Book contents
- Shakespeare Survey 75
- Shakespeare Survey
- Shakespeare Survey
- Copyright page
- Editor’s Note
- Contributors
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Understanding Iago, An Italian Film Adaptation Of Othello: Clientelism, Corruption, Politics
- Circumventing Marginality: The Curious Case Of India’s Othello Screen Adaptations
- Othello’s Kin: Legacy, Belonging And The Fortunes Of The Moor
- ‘More Fair Than Black’: Othellos On British Radio
- ‘This Fair Paper’: Othello And The Artists’ Book
- Othello: A Dialogue With The Built Environment
- ‘[A] Maid Called Barbary’: Othello, Moorish Maidservants And The Black Presence In Early Modern England
- ‘The Moor’s Abused By Some Most Villainous Knave, Some Base Notorious Knave, Some Scurvy Fellow’: Legal Spaces, Racial Trauma And Shakespeare’s The Tragedy Of Othello, The Moor Of Venice
- Ben Jonson’s Sejanus And Shakespeare’s Othello: Two Plays Performed By The King’s Men In 1603
- Iago And The Clown: Disassembling The Vice In Othello
- Pitying Desdemona In Folio Othello: Race, Gender And The Willow Song
- Desdemona’s Honest Friend
- Suffering Ecstasy: Othello And The Drama Of Displacement
- Othello’s Sympathies: Emotion, Agency And Identification
- Warning The Stage: Shakespeare’s Mid-Scene Entrance Conventions
- Looking For Perdita In Ali Smith’s Summer
- Grafted To The Moor: Anglo-Spanish Dynastic Marriage And Miscegenated Whiteness In The Winter’s Tale
- Rhyme, History And Memory In A Mirror For Magistrates And Henry VI
- ‘Bad’ Love Lyrics And Poetic Hypocrisy From Gascoigne To Benson’s Shakespeare
- Viola’s Telemachy
- New Analogical Evidence For Cymbeline’s Folkloric Composition In The Medieval Icelandic Ála Flekks Saga
- ‘But When Extremities Speak’: Harley Granville-Barker, Coriolanus, The World Wars And The State Of Exception
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2021
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2021
- Professional Shakespeare Productions In The British Isles, January–December 2020
- The Year’s Contribution To Shakespeare Studies
- Abstracts Of Articles In Shakespeare Survey 75
- Index
Pitying Desdemona In Folio Othello: Race, Gender And The Willow Song
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2022
Edited by
Book contents
- Shakespeare Survey 75
- Shakespeare Survey
- Shakespeare Survey
- Copyright page
- Editor’s Note
- Contributors
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Understanding Iago, An Italian Film Adaptation Of Othello: Clientelism, Corruption, Politics
- Circumventing Marginality: The Curious Case Of India’s Othello Screen Adaptations
- Othello’s Kin: Legacy, Belonging And The Fortunes Of The Moor
- ‘More Fair Than Black’: Othellos On British Radio
- ‘This Fair Paper’: Othello And The Artists’ Book
- Othello: A Dialogue With The Built Environment
- ‘[A] Maid Called Barbary’: Othello, Moorish Maidservants And The Black Presence In Early Modern England
- ‘The Moor’s Abused By Some Most Villainous Knave, Some Base Notorious Knave, Some Scurvy Fellow’: Legal Spaces, Racial Trauma And Shakespeare’s The Tragedy Of Othello, The Moor Of Venice
- Ben Jonson’s Sejanus And Shakespeare’s Othello: Two Plays Performed By The King’s Men In 1603
- Iago And The Clown: Disassembling The Vice In Othello
- Pitying Desdemona In Folio Othello: Race, Gender And The Willow Song
- Desdemona’s Honest Friend
- Suffering Ecstasy: Othello And The Drama Of Displacement
- Othello’s Sympathies: Emotion, Agency And Identification
- Warning The Stage: Shakespeare’s Mid-Scene Entrance Conventions
- Looking For Perdita In Ali Smith’s Summer
- Grafted To The Moor: Anglo-Spanish Dynastic Marriage And Miscegenated Whiteness In The Winter’s Tale
- Rhyme, History And Memory In A Mirror For Magistrates And Henry VI
- ‘Bad’ Love Lyrics And Poetic Hypocrisy From Gascoigne To Benson’s Shakespeare
- Viola’s Telemachy
- New Analogical Evidence For Cymbeline’s Folkloric Composition In The Medieval Icelandic Ála Flekks Saga
- ‘But When Extremities Speak’: Harley Granville-Barker, Coriolanus, The World Wars And The State Of Exception
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2021
- Shakespeare Performances in England, 2021
- Professional Shakespeare Productions In The British Isles, January–December 2020
- The Year’s Contribution To Shakespeare Studies
- Abstracts Of Articles In Shakespeare Survey 75
- Index
Summary
Pity is a major emotion in Shakespearian tragedy, but its relation to critical race studies and gender studies has been comparatively under-examined.2 Pity fundamentally depends on an exchange of sympathy between the pitying, often in a position of advantage or at least of security, and the pitied, typically in a position of disadvantage. In Shakespeare’s era, and in many before and since, differences in race and gender have entailed certain advantages and disadvantages: in his England, white male figures (at least those of a certain class) typically possessed more legal advantages than female figures or persons of other races.3 Attentive to difference regarding both race and gender, Othello draws pity from audiences through its portrayals of these intertwined concerns, brought together pointedly through the marriage of Othello and Desdemona.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shakespeare Survey 75Othello, pp. 148 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022