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Page 77

Sans Souci: The Hindoo Othello

Othello, of Shakespeare’s plays, the latest and the best, was the great attraction Thursday night—the player, however, but not the play. Performed by Baboo Bustomchurn Addy…all expectations were, of course, centred in the young aspirant for dramatic fame, who has gallantly flung down the gauntlet to the rest of the members of the Native community. For in England, it is well known, the poetry of the mind has long given way to the poetry of motion, and Shakespeare, exiled from the country he honours so much, seeks an asylum on the Calcutta boards. …Pleasanter still it is to record the attendance of the most influential members of the Civil Service, impelled, no doubt, some by curiosity, others, we trust, by a worthier motive.… Othello’s entry was greeted with a hearty welcome, and the first speech… evidenced considerable study and an absence of that timidity so constantly the concomitant of a first appearance. Slim, but symmetrical in person, his delivery was somewhat cramped, but, under all circumstances, his pronunciation of English was for a Native remarkably good.

(Mitra 1967:205–6)

While the reviewer evokes a curious nostalgia for the “exiled” Shakespeare seeking “an asylum on the Calcutta boards,” he quickly re-asserts the divide between England, the home of Shakespearean drama, and the colonial backdrop for this Native performance. The reviewer’s praise of the young ‘‘aspirant to dramatic fame” is seldom unqualified. His tongue-in-cheek praise of Addy for flinging “down the gauntlet to the rest of the members of the Native community” is accompanied by a reminder of Addy’s inescapable Native limitations: “his delivery” was “cramped,” but “his pronunciation of English was for a Native remarkably good” (206– 7). The Hurkaru reviewer also states: “As might have been expected, [Addy] was far from being proficient in the art of bye-play, which was painfully remarked throughout the piece.… [A] better knowledge of stage-business would be a great desideratum” (207). Overall, the reviewer seems pulled apart by conflicting responses, regretting Addy’s incompetence in the third act, which “was very poor”; on the other hand, although Addy’s “utterance of the finest passage: ‘Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trumpet’ etc. was a dead failure” (210; Othello 3.3.356), the reviewer nonetheless praises the Native actor for his passion: “The act was more or less relieved by the vitality infused into the part where Othello seizes Iago by the throat, and shortly afterwards by the energetic full-toned declaration of: Arise black vengeance…!’” (207; referring to Othello 3.3.451).

So continues the rest of the review, with a mixture of praise and condescension; the reviewer laments the “inexperience” of the Native actor and his consequent inability to “depict the ravages of the whirlwind of jealousy which overpowers the soul of the Moor,” yet lauds Addy’s “success” when, “racked with the tortures of an agonized heart he gave full vent to his suspicions, [saying to Desdemona] ‘Come, swear it, damn thyself’” (208; referring to Othello 4.2.37).

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