A Round Unvarnish’d Tale

Sir:

I have been reading PNR 217 slowly, with pleasure. Vahni Capildeo’s reflections remind me of a production of Othello I once saw in Newcastle (a touring company of the RSC, if I remember correctly) that had all the cast speaking conventional late twentieth-century stage diction, but Othello himself nineteenth-century oratorical. Capildeo catches this by calling him ‘a linguistic mismatch for his entire play’.

j. kates
by email