Hewlett's Views on Race

SHANE WHITE: In the last performance we have of Hewlett, he's playing Othello and then he sings some of the Marseillaise in English to this audience of French planters.

A song about liberty to French planters who just lost their slaves because freedom has come to Trinidad seems—there's a pointedness to what he's doing, there's a clear point for interspersing and singing, for intercutting and singing the song there. And it's in one sense murdering Othello, I suppose. In another, it's fulfilling the promise, in a sense, of Othello. So, I tend to think it's creative. Other people might think it is as doing something, considerable violence to Shakespeare's intentions.

When Mathews, when Charles Mathews, satirized the African Theater, Hewlett actually wrote a letter, which was published in the newspaper that Noah edited, and Hewlett said:

Why these reflections on our color, my dear Mathews, so unworthy of your genius and humanity, your justice and generosity? Our immortal bard says, (and he is our bard, as well as yours, for we are all descendents of the Plantaganets, the white and red rose;), our bard Shakespeare makes sweet Desdemona say, "I saw Othello's visage in his mind." Now when you are ridiculing the "chief black tragedian,"— and burlesquing the "real negro melody," was it my "mind" or my "visage" which should have made an impression on you?

I think Hewlett's making the point then that Shakespeare is not the property of whites, of any one group.