Race in 19th century productions of Othello

This is a poster advertising a performance of Othello in November 1836, nearly 232 years to the day after the first recorded performance of the play in 1604, at the Theatre Royal in London, England. What is of particular interest here is the identity of the man who plays Othello, a well-known and hugely respected American actor named Edwin Forrest. There are one aspect of Forrest's identity in particular which is worth discussing, so as to better understand the manner in which Othello was performed in the centuries after its original release: he was white. This fact is of particular interest seeing as this production of the play was staged during the time period when the topic of the race of actors playing Othello was finally put into question. The first black Othello only took to the stage a mere decade earlier, in 1826, when 19-year old Ira Aldridge began to take on the role of the moor. The reception of this milestone was mixed, to say the least. Despite Aldridge's success as an accomplished actor and playwright, this was a time at which a black man being on stage was not always an accepted practice. The London newspaper The Athenaeum wrote about a particular 1833 Covent Garden performance of Othello, at which they were disgusted by seeing the white actress playing Desdemona being “pawed about the stage by a black man.” It is therefore worth hypothesizing that this reception may have inclined English theatres to stop using black actors as Othello. After all, it would be another century until the moor was portrayed by another black man, Paul Robeson. So, by exploring the theatrical paradigm at the time of the performance listed in this poster, we can gain a greater understanding of the cultural implications of a performance of Othello in the 19th century, and we can see that the issue of race in productions of the play lasted until far more recently than one may have expected.

Bibliography:
"2016/2017 Season." WSC Avant Bard Theater on the Edge. N.p., 18 Jan. 2015. Web.