Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-30
The Historicity of othello.
From the Springfield Republican.

From the Springfield Republican.
To trace to historic fact the personages
OF a play, to pin down to actually a great
work of the imagination, has a fascination
for some minds. That any one should care
10 know whether or not there was an
Othello, a Desdemona, and whether or not
such a story as Shakespeare told was ever
enacted, is quite alien from the purport
of the play itself. in which life Itself I'M
folds before our souls the tragedy of mis-
understandings, in which noble and gentle
natures are ruined by spirits of mal.gnity
and yulgarity. There IS a literary interest,
of course, in tracing the origins of the
great dramatist's work, and that is all the
interest there is. The interior meaning of
The work does not depend on the reality or
fabulation of the tale; 1t Is not matter
of derivation.
The recent citation In our columns of an
alleged discovery in the papers of a Milan
csc family (he CalergD, that Othello was
a real person, but he was not a Moor.
and his name was Nicola Guerini;" that
he married his cousin DeSdemona, and on
a suspicion of her infidelity had her slain
by 1.-The ensign of his ship" who beat her
to death with bags of sand, while he, the
husband, looked on and .'upbraided her
for a crime of which was Innocent
all this has nothing TO do with Shake
speare's play, essentially in its character
or historically as to its foundation. The
account in the Calergd papers (of whose
warranty tells of Desdemona's fleeing to a
church in a town on the coast of Crete,
and there are other irreconCiabfe Incidents.
The story of the Guerini couple dates from
1912 1t is said and If there was such a
story, it was perhaps used by Gerald Gin
THO, the Italian who in 1865 published, In
a collection of brief novelles-not novels,
but what are now called "storiettes'' by our
popular 1O-cent magazines-the tale of the
valiant Moor" from which 1t has been
reasonably held that Shakespeare borrowed
in part the plot and situations of his great
tragedy. This is authentic. Cinthio's lit
lie narrative exists. There is this resem-
blance between the Calergt story and Gin
thio's; in the latter Desdemoua IS beaten
to death by the wicked ensign, with q
stocking filled with sand" But there Is
very slight resemblance to Shakespeare
even In this tale of Cinthio.
No, there was never any Othello IN his
tory. He and Desdemona, 1ago, Cassie,
Emilia Brabantio, Roderigo, are wholly
| Shakespeare's. The existence of jealous
husbands malicious and enVious conf
dants and traitors, foolish, firiatious young
fellows-that is common enough. But the
discovery OF a hundred such tales of Italy
amounts to nothing. A correspondent, in
curing about the matter, says that traV-
eIed acquaintance declared the Calergi
story not new, because she had seen In
Othello lived and died - This travelled
person probably refers to what lis called
'Desdemona's palace on the Grand canal.
That is a mere gondolier's advertisement
There Is no sort of historical authority for
it. any more than there is for "Juliets
tomb in Verona-which Is really an old
water trough. Such things there must be
to make the European trips interesting to
tourists But let not rest very seriously
on matters like that.