There is little doubt that by _Othello_ Shakespeare intended a Negro, or, in any case, someone whom the white denizens of New Orleans would call a nigger. “Moor” or “Blackamoor” was the common name for Negro, and the local detail of the play confirms the impression of a thick-lipped, black-bosomed, rather repulsive physical type. The psychology of _Othello_ is, moreover, that of the modern Negro. His florid and sentimental talk, with its romantic yearning and its exaggerations, is very characteristic. I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth ‘scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach, Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence And portance in my travels’ history: Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak,—such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. And are not his last noble words, with his dramatic and romantic gesture, and his suicide, the noble African set upon a pedestal! Fanny Kemble in her diary tells how John Quincy Adams thought “it served _Desdemona_ right for marrying a ‘nigger,’” and she imagines the fine effect which some American actor in the rôle of _Iago_ might obtain by substituting for “I hate the Moor” “I hate the nigger,” pronounced in proper Charleston or Savannah fashion. “Only think,” says Fanny Kemble, “what a very new order of interest the whole tragedy might receive acted from this standpoint and called ‘Amalgamation, or the Black Bridal.’” The sympathy of a Southern audience would be almost exclusively with _Iago_ and _Roderigo_ and the father. But could they tolerate it without a lynching? No Negro company dare produce it south of the Mason-Dixon line. How the Negroes would perform tragedy in the vein of tragedy I do not know. There is so much tragedy in their history, in their past, that they have sought only comic relief. I believe the characteristic Americanism of “Keep Smiling” or, as expressed in the song, “Smile, Smile, Smile,” comes from the Negro. The colored people as a whole seem to be serious only in church or at musical gatherings. Even the eloquent pastor has no easy task to gain the attention of his congregation. He must walk about and rage and flash, and with crashing reverberations explode the wrath of God like the voice of the Almighty in the storm. He must forget ordinary diction in forgetting himself, and chant in ecstasy and rapture, lifting up his whole soul to the Lord. If you talk to the Negro, he merely laughs; you must chant to him to be taken seriously. In this possibly lies the vein for Negro dramatic tragedy and prophetic poetry. Perhaps, however, the emotional appeal of such will be too strong for Whites.