The year was 1603 and a plucky band of actors appeared on the stage at the Globe theatre to perform Ben Jonson’s play, Sejanus, a tragedy about a Roman soldier. The performance was such a flop that the cast was hissed and heckled off stage. One member of that cast was William Shakespeare – and now an academic is making the case that this humiliating experience went on to affect the writing of one of the bard’s greatest plays, Othello.
Dr John-Mark Philo, an academic at the University of East Anglia (UEA), told the Observer that there is a reluctance to think of Shakespeare as “anything other than perfection” and that although the booing incident is known about, its significance has been overlooked.
