Blackface Shakespeare: Thomas D. Rice and the Return of Jim Crow as Otello

Abstract

Thomas D. Rice's Otello Burlesque represents the first full performance to link Shakespearean burlesque with blackface minstrelsy on the early American stages. This disturbing milestone has its origins in a pressing need, on Rice's part, to expand the range of his signature persona, the “original Jim Crow.” Rice developed his script during an extended hiatus, following a successful tour of England. Although it generally is regarded as a loose adaptation of Maurice Dowling's 1834 Othello Travestie, I argue that Rice took care to blend Dowling with Shakespeare. This combination recasts Jim Crow as a grotesque persona, which disrupts Shakespearean burlesque as much as it does blackface minstrelsy. Accordingly, the play dwells on Othello's anguish, but displaces that anguish in an atmosphere of chaos. In turning to performance history, I argue that the play was regarded as a momentary sensation, whose novelty wore off almost as quickly as it appeared. Subsequent revivals suggest that producers went to some trouble to maintain interest among audiences. In its treatment of racial difference as “fun,” Otello Burlesque draws attention to a culture of distraction, where the term is understood as civil conflict and as the momentary diversions that draw public attention away from it.