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Page 70 valuable aid of several English Gentleman Amateurs, will present to his Friends and the public a novel evening’s entertainment. On Thursday Evening, August 10th, 1848, will be acted Shakespeare’s Tragedy of “Othello” The Moor of Venice…[b]y a Native Gentleman. (Mitra 1967:197) Having a “Native Gentleman” play Othello, the Moor of Venice, was part of a movement in English theaters of Calcutta at the beginning of the nineteenth century toward “ethnic correctness” of representation. In looking for models homewards, the English theaters in Calcutta aimed at verisimilitude and realism, while, of course, adjusting to the climes of the colony, both geographic and cultural. Expectations of English audiences in India were somewhat different from those of their London counterparts, especially when the productions dealt with certain subjects that meant more in the colonies than at home. Prior to Barry’s production of the Native Othello, several plays on the nineteenth-century stage prominently figured a number of ‘‘Moors.” A production of Zanga, also known as The Revenge: A Tragedy, by Edward Young (1683–1765), which originally was performed in London’s major theaters, was produced in Calcutta by the locally famous Chowringhee Theatre, described by the Calcutta Journal on October 26, 1819 as follows:5 The entrance of Zanga…did not prevent us from being struck with the want of dignity as well as of propriety in the costume. It was neither princely, nor Moorish, and we are satisfied that if a person in such a dress had been seen (not now, but at any past period however near or however remote) in the streets of Tripoly, Tunis, or Algiers, notwithstanding the variety of dresses to be met with in these Moorish cities, he would have been as much regarded as an object of curiosity as an Englishman in the heart of Fez. The departure from African costume is scarcely pardonable here, surrounded as we are by Mohammedans of Asia, from whom at least our amateurs, whether managers or performers, might have learnt.… (370) The reviewer’s criticism and commentary focus on ethnic correctness of representation, as the embodiment of the Moors on stage was found wanting in terms of realism. The criticisms suggest that |
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