The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 27.136  Tuesday, 19 April 2016

 

[1] From:        Arnie Perlstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         April 18, 2016 at 1:48:23 PM EDT

     Subject:    Identity of the Clown in Othello 

 

[2] From:        Arnie Perlstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         April 18, 2016 at 2:29:34 PM EDT

     Subject:    Identity of the Clown in Othello 

 

 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Arnie Perlstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 18, 2016 at 1:48:23 PM EDT

Subject:    Identity of the Clown in Othello 

 

Laurie Johnson wrote: 

 

“I haven’t yet been convinced by anything in the arguments about the Clown in Othello being Iago in disguise, and I would like to pose one problem with the theory that the text of the play exposes. In Act 3, Scene 1, the Clown exits and Iago enters on the same line (line 31 in the Folger digital copy, the Clown exiting on “I shall seem to notify her”). From a staging perspective, this seems to me to make it unlikely that the playwright expected the two characters to be one.”

 

Laurie,

 

I addressed this very issue 4 weeks ago in my second post in this thread, and explained how the immediate shift from Clown onstage to Iago onstage was a positive not a negative in terms of staging, as follows:

 

“What if Iago’s disguise as the Clown were maintained intact for the audience until the Clown exits during 3.1, whereupon, instead of entirely leaving the stage, we would see him at the extreme side of the stage, behind some sort of wall so as to be out of sight from Cassio, shed his disguise as the Clown, to reveal himself as Iago, and then for him to enter again right away as Iago! I believe this would be a wonderful, even electrifying moment, from a dramatic point of view, and it would allow for the message to get through to the audience, which would have just experienced the same sort of duping as Iago inflicts on everyone else in the play, but where we are rescued from our duped status before the play continues. I.e., we feel what it is like to be deceived, and so we can no longer rest assured that we would not be gulled by Iago if we were there. It takes us all down a peg.”

 

In short, it’s no accident that Shakespeare wrote the entrance of Iago to immediately follow the Clown’s exit, with no gap but also no overlap - it’s a giant hint and invitation to a creative director.

 

 

Cheers, 

Arnie 

 

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Arnie Perlstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         April 18, 2016 at 2:29:34 PM EDT

Subject:    Identity of the Clown in Othello

 

Marianne Kimura wrote: 

 

“I think the clown figure in Othello may indeed be a double of Iago, sort of a psychic shadow meant to underline or highlight Iago’s festive origins as a Vice/Lord of misrule/fool figure”

 

Thank you very much for your above reply, Marianne, which is representative of some other replies I’ve received so far, and also of some of the prior scholarly takes I’ve read on the subject of the Clown in Othello. 

 

In a way, it’s a middle ground between the extremes of seeing no particular connection between Iago and the Clown, on the one hand, and my claim that Iago is the Clown, on the other.

 

What I find most fascinating is the greater willingness of those in the middle like you, Marianne, to see Shakespeare as presenting close parallels between two characters which have no basis in the realism of the world of the play, rather than those parallels being evidence of those two characters being the same character—which,again, would be totally realistic given Iago’s being such a shapeshifter in every other way.

 

I’d love to hear what your underlying thought process is on that point! 

 

Cheers,

Arnie

 

 

 

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