Essay
Othello's Countrymen
Eldred Durosimi Jones · 1965
Synopsis
A study of the African characters of English Renaissance drama. The author starts from the image of Africa in Elizabethan England and shows that Black figures already belonged to the tradition of the stage: devils with blackened faces in the mystery plays, morris dancers, the king of Egypt of the mummers. He then examines the Moors of the Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, from the Black villain such as Aaron to the white or tawny Moor, dignified but reputed cruel, up to Othello.
Context
The book was published in London in 1965 by Oxford University Press, in the name of the university college at Freetown, in a little over one hundred and fifty illustrated pages; it was drawn from its author's thesis. The following year, it received the critics' prize at the first World Festival of Negro Arts, in Dakar. The author extended this research in 1971 with a study of the Elizabethan image of Africa, published for the Folger Shakespeare Library, then devoted a book to the work of Wole Soyinka in 1973.
Who it is for
In English, never translated into French; a scholarly study, based on the texts and documents of the period, accessible to anyone who knows a little Shakespeare.
Prizes and reception
Awarded a prize in Dakar in 1966; studies of Othello and of the Moors of the English stage still cite it.
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