SHAKESPEARE AND TO-DAY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1148, 8 June 1911, Page 6

SHAKESPEARE AND TO-DAY.

.OTHELLO'S WOES. Freshness and vigour were characteristics of the lecture on "Othello," which Mr. 11. L. James delivered to the Wellington Philosophical Society last evening. Tho attendance was reinforced by a number of 'members of the Shakespeare Society, and the accommodation in the' library of the "Dominion Museum was fully taken up. _ ' After a playful reference to his own temerity in venturing to speak in 1 the stronghold of material science, Mr. James proceeded to draw a slinrp distinction between the Shakespearean age and the present lime. If Shakespeare was accused of writing bombast, the reply should be that he lived in an age of bombast. We. on the contrary, lived ill an ago of humbug: We did not. read in Shakespeare about spoon-feeding prisoners i;i gaol, or. bringing up children without the rod which every child needed, or supplying pocket-handkerchiefs and small toothCombs to negroes, or putting wisps of cotton round statues. Those were the things that were done ill this age .of humbug, and Shakespeare, who always called a spado a spade, had to be altered to suit our squeamishness. It was accordingly supposed .nowadays that Shakeepearo intended Othello to be a handsome swarthy individual, whereas ho really meant to represent him as an ugly, negro. The colour of Othello did not matter much to Shakespeare—all lie cared for was tlio psychology of Othello —but it mattered now, because so much had been made of it. Desdemona loved him for his mind, and that was a higher kind of love than that which must be attributed to lier if Othello was handsjme and swarthy. In support of this view, Mr. James mentioned that early . dramatic and pictorial representations— even down to the edition of "the deplorable Howdler"—showed Othello as a negro. He also submitted many quotations from the play itself, such as the reference to Othello's "sooty bosom and the epithet "Thick-lips" applied to him. Unfortunately, critics and editors- had been hypnotised by our modern squeamislines.?,' and therefore did not giyo this evidence its proper weight. Passing '.on to other aspects of his subject, Mr. James said'that the "woes of Desdemona were often commemorated, but readers and critics too often failed to recognise the far greater, far keener and far more lasting woes of Othello. In considering Othello's. action in killing Desdemona, from the modern point of view it should be remembered that he was an Oriental, and at tho time a despotic ruler, and the fault of which he Jiad been led to suppose Desdemona guilty was treason as well as marital unfaithfulness! Besides there was before the people of-that age the example of Henry VIII. From tlie Shakespearean point of view, however, it was enough that the psychology of Othello demanded that under such circumstances ho should act as ho did. The killing of Desdemona was regarded by Othello -not as a murder but as a sacrifice. Desdeniona, instead of removing his suspicions by frank explanations, equivocated, and was silent when she ought to have spoken. In conclusion, Mr; James read, with much dramatic force, and with illuminating comment, several of tho finest passages tragedy. Desdemona's song was sung to the original music bv Mrs. B. Wilson The president (Mr. G. V. Hudson) exoressed (he thanks of the meeting to Mr James and Mrs. Wilson. Dr. Newman remarked that Mr. James's readings of Shakespeare struck him as superior to the declamation of Sir H. Beerbohm Tree whom he recently'heard in "Henry VIII."