Assignment: Write an at least 750 words essay that defends a thesis you developed through a close critical reading/analysis of one literary works listed below and supported by at least one secondary source drawn from such academic databases as the MLA International Bibliography, JSTOR, and Project MUSE. You will access these databases through the Troy Library website, not general web searches. This essay relies mainly on textual support from the primary text, but includes at least one secondary source that supports/sustains the student’s argument. Do not confuse “critical analysis” with “plot summary”; the goal is to develop, sustain, and advance a thesis based on a critique of the primary text but supported in part by at least one secondary source. Choice of two topics—write on only one: Topic 1: Analyze one soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Othello so that you can show how the speech’s imagery helps us to understand what Iago or Othello is thinking and doing at that point of the play. Use the discussion boards to ask questions—there is an entire section in the discussion boards for the speeches. You are analyzing the speech to give a sense of HOW Iago and Othello explain their thoughts—you do not want to merely summarize the speech. As with Essays 1 and 2, this is thesis driven—you are not given a thesis here as in Essay 1, but must invent one as in Essay 2. So, the thesis should say something about how the speech reveals Iago or Othello’s character and what they are thinking at this point in the play. You will want to go through the speech and examine how each line builds up the speech—go through it line by line (not to summarize though), to show how it all comes together through the specific imagery in the speech. The soliloquies are: Iago: Act 1, Scene 3, Lines 367-88 (1.3.367-88) Iago: 2.1.269-95 Iago: 2.3.299-325 Iago: 3.3.336-345 Iago: 4.1.93-103 Othello: 5.2.1-22 You will want to formulate a clear thesis (a statement about what you believe the speech says or does most strikingly, in your opinion) and develop your argument showing how it achieves this by drawing evidence from such elements as simile, metaphor, vocabulary/diction, symbol, rhyme, etc. Use the elements discussed in the Backpack Literature chapters and in our discussions as your guide. Your goal is in no way here to summarize the speech. Rather, go through each line very carefully, explaining how each image adds to the speech’s overall impact and progress—each of Iago’s speeches shows us how his thinking is developing and how his plan comes together. Othello’s speech shows us the result of Iago’s work on him— Othello is possessed by the idea that Desdemona has not only been unfaithful to him, but will bewitch and cheat on other men. You will want to formulate a clear thesis (a statement about what you believe the speeches say or do most strikingly, in your opinion, to develop the common themes) and develop your argument showing how they achieve this by drawing evidence from such elements as simile, metaphor, vocabulary/diction, symbol, rhyme, etc. Use the elements discussed in the Backpack Literature chapters and in our discussions as your guide. You MUST USE direct quotes to support a thesis in a tight, focused argument; a good rule of thumb is one quote per paragraph. Each speech has strong elements to choose to analyze, and I will certainly be happy to talk to each of you about possible quotes. I look forward to reading your essays. There is one required outside source. This source cannot be from just any author or website—any use of a site like SparkNotes, Shmoop, eNotes, etc. will not fulfill the requirement and should be avoided. These are not university level sources. Instead, you must use the MLA International Bibliography of JSTOR Arts and Sciences—databases you must access through the Troy Library: http://trojan.troy.edu/library/ When you access that link, you should see this screen: In your browser (not the image above), click on ‘Databases by name:’ and then type ‘MLA International Bibliography,’ ‘JSTOR,’ Project MUSE.’ It is useful to go through all three to find good sources. If you are off-campus/off-site, you will be prompted to enter your Troy email address and password for access to the databases. Do so. You will then be in the MLA Bibliography through EBSCHOhost (or JSTOR or Project MUSE). When you search here, simplicity is best. Start wide--just the author’s name and/or the title of the play. Here, I might start with ‘Shakespeare Othello' or ‘Wilson Fences’ and be sure to select 'Linked Full Text' articles from all sources. Since most of us are not able to get to main campus and the library, we want to search only for 'full-text' articles so we can read and download them remotely. You will need to read several articles to find one that fits your argument. Do not simply ‘drop’ a quote or two from your article into the essay—as in 1101, all outside sources must be logically incorporated into your essay with an attributive phrase and analysis that ties the quote to your thesis. Here's what that search screen should look like: Quality research takes time. It is not easy, and results rarely fall into one's lap. One needs to understand that diligence and reading a lot of material that might not directly help one's research project is a part of the job. Please email me with questions/ideas/problems. I am here to help! Basic Guidelines: • • • • • • • • Double space your essay; include your name, the course number and section at the top of the first page Avoid the use of the second person as it is conversational and too direct. Use the first person to describe your own thoughts, but better to use the third person. Introduce your poems and authors by full title and his/her full name early in the paper. Thereafter, only use his/her last name. Do not focus on the writing process. Be sure that you do not simply summarize or paraphrase the speech or speeches. Assume the reader knows the play you are talking about; your job is to help the reader see below the surface and understand the speech or the speeches better. Write in the present tense, but do use tenses to show chronology in the speech itself as needed. Always use direct quotes to support your claim, and thoroughly explain what each quote means and why it is important to your thesis. A good rule of thumb is one quote per paragraph. Examine how Shakespeare and Wilson use language—including similes, metaphors, and other comparisons, symbols, rhymes that link concepts, archaic meanings of words and their etymologies—use the OED through the links at the Troy library website (you pay for the subscription as part of your tuition—use it), etc. What you’ll be graded upon: 15% Introduction: You establish a context for the significance of your thesis in regards to the literary work as a whole. How does your argument contribute to understanding the author’s major literary/thematic concerns? What can other readers learn from your analysis? How does your analysis/critique fit in with other critical responses of the author/literary work? 15% Thesis: You state your main point (or argument) in 1-2 sentences. The thesis is the culmination of your introduction. 30% Organization. Your essay should follow that of typical literary critiques: Since your focus must be on analyzing some literary motif, theme, or a combination of literary elements (such as symbolism, character, setting, etc.), your essay must contain well-structured supporting paragraphs that contain a topic sentence, quotes from the primary text, at least one quote from a secondary source, an explanation/discussion of the significance of the quotes you use in relation to your thesis, and a concluding sentence or two that situates the entire paragraph in relation to the thesis. Your thesis will focus on some kind of critical analysis of the primary text, so your supporting paragraphs should contain quotes from the text that illustrate your thesis/argument; in addition, you should include at least one quote from secondary source to support your argument. Your supporting paragraphs should be organized around each of the quotes you use, explaining the significance of the quotes and why (or how) they illustrate your main point, but you also need to make sure that your paragraphs contain strong transitions and at least six (or more) sentences. 10% Conclusion: Regardless of the argument you make, you want a conclusion that avoids summarizing what you’ve just said, and please avoid writing, “In conclusion.…” Your aim in a conclusion is to place the discussion in a larger context. For example, how might your critical analysis of a literary character relate to the other characters in a work? How might your thesis be applied to other aspects of the text, say for example, setting or symbolism? 15% Grammar and mechanics: Your paper avoids basic grammar mistakes, such as dropped apostrophes in possessives, subject/verb disagreement, arbitrary tense switches, etc. The paper demonstrates a commitment to proofreading by avoiding easy-to-catch typos and word mistakes (effect for affect, for example). The paper adheres to MLA formatting style for in-text and bibliographic citations. 15% Presentation: Your paper meets the minimum length criteria of 750 words, is typed with a title and your name on it. You follow your individual professor’s instructions for formatting (margins, placement of the name, etc). https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.troy.edu/article/689900 ACCESS PROVIDED BY TROY UNIVERSITY LOG IN B R OWS E OR MENU Asian Theatre Journal • • Asian Theatre Journal Volume 35, Number 1, Spring 2018 University of Hawai'i Press Article Viewed | Download | Save View Citation Additional Information • "Come, You Spirits":An Alternative Afterlife to • • • • • Shakespeare's Macbeth and Othello, as Mediated through Japanese Classical Nō and Kyōgen Theatre • Michael Ingham (bio) and Kaoru Nakao (bio) This study will explore the potential of nō theatre as a form in which adaptations, or more accurately transcultural transformations and appropriations, of Shakespearean drama can flourish in a Japanese cultural context. With reference to specific performance examples we will argue that transculturation of Shakespearean drama through the vehicle of the transcendently metaphysical and ritualized nō in combination with the more dramatically mimetic, if similarly stylized, kyōgen can offer fresh perception of theatrical possibility for both western and Japanese audiences. The practice invites both audience constituencies to share in alternative ways of seeing and feeling about the iconic and sometimes culturally conservative constructs of Shakespeare and nō, respectively. Bearing in mind the phenomenon of cultural mobility and transmission, as proposed by Stephen Greenblatt and others, we will discuss three principal case studies, Izumi Noriko's 2006 nō Macbeth and 2013 nō Othelloproductions and Nomura Mansai's 2010 Tokyo mixed-mode production and subsequent touring version of Macbeth. They serve as very good illustrations of how, in spite of the apparent aesthetic restraints arising out of the formality of its theatricality and codification, nō and kyōgen theatre can afford new insights into Shakespeare as a contemporary global theatre practice. [End Page 112] Introduction Japanese Shakespeare is familiar to the broader Western audiences, mainly in its representations by Kurosawa Akira (黒澤明) in cinema and Ninagawa Yukio (蜷川幸雄) and Suzuki Tadashi (鈴木忠 志) in theatre. Nonetheless, the international discourse on Japanese appropriations of the Western Bard into established traditional forms including kabuki (歌舞 伎), bunraku (文楽), kyōgen (狂言) and nō (能) is relatively under-developed, despite growing interest in the phenomenon. Minami Ryuta (南隆太), for example, writing on the nō-Shakespeare fusion, claims that "Noh Shakespeare has not drawn enough academic attention to be known outside Japan" (Minami 2012: 184). In their overview, "Seven Stages of Shakespeare Reception"—Daniel Gallimore's and Minami Ryuta's chapter in Jonah Salz's authoritative and compendious 2016 study, A History of Japanese Theatre—the authors' seven stages do not specifically include nō Shakespeare, as they do kabuki and shimpa (Gallimore and Minami 2016: 485–486). Presumably their reasoning is that nō adaptations are not yet seen as being sufficiently established to warrant specific reference. We can therefore intuit that nō is subsumed under their seventh stage, designated "reinvention." Nō's partner form, kyōgen, has also been employed to great effect in what are often termed "Japanized" Shakespeare transformations, notably Takahashi Yasunari's and Nomura Mansai's (野村萬斎) critically lauded Kyōgen of Errors (高橋康也『間違いの喜劇』), performed at the Globe Theatre in 2001 and at the San Francisco International Arts Festival in 2005. The style employed for this production was by no means authentic kyōgen, however; to quote Paul A.S. Harvey, it represents "a modern work of art that hypothesizes a kyōgen version of a classic—both Shakespeare and Plautus" (Harvey 2002: 249). In a very positive Asian Theatre Journal review Kathy Foley (2007: 295) described the actors' timing as "richly comic," and commented on how the actors "evoke stock kyōgen characters—servant, master, women—with economy and form." In Japan itself, as opposed to overseas, achieving visibility and acceptance in a traditional theatre world that jealously guards its conservative ethos and traditions has been a greater challenge. As Kobayashi Seki, writing of the kyōgen traditions and the boom in experimentation in the form during the postwar period, has pointed [End Page 113] out, the iemotos (grandmasters or heads of the respective traditional schools) of postwar kyōgen have tended to be more open to experimental approaches, whereas the iemotos of the nō schools have generally been more resistant to experimentation and change (Kobayashi 2007: 166–167 and passim). Shakespearean characters and motifs in The Kyōgen of Errors and The Braggart Samurai (Yasunari Takahashi's kyōgen Merry Wives of Windsor, 1991) were potential catalysts for stimulating interest among younger, more Westernized Japanese audiences, as well as capturing useful overseas attention. At the same time, this represents a degree of momentum toward experimental work that respects the integrity and conventions of the traditional forms, particularly among more recent, less conservative generations of Japanese theatregoers. Kawachi Yoshiko (川地美子) has commented on this phenomenon of an increasingly traditionalist theatrical orientation since the turn of the millennium: "[T]he fusion of Shakespeare with nō and kabuki plays represents a current trend in Japanese Shakespearean theatre" (Kawachi 1998: 70). Nō is the oldest continuous theatre form in Japan, dating back to the fourteenth century Muromachi culture. About 250 dramas remain in the repertoire, and are classified into two groups: the dream play or phantasmagoric drama involving ghosts and spirits known as mugen-nō (夢 幻能), and genzai-nō (現在能) about living human characters. In the mugen play (the bulk of the repertoire) the shite or main role is not a human, but, for example, a ghost, deity, or spirit.1 A more nuanced classification was introduced in the seventeenth century (Edo era) in which the type of character played by the shite was the determining factor: the first category is a deity play, and such pieces may eulogize the emperor's peaceful reign; the second category involves a male warrior's ghost in recollection of the past; the third category concerns a refined female protagonist who may be a living woman or a ghost-woman; the fourth category contains miscellaneous plays, featuring human characters and passions; and the fifth category play involves the shite portraying a demon. Izumi's nō Macbeth and nō Othello of this study are dream or mugen-nō works, which correspond to the second (warrior) and fourth (miscellaneous) category plays, respectively. The final case study, Nomura Mansai's version of Macbeth, also corresponds more closely to the fourth category (miscellaneous), but, being experimental in orientation, has little affinity with the other types. The austerity of classical nō makes it a challenging form in which to present Western plays that tend to be plot-driven and dramatically immediate. The nō form is the antithesis of this aesthetic, adopting a more abstract and retrospective viewpoint on events. One can argue that the word "dramatic" in a western theatrical sense is inapposite. As [End Page 114] Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound noted, "We do not find, as we find in Hamlet, a certain situation or problem set out and analyzed. The noh … presents or symbolizes a complete diagram of life and recurrence" (Fenollosa and Pound 1959:11–12). Recurrence or revisiting, according to the Buddhist belief system, is the conceptual basis for nōadaptations of Japanese literary works, so this conceptual framework is natural when adapting foreign writers, particularly Shakespeare. Nō has a long history of employing legends as sources for its adaptations, and it is therefore not surprising that the idea of transposing Shakespeare into nō was originally broached by a storywriter and novelist, Natsume Soseki (夏目漱石) as early as 1911. For him nō represented a more natural medium for adapting western classics than the more popular kabuki and bunraku. Despite Natsume's critical recommendation, subsequent adaptations of Shakespeare have tended to focus on kabuki especially. Tsubouchi Shōyō (坪内逍遥), like Natsume an English professor, was the first translator of Shakespeare into Japanese, and favored kabuki as a vehicle for Japanese Shakespeare. His view, as a respected Japanese Shakespeare specialist, was that nō was a heritage form that did not take to contemporary adaptation, and this opinion carried great weight with translators, practitioners, and critics. As a result of the cultural iconoclasm and rejection of tradition that emerged in the 1970s, hybridity and intertextuality became rather common in Japanese theatre, and intercultural initiatives of Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook, and Eugenio Barba, especially, became influential. Cultural exchange and a growing cosmopolitanism promoted radical changes in all the arts, eventually spreading even to the conservative nō. University professor and nō aficionado-adapter Ueda Munakata Kuniyoshi (宗方邦義) bridged the divide between nō and Shakespeare; he began his experimentation in the mid-1970s in the United States, and subsequently performed nō in English there and in Japan (Noh Hamlet, 1982; Noh Othello, 1986; and Noh Macbeth, 1987), as well as in Japanese in Japan (Noh Othello, 1992 and 1995). His highly abridged and restructured versions using nō's narrative context and semiotic code took into account the musical and rhythmic properties of nō, as well as the kinetic conventions. Ueda Munakata's bilingual book discussing his experience of culturally transposing Hamlet also provided examples of the performance text with musical and movement notation (Ueda 1991). Another nō actor with Anglophone cultural interests, Sekine Masaru (関根勝, b. 1945), has more recently experimented with nō and kyōgenin similar intercultural Shakespeare projects, extending the inter-continental bridge developed by Ueda Munakata, and producing his own study in English on the theories of Zeami (世阿弥-1363–1443), the key figure in the development of the [End Page 115] genre. There is in Japan a growing interest in the possibilities of a Shakespeare-nō fusion that is both genuinely Shakespeare and genuinely nō. The effort is somewhat akin to experiments in China with xiqu-Shakespeare transformations. However, merging Shakespeare's language and nō remains a great challenge for any prospective adapter of Shakespeare into the form, since the authenticity in nō lies in its combination of chant (utai 謡) and dance (shimai 仕舞), with the conceptual term kabu (歌舞) denoting a performative hybrid that is highly specialized. Unlike the comical irreverence in kyōgen theatricality, nō is mediated through remembrance of time past. To quote Ueda Munakata, "[It] is distinctively a theatre of ghosts, or of the subconscious world of dreams. In its world the living and the dead exist together" (Ueda 2001: 69). Its half-sung half-chanted recitation eschews direct dramatic conflict or events in favor of ritualistic invocations, reminiscences, and cathartic re-enactment for reaching peace or seeking intercession. Thus, direct dramatic interaction is minimized, as the narrative unfolds obliquely through the veil of time and deeds that cannot be undone, only atoned. While there are parallel motifs of guilt, remorse, and atonement in Shakespeare's works, these ideas emerge through the dramatic present of the play, and often are in the play's dénouement, rather than being, as in nō, anterior to the stage spectacle. So, there is a marked contrast of temporal reference between the retrospective trajectory of nō and the emphasis on prophecies and prolepsis on which a play like Macbeth is predicated. Macbeth and Othello, together with King Lear, have frequently been the Shakespeare texts of choice for Asian intercultural adaptation/appropriations, given their dramatically compelling central characters. Ueda Munakata's nō Othello production in Tokyo in 1992 was the first Japanese-language production of a full Shakespeare play performed in the nō style,2 with his text oscillating between classical and modern Japanese. In response to critical disapproval of the hybrid language use, he subsequently opted for a version couched entirely in modern Japanese. Later, Satoshi Miyagi's(宮城聡) mugen-nō Othello (the ghost play type) was staged on a purpose-built nō stage in the gardens of the Tokyo National Museum by Ku Na'uka Theatre Company (ク・ナ ウカ) in November 2005, and was subsequently performed in an open-air setting in New Delhi. Motohashi Tetsuya (本橋哲也) describes this production as one that "bridges the gap between the traditional form of nō and the modern stage-presentation" (Motohashi 2013: 25). It was notable for employing the motif of an afterlife encounter, in keeping with the mugen-nō tradition, in which Othello seeks forgiveness and expiation for the terrible wrong he has done to Desdemona, but in [End Page 116] which a sense of reconciliation is also achieved. In spite of its intended mugen-nō ethos, though, Miyaga's version was sui generis and strongly influenced by intercultural and Pan-Asian theatre practices. Clearly, a reconciliation, or bridging, between nō and Shakespeare, which thoroughly respects the formal conventions and staging, the authentic stylistic features and, above all, the theatrical soul of the genre, requires careful selection. All three of these elements need to be present for the nomenclature nōto be valid in any rigorous application of the term. As Robert Tierney observed in his 2009 review of the Ryutopia nō production of The Tempest: "There are principally two ways to perform Shakespeare on the Noh stage. The first way is to change his work into a Noh play and to perform it in the same way that other plays from the Noh repertory are performed … The second way, however, is to preserve the integrity of the Shakespeare play but to arrange the performance in the style of the Noh" (Tierney 2009: 165). Our first two case studies will exemplify the first of these two strategies, while our final case study—like Miyaga's mugen-nō Othello—is more representative of the latter. Izumi Noriko's Macbeth: "All Our Yesterdays" (Macbeth V, v, 22) Izumi Noriko (泉紀子), director of the Institute of Japanese Culture at Hagoromo University of International Studies (羽衣国際大学 日本文化研究 所), which sponsored her production, makes it clear that the aim of the project was not intercultural fusion: "The Noh Macbeth production was created by professional Noh actors to be performed for people who already understand the Noh conventions. It was not an experimental fusion theatre targeting Shakespeare scholars unfamiliar with Japanese classics" (Izumi 2006). It was originally conceived in 2005 as a research-oriented production based on Shakespearean honzetsu (本説, nō source material derived from literature or legend which was not necessarily of Japanese provenance, even in earlier centuries) at Sakai Nō-Gaku Theatre (堺能楽会館). Izumi's production enjoyed a revival in 2006 at Osaka Nō-Gaku Theatre (大阪能楽 会館), at the Museum of Art at Shizuoka (MOA 美術館能楽堂), in 2010 at the Ikaruga Hall in Nara, and was also performed at the 100th anniversary festival of Akira Kurosawa's birth in Yamanashi, as well as being broadcast on a cable television channel dedicated to kabuki performance (Fig. 1). Izumi's Macbeth is considered shinsaku-nō (新作能), that is "new-made" nō. Nevertheless, its conventions are closely connected with the Hōshō-nō school (宝生流), and the production—the result of collaboration between Izumi and nō master Tatsumi Manjiro (辰巳満 次 郎)—adheres closely to a nōstructure. The waki (ワキ), or [End Page 117] supporting role, is a priest on a pilgrimage stopping at a ruined castle, and is of course absent from the dramatis personae of Shakespeare's play. The priest meets the mysterious looking castle keeper, the mae-shite (前 シテ) or first half main role actor, who recounts the history of the castle and the bloody murder of the king by the castle's owner, Macbeth. Then we learn that the narrator of the history is, in fact, the ghost of Macbeth, who cannot rest in peace, but is haunted by his crimes. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Ai-kyōgen scene from Izumi Noriko's Macbeth Ikaruga Hall, Nara, 29 April 2010. (Photo: Kiyoji Nakagawa) The middle section of the performance consists of two successive ai-kyōgen (間狂言) interludes. Ai-kyōgen are normally embedded in the middle of the typical nō. Having two is an experimental choice, since nō conventionally has only one. These scenes are only observed by the priest, who remains concealed, and does not interact with the Macbeth and Lady Macbeth characters; and the second and dark ai-kyōgen is atypical of the comic and dialogic style of kyōgen. Suzuki Masae suggests benefits of using kyōgen in adaptations: "Flexible use of kyōgen actors in addition to the nōh shite and waki actors can be one key to the success of adapting Shakespeare to the style of noh" (Suzuki 2009: 161). The first ai-kyōgen is the spirit's narrative, and this is immediately followed by the entrance of Lady Macbeth, also a ghost, and acted again in the kyōgen style. The "fair is foul and foul is fair" theme is prominent in the first ai-kyōgen, while the hand-washing actions associated with Lady Macbeth's sleep-walking scene are witnessed in the latter. In this [End Page 118] ai-kyōgen scene Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, like all human beings, are controlled by "weird spirits" whose supernatural power is irresistible. The final section comprises exchanges between the nochi-shite (後シテ), the main actor (the Castle Keeper), as the ghost of Macbeth, re-enacting his murders and ultimately replaying his own death in battle to seek the Priest's prayer intercession on his behalf, which represents his only hope of salvation from eternal combat in the shura-do (修羅道). (This refers to the ghost-warrior's hell of the nōbelief system, broadly equivalent to a purgatorial state.) The Priest agrees to chant Buddhist sutras for his soul: "Here I chant the sutras aloud: O moon of enlightenment, that clears the deep mist of human desires and sins, please give light to this wandering ghost. Please enlighten him" (Izumi 2006: 3). At this juncture Macbeth relives his final battle against impossible odds, represented in a nō dance. Details of Macbeth's death are chanted by the chorus, who urge the Priest to pray for his soul to redeem him from the third level of hell where he now resides, awaiting redemption through the holy man's prayers. The outcome remains open-ended, in that we do not learn whether the Priest's intercession will redeem Macbeth's tortured soul. Thus, there is no resolution, as is the norm in Zeami's nō, in which the protagonist is brought to enlightenment and heavenly perfection, according to Buddhist doctrine. Instead, we see Macbeth disappearing into the pit of darkness in the shura-do netherworld to linger in this liminal area without certainty of redemption. Perhaps there is some hope for him, but he is still steeped in blood and his valor, emphasized in their intercession for him by the Priest and the Chorus, may not redeem him. Although this nō play ends with a quotation from an old Japanese poem—"stitch my clothes together"—evoking "only the sound of wailing" and the transience of all things, the front-stage nō candles remain lit. The flames of the candles illuminate the darkness, as opposed to the more nihilistic ending of Shakespeare's play in which Macbeth's allusion to his wife's death, "Out, out, brief candle" (Macbeth V, v, 23) is subsequently echoed by the snuffing-out of his own life. This powerful visual metaphor can only be fully appreciated by those to whom Shakespeare's play and its themes are familiar. Izumi's Macbeth utilizes nō-utai singing with instruments, as well as the measured and dignified nōdance patterns and the characteristic gliding walk. Emotion is conveyed by the stamping especially in the dramatic recount of the murders, while Macbeth's own death is represented by a kneeling posture and the use of his naginata (長刀), or halberd, to convey his attempt to repel the arrows and spears raining down on him. This is an important scene, called mai-bataraki (舞働), [End Page 119] which is a rapid and vigorous movement sequence in nō theatre convention conveying deep emotion, and is typical of the form, being both poignant and wordless. It appears to be a dance, but nō makes a fine distinction between mai-bataraki and dance. Mai-bataraki shows the spiritually uplifted emotion of the shite character. This mai-bataraki scene relies on the audience's imagination to infer the formal meaning from the context of Macbeth's words before he moves, "I continue to fight and have to suffer eternity in shura-do" (Izumi 2006:4)("果 てもなき修羅の戦いの苦しさに、鎧の糸はほころびて心 の休まる時もなし "), as he remembers his warrior life. It thus serves as a microcosm of the whole story of Macbeth. His opening actions represent his fighting partnership with Banquo, followed by his move to the hashigakari (橋掛 り)—literally the bridge-way onto the stage and metaphorically the bridge between the physical world and the spirit world—where he stops in front of the torches representing candles that are set between the conventional miniature pine-trees (matsu 松). These torch "candles" also surround the front-stage, and are typical of so-called "candle-nō" or rōsoku-nō (蝋燭能). This moment evokes the image of Macbeth's famous line, "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow," ending with the words "out, out brief candle," (Macbeth V, v, 19–23) but the difference in this version is that the candles are not extinguished. The Macbeth ghost wears the conventional ayakashi (怪士) mask, with emotion calibrated and communicated by the angle of the mask. In order to express the ghost Macbeth's torment in the scene described above, the mask is angled downwards by the shite in a stylized motion known as kumorasu(クモラス、曇らす, making the face dark). The subtlety of these motions and the ascetic mood of the opening and concluding sections of the play are consistent with nō's theatrical code, supporting Izumi's claim to have produced a Shakespeare nō that is intended for those familiar with nō, rather than for those familiar with Shakespeare. Izumi Noriko's Othello: "Even Now, Now, Very Now" (Othello I, i, 88) Izumi produced her shinsaku-nō Othello in 2013, employing a similar staging and aesthetic concept to Macbeth in mugen-nō form. The production was originally staged at Osaka Prefecture University and Hagoromo University of International Studies, but there was a re-run in 2016 at the professional Ooe-Nō-gaku Theatre in Kyoto. As with Macbeth, the verse script is Izumi's adaptation. The Mediterranean island of Cyprus, where the Shakespeare source takes place, is the site of the play's events. This setting creates resonances between what was for the Venetian trading empire the southern colonized culture of Cyprus [End Page 120] and the southern Japanese island of Okinawa (沖縄). In 1906 a shingekiadaptation of Othello, entitled Osero, was staged in Naha City in Okinawa in the local dialect. This was based on the earlier 1903 production of Othello directed by Kawakami Otojiro (川上 音二郎—1864–1911) at the Tokyo Meiji Theatre. In April 1991 Ishizawa Shuji's(石澤秀二) revival at the Tokyo Globe Theatre of Kawakami's original was a reminder and celebration of this groundbreaking production. According to Suzuki Masae, the ethnic and cultural differences between the indigenous people of Okinawa and the dominant Japanese culture offered fertile ground for creating a parallel scenario, echoing the racial theme and subtext of Shakespeare's Othello, and "reflecting certain views of Japanese history" (Suzuki 2002: 132). Izumi departs from the conventional opening scene of a mugennō, which presents the waki human character meeting the incognito mae-shite figure, who will eventually reveal himself as the ghost of Othello. Instead, the play opens with an ai-kyōgen scene (Fig. 2) featuring a white-haired demon spirit representing Iago, who narrates how he intends to make use of Desdemona's dropped fan (replacing the handkerchief of the source text) to create malicious mischief. This motif corresponds to the romantically associated fan device in the nō dramatic tradition, implying mutual desire to meet again.3Iago's scheme, as he relates, is to make General Othello insanely jealous, and thus drive him to murder Desdemona, following which Othello will commit suicide. Iago explains exactly how he intends to trap Othello, and—concluding that "there is no more dreadful poison than jealousy" (Izumi 2013)—he sits on the hashigakari, and remains a shadowy, ominous presence throughout the following scene. Instead of the retrospective dramatic orientation of typical mugen-nō, related to deeds committed but un-atoned, Iago's intent connotes a distinctly future timeline and dramatic trajectory. The opening scene conveys a formal hybridity; it implies the genzai-nō form, associated with present time and human events, but subsequently the performance reverts to the mugennō conventions as with Izumi's Macbeth. After Iago sits on the hashigakari, a wandering minstrel, the waki, appears. Informing the audience that he has just arrived in Cyprus from Venice, he observes some beautiful silver-white flowers on the grounds of a desolate castle. Just as he is on the point of picking one of these alluring flowers, an old man, seemingly a gardener, prevents him. The old man informs him that these flowers bloom only one night each year, on the anniversary of General Othello's and his wife Desdemona's deaths. The gardener explains that the flowers have yet to "forgive" him. As the minstrel observes the flower petals wither and fall, the gardener gathers them, and holds them close. He reveals that he is the [End Page 121]ghost of Othello, seeking forgiveness and redemption for the murder of his wife, and disappears. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. White-haired demon spirit of Iago in opening ai-kyōgen scene from Othello at Ooe-Nō-gaku Theatre in Kyoto, 3 December 2016. (Photo: Chisa Fujiwara) The resumption of the ai-kyōgen featuring Iago brings greater clarity to Izumi's dramatic conception and to the play's temporal setting. The malign spirit of Iago appears to the waki in his sleep, and Iago's ghost re-enacts his intrigue against Othello, revealing that both he and Othello have fallen into hell, but for him divine punishment has been meted out on account of the malicious deception played on the gullible General. He scoffs at his fate, in which he is karmically condemned by the gods endlessly to repeat the fan (handkerchief) snare of Othello. Chortling with demonic glee, he execrates not only the spirits of Othello and Desdemona, but inveighs against all [End Page 122] humankind, reveling in the eternal recurrence of his karmic fate. Leaving the fan in a prominent downstage position in the spotlight and using his earthly baton (uchizue, 打杖) of authority as a mystic wand to place a curse on it, Iago's ghost utters further maledictions, praying all humanity may suffer the poison of jealousy. He then withdraws without ceasing his resonantly malevolent cackling. The second act is the Minstrel's oneiric vision: Othello's spirit, assuming a human form in his mind, now enters the stage. Since the Minstrel's dream replays the jealousy motif as though it were occurring in the real time of a human action plot, as in genzai-nō, Othello is unable to expiate his sin through confession or reconstruction, as Izumi's Macbeth sought to do. In the context of Izumi's ingenious plotting, Othello is condemned, Prometheus-like, to the eternal repetition of his jealousy. Hence, when the white-veiled Desdemona appears, he is unable to believe in her innocence of infidelity. As in Sartre's Huis Clos (No Exit) love triangle set in purgatory, in which hell is "other people," the eternal triangle of mutual hell that exists for all three protagonists in the Othello narrative is skillfully perpetuated beyond the grave, as in conventional mugen-nō. Here however, it has been deftly modified to reflect the tragic dimension of Shakespeare's world, in which "as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods" (King Lear, IV, i, 41–42). Trapped in this cycle of dramatic re-enactment, Othello can only try in vain to seek forgiveness, but the symbolic presence of the incriminating fan spot-lit downstage center makes it clear to the audience that Iago's spell of corrosive jealousy cast on Othello will perpetually recur (Fig. 3). Othello's frustration at being unable to accept Desdemona's innocence (in the eternal present) or receive full forgiveness for his crime against her (in a temporally different but co-extensive dramatic frame) is symbolically expressed by the performance of kakeri (カケリ). This step is a similar kind of dramatic movement to mai-bataraki that is used to express a speechless feeling of mental confusion. Tatsumi Manjiro who designed the choreography and performed the Othello shite role,4 introduced a formal innovation: in the middle of Othello's dance movement. Desdemona's ghost appears, her head and upper body covered by a long white veil, symbolic of innocence. She declares that she has not changed her mind about confessing to her husband's charge of infidelity, even after death, and advises Othello to torture himself no more. However, the more innocent and artless she appears, the madder Othello becomes, continuing the kakeri movement in a circular pattern. Desdemona joins him in this circular motion, but, although they become tantalizingly close, they are unable to touch one other, and thus reconcile. The hypnotic accompaniment to this dramatic sequence is the taiko (drum, 太鼓), beating a single beat in a [End Page 123] rhythmically monotonous tempo. This impressive scene symbolically expresses the impossibility of rapprochement between Othello and Desdemona and the divided couple's inescapable karma. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Othello, holding fan, and Desdemona from Othello at Ooe-Nō-gaku Theatre in Kyoto, 3 December 2016. (Photo: Chisa Fujiwara) Nomura Mansai's Macbeth: The Day before Tomorrow An interesting link between Nomura's and Izumi's Macbeth and Othello productions is that Nomura, an established kyōgen Shakespeare expert, was engaged as a script consultant/editor for the ai-kyōgeninterludes in Izumi's Macbeth, as well as performing the ai-kyōgen role of Iago in the 2015 re-run of Izumi's Othello. Having worked on Izumi's Macbeth may well have sparked Nomura's interest in creating his own version. However, Nomura's Macbeth, by sharp contrast with Izumi's, [End Page 124] makes no effort to bring Shakespeare's "tale told by an idiot" (Macbeth V, v, 26–27) to either nō or kyōgen practice in any instantly identifiable way. Rather, he introduces nō and kyōgen techniques from his own acting career and those of the minimal, five-person cast, as well as traditional staging devices, to the world of Shakespeare's play, ostensibly set in medieval Japan when nō was still developing. This approach made the production much more amenable to overseas touring following its 2010 première at Setagaya Public Theatre in Tokyo. Performances were given in Seoul and at the Japan Society in New York in 2013; and at the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu, Romania, as well as at the Maison de la Culture du Japon, Paris, in 2014. On the group's return to Japan in June 2014 there were further performances at Setagaya and in Nagoya, Niigata, Fukuoka, and elsewhere. A 2016 tour designed to commemorate the quatercentenary of Shakespeare's included Hokkaido and other venues. Unlike the limited performances of Izumi's two academically oriented productions, Nomura's Macbeth has inevitably enjoyed much greater exposure due to the professional and commercial status of the company. His idiosyncratic version of the play in Kawai Shoichiro's(河合 祥一郎) translation is pared down to an economical ninety minutes. To use a cultural translation concept, he opts to foreignize the Shakespeare original, rather than domesticate or nativize (as Izumi's version does). In an interview he gave before the 2010 production Nomura acknowledges the new work's orientation more toward Shakespeare than toward authentic traditional theatre: "In a sense, I might be getting further away from the kyōgen form with each play. Especially in this play every performer is a modern theatre actor without me. Perhaps, not a trace remains of thinking about nō and kyōgen in my idea now. But each of these theories considers that the actors perform based on a theatrical pattern, which appeals to the imagination of a general audience, as well as nōh and kyōgen" (Nomura 2010).5 What is achieved in this process of fusion is a theatrical hybrid, perceptibly stylized, formalized and even ritualized in certain scenes, while dramatically mimetic in others. He employs the traditional Japanese furoshiki (風呂敷), an all-purpose wrapping-cloth of varying size, to great theatrical effect to suggest an ever-changing landscape and facilitate rapid transitions between scenes in this seamless performance. His compression and concentration on the mental world of Macbeth, interacting mainly with Lady Macbeth, but also a three-man chorus of male witches and other characters, is reminiscent of nō, as are Nomura's martial moves, brandishing the naginata (halberd). Other nō and kyōgen elements include pieces of costumes, such as the kataginu [End Page 125] (肩衣, the sleeveless ceremonial vest) and the hakama (袴, a kind of flared pants worn for formal attire). When Duncan appears, his costume and crown largely conform to nō style, whereas the costumes of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth resemble typical kyōgen attire. The flexible entrance curtain upstage center, which, like the furoshiki stage-cloth, indicates multiple locations and a range of semiotic possibilities, is also suggestive of traditional kyōgen. In other respects, though, there is relatively little taken from nō, and kyōgen aesthetics and conventions are more frequent: for example, the cast—aside from the murdered Banquo—wear no masks, and do not walk in the gliding nō manner: neither do they enter formerly along the hashigakari or perform in tandem with a formal chorus; above all, there is dramatic realism in a number of exchanges, especially between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In Nomura's and Kawai's version what matters is the thematic concept rather than formal or conventional authenticity. The production's sub-title "The Day before Tomorrow" echoes and gives resonances to the lines, "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow … to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death." (Macbeth V, v, 19–23) Thus Nomura's stunning opening, employing his own disconnected voiceover of textual fragments intoned over a dark stage lit only by an eerie lamp connoting cosmic debris and countless stars—"things in the universe, dust in the universe, dregs and refuse of civilization, human trash, cosmic dust …" (Nomura 2010, surtitles)—connotes precisely that nihilistic feeling to the minds of those familiar with Shakespeare's play text, and particularly evokes Macbeth's famous soliloquy. For those less familiar with Shakespeare's imagery it still conveys the quintessential distal perspective of nō ritual and thus a rather different Zen (禅) consciousness, which contrasts with Shakespeare's worldview. When this cosmic opening segues into Hecate's speech (Macbeth III, v, 23–33) in voiceover, mocking the illusions of human kind and their obsession with security, we realize that the framing device—and indeed the macro-perspective of the adaptation—is the witches' plot to snare Macbeth. The witches, all male (as in Ninagawa's ground-breaking kabuki-inspired 1985 production, which was set in the environs of a Buddhist temple), also act as various courtiers and observers, and bring a sense of kyōgen-style humor, albeit dark, to the proceedings. As is clear from the set design of the palace after Macbeth assumes power—a giant spider-web—he is caught in his own web of treachery and deceit (Fig. 4), although it has been spun for him by the witches (shades of Kumonosu-jô, Kurosawa's film version of Macbeth). Unlike Izumi's concern with the faint possibility of redemption through [End Page 126] the ritualized nō re-enactment, there is no redemptive prospect for the tyrant. Instead, there is only nature and the life-affirming seasons, accentuated by the spring flowers that emerge after the winter of discontent of Macbeth's bloody reign. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Macbeth (2016), produced at Setagaya Public Theatre, is haunted by the vision of the masked ghost of Banquo with the witches' spider-web symbolically dominating dramatic events. Relative realism of gesture here indicates the production's departure from nō aesthetic conventions. (Photo: Yoshinori Midou) In Nomura's neatly framed ending, these bright flowers literally spring up from the white furoshikicloth, connoting snow and earth and covering the body of the slain Macbeth; the tyrant's body, now turned to dust, returns to the flux of the universe, ironically producing beauty out of horror and implying regeneration. This arresting device recalls the "Fair is foul and foul is fair" motif (Macbeth I, i, 12) that permeates the play, and [End Page 127] which ends Nomura's version and vision. Shakespeare's more positive human dimension of the planned coronation of Malcolm at Scone is dispensed with, and the 'wyrd' (i.e., fateful) sisters bring the play to its close where it began, in cyclical fashion, like the passing of the seasons, which the staging subtly and expressively connotes. Whereas overseas critics, in addition to the Anglophone reviews in Japan, lauded the intelligent use of these motifs in Nomura's adaptation, critical reviews in Japanese tended to be equivocal: one review, for example, argued that Nomura's staging smacked of "Japonism" for foreign consumption, rather than the more authentically Japanese nō-kyōgen ethos (Kohno and Sugiyama 2013). Conclusion In nō theatre the literary and poetic quality of the text is of paramount importance—one close common feature with Shakespeare plays—and Shakespeare's verse is well served by the visual, aural, and kinetic poetry of nō. At the same time, for the transposition to work there is an assumption that nō audiences are already familiar with the literary sources. For such purpose a good Japanese version of the Shakespeare play-text suffices, since the beauty of the source imagery is certainly more accessible to the average Japanese theatregoer in translated form than in the English original. Besides, the point of the performance is not purely in the narrative itself—despite the imaginative reorganization and layering of the Shakespeare plot—but also in the aesthetic satisfaction in observing the perfection of form, line, movement and tempo, song, and rhythmic and melodic accompaniment. The educated spectator is assumed to know both the form and, in this case, the Shakespearean play. The sense of impending fate and ambience of superstition that pervades Shakespeare's Macbeth and, to a lesser extent, Othello,is creatively transformed into a different eschatological dimension in nō. One is often struck by the relative absence of Christian religious doctrine in Shakespeare's plays, but also by the intimations of more primal belief systems driving his characters. The hybrid of Japanese Buddhist and Shinto metaphysics that underpins the nō drama replaces the sense of tragic void and historical contingency that Shakespeare's tragic vision shares with his Jacobean contemporaries. For the non-transcendental emptiness of Shakespeare's physical world of materialist ambition the dramatic world of nō substitutes a numinous Zen emptiness and, above all, a belief system in which posthumous atonement and expiation are the goal, as opposed to earthly power. While Izumi's Macbeth and Othello might be conceived as authentic nō, despite the culturally alien source, Nomura's is clearly not authentic nō or kyōgen according to any purist definition. What matters[End Page 128] more than formalist considerations is that these are all compelling representations of Shakespeare's tragic figures, perceived not as a specific human anti-heroic or flawed characters in a naturalistic context, but rather in Macbeth's case as a "walking shadow that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more" (Macbeth V, v, 24– 25) and in the case of Izumi's conception of Othello and Desdemona, in a netherworld limbo as "unprepared spirits" not purged or "solicited," but rather "unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace" (Othello, V, ii, 27–31). Izumi's and Nomura's versions restore the cosmic dimension that is also the stuff of Western tragic theatre traditions, beginning with the Greek. All three case studies serve to exemplify Stephen Greenblatt and colleagues' manifesto on cultural mobility, and perfectly illuminate the fluidity, instability, and mutability that is inevitably associated with the concept. As Greenblatt argues in his introduction, cultural mobility and fluidity is not a recent idea: Enhanced cultural mobility, Goethe ardently hoped, would foster a new cosmopolitanism, an unregulated free trade in expression and feeling, an epoch of global respect … Mobility can indeed lead to heightened tolerance of difference and an intensified awareness of the mingled inheritances that constitute even the most tradition-bound cultural stance, but it can also lead to an anxious defensive, and on occasion violent, policing of the boundaries. (Greenblatt et al. 2010:6–7) This reference to a "tradition-bound stance" resonates with both nō and Shakespeare practices, where purists have long attempted to police the boundaries of the theatrical imagination. Despite the obvious benefits of intercultural mobility, these "mingled inheritances" can produce superficial hybrids. Taking aim at more predatory Western intercultural productions principally, Rustom Bharucha cautions against "the voracious consumption of any number of visual effects, more often than not decontextualized from Asian performance traditions like noh, kabuki, kathakali and so on," resulting in "paraphrase and banality … in the name of postmodern reinvention" (Bharucha 2010: 272). Bharucha undoubtedly has a point. However, the case study productions discussed in the present study suggest that appropriation certainly need not be unidirectional, and that the intercultural theatre paradigm has shifted, at least as far as Japanese theatre is concerned. Inspired by the experimental initiatives of Ueda Munakata and Sekine, Izumi's and Nomura's productions represent more the result of "global artistic cross-pollination," to quote Jonah Salz (2016: 513), than of intercultural experimentation of the type that Bharucha inveighs against above. The orientation has shifted so that the exchange "has [End Page 129] recently become more ubiquitous and mutually influential than previously described," which Salz sees as a "fortuitous encounter," arguing that in the new intercultural process of cross-pollination borrowed elements are "returned to Japan, and reinvented" (p. 513). Equally, as we have seen from the case study productions and others referenced above, Shakespeare is returned to his source tradition reinvigorated, his theatrical boundaries ever more extended. As an evocative, stylized theatrical form, mugen-nō, by enacting the afterlife of Shakespeare's characters, contributes distinctively to the afterlife of Shakespeare's plays. This quality in particular distinguishes nō Shakespeare from many other Shakespearean adaptations and appropriations on the international scene. In reflection, therefore, Natsume Soseki's intuitions about the suitability of the authentic and strictly observed nō form as a vehicle for transforming Shakespeare into a Japanese cultural consciousness have been vindicated by the nō and kyōgen Macbeths and nō Othello almost a hundred years after his advocacy. With such thoroughly Asian theatre appropriations as Izumi's nō Macbeth and Othello, it appears that the tables are being turned on Western, post-Artaudian intercultural directors of the Mnouchkine and Brook stamp. Izumi's efforts, together with Nomura's more idiosyncratic and freewheeling approach to engaging with Shakespeare, create productions that epitomize the exciting possibilities afforded by more reciprocal, local/global Shakespeare performance practices. Michael Ingham Mike Ingham (Department of English Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong) has published widely on Shakespearean adaptations, performance studies, and Hong Kong anglophone writing. Recent publications include "Shakespeare and Jazz" in the 2016 Cambridge Guide to World Shakespeares and Stage-play and Screen-play: The Intermediality of Theatre and Cinema (Routledge 2017). Kaoru Nakao Kaoru Nakao is an associate professor specializing in nō in the Theatre Studies section of the School of Letters in Osaka University, with current research involving intercultural study, including recent nō versions of Shakespeare plays. Additional References • Izumi Noriko. 2006. Shinsaku-Noh Macbeth [DVD, book], ed. Izumi Noriko. ISBN 9784757607538, 2007. (See also recording of Shizuoka Museum of Art (MOA) version in MIT Global Shakespeares. 2006 Noh Macbeth. [Directed by Izumi Noriko] http://globalshakespeares.mit.edu/noh-macbeth-izumi-noriko-2006/, accessed 23 April 2016). Google Scholar https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.troy.edu/article/621080 ACCESS PROVIDED BY TROY UNIVERSITY LOG IN B R OWS E OR MENU Shakespeare Bulletin • • Shakespeare Bulletin Volume 34, Number 2, Summer 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press Article Viewed | Download | Save View Citation Additional Information • Concluding Othello:Contrasting Endings by Shakespeare and • • • • • Fred Wilson • Peter Erickson Abstract Lodovico’s urgent reaction—“The object poisons sight. / Let it be hid”—shapes the conclusion of Shakespeare’s Othello. The gesture to shut the bed curtains to cover up the dead bodies of Othello, Desdemona, and Emilia on the bed signifies not only Lodovico’s refusal to look but also his refusal to reflect or to understand what has happened. Consequently the ending remains unresolved. By contrast, the African American artist Fred Wilson can bear to reflect and to question and brings us to the conclusion that we cannot possibly understand without the lens of race. Wilson’s sequence of sculptures posits an open and expanded field in which all aspects of mourning become a potential source of emotional complexity and deeper insight. Lodovico’s command “Let it be hid” ultimately means hiding from the understanding that full analysis could reveal. Fred Wilson’s art undoes and reverses the effect of Lodovico’s hiding. Unlike the closed bed curtains, his formal structures create symbolic spaces for ceremony, contemplation, and critical breakthrough. The artistic process of Wilson’s alternative endings releases Shakespeare’s character Othello—and releases us, too. The purpose of this essay is to compare Shakespeare’s conclusion to Othello with the implied closure for the play that contemporary black artist Fred Wilson creates. The different medium of visual art enables Wilson to perform an alternative ending for Othello. I begin with a detailed analysis of Shakespeare’sculmination, which then becomes the basis for highlighting the transformation that Wilson’s artistic initiatives establish. The result is that Wilson’s exploration challenges us to experience the conclusion of Othello from a changed perspective. Shakespeare’s Culmination of Othello: Avoidance of Disclosure Shakespeare’s final scene stages a series of definitive last lines and deaths as we successively hear Desdemona—“Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!” (5.2.134)—Emilia—“So speaking as I think, alas, I die” (5.2.258)—then Othello—“Killing myself, to die upon a kiss” (5.2.369).1 Yet despite these theatrical signals of conclusion, Shakespeare’s ending is strangely inconclusive and incomplete because full assessment is lacking and indefinitely postponed. After the elimination of the two female characters, four male characters remain as potential narrators who attempt to negotiate the outcome. Each tentatively puts forward an explanatory approach without much substance; the result is unsatisfactory because all four men withhold crucial information. First, Iago’s improvisational ability to fabricate stories makes him a possible source of a more complex analysis. But he refuses by insisting on remaining silent: “From this time forth I never will speak word” (5.2.310). The threat of torture is frantically promised but this rhetorical flurry fails to break Iago’s firm commitment to silence. [End Page 277] Second, Othello begins to sketch his story but silences himself before he can adequately elaborate. The unfinished image he leaves behind is limited because it reverts to his predictable identity as the skilled good soldier who should be remembered as the faithful servant of the state. Though Othello asks his audience to “Nothing extenuate” (5.2.351), he himself has already violated this admonition by understating his shortcomings as “these unlucky deeds” (350).2 Othello’s situation is not a matter of luck but rather the product of deep cultural structures involving racial difference, which, in the end, all of Shakespeare’s characters are conspicuously unable to address. The integrity of Othello’s black identity has been so completely damaged and negated that he cannot articulate the relevant criticism that we need to hear. Instead, Othello adopts the ingratiating tone with which he appealed to members of the Senate at the outset. It is as though the play reduces him to attempting to regain white acceptance by summoning his eloquence to win his way back into the senators’ good graces. We can speak for the deeper racial complexity of Othello’s circumstances; Shakespeare’s text does not. Third, Cassio, whose command replaces Othello’s and thus restores white authority, pays homage to his predecessor: “For he was great of heart” (5.2.371). Reuben Brower cites this one-liner at the beginning and end of his “Introduction: The Noble Moor” to validate the use of “Noble” (1–28). Yet Cassio’s appeal to “greatness of heart” to redeem Othello’s heroic stature registers as a conventional platitude: matters of the heart are far more extensive. Cassio sidesteps the play’s central theme of love as dramatized in the loss Othello articulates as “there where I have garnered up my heart, / Where either I must live or bear no life” (4.2.59–60). This painful experience of heart makes Cassio’s final testimony seem perfunctory. Furthermore, his attempted tribute omits the triangle created by Cassio’s role as the white go-between on whom black Othello must of racial necessity rely in conducting his courtship of Desdemona. Completely left out of account is the possibility of any evaluation of this triangular situation, which plays such a significant part in causing the spousal split. 3 Cassio remains silent. Fourth, Lodovico, the representative of the Venetian Senate, does not reveal his personal position when he speaks the play’s final words: “Myself will straight aboard, and to the state / This heavy act with heavy heart relate” (5.2.380–81). Does “act” refer to Othello’s murder of Desdemona or to his suicide? Which adjective in the doubled “heavy” weighs more? Lodovico appears to juggle an ambiguously, and perhaps spuriously, even [End Page 278] balance between the horror of Othello’s “act” and the sympathy and sensitivity of Lodovico’s own “heart.” What story will he eventually tell? The answer is necessarily opaque because his linguistic stance presumably defers the conclusion to a higher level of power when in a distant future too long for a play he transfers the facts to the senators and lets them decide how to judge Othello’s behavior. Lodovico makes it sound as though he is in charge when he announces the change of command from Othello to Cassio: “Your power and your command is taken off, / And Cassio rules in Cyprus” (5.2.340–41). Yet Lodovico is simply repeating instructions already issued by the Duke in the letter Lodovico is carrying. As Lodovico indicates: “For, as I think, they do command him [Othello] home, / Deputing Cassio in his government” (4.1.228–29). The news of Cassio’s appointment to take Othello’s place has been reached in Venice before knowledge of Othello’s conflict with Desdemona in Cyprus and therefore occurs in a vacuum without explanation, with no reason given. As emissary, Lodovico is not part of the inner core of central authority; he is enough in the know to have an idea which way the wind is blowing, but his limited status makes him cautious about drawing conclusions.4 His imprisonment of Othello is a decisive move: “You shall close prisoner rest / Till that the nature of your fault be known / To the Venetian state” (5.2.344–46). Nonetheless, the precise meaning of “the nature of your fault” is undefined. The exact “nature” is unspecified and therefore remains vague and indeterminate. The dramatic logic is frustratingly unclear: the audience is not allowed to know where we stand now or a few moments later when Lodovico’s pronouncement brings the play to an end. It is thus left for Othello to give Lodovico the semblance of an ending in the “bloody period” (5.2.366). In his demonstration of obedience, Othello fills the gap in Lodovico’s yet-to-be-told story when he anticipates the state’s disapproval and the punishment it will declare necessary; he complies in advance by carrying out his own punishment in taking his life. Othello’s self-administered submission, with its implied admission of guilt, short-circuits and thus forever evades discussion of the play’s deeper network of racial difficulties.5 The overall effect of Shakespeare’s problematic non-ending is to enact a lingering equivocation and to arrive at an impasse. The play leaves the audience stalled with a permanently suspended ending and hence without the benefit of a clear resolution. We can, however, imagine an audience to whom Fred Wilson speaks that no longer agrees to remain silent about the racial dilemma so implicit as to be suppressed in Shakespeare’s drama. [End Page 279] Since critical assessment of race is missing from inside the play, the questions must be raised and amplified from outside. Fred Wilson’s Ongoing Shakespeare Project Fred Wilson’s experiment with Othello, which began over a decade ago when he represented the United States at the 2003 Venice Biennale, now extends to his most recent work in the exhibition, Fred Wilson: Sculptures, Paintings, and Installations, 2004–2014, including six new pieces focusing on Othello.6 Over the course of this long-term project, Wilson’s approach to rendering Shakespeare in visual form has gradually grown in scope and complication. Early examples tend to be self-contained, relatively isolated individual works. In sharp contrast, Wilson’s recent work is greatly expanded through the introduction of two major elements. First, in the 2014 exhibition, Wilson’s previously restricted focus primarily on the entangled figures of Othello and Iago expands to include significant women characters, Desdemona and Emilia, in order to confront the bad faith between them and thereby to pursue the larger network of entanglements. Wilson’s addition of more characters encompasses the full scale of Shakespeare’s drama and thus for the first time conveys a strong sense of the play as a whole. Second, Wilson identifies pieces with recognizable moments within the play that, taken together, engage the entire drama. This arrangement links each specific work in an overall context and thus asks us to trace Wilson’s perception of the sequential logic of the series.7 These two new dimensions create a far more flexible and comprehensive medium for Wilson’s interaction with Othello. In moving from Shakespeare’s drama into the space of Wilson’s art, we must go through a process of adjusting to a different method and learning how to understand a different mode of communication. The first assumption might be that the transition is impossible because of two crucially significant absences—language and performance action. How can nonverbal, nonspeaking art objects such as chandeliers and mirrors communicate, and comment on, Shakespeare’s text? The brief verbal clues in Wilson’s titles draw us into the cross-media process by which Shakespeare’s words are translated into a realm where a visual language reigns. The most immediate action is the artist’s chosen material of black Murano glass, which readily speaks for itself without words.8 It announces that Wilson has relocated Othello in a consistently black world and that racial blackness will not be ignored but, contrary to Shakespeare, will occupy center-stage. Wilson’s positive commitment to black identity [End Page 280]begins to challenge Othello’s self-doubt. Changing the setting is already to change the story. How can static objects be seen as in motion? Once having entered the museum gallery, the viewer finds the exhibition space more fluid. The cumulative effect of locating stationary objects in a deliberate order imbues the art objects with a forward momentum. Following the path sets the viewer in motion and gives the works a tacit mobility. Speaking to Kathleen Goncharov, Wilson explains that his art experience incorporated an interest in performance: “I studied dance outside of my art training, but it was clear it went hand in hand with sculpture and so I created projects related to sculpture and movement [. . .]. In college no one was doing performance art, but I was interested in it. I studied theatrical lighting, stage makeup, and modern dance” (20). These references to sculpture, movement, performance, and theater practice resonate with the multimedia appeal of Wilson’s approach to Shakespeare. Wilson’s gallery space functions as a stage on which the moving culmination of his final piece enacts a parallel with the ending in Shakespeare’s theater: Wilson’s large size black screen is equivalent to the drawn bed curtains that hide the dead. This correspondence calls for a comparative assessment of their respective conclusions. Pursuing Othello’s Journey in Wilson’s Current Work In the title of Fred Wilson’s first piece, I Saw Othello’s Visage In His Mind, we recognize that the speaker is Desdemona and that this direct quotation places the viewer in act one, scene three, near the beginning of Shakespeare’s play. The linguistic imagery here of an exterior visage and an interior mind is registered in Wilson’s silent, multi-layered, and all-black mirror by two visual elements. First, the oval in the center contains an approximately facial shape that has the look of an abstract African mask. The surface of the mask is covered by a geometric design of thin straight lines with a diamond-shaped core that appears to constrain or possibly cross out. Since hypothetically the mask-like apparatus can be removed, we can imagine the possibility of another reality underneath the mask. A second embedded shape, the much larger rectangular frame that encompasses the oval, suggests a portrait of the alternate interior space of Othello’s mind. The attraction is dramatized by the elaborate leaf decorations that Wilson places around the borders of the frame. Wilson’s piece creates a sense of uneasiness and tension because it makes us wonder what Desdemona sees and does not see (or does not [End Page 281] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Fred Wilson. I Saw Othello’s Visage In His Mind, 2013. Murano glass and wood. 64 x 51-1/2 x 7-3/4”. All artwork © Fred Wilson, courtesy Pace Gallery and all photography by Kerry Ryan McFate, courtesy Pace Gallery. [End Page 282] want to see) when she looks at Othello. The piece also puts the viewer in an analogous parallel position of looking and seeing. Wilson’s purely visual gesture allows us to see only Othello’s total blackness. In Shakespeare’s drama, however, Desdemona’s verbal formulation enables her to bypass the blackness of Othello’s face by focusing exclusively on his mind as a more desirable internal arena for love. The policy of excusing or downplaying Othello’s blackness is articulated by the Duke of Venice’s consolatory message for Brabanzio specifying that his daughter’s husband is “far more fair than black” (1.3.289). But the Duke is following an approach already introduced by Desdemona thirty-eight lines earlier (1.3.251). Her lead role in overlooking and so ignoring Othello’s racial blackness is the disturbing content of Fred Wilson’s first piece. It is worth noting at the outset two small features that will reappear in his final piece and nowhere else, as though signaling a direct consequential link between the beginning and the end of Wilson’s overall trajectory. In Act V. Scene II – Exeunt Omnes, the motif of thin lines and of rows of button-like fasteners bordering frames will take us full circle back to this starting point. I would locate the next mirror piece, Iago’s Desdemona, in act two, scene one, in Cyprus, where Desdemona has arrived in the company of Iago, in whose “conveyance” (1.3.284) Othello has entrusted her. While awaiting her husband who is traveling in a separate boat, Desdemona, of her own volition, initiates a verbal game with Iago in which she puts the terms “black” and “white,” with their racial undertones, dangerously in play. If act one reveals Desdemona as a speaker at the height of her boldness and independence, then act two shows her portrayed as radically compressed and diminished. Wilson’s Iago’s Desdemona presents a tiny, shrunken oval in the center. The scale of the subsequent Emilia’s Mirror, which will be twice the height of Iago’s Desdemona, provides a comparative measure of the latter’s small size, echoing the smallness mocked in Iago’s cruelly reductive joke, “To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer” (2.1.162). The floral adornment is lavish but so congested that it seems to smother (as though in anticipation of her death). In ceding control to Iago, Desdemona sets herself up by inviting Iago to define her, as the possessive Iago’s in Wilson’s title indicates. In Wilson’s first piece, Desdemona speaks for herself; in the second, Iago speaks for her. Nonetheless, there is a latent continuity between their respective versions of blackness. Fred Wilson’s chandelier entitled Oh! Monstruosa Culpa! quotes Verdi’s Otello (468–69),9 which is in turn traceable to act three, scene three, of Shakespeare’s play, where Othello is overcome by the intolerable conviction that Cassio and Desdemona have betrayed him and restored [End Page 283] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Fred Wilson. Iago’s Desdemona, 2013. Murano glass and wood. 40-1/8 x 25-1/8 x 6” (101.9 x 63.8 x 15.2 cm). [End Page 284] the image of a white couple. The corresponding moment is Othello’s outburst “O, monstrous, monstrous!” (3.3.431). When we look up at Wilson’s chandelier, the most conspicuous feature is the proliferation of round objects nested in the branches. According to Doro Globus, these “spherical orbs and cups” can be seen as a symbolic disease spreading like “tumors that take over the whole” (13). Although Othello attempts to ascribe the source of these tumors to Cassio here, ultimately the burden, in enlarged form, passes back to Othello himself in the later, and only other, chandelier, No Way But This. The dimensions of the second chandelier will have grown to almost twice the size of the first, as have the complexity and density of the inner structure. In the move from the first to the second chandelier, the number of simulated candles will triple but the illumination remains dim. Fred Wilson’s next three pieces all belong to the final act of Shakespeare’s Othello. The title, Emilia’s Mirror – Act 5, Scene 2, tells us exactly where we are and how quickly we have moved forward to the end. The huge difference in sizes from the diminutive Iago’s Desdemona to the impressive scale of Emilia’s Mirror signifies Emilia’s emergence as a spokesperson whose transformation gives her the ability to stand up to, and fight back against, her husband: “’Tis proper I obey him, but not now” (5.2.203). With Desdemona’s voice silenced, Emilia’s outspoken eloquence briefly fills the vacuum. No Way But Thiscomes from Shakespeare’s final sentence for Othello. The sentence structure inevitably connects this chandelier to Wilson’s earlier chandelier, To Die Upon A Kiss (5.2.368– 69).10 The Twofold Structure of Othello’s Final Scene Shakespeare’s ending juxtaposes two distinct actions: first, Othello’s suicide and, second, Lodovico’s command to block our view. The sharp withdrawal caused by this second step means that we cannot fulfill our roles as thoughtful witnesses, thus leaving us with an unfinished story. The final 11 lines spoken by Lodovico that constitute the truncated conclusion of Shakespeare’s Othello are so fraught that they disrupt any prospect of illumination. The neatness of the “state”/“relate” rhyme that rounds off the last two lines cannot smooth over the overwhelmed emotional tone that Lodovico transmits to us. He seems upset to be the one who bears the burden of responsibility for reporting what has occurred. But, more deeply, he cannot look at the primary evidence of the dead bodies, as his terse order to close the bed-curtains indicates: “The object [End Page 285] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 3. Fred Wilson. No Way But This, 2013. Murano glass and light bulbs. 72 x 68 1/2 x 68 1/2”. [End Page 286] poisons sight. / Let it be hid” (5.2.174–75). Just as the curtains are literally called upon to erase the outcome, so the three key words compressed in a single sentence—“object,” “poisons,” “sight”—prevent understanding by their dismissive depersonalizing implication that the figures, lumped into an unsightly “object,” are not human. The desire to erase prevails because the driving impulse is to protect the viewer rather than to contemplate the deceased. We cannot forget Lodovico’s limitation as the speaker of the play’s inconclusive last words. The final impression is the disarray conveyed by the absence of an insightful end for Shakespeare’s play. This is where Shakespeare’s and Fred Wilson’s endings diverge. As a transition from Shakespeare to Wilson, I cite Michael Neill’s focus on the absence of funeral ritual in his aptly named section “Maimed Rites” with regard to the “degrading cruelty [. . .] signaled by Lodovico’s horrified attempt to efface the spectacle of death, as he orders the curtains drawn upon the bed of slaughter [. . .]. This tragedy is shorn of the funeral dignities that serve to put a form of order upon such spectacles of ruin [. . .]” (296).11 Refusing to bear witness, Lodovico simply banishes Othello from sight; Shakespeare’s Othello cannot end because mourning is blocked. By eliminating Lodovico’s role as the intermediary, Wilson is able to respond directly to Othello’s anguish and confusion with an engaged tone of concern not forthcoming in Shakespeare’s Othello. By comparison with Lodovico’s fixed image of the closed curtain, Wilson shapes a far more powerful, proactive object in a screen that has the capacity to address multiple issues. For the audience, Wilson’s concluding work creates a performative space for acknowledging sadness and experiencing grief and thus reintroduces an active emotional and interpretive role for the audience. The screen may appear at first sight to be another inert object but Wilson’s art brings the screen back to life to tell a more complex version of Othello’s story. Fred Wilson’s Screen When Lodovico angrily demands that the bed curtains be pulled shut to hide the bodies, he freezes the drama in a fixed mode of uncertainty. The act of closing the curtains also symbolizes a complete internal shutdown of Lodovico’s emotional exposure. When Fred Wilson graciously portrays an analogous barrier, his screen enacts a twofold experience because the artist is not only staging a death but also simultaneously performing a memorial ritual. Wilson thus creates an atmosphere of something still to happen on stage through which he insists on acknowledging [End Page 287] the scope of all aspects of mourning as a potential source of deeper insight. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 4. Fred Wilson. Act V. Scene II - Exeunt Omnes, 2014. Murano glass and wood. 7’ 3” x 10’ 8” x 8’¾” (221 x 325.1 x 21.3 cm). The title of Wilson’s concluding art work is emphatically explicit about the finality of its position: Act V. Scene II – Exeunt Omnes. Yet even more emphatic is the dominant, overwhelming scale of the piece—roughly 7 feet high by 10 feet wide—which attracts the viewer’s attention. For all its decorative complications, including a strangely off-center, vacant mirror-like structure that disrupts the neatness of the overall symmetry, the huge piece serves as a wall that prevents us from seeing, but not from feeling, what is behind it. This screen functions as an equivalent to the bed curtains closed to block our sight of the three dead bodies on the bed—Desdemona, Emilia, and Othello. They have disappeared only because they are hidden but they have not exited the stage. The highest point in the center of this work has the distinctive form of an arch opening up the possibilities of signifying homage, registering regret, and prompting meditation. The arch offers the hint of passageway, as though we are not completely cut off. [End Page 288] Here it is important to note the different paces of theatrical closure and the more leisurely process of walking through the exhibition gallery. Theater races to wrap up the ending as exemplified by the conspicuously futile channeling of energy into the use of torture to extract from Iago an explanation of what happened. The repeated urge from “Torments will ope your lips” (5.2.312) to “To you, Lord Governor, / Remains the censure of this hellish villain. / The time, the place, the torture, O, enforce it!” (377–79) attempts to bring the play to an end with a simplistic scapegoating that prevents a more complex evaluation. However, in the gallery setting the viewer controls the pace and can pause, or even stop at length, to continue looking and reflecting at a single point and thereby to extend the experience of a given moment. One also has the possibility of returning to a previous spot to look and reflect again. By contrast to the abruptness of Shakespeare’s ending, Fred Wilson’s conclusion in Act V. Scene II – Exeunt Omnes presents a fuller acknowledgment of sadness. His intervention goes beyond a narrow recognition of the fact of Othello’s death to allow ample space for the further emotional steps of meditating on the loss and of pursuing a more carefully considered account of its cause. The generosity of this gesture is quite different from the familiar terseness, amounting to dismissal, of “The object poisons sight. / Let it be hid” (5.2.374–75). Wilson’s final piece keeps our attention alert to the three individuals on the bed by effectively performing a ceremony of mourning.12 In slowly witnessing Wilson’s work, we are given an opportunity gracefully to consider how we might say farewell and ultimately let go, as well as how we might be changed by the event. Tears Of the six pieces in Fred Wilson’s current Shakespeare series, the first five are from 2013; the sixth is dated 2014. Although they are not explicitly linked to Shakespeare, I connect this sixth work with two ancillary pieces in the exhibition also made in 2014—Whether or Not and Cadence—because of their metaphorical association with the theme of mourning evoked by Act V. Scene II – Exeunt Omnes. Both pieces consist entirely of black glass drip forms that I interpret in the present context as a profusion of black tears that indicate the act of grieving and the accompanying emotional release. There is a tacit Shakespearean connection because the motif of tears has a precedent in Shakespeare’s Othello in the seven references to tears—two by Desdemona and five by Othello—most prominently in Othello’s concluding self-image as “one whose subdued eyes, / Albeit unusèd to the melting mood, / Drops tears as fast as the [End Page 289] Arabian trees / Their medicinable gum” (5.2.357–60). Fred Wilson’s evocation of tears has a more complex impact because he brings together two different visual images. In dramatizing the interaction between Whether or Not and Cadence, Wilson’s mix broadens their range and increases their strength by combining the effects of fierce, destructive, anguish with a more soothing composure. The tears in Whether or Not are widely dispersed. The overall size of this piece—10 feet high by 13 feet across—matches and even exceeds the scale of Act V. Scene II – Exeunt Omnes. The scattered format of Whether or Not spreads the tears out in three clusters of varying size as though the solid screen of Act V. Scene II had broken up into fragments. In Whether or Not, the tears are sprayed in a diagonal pattern that intimates the vigor of grief in the force of their outward projection. Yet the angular shape is aesthetically pleasing. Looking at Whether or Not we may imagine the slanting motion of cleansing vectors—a mass of tears like wind-driven rain that sweeps across the gallery wall with a propulsion that feels refreshing, as though signaling a new start, new possibilities, that emerge through the catalyst of Wilson’s art. Cadence suggests not only the necessity but also the beauty and value of tears. Configured as a tall vertical axis, the tears falling directly down are so closely spaced that they seem to be braided together, with the largest tear at the top and the smallest at the bottom. Their beauty is enhanced by the sense of visual rhythm implied by the musical allusion in the title word. The beauty of this composition is, of course, founded on suffering. I conclude by reviewing the contrast, evoked in my title, between Shakespeare’s drama and Fred Wilson’s exhibition of Othello-connected pieces. Lodovico’s command to close the bed curtains signifies concealment and refusal: “Let it be hid” ultimately means hiding from the understanding that deeper analysis could reveal. In the end, Fred Wilson’s art undoes and reverses the effect of Lodovico’s hiding. Unlike the closed bed curtains, Wilson’s huge screen creates a symbolic space for ceremony, contemplation, and a critical breakthrough. Wilson’s experimental pieces lead to a formally structured experience of sadness and change—an artistic process that releases the character Othello and releases us too. Wilson creates an alternative vantage point by exposing what is hidden in the Shakespearean archive and by letting it be reinterpreted in the form of a substantially revised narrative. Our role as witnesses to Othello’s fate now reaches beyond Shakespeare’s constrained conclusion and opens up a larger space that enables us to illuminate the full complexity of the drama’s racial difficulties as more deeply tragic than the play by itself can clarify. [End Page 290] Peter Erickson Northwestern University Additional References • Berger, Harry, Jr. A Fury in the Words: Love and Embarrassment in Shakespeare’s Venice. New York: Fordham UP, 2013. Print. Google Scholar • Copeland, Huey. Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2013. Print. Google Scholar • Erickson, Peter. “Black Like Me: Reconfiguring Black Face in the Art of Glenn Ligon and Fred Wilson.” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 25 (2009): 30–47. Print. Google Scholar • ———. “Mining Shakespeare: Fred Wilson’s Visual Translations of Othello.” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 33 (2013): 8–19. Print. Google Scholar • ———. “Race Words in Othello.” Shakespeare and Immigration. Ed. Ruben Espinosa and David Google Scholar • Ruiter. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. 159–76. Print. Google Scholar • ———. “Respeaking Othello in Fred Wilson’s Speak of Me as I Am.” Citing Shakespeare: The Reinterpretation of Race in Contemporary Literature and Art. New York: Palgrave, 2007. 119–50. Print. Google Scholar • González, Jennifer A. Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2008. Print. Google Scholar • Mercer, Kobena. “Interrupting Arkhe: The Installation Art of Fred Wilson.” Fred Wilson: Works 2004–2011: December 22, 2010–May 5, 2013. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2012. 1–11. Print. Google Scholar • Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson. Ed. Lisa G. Corrin. New York: The Contemporary, Baltimore in cooperation with the New Press, 1994. Print. Google Scholar • Royster, Francesca T. “Rememorializing Othello: Teaching Othello and the Cultural Memory of Racism.” Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s Othello. Ed. Peter Erickson and Maurice Hunt. New York: MLA, 2005. 53–61. Print. Google Scholar • Smith, Ian. “We Are Othello: Speaking Race in Early Modern Studies.” Shakespeare Quarterly 67.1 (2016): forthcoming. Google Scholar 572274 research-article2015 LAL0010.1177/0963947015572274Language and Literaturevan Duijn et al. Article When narrative takes over: The representation of embedded mindstates in Shakespeare’s Othello Language and Literature 2015, Vol. 24(2) 148­–166 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0963947015572274 lal.sagepub.com Max J van Duijn Leiden University, Centre for the Arts in Society, the Netherlands Ineke Sluiter Department of Classics, Leiden University, the Netherlands Arie Verhagen Leiden University, Centre for Linguistics, the Netherlands Abstract In recent times, researchers across a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have been interested in the human ability to process embedded mindstates, also known as ‘multiple-order intentionality’ (MOI): A believes that B thinks that C intends (etc.). This task is considered increasingly cognitively demanding with every order of embedding added. However, we argue that the way in which the information relevant to the task is represented in language (in particular, using a narrative) greatly influences how well people are able to deal with MOI cognitively. This effect can be illustrated by paraphrasing situations presented by a play such as Shakespeare’s Othello: by the end of Act II the audience has to understand that Iago intends that Cassio believes that Desdemona intends that Othello believes that Cassio did not intend to disturb the peace. Formulated this way, using sentence embedding to express the intentional relationships, this is highly opaque. At the same time, we know that Othello has been understood and appreciated by innumerable different audiences for ages. What is it that the play’s text does to make the audience understand all these embedded mindstates without undue cognitive strain? In this article we discuss six ‘expository strategies’ relevant to the representation of MOI and illustrate their working with examples from Shakespeare’s Othello. Corresponding author: Max J van Duijn, Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS), P.N. van Eyckhof 2, 2311 BV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Email: m.j.van.duijn@hum.leidenuniv.nl van Duijn et al. 149 Keywords Mindreading, multiple-order intentionality, narrative, Othello, Shakespeare 1 Introduction Normally developed human adults are indubitably nature’s mindreading champions: even when provided with only limited cues, we are often able to form strikingly elaborate understandings of what others think, believe, intend, desire, and so on. This capability is often referred to as ‘Theory of Mind’ or ‘mindreading’. When multiple mindstates are embedded, the term ‘multiple-order intentionality’ (MOI) is used: A knows that B believes that C intends (etc.). In recent years, scientists and scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds have made connections between MOI and literature. It is argued that readers of fiction not only have to keep track of what characters think (believe, intend, desire, etc.), but also of what they think these characters think that other characters think. Dunbar suggests that, in this way, an audience reading or watching Shakespeare’s Othello has to work at higher orders of intentionality: ‘they have to believe that Iago intends that Othello imagines that Desdemona is in love with Cassio’ (2008: 414, italics added).1 This seems to pose a paradox: on the one hand, working at higher orders of intentionality is considered cognitively taxing (Kinderman et al., 1998; Stiller and Dunbar, 2007). On the other hand, it is clear that a play such as Othello has been understood and appreciated for ages, indicating that a normally gifted reader/watcher can follow it without undue cognitive strain. This suggests that some aspects of the exposition of information in Othello and comparable texts must alleviate the cognitive burden of processing MOI. Using examples from Othello, we will discuss six strategies characteristic of (literary) narrative discourse that support the ability of readers to keep track of the mindstates of characters, even when these mindstates are mutually related and embedded in complicated ways. But before doing so, we will address MOI in some more detail, and discuss several possibilities to express embedded mindstates in language. We will conclude by discussing how our findings fit into a more general debate about the human ability to read minds. 2 Mindreading, theory of mind and multiple-order intentionality During the 1970s, several academic fields intensified their interest in how, and to what extent, humans and other primates can engage in taking the perspectives of others. Dennett (1971, 1987) introduced his concept of the ‘intentional stance’ and Premack and Woodruff (1978) made the term ‘theory of mind’ famous. Their work initiated a tradition of experimental and social research and raised fundamental debates among philosophers, psychologists, ethologists, neuroscientists, and contributors from other fields. A rich and insightful overview is given by Apperly in his recent monograph Mindreaders (2011). In this article we will follow Apperly’s suggestion to drop the term ‘theory of mind’ (to avoid the implication that attributing mindstates is like having a theory) and refer to the 150 Language and Literature 24(2) Table 1. P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 Pn [I know that] Will is a sailor. [I know that] Bill believes that Will is a sailor. [I know that] Mary believes that Bill believes that Will is a sailor. [I know that] Peter believes that Mary believes that Bill believes that Will is a sailor. [I know that] John believes that Peter believes that Mary believes that Bill believes that Will is a sailor. [I know that] Sally believes that John believes that Peter believes that Mary believes that Bill believes that Will is a sailor. [I know that] Namen believes that Pn–1 first order intentionality second order intentionality third order intentionality fourth order intentionality fifth order intentionality sixth order intentionality n-th order intentionality set of mechanisms, routines, and tricks that humans apply to form understandings of other’s mindstates as ‘mindreading’. In the past decade, several links have been pointed out between mindreading and literature. Some scholars have suggested that, when forming an understanding of the inner lives of fictional characters, we use the same mental capacities as when reading other people’s minds in everyday social interaction (see e.g. Budelmann and Easterling, 2010; Cefalu, 2013; Palmer, 2004; Zunshine, 2006). Others have argued that reading fiction may train our mindreading abilities (e.g. Djikic et al., 2013; Kidd and Castano, 2013; Vermeule, 2010). This fits the broader idea that stories function as cognitive play: they may form a ‘playground’ where readers can develop various socio-cognitive skills without risking real-life social costs (Boyd, 2009). While the central focus of this article will be on embedded mindstates and the narrative expressed by Shakespeare’s Othello, we will get back to these more general connections between mindreading and literature in our concluding section. In various articles and books, Dennett (e.g. 1971, 1987) systematically works out the idea that mindreading has recursive potential: it can be self-embedded. In line with the examples he discusses, this can be demonstrated as follows in Table 1.2 The propositions in Table 1 show that the recursive procedure of embedding one proposition expressing a subject’s mindstate into another, can produce propositions of any length and complexity. However, these propositions clearly become more opaque and their contents harder to grasp as the number of embeddings increases. This is presumably what led to the idea that there is a general upper limit to the number of orders of intentionality that humans can handle, as suggested by Dennett (1971) and tested experimentally by Kindermann et al. (1998) and Stiller and Dunbar (2007). They argue that the maximum for contemporary humans lies at around fifth order. In their experiments participants were presented with short narratives describing social situations that included several characters: Emma worked in a greengrocer’s. She wanted to persuade her boss to give her an increase in wages. So she asked her friend Jenny, who was still at school, what she should say to the van Duijn et al. 151 boss. ‘Tell him that the chemist near where you live wants you to work in his shop,’ Jenny suggested. ‘The boss won’t want to lose you, so he will give you more money’ she said. So when Emma went to see her boss that is what she told him. Her boss thought that Emma might be telling a lie, so he said he would think about it. Later, he went to the chemist’s shop near Emma’s house and asked the chemist whether he had offered a job to Emma. The chemist said he hadn’t offered Emma a job. The next day the boss told Emma that he wouldn’t give her an increase in wages, and she could take the job at the chemist’s instead. (Stiller and Dunbar, 2007: 101–102) After the narratives were read out to the participants, they were asked questions of increasing complexity, measured by the number of orders of intentionality as expressed through linguistic embeddings. They had to choose, for example, between ‘Emma thought the boss believed that the chemist wanted her to work for him’ or ‘Emma thought the boss knew that the chemist had not offered her a job’ (Stiller and Dunbar, 2007: 102). The level at which participants first failed answering such questions correctly was normally distributed with a peak around fifth order. However, it is not clear what exactly this means: the factor limiting performance at the higher levels was perhaps not so much the participants’ ability to cognitively handle the situation presented by the narrative, nor was it the understanding of the narrative itself, but rather the participants’ ability to process the multiply-embedded sentences of the questions. We suggest that the way mindreading tasks involving MOI are represented is crucial to the actual performance of the subjects facing these tasks.3 In the next section we will take a closer look at the possible ways to represent MOI in language and narrative. 3 Representing embedded mindstates: From sentence to narrative Within sentences, several linguistic devices are available for coordinating different perspectives (see, for example, Dancygier and Sweetser, 2012; Verhagen, 2005). At least in middle- and western-European languages, a central device is complementation, where a verb of cognition (think, know, intend, etc.) is specified by a complement clause, as in Table 1. However, if the representation of a MOI situation relies on such complex sentences only, it very soon becomes hard or even impossible for a reader or hearer to make the right inferences about the involved mindstates. Consider P4 and P5 in Table 1: these propositions are hard to link correctly to the situations referred to. This is in line with the fact that in corpora of literary narrative and natural spoken discourse, sentences containin...
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