Re-creating Shakespeare's Othello in Yerima's Otaelo

By Isaac Attah Ogezi
In a moving tribute to his friend, William Shakespeare, in 1623, the English writer, Ben Jonson, in his poem “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author”, prophesied the timeless influence of the former when he penned thus: “He was not of an age, but for all time!’ The universality of Shakespeare’s mind is so great that Dr. Samuel Johnson, writing a century later, said that “We owe Shakespeare everything” because he has taught us through his immortal works how to understand the human nature, the inherent heart of darkness that is man, the good, bad and ugly sides of humanity. Shakespeare’s importance to world literature cannot be over-emphasized. This is evident in the endless translations of his works into several languages of the world and the countless adaptations birthed by his works. One of such latest efforts is Ahmed Yerima’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s arguably most topical and accessible tragedy, Othello, under the title Otaelo.
Yerima’s fascination with Shakespeare dates back several decades ago, as he wrote in the Author’s Notes, “When I first encountered the genius called William Shakespeare through his works, I wondered sometimes with childish envy how God had endowed one man with such a profound creative mind … It was for me and millions of dramatists like me to translate his works into our language, into our cultural reality, into our human, social and religious sensibility” (p. 6). Otaelo is the brain child of this fascination; Yerima’s own version or stage adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello.
Set in the Igbo village of Umuagu, south-eastern Nigeria, Yerima’s Otaelo is based, like Shakespeare’s Othello, on the themes of love, jealousy, deception, prejudice and destruction. It tells the story of Chinyere, the only child of the Igwe, who turns down all eligible suitors only to nurse some intense, “abominable” feelings for an osu, Otaelo. Interestingly, these feelings are reciprocated such that upon the victorious return of the Igwe along with the warlords from the war, the Igwe, like King Herod the tetrarch in the Bible, raises his ofor, places it on Otaelo’s shoulder, and then his chest, kisses the ofor and says: “By the gods, I swear whatever you wish, I shall grant” (p. 16). To the greatest shock of everybody in the palace, Otaelo asks for the hand of the Igwe’s only child Chinyere in marriage. The rest is pandemonium. In a word, this indecent request by an osu almost causes an upheaval in the village of Umuagu, but there is no turning back. The Igwe’s word is law except only if the daredevil osu could reverse his sacrilegious request. Much against the popular will of the people and the gods, the Igwe gives out the hand of his willing daughter in marriage to Otaelo on the gods’ condition that they never set foot on the soil of Umuagu again after their marriage. Going into a trance, Okaramuo warns: “The gods decree, to save the throne let the Osu (Otaelo) and your daughter marry in three days’ time. His god Ala protects him. Both the Osu and his wife must never set foot on the soil of Umuagu again after they are married” (p. 28.). A marriage to an osu wittingly or unwittingly automatically makes the freeborn partner like Chinyere an osu, the same way as running into a shrine of a god for protection. Based on the gods’ stringent condition, the lovers’ fate is sealed and after their marriage, they leave the village of Umuagu. Unfortunately for them, they have reckoned without the betrayals, intrigues, jealousies and destruction of life, thence the harvest of deaths that marks their tragic end in the play.
In this adaptation, Yerima took his raw material from Shakespeare’s Othello, to address the lingering, decadent and outlandish osu caste system in Igboland which is viewed even worse than racism (mere differences in colour between dark Othello and the lily-white Desdemona). He has used his dramatic licence very effectively in this play to use the Igbo as his fictive people, their culture as his culture, their gods and practice as the backdrop of this tragedy. The choice of the osu caste system is very apt as this is perhaps the most traumatic, dogged practice among the Igbo people which separates man from his fellow man, sets other people apart for the gods, even worse than slaves. This evil practice like racial prejudice has torn friends and lovers apart as in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, where Obi and Clara fall victims of this evil practice. Yerima has been able to recreate the Igbo world-views, atmosphere, the flora and fauna of its people, the idioms and proverbs, etc., in this play. His deliberate use of language and imagery to impose his vision on the older work and to situate it within the Igbo social reality is worthy of commendation. The effective use of jigida, waist-beads, is more emotional and significant to his Igbo, nay, African audiences than the trite, rather highbrow, Western and unsentimental handkerchief in Othello. According to the playwright:

My adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello which I titled Otaelo is based only on Shakespeare’s theme of jealousy and intrigues. The adaptation is based on the Igbo Osu tradition, and the characters’ names change, the situation changes, the sensibilities change but the “jigida” which is the new symbol of love which represents the handkerchief of Shakespeare’s original play still serves as the destructive metaphor in the adaptation. (p. 124, Ahmed Yerima: Basic Techniques in Playwriting, 2003)

Yerima’s thematic pre-occupation in this play, like his elder compatriot, Chinua Achebe in No Longer at Ease, is to draw a critical and urgent attention to the inherent harm in this evil practice among the Igbo. He cannot imagine the traditional sanctioning of ostracization of a certain section of the society for what their ancestors knowingly or unknowingly committed, akin to the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children right up to the last generation. Otaelo’s case, like many cases in Igboland, is particularly touching. His mother killed his father by mistake while he was still in her womb. In a bid to run away from the punishment of death, she “ran to the shrine of Ala for protection. There she became an Osu, and after I was born, she was still used for sacrifice to the gods she ran to for protection” (pp. 34 and 35). Otaelo seems to be speaking the minds of all those ostracized for no fault of their own in the unholy name of a tradition that has long outlived its importance, when he poignantly cries:

Does blood not flow in my veins? Do I not cry, laugh or feel the pangs of pain like anybody? … Let her! Let her share in the chorus of pain which I sing all my life. What did I do wrong? Did I ask to be born by her? In obeying the nature of birth and passing through her passage of life, I offended the earth. That singular act, though no fault of mine makes me today an untouchable” (pp. 34 and 35).

However, the question is: how successful is Yerima’s Otaelo as a tragedy? Otaelo as the central character has all the attributes of a tragic hero – his grass-to-grace success story like Shakespeare’s Othello and Rotimi’s Odewale in The Gods are Not to Blame, his bravery, and, of course, the tragic flaw of vaulting jealousy and the penchant for hasty actions. But do these attributes alone qualify Otaelo as a great tragedy in the class of Shakespeare’s or even the Greek tragedies? Methinks, the answer must be in the negative. For one thing, Yerima’s Otaelo lacks the elevated language of Shakespeare’s Othello enough to make it a full-scale tragedy of great grandeur. No one can satisfactorily discuss tragedies without recourse being had to language at its most sublime, the intensity of emotions which can only and aptly be captured by a dexterous use of sublime language. When Shakespeare’s Othello discovers his folly in killing an innocent Desdemona, he cries lyrically thus:
O cursed, cursed slave! Whip me, ye devils,
From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur,
Wash me in steep-down gulf of liquid fire!
O Desdemon! Dead Desdemon: dead! O, O!
(p. 130, William Shakespeare: Othello, Wordsworth Classics edition, 2003).
This kind of heightened language is lacking in Yerima’s Otaelo. Placed in a similar circumstance, when Otaelo discovers his folly, he walks slowly to the lifeless body of Chinyere and says: “Oh the gods have pity on my soul. Wait Chinyere, my princess, my wife, don’t go too far” (p 56). Yerima’s language in this play is cliché-ridden in most emotional scenes where sublime poetry should be able to express the emotions of the characters better. Earlier in the play, Otaelo and Chinyere meet after the elders of the land, the Ndiche, have decided on the course of action to take, Otaelo prosaically tells Chinyere in a rather threadbare, melodramatic and childish language that: “I love you, too more than life. For in you I have the freedom of heart. Not because you are a princess, but because, you control the air that I breathe” (p. 36). To compensate for this dearth of enough highly poetic language to express their emotions effectively, the playwright made Chinyere raise her right arm slowly and says: “This is my love I want to express, and I want to keep with you and in you, forever. Here … cut” (p. 36). And amateurishly, Otaelo brings out his right arm, cuts her, and cuts him and they both suck in a blood-oath! (p. 36). Secondly, when pathos is not well evoked in a play to attain the cathartic level of a high tragedy called purgation, such a tragedy cannot be said to be a success. Thence marks the inadequacy of Yerima’s Otaelo as a tragedy and a work of art. Writing on the inadequacy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a work of art, the poet-critic T. S. Eliot in a famous essay in 1919, submitted: “Hamlet, like the sonnets is full of some stuff that the writer could not drag to light, contemplate, or manipulate into art … in the character Hamlet, it is the buffoonery of an emotion which can find no outlet in action; in the dramatist it is the buffoonery of an emotion which he cannot express in art.” The same can be said of Yerima’s Otaelo. For example, the choice of Chinyere, the Igwe’s only child and daughter by the playwright to break so serious a traditional taboo such as the osu caste system instead of heightening the emotional intensity of the play, rather does the opposite, as it trivializes the magnitude and seriousness of the osu caste system among the Igbo, and exposes how little the playwright knows about the Igbo traditions. Thus, the reaction of the Igwe as the custodian of his people’s culture to such an abomination is most unrealistic. Perhaps if the playwright had used an elder statesman’s daughter in the society rather than the Igwe’s as in Shakespeare’s Othello, it would have added some verisimilitude to the work. Besides, in an egalitarian and highly ultra-democratic society such as the Igbo, the Igwe’s word is not law like Ezeulu in Achebe’s Arrow of God. In consequence, it is manifestly wrong for Chinyere to say that: “Since my father has sworn by his Ofor, his word is law” (p. 25). The Igwe’s ofor as the symbol of authority cannot be used to break a time-hallowed tradition like the osu caste system, enough for the Igwe to say to an osu: “By the gods, I swear, whatever you wish, I shall grant. Speak, my honour is before you” (p. 16). The violation of a sacrilege by the Igwe is not a personal matter but communal in nature. In writing about a culture that is not one’s, it behooves on the writer embarking on such a task to undertake an in-depth research into the traditions of such people, their world-views, belief system, mores, norms and values which it obviously appears Yerima has not done enough in this play.
Be that as it may, Yerima’s Otaelo is a great contribution to the perennial fight against the social anathema among the Igbo called the osu caste system. It is socially committed and may perhaps force some die-hard practitioners to have a rethink despite the failings of the play as a tragedy and a work of art. The problem with adapting the work of a great dramatist like Shakespeare is that the later work will more often than not pale into insignificance when compared to the supreme art of the former like a midget before a giant.