Here's a confession. I've never really loved Othello. Or, rather, I don't see how it earns its place alongside other genuinely Great (capital G) Shakespearean tragedies. It's packed full of folly and nonsense and so much of its plot machinations hinge on ridiculous coincidence. At any point, if Othello turned to Desdemona and asked, ‘Have you done anything dodgy with that handkerchief I gave you?’ she'd explain that she hadn't, and the play would be over.
But, then, that's Shakespeare's cowed and terrified Desdemona; bewildered and astonished by her spouse turning against her. Toni Morrison's smart, sly and triumphant Desdemona is another thing altogether.
The late Morrison's one-act curiosity reimagines the fourth act of the Bard's play, but shifts the focus and context entirely. Here, Morrison holds Shakespeare to account with his portrayal of both race and gender and reconfigures the plot, with her own dialogue, to present a world in which Othello's bride has agency. It's no coincidence that this play is called Desdemona and Morrison positions her heroine in an act of hope and flickering memory as she explores who she is, where she came from and (not Emilia here) Barbary, the maid who brought her up.
Morrison's gaze, with its focus on African American characters, is ideally suited to this re-examination of the Bard's play and it makes for a terrific companion-piece. I couldn't begin to imagine anyone reading it without a working knowledge, at least, of Othello and, even then, this is – for all its poetry, wonder and song – unashamedly intellectual and challenging.
To query who might this play be ‘for’ feels almost reductive. That said, there are deliberately confrontational images of rape, violence and torture. Morrison is more interested in interrogating the original text and providing modern audiences with a new slant and perspective on the Moor of Venice, his doomed bride and an age when a woman could so easily be silenced.
For sophisticated and hungry readers, Morrison's work should be considered essential reading. However, for the rest of us, it's a brilliantly constructed intensely meta-theatrical experiment which might not earn a place at the top of our reading lists.