Delacroix’s Tragedy of Desdemona

Summary

If we are to understand the fate of Shakespeare’s Othello in nineteenth-century France we must try to set aside our Anglo-Saxon sensibility and the Elizabethan concept of theatre and adopt the viewpoint of a literary and visual culture moving away from French classical tragedy. One of the most direct ways of achieving this standpoint is through the work of Delacroix, for his conception of the tragedy focuses many conceptions current in his day.

One of the central figures of the age preceding his and the man whose adaptation of Othello started the revolution of thought which we shall consider was Jean-Francois Ducis. Since 1792 the Parisian public had been acquainted with the Othello theme chiefly through the acting of Talma in Ducis' Othello. In his preface to the 1819 edition Ducis attempts to justify the major changes he was obliged to make to Shakespeare's play in order to make it acceptable to the sober taste of his audiences.