More than a retelling, this aptly termed "reconceptualization" provocatively modernizes Shakespeare's play. As in the original, the middle-aged general Othello the ``moor'' and young European noblewoman Desdemona fall in love and marry secretly. But Lester (To Be a Slave; John Henry) transplants the action from Venice and Cyprus to Elizabethan England and turns Iago and Emily into Africans like Othello, so that the three of them share a distinctly non-European point of view. Iago's envy of Othello and ability to whip him into a jealous rage at Desdemona are thus cast in a new light, though the tragic outcome remains the same. While the ending feels abrupt, Lester's novel succeeds in holding up a mirror to contemporary society. Phrases and passages directly based on Shakespeare's language are printed in a different typeface, a device that may distract the reader but eases comparisons with the original work. Ages 8-12. (Apr.)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Gr 8 Up-In this beautiful and powerful novelization of Shakespeare's play, Lester has kept the plot intact but made some other changes crucial to his purpose. He shifts the setting from Venice to England and, most significantly, makes Othello, Iago, and Iago's wife all definitively black. They share a three-way friendship that originated in their native Africa. It is important that Iago is black and thereby released from any racist intent; the author is then able to maintain the focus of the tragedy on the weaknesses of the human soul and on problems of perception versus reality. But through the enhanced character development afforded by the novel form, Lester has also explored problems of racial alienation. His prose is an incredibly skillful blend of his own words and Shakespeare's, both paraphrased and quoted directly, interwoven seamlessly into a narrative that transmutes the musical feeling of Shakespeare's language into modern English. This is a book to be enjoyed on its own but is sure to send many readers back to the original with a heightened understanding of and appreciation for it. This wonderful achievement is a must for all libraries.-Margaret Cole, Oceanside Library, NY
Some may wonder what Lester is up to here. A novelization of Shakespeare's "Othello"? Why not just read the play? But in his well-reasoned introduction, Lester tackles that subject head-on, and his answers should convince even purists that there's a place for this book. After all, it's common knowledge that Shakespeare took plots from other works, so Lester is only following the Bard's example. Moreover, Lester firmly states that his book is not a substitute for the play but, rather, a re-imagining of the story
Though he follows the original story line, Lester has made significant changes in the characterizations. Now Iago and Emilia (Emily in the play), like Othello, are black. Lester wanted race to be a more central theme of his novel, and by repositioning these characters, he brings a new and powerful dimension to that aspect of the story. In portraying Othello, Iago, and Emily as Africans who have come to England (the new setting) together, Lester gives them a mutual history that also adds psychological depth to his new conceptualization
Another goal of Lester's is to make his book a bridge to the play. Since Shakespeare's language can be an inhibiting factor for young people, this more modern rendering makes the story accessible. But Lester does not entirely remake Shakespeare's style. Sometimes Lester paraphrases; at other times, he uses exact wording, which is printed in boldface, a useful, if occasionally awkward device
There's only one problem with the book, and it's one that has played around the edges of Shakespeare's work as well. Othello's dramatic about-face concerning Desdemona, ending in her murder, comes with a quickness that will probably startle young readers. Despite the pyschological motivations Lester has tried to establish, Othello's haste to distrust does not seem to mesh with the image of the noble general that's been presented. Perhaps because of the intimacy a novel engenders, this jump seems more jarring here than it does in the play. On the whole, however, this is a fascinating effort. The story of "Othello", with its questions about perceptions, race, and the nature of love and friendship, will be a natural draw for young people, just as it has been for readers worldwide, for centuries.
This is an edition of Othello whose conversational introduction and unobtrusive but thorough notes will make the first-time visitor to the text an expert on the play. By keeping her own focus on the issue of performance – including her nuanced descriptions of the major films – editor Gretchen Schulz not only helps readers see Othello in the theatre of the imagination, she helps them to direct it as well.
Even as the New Kittredge Shakespeare series glances back to George Lyman Kittredge's student editions of the plays, it is very much of our current moment: the slim editions are targeted largely at high school and first-year college students who are more versed in visual than in print culture. Not only are the texts of the plays accompanied by photographs or stills from various stage and cinema performances: the editorial contributions are performance-oriented, offering surveys of contemporary film interpretations, essays on the plays as performance pieces, and an annotated filmography. Traditional editorial issues (competing versions of the text, cruxes, editorial emendation history) are for the most part excluded; the editions focus instead on clarifying the text with an eye to performing it. There is no disputing the pedagogic usefulness of the New Kittredge Shakespeare's performance-oriented approach. At times, however, it can run the risk of treating textual issues as impediments, rather than partners, to issues of performance. This is particularly the case with a textually vexed play such as Pericles: Prince of Tyre . In the introduction to the latter, Jeffrey Kahan notes the frequent unintelligibility of the play as originally published: "the chances of a reconstructed text matching what Shakespeare actually wrote are about 'nil'" (p. xiii) But his solution — to use a "traditional text" rather than one corrected as are the Oxford and Norton Pericles — obscures how this "traditional text," including its act and scene division, is itself a palimpsest produced through three centuries of editorial intervention. Nevertheless, the series does a service to its target audience with its emphasis on performance and dramaturgy. Kahan's own essay about his experiences as dramaturge for a college production of Pericles is very good indeed, particularly on the play's inability to purge the trace of incestuous desire that Pericles first encounters in Antioch. Other plays' cinematic histories: Annalisa Castaldo's edition of Henry V contrasts Laurence Oliver's and Branagh's film productions; Samuel Crowl's and James Wells's edition of (respectively) I and 2 Henry IV concentrate on Welle's Chimes at Midnight and Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho ; Patricia Lennox's edition of As You Like It offers an overview of four Hollywood and British film adaptations; and John R. Ford's edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream provides a spirited survey of the play's rich film history.
The differences between, and comparative merits of, various editorial series are suggested by the three editions of The Taming of the Shrew published this year. Laury Magnus's New Kittredge Shakespeare edition is, like the other New Kittredge volumes, a workable text for high school and first year college students interested in film and theater. The introduction elaborates on one theme — Elizabethan constructions of gender — and offers a very broad performance history, focusing on Sam Taylor's and Zeffirelli's film versions as well as adaptations such as Kiss Me Kate and Ten Things I Hate About You (accompanied by a still of ten hearthtrobs Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles). The volume is determined to eradicate any confusion that a first time reader of the play might experience: the dramatis personae page explains that "Bianca Minola" is "younger daughter to Baptista, wooed by Lucentio-in-disguise (as Cambio) and then wife to him, also wooed by the elderly Gremio and Hortensio-in-disguise (as Licio)" (p.1). Other editorial notes, based on Kittredge's own, are confined mostly to explaining individual words and phrases: additional footnotes discuss interpretive choices made by film and stage productions. Throughout, the editorial emphasis is on the play less as text than as performance piece, culminating in fifteen largely performance-oriented "study questions" on topics such as disguise, misogyny, and violence.
Studies in English Literature, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Volume 51, Spring 2011, Number 2, pages 497-499.
