Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Studies in the Life and Environment of Shakespeare Since 1900
- Shakespeare’s Deposition in the Belott-Mountjoy Suit
- Shakespeare’s Reading
- Recent Studies in Shakespeare’s Chronology
- Coriolanus and the Midlands Insurrection of 1607
- The Shakespeare Collection in the British Museum
- The Structural Pattern of Shakespeare’s Tragedies
- The ‘Meaning’ of Measure for Measure
- Hamlet and the Player Who Could NOT Keep Counsel
- Unworthy Scaffolds: A Theory for the Reconstruction of Elizabethan Playhouses
- Shakespeare in the German Open-Air Theatre
- Othello in Paris and Brussels
- Shakespeare and Denmark: 1900–1949
- International News
- A Stratford Production: Henry VIII
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespeare Studies: 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life and Times
- 3 Textual Studies
- Index
- Plate Section
Othello in Paris and Brussels
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2007
- Frontmatter
- Studies in the Life and Environment of Shakespeare Since 1900
- Shakespeare’s Deposition in the Belott-Mountjoy Suit
- Shakespeare’s Reading
- Recent Studies in Shakespeare’s Chronology
- Coriolanus and the Midlands Insurrection of 1607
- The Shakespeare Collection in the British Museum
- The Structural Pattern of Shakespeare’s Tragedies
- The ‘Meaning’ of Measure for Measure
- Hamlet and the Player Who Could NOT Keep Counsel
- Unworthy Scaffolds: A Theory for the Reconstruction of Elizabethan Playhouses
- Shakespeare in the German Open-Air Theatre
- Othello in Paris and Brussels
- Shakespeare and Denmark: 1900–1949
- International News
- A Stratford Production: Henry VIII
- The Year's Contributions to Shakespeare Studies: 1 Critical Studies
- 2 Shakespeare’s Life and Times
- 3 Textual Studies
- Index
- Plate Section
Summary
[Translated by Sir Barry Jackson] Of all the tragedies of Shakespeare, Othello is undoubtedly the one which the French theatre-goer has been able to accept with least perplexity. The action is complete, developing with compact logic. Louis Gillet, the French critic, says: “In form, Othello is the author’s finest work. No play is so simple, so well constructed, or more in accord with the classic spirit. The poet has left us nothing more complete and rounded. . . . All the reactions are of common humanity, entirely comprehensible, with no place for the supernatural or the marvellous.” There is truth in this statement: although perhaps it might be better re-phrased in a slightly different manner—in Othello the mysterious, always repellent to Latin races, does not immediately make itself apparent, and might indeed in desultory reading be thought to be absent altogether, while the characters are so conceived that French actors, trained by classic discipline, will always be more at ease in this play than in any other of the poet’s works.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare Survey , pp. 98 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1950