Stewart’s presence, while it guaranteed the staging of a great deal of public interest, could not do the same for its conceptual plausibility. As I have already suggested, there were scattered snickers from the audience at Stewart’s intoning “Haply for I am black”; yet the reaction, surely unintended on the director’s and actor’s parts, cannot simply be blamed on the audience’s lack of imaginative sophistication. To accept the undeniably pale Stewart as black demands that the power of the script’s fiction—what I’ve already termed the authority of the Shakespearean text—override all the cues to the contrary that the actor playing Othello is not black, nor is he making any somatic attempt to impersonate blackness, vexed, indeed, as that possibility would be. Acceptance demands a rarefaction and idealization of the site of viewing perhaps unlikely ever to have been achieved by any audience at any time, but certainly not to be achieved when part of the point of casting Stewart is presumably his fame, either as a mass-culture icon, or as a British Shakespearean actor.

Given that Don Pedro's substitute (and suspect) wooing of Hero for Claudio takes place while he is masked--as well as Branagh's lavish climax, which just barely records the Don's isolation from the happy denizens of the villa as the camera cranes over the ever-expanding nuptial festivities--it becomes difficult not to color Beatrice's rejection of the black Don as evidence of the film's covert perception of racial difference and its significance. And it is a perception that runs precisely counter to Branagh's avowed intention to offer an inclusive, all-encompassing instantiation of Shakespeare.

Gerbeaud Budapest, Hungary The final eastbound stop in the sweet-tooth triathlon (after Angelina’s in Paris and Demel’s in Vienna), Budapest’s famous Gerbeaud coffeehouse is a neo-Baroque throwback to imperial times, and an oasis of relaxation in a city reinventing itself at breakneck speed. But then, that’s nothing new. In the late 19th century, Budapest was one of the fastest growing cities in the world and the city’s coffeehouses became second homes for writers, artists, politicians, journalists, and even a bit of royalty in the person of Empress “Sissi” Hapsburg. Opened in 1858, Gerbeaud survied the bleak period of Communism and is now back on the tourist circuit—ensuring its survival, but making it impossible to find a late afternoon table in the vast, mansionlike interior, with its heavy velvet curtains, silk wallpaper, crystal chandeliers, and marble-topped tables. Throughout its history, Gerbeaud has been a nirvana for chocoholics. Astounded by the dozens of ultra-rich confections made daily on the premises, wide-eyed, sweet-toothed, first-time patrons are hard pressed to choose between delicacies such as Gerbaud’s signature seven-layer chocolate cake (the original Hungarian rhapsody?) and its famous cherry or apple strudel.

From her vantage point beneath the shadowy trees, the woman in black muttered a profanity that was entirely out of place in the churchyard. She sank down onto a long neglected tomb and cursed again when she saw the state of her new shoes. Her jaw set firmly in passionate ill will, she clamped a cigarette between scarlet lips, lit it, and exhaled disenchanted smoke from her long slender nose. A gust of arctic air made the woman shiver and tuck wispy tinted hair back beneath her sleek fur hat. The thud, thud of earth shovelled onto the wooden coffin only added to her exasperation, as the gravediggers committed Jane Victoria Lawrence's body to eternity. 'If the old bitch had only listened to reason.' The violent mute words echoed in the woman's brain. But there was no use crying over spilt blood. It seemed there was an heir to the property and that could present either a help or a hindrance. With an inquisitive eye she observed Belinda entering the car and being driven away. 'And we have Inspector Jordan on the case. Thinks he's Somerset's version of Hercule Poirot. More like a deficient Jane Marple,' muttered the woman in derisive tones as the Inspector's car vanished over the hill. The woman rose a little unsteadily to her feet. The chill of the graveyard was entering her bones and she needed a warming brandy. Lurking around graveyards at her time of life was a little like tempting fate. As she ground the half-smoked cigarette into the mud, she watched the Vicar, as he headed towards the church. The Vicar hummed fragments of a hymn to himself. He'd not only despatched Miss Jane Lawrence from this life but also from his mind. His attention was now firmly fixed on Sunday's sermon and he was oblivious to everything around him. "Our life with its temptations and struggles is often similar to a voyage on a stormy sea" was the text, but how to put it into language that his largely geriatric land-bound parishioners would relate to? The ancient church door swung shut, there was a moment's silence, and another figure emerged from behind the building. The woman pulled her elegant coat tightly about her, burying her chin into the gratifying warmth of the fur collar. Screwing up her eyes to focus on the man, for it was a man, a well-built athletic man, she watched as he made his way through the tombstones. For a moment, a desirable feeling of sexual anticipation warmed her, allowing her features to relax into a coquettish smile. But as the man drew nearer a frown of uneasy recognition creased her brow, adding lines to that face that had cost her dearly in cosmetic additives. Rather than confront him she turned and hurried away in the opposite direction, her black coat gradually blending into the gloomy environment. (C)2005 Brian Kavanagh

I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play Have by the very cunning of the scene Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaimed their malefactions... -- from Shakespeare's Hamlet

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