Professor David Peimer
Othello and Caliban: Two Very Different Outsiders
Summary
The character Caliban from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and the character Othello are both unique outsiders in Shakespeare’s work. Professor David Peimer takes a look at the similarities and differences between these two and discusses the significance of writing such characters into plays during this time period.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Sure, I think that’s a very interesting idea. I mean obviously Shakespeare wouldn’t have used, known these ideas, but he knows it in another way ‘cause he uses words like alien, foreigner, citizen, but race, vile race, you know? So he’s very aware. And I don’t know how new or not these words were for his times. In Julius Caesar’s diaries, fascinating. 'Cause when Caesar is conquering England, or the Gauls, Caesar talks about the barbari. But in Roman times, every other person apparently, I think anyway in Caesar’s time, or Caesar’s diaries. Every other who isn’t a Roman is a barbarian. Wherever they come from, race, nationality, wherever, et cetera, they’re all barbarians. And of course the Romans are the most civilised and most cultured and sophisticated of them all of course. But it’s interesting that they’re all lumped together as barbarians, barbari, from the Latin. And he talks about the English going around almost naked with blue war paint on, and how barbaric and et cetera. So the word barbarian and barbaric was the word of Caesar’s times 2000 years ago. So are we projecting? Aren’t we projecting? Yes, we have to. I think we have no choice. We are of our own era. And I think what’s amazing that these plays of a couple hundred years ago can still be interpreted, pulled apart, thrown together to give us fresh ways of looking at ourselves. Not only Shakespeare’s time. I don’t think they’re done just to be sort of period pieces of history, these plays.