Notes: South Africa

259 | a new Shakespeare exhibition | The British Museum show was entitled Shakespeare: Staging the World, and ran 19 July–25 November 2012. Michael Billington’s review, published in The Guardian on 19 July 2012 [http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jul/19/shakespeare-staging-the-world-review], offers a good short survey. Subsequent references to exhibits follow page numberings in the catalogue, which is by Jonathan Bate and Dora Thornton (London, 2012).

259 | the portrait of the Moroccan ambassador | Catalogue, 36. The artist is unknown. The picture is in the collection of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, A0427, and is viewable online – with a selection of other highlights of the exhibition – at: [http://www.historyextra.com/shakespeare].

259 | the skull of a brown bear | Catalogue, 47. In the collection of Dulwich College, DC 760.

260 | a ‘hornbook’ | Catalogue, 124. In the collection of the British Museum, PE OA.9184.

260 | ‘Herne’s Oak’ | Catalogue, 84. In the collection of the British Museum, PE 1863, 1207.1.

260 | It was a book | Catalogue, 269. In the collection of Sonny Venkathrathnam, Durban.

261 |The Robben Island Bible | In telling the story of the book, I have relied upon – as well as my own research – several secondary works, chiefly David Schalkwyk’s excellent Hamlet’s Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare (London, 2013) and Ashwin Desai, Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island (Pretoria, 2012). I’m also indebted to Matthew Hahn, for sharing the script of his play The Robben Island Shakespeare, along with transcripts of his interviews with former prisoners.

261 | the ‘Alexander’ text | Precise figures are hard to come by, but it seems plausible to me that the Alexander complete works, published posthumously, is the most circulated edition in the English-speaking world. A short but insightful obituary of Peter Alexander, whose contribution to Shakespeare studies has been somewhat neglected, is available on the University of Glasgow website: [http://www.universitystory.gla.ac.uk/ww1-biography/?id=1733].

261 | ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths’ | Julius Caesar, 2.2.32–7.

261 | ‘solace and inspiration’ | Mark Brown, ‘British Museum Shakespeare Exhibition to Include Prized Robben Island Copy’, The Guardian, 17 July 2012 [http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/jul/17/british-museum-shakespeare-exhibition-robben-island].

262 | ‘passed around from cell to cell’ | ‘British Museum to Display Robben Island Copy of Shakespeare’s Works’, The Telegraph, 18 July 2012 [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/9407821/British-Museum-to-display-Robben-Island-copy-of-Shakespeares-works.html].

262 | The Times of India helpfully explained | ‘When Diwali Cards Helped Nelson Mandela’s Time in Jail’, The Times of India, 19 July 2012 [http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/when-diwali-cards-helped-nelson-mandelas-time-in-jail/articleshow/15043741.cms].

262 | ‘The book was used in the same way’ | Quoted in John Battersby, ‘South Africa: African Freedom and Shakespeare’s World’, AllAfrica[http://allafrica.com/stories/201207120221.html].

262 | ‘Nelson Mandela’s Shakespeare edition’ | ‘Nelson Mandela’s Shakespeare Edition to go on Display’, BBC News, 19 June 2012 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18502371].

262 | Assuming that the story about … Hamlet in Sierra Leone | See also my Prologue, xxvi–xxvii; of the works I cite, Bernice W. Kliman is the most sceptical in ‘At Sea about Hamlet at Sea: A Detective Story’, Shakespeare Quarterly 62 (2011), 180–204.

263 | Antony Sher | See Battersby report cited above; both Sher and Doran were instrumental in arranging the display of the book in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2006, and referenced it as part of the inspiration for Doran’s RSC production of Julius Caesar in 2012. See Sylvia Morris, ‘Julius Caesar: Shakespeare’s African Play’, The Shakespeare Blog, 30 April 2012 [http://theshakespeareblog.com/2012/04/julius-caesar-shakespeares-african-play/].

264 | A Book of Homage | Israel Gollancz (ed.), A Book of Homage to Shakespeare (Oxford, 1916). Helpfully, the original edition is downloadable online for free as a PDF [https://archive.org/details/cu31924013146257] and is scheduled for republication by Oxford University Press in June 2016, with a new introduction by Gordon McMullan [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-book-of-homage-to-shakespeare-9780198769699?cc=us&lang=en&].

265 | ‘William Tsikinya-Chaka’ | Book of Homage, 336–40.

265 | ‘I was not then as well acquainted’ | Book of Homage, 337.

266 | ‘According to the pictures’ | Book of Homage, 339–40.

268 | an article gave me what I wanted | Coppélia Kahn, ‘Remembering Shakespeare Imperially: the 1916 Tercentenary’, Shakespeare Quarterly 52 (2001), 456–78. See also Tim Couzens, ‘A Moment in the Past: William Tsikinya-Chaka’, Shakespeare in Southern Africa 2 (1988), 60–66; and Brian Willan, ‘“A South African’s Homage” one hundred years on: Sol Plaatje’s contribution to the tercentenary Book of Homage to Shakespeare’ (1916), forthcoming in the journal Shakespeare in Southern Africa (2016).

269 | Born in 1876 | On Plaatje’s life, the authoritative source is Brian Willan, Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist, 1876–1932 (Berkeley, CA, 1984); Willan has also edited Native Life in South Africa (Harlow, 1987) and a volume of Selected Writings ( Johannesburg, 1997). I’m hugely grateful to Brian Willan for sharing his considerable Plaatje expertise and responding to many email queries, as well as sharing revised chapters of the updated biography. A short and very readable introduction to Plaatje is in Tim Couzens and Brian Willan, ‘Solomon T. Plaatje, 1876–1932’ [Plaatje centenary issue], English in Africa, 4 (1977).

269 | more enthusiastic biographers | Seetsele Modiri Molema, Lover of his People: A Biography of Sol Plaatje, trans. and ed. D. S. Matjila and Karen Haire (Johannesburg, 2012), would undeniably fall into this camp.

269 | ‘greatly impressed’ | Cited in Willan, Sol Plaatje, 243.

271 | A thin wodge of yellowing foolscap | The University of the Witwatersrand website lists basic information on the Plaatje papers, and offers some digitised images and sound files: [http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/?inventory/U/collections&c=A2550/R/]. The diary was published as The Boer War Diary of Sol T. Plaatje: An African at Mafeking, ed. John L. Comaroff (Johannesburg, 1973).

273 | Nkosi sikel’ iAfrika | This wonderful and powerfully historic recording has been uploaded by the South African Audio Archive, alongside a fascinating account of its genesis and contents by Siemon Allen: [http://www.flatinternational.org/template_volume.php?volume_id=267].

273 | ‘We do not hanker after social equality’ | Koranta ea Becoana, 13 September 1902, reprinted in Selected Writings, 61–4.

274 | Natives Land Act | A good short account of the 1913 Land Act is available at South African History Online, an excellent general source on many aspects of the pre-apartheid and apartheid eras [http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/natives-land-act-1913].

274 | ‘Awaking on Friday morning’ | Solomon Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa, ed. Brian Willan (Harlow, 1987), 6.

274 | ‘Tears rolled down our cheeks’ | Native Life, 79.

274 | Critics have drawn attention | See Willan, Sol Plaatje, 201; also the brief but good account of Plaatje’s activism and writing in J. D. Fage and Roland Anthony Oliver (eds), The Cambridge History of Africa, 8 vols, vol. 7 (Cambridge, 1986), 256–9.

275 | ‘Are not many of us toiling in the grain fields …?’ | Native Life, 105–6. The quotation from King Lear is at 3.2.7–9 in the 2005 Oxford complete works, but I’ve retained the spelling of Plaatje’s quotation, which will have used an earlier edition. On Plaatje’s use of Shakespeare, see thoughtful accounts by Natasha Distiller, South Africa, Shakespeare, and Post-Colonial Culture (Lewinston, NY, 2005); David Schalkwyk and Lerothodi Lapula, ‘Solomon Plaatje, William Shakespeare, and the Translations of Culture’, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies 9 (2000), 9–26; and David Schalkwyk, ‘Portrait and Proxy: Representing Plaatje and Plaatje Represented’, Scrutiny2 4 (1999), 14–29.

276 | ‘If there were reason’ | Titus Andronicus, 3.1.218–25.

278 | The story seemed to begin in June 1914 | For biographical details on Plaatje, far and away the best resource is, again, Brian Willan’s Sol Plaatje. This section of Plaatje’s life is covered pp. 174–204.

278 | Professor Higgins | The ONDB biography of Jones by Beverley Collins is a mine of fascinating detail – not least that Jones inspired the figure of Higgins – and well worth consulting. Available online at: [http://www.oxforddnb.com].

276 | celebrations marking the tercentenary | On the anniversary events, see Kahn, ‘Imperially’, and the introduction to McMullan’s forthcoming edition of the Book of Homage.

276 | might have attended | The Setswana introduction to  Diphosho-phosho makes brief reference to Plaatje having seen Caesar live on stage, presumably during this visit, but it is difficult to verify which performance he saw, or where.

276 | ‘with the maturity’ | Book of Homage, 339.

280 | ‘translated partly in 1923’ | ‘Shakespeare in Setswana’, The Star [Johannesburg], 26 July, 1930.

280 | Thomas Mofolo’s Sesotho novel | Chaka is available in various editions; the best translation is probably by Daniel P. Kuenene, published in Heinemann’s African Writers series (London, 1981).

280 | parts of Twelfth Night | See Brian Willan, ‘Whose Shakespeare? Early Black Engagements with Shakespeare’, Shakespeare in Southern Africa 24 (2012), 3–24.

281 | Diphosho-phosho | Published by the Morija Printing Works, Morija, 1930. A paperback facsimile edition is available from the Arts and Culture Trust, printed c.2000. I’m indebted to Johann Cronje of the Sol Plaatje Educational Trust in Kimberley for allowing me to get hold of this edition, and the recent reprint of Dintshontsho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara (Johannesburg, 1937).

281 | a quietly radical act of translation | On Plaatje’s strategies as a translator, see especially Shole J. Shole, ‘Shakespeare in Setswana: An Evaluation of Raditladi’s Macbeth and Plaatje’s Diphosophoso’, Shakespeare in Southern Africa 4 (1990), 51–64; Ameer Sohrawardy, ‘Twin Obligations in Solomon Plaatje’s Diphosho-phosho, in Native Shakespeares, ed. Dionne and Kapadia, 187–200; Seddon, ‘Orality’; and Schalkwyk and Lapula, ‘Translations’.

282 | ‘When the sun shines’ | The Comedy of Errors, 2.2.30–31. I’m indebted to Daniel Matjila for the back translation from Setswana.

282 | ‘Thou art an elm’ | The Comedy of Errors, 2.2.177. Again, I’m grateful to Daniel Matjila for the back translation.

282 | ‘it has been both difficult and intricate’ | Diphosho-phosho, Introduction. English translation in Selected Writings, 383–4.

291 | His novel Mhudi | The most in-depth account of Plaatje’s use of sources in the novel is Stephen Gray, Sources of the First Black South African Novel in English: Solomon Plaatje’s Use of Shakespeare and Bunyan in ‘Mhudi’ (Pasadena, CA, 1976).

286 | ‘Then must my sea’ | Titus Andronicus, 3.1.226–32.

288 | The Cradle of the World | For – entirely dispiriting – details of the film and production, see Willan, 287–90. One of the photographs, even more dispiriting, is online at: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philharmonic_Hall,_London].

289 | a couple of pages at most | I’m indebted to Brian Willan for sharing photocopies of these pages. The chronology of Plaatje’s translations remains highly speculative, given the fact that four of them have disappeared and the chaotic state his papers were in before they reached the Cullen archive, but (if one were minded to be optimistic) it doesn’t seem impossible that more documents or manuscripts may surface.

289 | ‘diminished what Shakespeare had written’ | Preface to Dintshontsho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara (Johannesburg, 1937), ix–x. Schalwkyk and Lapula are revealing on the tangled relationship between Lestrade and Plaatje’s text, in particular the loss of Plaatje’s painstaking Setswana–English orthography. See ‘Translations’, 24.

289 | ‘He hath disgraced me’ | The edition is the original one, Native Life in South Africa (London, 1916), and sits as an epigraph to chapter 9. The original text is in The Merchant of Venice, 3.1.54–68.

290 | ‘a prominent figure’ | ‘Mr Solomon Plaatje’, The Times, 28 July, 1932.

291 | ‘other types of literature’ | Cited in Willan, Sol Plaatje, 332.

291 | ‘Instead of wasting his time’ | Cited in Willan, Sol Plaatje, 332.

292 | ‘One wonders what secret fountain’ | Review of Mhudi, The Times Literary Supplement, 31 August 1933.

291 | ‘the greener pastures of European Society’ | The speech was givenin 1954. Cited in Crain Soudien, Peter Kallaway and Mignnne Breier, Education, Equity and Transformation, (Hamburg, 1999), which sets Verwoerd’s reforms in context and provides a good overview of apartheid education policy.

291 | ‘native intellectual’ | The key work is Frantz Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (1961), published in English in 1965 as The Wretched of the Earth. The best recent edition is by Penguin with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre (London, 2001). See also Fanon’s earlier Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (1952), published in English in 1967 as Black Skin, White Masks, which outlines Fanon’s pioneering investigations into the brutalising psychology of colonialism.

292 | Natasha Distiller | I’m hugely grateful to Natasha Distiller for making time to meet me – at very short notice – and for discussing her work with such thoughtfulness and generosity. Her thoughts on ‘coconut’ culture and Plaatje’s place within it are finely argued in Shakespeare and the Coconuts: On Post-Apartheid South African Culture (Johannesburg, 2012), particularly 40–45.

292 | The article appeared in Natural History magazine | Laura Bohannan, ‘Shakespeare in the Bush’, Natural History 75/7 (1966), 28–33. The text is printed in numerous anthologies and freely available on the Natural History website: [http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12476/shakespeare-in-the-bush]

292 | ‘“You Americans,’ said a friend’ | Bohannan, ‘Bush’, online p.1  [http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12476/shakespeare-in-the-bush].

293 | ‘People began to drink’ | Bohannan, ‘Bush’, online p.1 [http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12476/shakespeare-in-the-bush].

294 | ‘We, who are elders’ | Bohannan, ‘Bush’, online p.4 [http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12476/shakespeare-in-the-bush].

296 | Yaël Farber | I’m grateful to Yaël Farber for making to time to meet me in Edinburgh, and for sharing her thoughts on SeZar. Laurence Wright offers perceptive thoughts on the production in ‘Confronting the African Nightmare: Yaël Farber’s SeZaR’, Shakespeare in Southern Africa 13 (2001), 102–4, available online at: [http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Criticism/shakespearein/sasz2.html]. Wright has also brought together numerous performance materials, including reviews, production photographs and scripts on the University of Victoria Internet Shakespeare Editions site: [http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Criticism/shakespearein/sasz1.html]. Martin Orkin situates the production in a broader African context in ‘“I am the tusk of an elephant”: Macbeth, Titus and Caesar in Johannesburg’, in Ton Hoenselaars (ed.), Shakespeare and the Language of Translation(London, 2004), 270–86.

297 | The Julius Caesar Project | Brief directors’ notes are available online at: [http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=32726]. I’m enormously grateful to Kseniya Filinova-Bruton for enabling me to see the performance, and to the students, for talking to me so engagingly afterwards.

298 | Playing Shakespeare | The series was first broadcast on ITV in 1984, and full transcripts were published in full by the RSC in 2009. As well as being available on DVD, Playing Shakespeare is currently on YouTube, enabling the viewer to relish Barton’s cardigan and beard in glorious (if appropriately faded) Technicolor: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2VnxiW3oqk].

298 | A book on improvisation | Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (London, 1979).

304 | ‘ANC Disputes “Iconic” Status of Robben Island Bible’ | The story is by Anita Li. The Star, 26 December 2012 [https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2012/07/19/african_national_congress_disputes_iconic_status_of_robben_island_bible_displayed_in_british_museum.html].

307 | ‘run to the sooty bosom’ | Othello, 1.2.71–2.

307 | ‘Once more unto the breach’ | Henry V, 3.1.1.

309 | Shakespeare Against Apartheid | Martin Orkin, Shakespeare Against Apartheid (Craighall, 1987).

310 | ‘The young men and women’ | Orkin, Apartheid, 54.

310 | ‘It would be something monstrous’ | Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge’s Shakespearean Criticism, 2 vols, ed. Thomas Middleton Raysor (Cambridge, MA, 1930), 1, 47.

311 | Othello had played its own highly particular role | The most detailed account of Shakespearian performance history in South Africa – from which I draw many details – is in Eric Rosenthal, ‘Early Shakespearean Productions in South Africa’, English Studies in Africa 7 (1964), 202–16. Natasha Distiller, ‘Authentic Protest, Authentic Shakespeare, Authentic Africans: Performing Othello in South Africa’, Comparative Drama 46 (2012), 339–5, is perceptive on the discourse of ‘authenticity’ when it comes to South African productions of the play. Broader assessments of South African Shakespeare both on and off stage include Philip Brockbank, ‘Shakespeare’s Stratford and South Africa’, Shakespeare Quarterly 38 (1987), 479–81; Jonathan Holmes’s excellent ‘“A world elsewhere”: Shakespeare in South Africa’, Shakespeare Survey 55 (2002), 271–84; David Johnson, Shakespeare and South Africa (Oxford, 1996), which focuses on education; and Laurence Wright, ‘Shakespeare in South Africa: Alpha and “Omega”’, Postcolonial Studies 7 (2006), 63–81. Chris Thurman’s anthology South African Essays on ‘Universal’ Shakespeare (Farnham, 2014) is bracingly sceptical about ideas of universalism, particularly in an African context.

312 | ‘In frequenting the theatre’ | Commercial Advertiser (Cape), 18 June 1836. Cited by Laurence Wright in his (highly recommendable) brief overview of Shakespeare in South Africa for the University of Victoria’s Internet Shakespeare Editions: ‘“From Farce to Shakespeare”: Shakespeare on the South African Stage’, [http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Criticism/shakespearein/sasz1.html].

312 | ‘defining dramatic expression’ | Rohan Quince, Shakespeare in South Africa: Stage Productions During the Apartheid Era (New York, 2000), 95. I’ve also drawn on Quince’s ‘Shakespeare on the Apartheid Stage: The Subversive Strain’, in Laurence Wright (ed.), The Shakespearean International Yearbook, Volume 9: Special Section, South African Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century (Ashgate, 2009), 87–104, which is particularly strong on Shakespeare being used to critique the apartheid regime (often, pleasingly, in state-sanctioned productions). Bhekizizwe Peterson,‘Apartheid and the Political Imagination in Black South African Theatre’, Journal of Southern African Studies 16 (1990) 229–45, sets Shakespeare in the broader context of apartheid performance culture.

312 | ‘gentleman lately arrived’ | Cited in Quince, Shakespeare in South Africa, 93.

313 | ‘better understood here’ | Cited in Quince, Shakespeare in South Africa, 95. The original Dutch documentation is reprinted in Frederik Bosman, Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, 2 vols (Amsterdam, 1928), vol 2, 410.

313 | ‘extramarital carnal intercourse’ | Extensive documentation on apartheid-era legislation, including context and timelines, is included in the wonderfully detailed Padraig O’Malley archive, now hosted by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. See online at: [https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/].

313 | In Port Elizabeth in 1962 | AP wire report, ‘Othello is Banned’, 10 July 1962, widely syndicated.

313 | Group Areas Act | A good timeline, with detail on individual pieces of legislation, is available at the South African History Online site. See: [http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/timeline-group-areas-act-and-selected-related-pieces-legislation].

314 | Dieter Reible | See Quince, Shakespeare in South Africa, 111. Quince also writes fascinatingly about the work of director Robert Mohr, whose 1960 Julius Caesar with a mixed-race cast directly critiqued the racist politics of the time – not least because it took place just months after the attempted assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd. See Quince, ‘Apartheid Stage’, 91.

314 | Kinkels inni Kabel | A full performance history of the piece is included in the – brilliant –online Encyclopedia of South African Theatre, Film, Media and Performance, originally created by Temple Hauptfleisch. I’ve cross-checked details of relevant performances in this source, which is enthusiastically recommended for anyone wanting to research the history of South African theatre or film. See: [http://esat.sun.ac.za/].

314 | the British playwright Donald Howarth | I’m enormously grateful to Donald Howarth for welcoming me into his home and helping me unscramble chronology, as well as allowing me to see a typescript of Othello Slegs Blankes, the text of which remains unpublished.

315 | ‘lay bare the absurdities’ | Cited by Quince, ‘Apartheid Stage’, 94.

315 | a similar theatre up in Johannesburg | The most useful guide to the history of the Market, featuring interviews with many protagonists, is Anne Fuchs, Playing the Market: The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, 1976–86 (Chur and New York, 1990). Pat Schwartz’s The Best of Company: The Story of Johannesburg’s Market Theatre (Craighall, 1988), is also an excellent resource.

316 | Joko Scott | Kani was widely reported to have been the first black South African ever to play the role, but Quince’s account makes it clear that Scott did so first, albeit in a non-professional production at the People’s Space Theatre in Cape Town. See Quince, Shakespeare in South Africa, 104, which offers a detailed description of the show and Klotz’s approach to the text.

317 | Suzman later told me | I’m indebted to Janet Suzman for making time to speak to me both in Edinburgh and at the Hilton Arts Festival near Pietermaritzburg, and for being kind enough to confirm various details over email. I’ve also drawn corroborating information from her essays, ‘Othello: A Belated Reply’, Shakespeare in Southern Africa 2 (1988), 90–6; and ‘South Africa in Othello’, in Jonathan Bate et al. (eds), Shakespeare and the Twentieth Century (Newark, DE, 1998,) 23–40.

317 | ‘sexual bond in public’ | Elizabeth Lickindorf, ‘The Verse Music of Suzman’s Othello’, Shakespeare in Southern Africa 1 (1987), 69–71.

317 | ‘patronising liberalism’ | Jeremy Dowson, The Argus, 2 November 1989.

317 | ‘side with [Iago]’ | Michael Venables, The Citizen, 18 September, 1987. Quince, ‘Apartheid Stage’, describes the production in detail and aggregates numerous reviews, while Adele Seeff’s ‘Shakespeare at the Market Theatre’, Shakespeare Bulletin 27 (2009), 377–98, offers a cool contextual appraisal, assembled with the benefit of hindsight.

317 | ‘broken new ground’ | John D. Battersby, ‘The Drama of Staging Othello in Johannesburg’, The New York Times, 26 October 1987 [http://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/26/theater/the-drama-of-staging-othello-in-johannesburg.html].

317 | ‘had we known’ | Quoted in Battersby, ‘Drama’.

318 | ‘’Swounds, sir, you’re robbed’ | Othello, 1.1.85–9.

319 | ‘O gull, o dolt’ | Othello, 5.2.170–1.

319 | ‘Cassio’s a proper man’ | Othello, 1.3.384–5.

320 | the pioneering black American actor Ira Aldridge | On Aldridge’s work and life, the authoritative source is Bernth Lindfords’s recent biography Ira Aldridge, 2 vols (Rochester, NY, 2011), but its predecessor, Herbert Marshall and Mildred Stock’s Ira Aldridge: The Negro Tragedian(Carbondale, IL, 1958), is also highly recommended.

320 | ‘voic[ing] the far-off groans’ | K. Zvantsev, Ira Aldridge: Biographicheski Orcherk (St Petersburg, 1858), cited in Michael Neill’s fine single-volume Oxford Shakespeare edition of Othello (Oxford, 2008), 52.

320 | Paul Robeson | On Robeson, the most reliable biography is Martin B. Duberman’s Paul Robeson (New York, 1988). On Robeson’s relationship with Shakespeare, see Lindsey R. Swindall, The Politics of Paul Robeson’s Othello (Jackson, MI, 2011).

321 | James Earl Jones | For a fascinating account by Jones, offering extended thoughts on a role he last played in 1982, see Susannah Carson (ed.), Shakespeare and Me: 38 Great Writers, Actors, and Directors on What the Bard Means to Them – And Us (New York, 2013), 104–140.

321 | ‘Othello is the one role’ | Hugh Quarshie, Second Thoughts about Othello (Chipping Campden, 1999). In a Guardian interview with me published after the text for Worlds Elsewhere was finalised, Quarshie emphasised that he never said that performers of colour should avoid the role, merely that they needed to consider its historical context with great care. See Andrew Dickson, ‘Othello: The Role that Entices and Enrages Actors of all Skin Colours’, The Guardian, 10 June 2015 [http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/jun/10/othello-actors-rsc-lucian-msamati-hugh-quarshie].

321 | so many gallons of scholarly ink | Key accounts include Emily Bartels, ‘Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashionings of Race’, Shakespeare Quarterly 41 (1990), 433–54; Ania Loomba, ‘“Local manufacture made-in-India Othello fellows”, in Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin (eds), Post-Colonial Shakespeares (London, 1998), 143–63; Dympna Callaghan, ‘Othello was a White Man’, in Shakespeare Without Women: Representing Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage (London and New York, 2000), 75–96; Peter Erickson, ‘Images of White Identity in Othello’, in Philip C. Kolin (ed.), Othello: New Critical Essays (London, 2002), 133–45; and Daniel Roux, ‘Hybridity, Othello and the Postcolonial Critics’, Shakespeare in Southern Africa 21 (2009), 23–31 . Loomba’s short study Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism (Oxford, 2002) addresses the key issues with commendable concision. Marianne Novy’s Shakespeare and Outsiders (Oxford, 2013) takes a broader approach, examining ‘otherness’ in many forms – ethnic, religious, familial – in the plays.

322 | edicts ordering the expulsion | See Emily Bartels, ‘Too many Blackamoors: Deportation, Discrimination, and Elizabeth I’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 46 (2006), 305–22, from where I have drawn quotations from Elizabeth I.

324 | ‘Does the fate of Othello’ | Jonathan Dollimore, Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault (Oxford, 1991), 157.

325 | The critics were the least of their problems | For more context, see Adele Seeff, ‘Othello at the Market Theatre’.

328 | a book by … photographer David Goldblatt | David Goldblatt, Photographs (Rome, 2006).

331 | Conditions for the first batch | For the realities of life on Robben Island, the best account is Fran Lisa Buntman, Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid (Cambridge, 2003).

332 | ‘the atmosphere of a university’ | See Barbara Hutton, Robben Island: Symbol of Resistance ( Johannesburg, 1994), 66. Ashwin Desai’s Reading Revolution: Shakespeare on Robben Island (Pretoria, 2012) is, I think, rather too credulous regarding the role of Shakespeare on the island, but contains many absorbing first-hand accounts and emphasises the undeniable importance of education.

332 | ‘many people have emerged’ | Desai, Reading Revolution, 9.

332 | It wasn’t just textbooks | For cultural life on the island, see Buntman, Robben Island, 62–73.

333 | ‘I read books in prison’ | See Hutton, Robben Island, 69.

333 | His perspective was different again | I’m deeply grateful to Eddie Daniels for agreeing to speak to me; I’ve cross-checked corroborative details with his memoir, There and Back: Robben Island 1964–1979 (Belleville, 1998).

334 | Sonny’s copy of Shakespeare | Alternative responses to the book – which draw inferences and conclusions somewhat different from my own – are in Desai, Reading Revolution, and David Schalkwyk, Hamlet’s Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare (London, 2013). I’m indebted to David Schalkwyk for talking me through his thoughts on the ‘Bible’, and for helping to clarify attributions and signatures.

335 | ‘If we shadows have offended’ | A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Epilogue, 1–6.

335 | ‘Give thy thoughts no tongue’ | Hamlet, 1.3.59–63.

336 | ‘Since brass, nor stone, nor earth’ | Sonnet 65, 1–14.

337 | claimed to have recalled | Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (Boston, 1994), 445.

337 | ‘a thing | That none but fools would keep’ | Measure for Measure, 3.1.7–8.

337–8 | has called the book a ‘palimpsest’ | Schalkwyk, Hamlet’s Dreams, 24.

338 | ‘The weight of this sad time’ | King Lear, 5.3.299–300.

338 | ‘Signor Antonio, many a time and oft’ | The Merchant of Venice, 1.3.105–12.

339 | ‘This island’s mine’ | The Tempest, 1.2.333–41.

339 | ‘You taught me language’ | The Tempest, 1.2.365–6.

342 | ‘be not afraid of greatness’ | Twelfth Night, 2.5.139.

344 | ‘Death, be not proud’ | In John Donne, The Complete English Poems, ed. C. A. Patrides (London, 1985). I have modernised orthography and punctuation (lightly).