8:06 a.m., Oct. 8, 2009----Kristen Poole, associate professor of English at the University of Delaware, will make a presentation on “Demons and the Deathbed: Othello and the Supernatural” at 6:30 p.m., Monday, Oct. 26, at the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, 2111 Sansom St., Philadelphia.

THIS STORY

E-mail

Print

Delicious

Digg this

Facebook

The presentation is the second seminar in the theatre's Connoisseur Shakespeare Series. Poole will explore the supernatural references behind Othello.

Tickets are $35, $20 for students and seniors, and are available by calling the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre box office at (215) 496-8001.

Othello, as modern audiences are aware, is a play exploring the personal and cultural implications of race. However, there is another facet of the play that would have been of great import to Shakespeare's original audience -- the earthly actions of angels and demons.

Othello is a play saturated with references to the supernatural, and the climactic scene of Desdemona's deathbed stages a familiar scene of "ars moriendi" literature (literally, "the art of dying"), thus portraying early modern beliefs about demonic activity.

Poole received her bachelor of arts degree from Carleton College and her master's degree and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is the author of Radical Religion: Figures of Nonconformity from Shakespeare to Milton (Cambridge University Press, 2000), as well as articles in Comparative Drama, English Literary History, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Studies in English Literature.

She is currently working on a book about interactions between the living and the dead in 16th- and early 17th-century England.