In:Othello in European Culture
Edited by Elena Bandín Fuertes, Francesca Rayner and Laura Campillo Arnaiz
[Shakespeare in European Culture 3] 2022
► pp. 99–112
Chapter 5Othello’s race and slavery
Shakespeare, Ducis and Barbaz
Published online: 25 May 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.3.05fra
https://doi.org/10.1075/sec.3.05fra
Abstract
Shakespeare’s Othello is usually regarded as a play about race. According to Douglas Lanier, however, continental European cinema often foregrounds the hero’s class instead of his race. I trace this continental phenomenon to post-revolutionary France. In Jean-François Ducis’s Othello adaptation (1792), race is subsumed under class. As John Golder has argued, Ducis’s Othello responds to the revolutionary French movement towards the emancipation of slaves and coloured people. When Britain abolished the slave trade, however, the dangers to economic prosperity became clear. In that context, a racist parody of Ducis’s Othello adaptation by the Dutchman Abraham Barbaz (1815) reinstated race as its anti-hero’s defining characteristic. Whether Othello’s race is seen as his defining characteristic depends on the political and economic context.
Keywords: Shakespeare, Ducis, Duval, Barbaz, Othello, race, class, French Revolution, slavery, abolition
Article outline
- Ducis and Duval
- Barbaz
- Slavery and slave trade
- Conclusion
Acknowledgements Note References
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