Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

O lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount: for mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompey the Great, sir.

-Costard

Love’s Labour’s Lost             Act V, Scene ii, Line 500

 

Costard is listed in the Dramatis Personae as ‘a clown’, and his lines certainly portray him as a bit of a clown. Not necessarily a circus clown, but a fairly dimwitted person type of clown. As such, there’s only so much sense that we’re going to be able to make out of today’s Totally Random line, and whatever sense there is to be gained would rely in large part on putting this in some context. I’m afraid I have neither the time nor inclination to do that this morning, so I’m leaving you on your own. After 609 posts, one would hope that you’d be able to work this one line out on your own.

Oh never mind, I guess I do have some thoughts. I suppose I just can’t help myself.

Since we’re talking about actors and Costard portraying Pompey, it has occurred to me that some folks nowadays have a tendency to find it problematic for some people to take on certain roles, for one reason or another. It has also occurred to me that every actor since the beginning of acting has taken the stage in an effort to pretend to be, and convince us that they are, someone whom they are not. So the question arises, when are certain roles, undertaken by certain actors, unacceptable, and why? Again, if virtually every role is an attempt to pretend to be someone else, who’s to say when a particular someone else is unacceptable? 

Now I’m not pretending to be stupid, and I understand the history of making fun of entire races or ethnicities on the stage. But somehow, I think we need to be able to put that in perspective. For instance (uh oh, here we go), the fact that white men painted their faces black in order to make fun of blacks in old minstrel shows (which I’m not defending here), should not preclude the acceptability of Laurence Olivier darkening his face to portray Othello. Sir Laurance was pretending to be someone he was not, a profession for which he received accolade upon accolade.  He was not darkening his skin in an attempt to malign a race or ethnicity. He was doing it to portray a character who happened to be a black man. Are we saying that he should  not have been allowed to portray Othello, or that he should not have darkened his skin to do it, or both? And, if either, please tell me why. If your answer is that he can’t do it because over one hundred years ago white men blackened their faces to belittle black men, well, I’m afraid I just can’t see how that makes sense.

There, I’ve waded into some murky, and potentially very hazardous, waters. And Lord knows, I am a very poor swimmer. C’est la vie.

And here is a pic of the fabled Sir Laurence portraying Othello, taken from my A.L. Rowse Annotated Shakespeare volumes.  As you can see, this was in 1964 when this was acceptable. Today? Not so much.