Othello

[Saturday] 21 May [1887], Douglass Travel Diary,

 Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress

When he found a moment to jot down his Venetian adventures, Douglass made sure to note, "On the great canal, I saw the house where Desdemoni resided when wooed by Othelo."

Although Othello and Desdemona were fictional creations and Shakespeare himself most likely never visited Venice himself, English visitors to the city had delighted in finding the site depicted in the play. In this case, the Palazzo Contarini-Fasan served as the location. 

(The picture that I have here is not the Palazzo, which appears as a sliver to the right of the luxurious mansion that I captured. I was working with a nineteenth-century Baedeker and no internet, so I had to guess. I did go around to the alley and get a picture of the doorway where Iago taunted Desdemona's father with all sorts of lewd suggestions, just to round things out.)

Not the Pal. Contarini-Fasan, 2017

Douglass sailed past this site, perhaps more than once on May 18 and 19, 1887, with Helen by his side. Seventy (or so he believed) and a himself a veteran of many of his own battles, he could identify with the Moor in other ways than a taboo, white wife. Of course, some will quickly point out the tragic ending of that tale, but here Douglass focuses on the beginning of the romance, reflected also in a print of the same wooing that the Douglasses placed above the fireplace in the parlor at Cedar Hill. Desdemona's adoring gaze in that image reflects Helen's in the famous portrait of the second Douglass marriage.

Behind the Pal. Contarini-Fasan, 2017

Douglass had seen a production of Othello almost exactly 18 years earlier sometime between May 10 and16, 1869. Then, his companion had been Ottilie Assing, along with her landlords the Frauensteins and their friends the Riottas. Never one to miss either the irony or the opportunity to tweak racial hypocrisy, he probably enjoyed the discomfort of fellow audience members seeing a formidable and elegant black man in white company, clearly the chaperone of a white lady. With the 14th Amendment hotly debated in Congress and at the Equal Rights Association meetings during the day, this exercise of the civil right of free association took on added importance.

Print of a painting of Othello wooing Desdemona, 

West Parlor, Cedar Hill, FDNHP

The performance may have enamored him less if it did not outright offend him. Assing proclaimed it "amazingly beautiful" and the lead "splendid" ("grossartig schone" and "vortrefflicher"). The reviewer at the New York Herald, on the other hand, proclaimed the star "the worst Othello we have ever seen outside an amateur performance." Whatever the quality of the performance, as was the case in most productions since the Bard's day, a white man played the lead in blackface. (The first Othello that I ever saw was a 1980s BBC production with Anthony Hopkins in blackface - ouch! I couldn't finish watching.) In this case, Edwin Booth, brother of that Booth and owner of the theater situated on 23rd Street at 6th Avenue (don't look for it today).

Douglass would probably have preferred to see Paul Molineaux Hewlett in the part. Hewlett would have been the youngest Othello on Broadway (before there was a Broadway) being only thirteen in 1860. Ira Aldridge would also have been a better choice, but he had died two years earlier. What Douglass thought of Booth, he kept to himself. Even the usually effusive Assing, who could not pass up an opportunity to parrot Douglass, did not mention his opinion.

If only Douglass could visit London now. The Shakespeare Globe's production of Othello stars Mark Rylance as Iago and Andre Holland in the title role and plays through October 13. I will be in London for a wedding at that time, so I have the great fortune to see it. Then, we will be off for the "Frederick Douglass across and against Times, Places, and Disciplines" in Paris, which has an engaging program of international scholars. Seeing Othello beforehand seems rather appropriate.