Teaching Othello in Post-Colonial Taiwan

Abstract

It was no accident that Othello has emerged to be one of the most taught Shakespearean plays in the United States. Though four hundred years old, the play addresses many prominent issues in contemporary American society—race, gender, and identity. There has been great enthusiasm for locating a “real life Othello” in contemporary American society, and O.J. Simpson seems to be the most extraordinary find. American students might not care about the fate of a Moorish general in Renaissance Venice, but they could very well identify and sympathize with and African-American football star in Beverly Hills. They could also understand as in the recent Hollywood movie “O” directed by Tim Blake Nelson, what it would be like being a minority basketball MVP in an all-white private high school. Numerous modernizations and adaptations of the play in the last few decades demonstrate that in introducing Shakespeare to contemporary audiences, relevance matters.