Part of
Othello in European CultureEdited by Elena Bandín Fuertes, Francesca Rayner and Laura Campillo Arnaiz
[Shakespeare in European Culture 3] 2022
► pp. 29–48
Edited by Elena Bandín Fuertes, Francesca Rayner and Laura Campillo Arnaiz
[Shakespeare in European Culture 3] 2022
► pp. 29–48
Chapter 1Charles Mathews’s Othello, the Moor of Fleet Street (1833) and Maurice Dowling’s Othello Travestie (1834)
Nineteenth-century Shakespeare burlesques and the question of political correctness
Travesty or burlesque was a popular genre not only in nineteenth-century England; in Austria Othello, der Mohr in Wien, was staged as early as 1806. As a tragedy built on a comic structure, Othello lent itself to a parodic treatment, and basically the same techniques were employed by Charles Mathews and Maurice Dowling. Hitherto unnoticed has been their influence on Dickens’s burlesques, particularly on his O’Thello. The two English travesties are similar in some respects (featuring an emancipated Desdemona), but also radically different: Dowling follows Shakespeare closely, whereas Mathews, in the tradition of The Beggar’s Opera, transfers the action to London’s low life. Such a debasement was unacceptable to nineteenth-century critics, but Dowling’s racist portrayal of Othello received applause for 30 years.
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