19.087 Paul Robeson as Othello: which edition?

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 87.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
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         Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 07:58:26 +0100
         From: "Donald Weinshank" <weinshan_at_cse.msu.edu>
         Subject: Paul Robeson as Othello -- very old vinyl record

Fellow Humanists:

When I was an undergrad at Northwestern U. in the 1950's, our "sophomore
lit." class studied Othello. I checked out from the University Library an
astonishing vinyl of Paul Robeson and Uta Hagan (and others, obviously)
reading Othello. I remember two lines from that recording with utmost
clarity. See Act V Scene II. (The lines are not contiguous.)

Emilia: "I shall speak though Hell itself should gape and bid me hold my
peace."

Iago: " ... for there's no right nor wrong but thinking makes it so."

The latter is a more concise a statement of complete moral relativism than
any I have ever seen.

My attempts to track down this recording to check my recollections have been
fruitless.

Amazon lists this for Robeson.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000AFSF/qid=1118275588/sr=8
-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl15/103-3276522-6042227?v=glance&s=music&n=507846
   but I have no idea if this is the same recording.

IMDB (International Movie Data Base) lists this for Hagan.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190614/
   but this seems to be an excerpt rather than the entire play.

Now here is why this matters. Since I want to quote that line of Iago's in
something I am writing, I checked my Random House, New York, 1944 edition of
the plays. NO SUCH LINES EXIST IN THAT EDITION.

I have several hypotheses to explain this conundrum.

* My "utmost clarity" of recollection isn't.
* Robeson, Hagan et. al. were working from a different edition.
* Robeson, Hagan et. al. made some changes in the text while recording.

My query is not urgent but only interesting -- to me, at least.

_________________________________________________
Dr. Don Weinshank Professor Emeritus Comp. Sci. & Eng.
1520 Sherwood Ave., East Lansing MI 48823-1885
Ph. 517.337.1545 FAX 517.337.1665
http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weinshan
Received on Thu Jun 09 2005 - 03:13:37 EDT