Othello

Mm.

And every time you do a play, doing a play is great, so fences, Othello, whatever.

Arturo Ui, and I, I love being an actor.

It's great.

Yeah.

Which I did for a very long, for 40 years or something, and what- whatever happened to that guy? Whatever happened to that thing? And you can't just break out in the middle of a play and start doing the tight five.

There was a moment in Othello when, um, my Iago started to laugh at something, and, uh, my face was desperate to be on the joke, but I had a bit to do.

I couldn't be in on his joke.

Yeah, but I, but you know what's funny though? I thought, the movie I'm, I got it confused with- O, which is-

Well, that's Shakes- That's, uh, Othello, um-

Othello, right

... like the modernized-

Did you know that Tim Blake Nelson, uh, directed that?

What does that mean? Too long, didn't read.

It's like Iago to Othello.

It's the eye of jealousy, the eye of envy, the eye that wishes unwell, the eye that sees Ellie's substack blow up and says, why not my substack? The eye that says, why is their marriage so good? Why is my marriage so bad? Why is their child so obedient? How do they get a big house? How is their house so big? That's Nazar.

And then to protect yourself from Nazar, the evil eye, you give to charity, you know, you give to the poor, you recite prayers.

And a lot of people say, I don't believe in these spiritual dimensions, the metaphysical reality of Nazar, right? But what I mentioned in the book also is you don't have to believe in that aspect of it, even though many cultures do.

There's a practical aspect of human nature, such as Iago and Othello.

His Nazar is a catalyst for catastrophe and tragedy that falls upon Othello.

And I think you explained one of the worst Hela Nazars was...

So I didn't want to combine these scenes with that and then have these scenes get overlooked all over again.

So instead, we get to take a detailed look at the shortest scenes in the play and what impact they could possibly have in Act 3, Scenes 1 and 2 of Othello.

Act 3, Scene 1.

Stage directions say, enter Cassio with musicians.

But after the first line, we will realize that we are outside of Othello's house.

As Cassio says to the musicians, Masters, play here.

I will content your pains.

Because it's not music, it's actually noise.

I'm going to see if I can find it.

It's Othello through the perspective of...

Desdemona? Not Desdemona, but like...

God damn, this is going to drive me crazy.

But one of the things he talks about is that there were blackface minstrel performances of William Shakespeare plays.

And I thought that was fascinating because through Scott Warmoth, I knew that Dylan had quoted a blackface minstrel version of Othello in Poboy.

When he sings, Othello told Desdemona, I'm cold, cover me with a blanket.

By the way, what happened to that poison wine? She said, I gave it to you, you drank it.

Those are literally lines from a 19th century blackface minstrelsy version of Othello.

So what I think Dylan did, I think he read Love and Theft, and when he got to that part, he sought out those plays from the 1970s.

That would not have been easy at the time either.

The Hamlet Podcast.

Hello and welcome to this exploration of Shakespeare's Othello with me, your host, Conor Hanratty.

Please forgive the state of my voice this week.

I have rather typically caught a cold directly in the aftermath of a new show opening.

And, Iago insists, he's never been in a better position to help Rodrigo.

I could never better stead thee than now.

But of course, Iago's off to Cyprus with his wife and Othello's wife too.

And so he tells Rodrigo to follow the wars also.