-Portugeses, 570–579. Lisboa: s.l.
Carneiro de Mendonça, Barbara Heliodora. 1968. “‘Othello’: A Tragedy Built on a Comic Structure.” Shakespeare Survey 21: 31–38.
Dickens, Charles. (1833–1836) 1987. Sketches by Boz. The Oxford Illustrated Dickens. Reprint. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dowling, Maurice. (1834) 1977–1978. Othello Travestie. In Nineteenth-Century Shakespeare Burlesques, edited by Stanley Wells, vol. 2, 3–43. London: Diploma Press.
Draudt, Manfred. 1993. “‘Committing Outrage against the Bard’: Nineteenth-Century Travesties of Shakespeare in England and Austria.” Modern Language Review 88: 102–109.
. 2005. “The Real Thing? Adaptations, Transformations and Burlesques of Shakespeare, Historic and Post-modern.” In Mixed with Other Matter: Shakespeare’s Drama Appropriated, edited by José Roberto O’Shea, Daniela Lapoli Guimarães, and Stephan Arnolf Baumgärtel, special issue of Ilha do Desterro 49: 289–314.
Gager, Valerie L. 1996. Shakespeare and Dickens: The Dynamics of Influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Haywood, Charles. 1977. “Charles Dickens and Shakespeare; or, The Irish Moor of Venice, O’Thello, with Music.” The Dickensian 73: 67–88.
Hitchcock, Tim. 2012. “Place and the Politics of the Past.” Accessed July 11, 2012. [URL]
Honigmann, E. A. J., ed. 1999. Othello. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. London: Arden Shakespeare.
Maley, Willy, and Roy Loughnane, eds. 2016. Celtic Shakespeare: The Bard and the Borderer. London: Routledge.
Mathews, Charles. (1833) 1993. Othello, the Moor of Fleet Street. Edited by Manfred Draudt. Tübingen: Narr.
Mayhew, Henry. 1861–1862. London Labour and the London Poor. 4 vols. London: Griffin, Bohn, and Company.
Nicoll, Allardyce. 1959–1962. A History of English Drama, 1660–1900. Second edition. 6 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Poole, John. (1810) 1977–1978. Hamlet Travestie. In Nineteenth-Century Shakespeare Burlesques, edited by Stanley Wells, vol. 1, 2–69. London: Diploma Press.
Roche, Senga Wallace. 1988. Travesties and Burlesques of Shakespeare’s Plays on the British Stage during the Nineteenth Century. PhD diss. University of London.
Rosario, Catherine. 2015. Black Rams and Extravagant Strangers: Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ and its Rewritings, from Nineteenth-Century Burlesque to Post-colonial Tragedy. PhD diss. University of London.