ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that Thomas Southerne and later adaptations of Oroonoko. In Oroonoko, Southerne exercised a rigorous editorial pen and made a series of significant changes and additions. Certainly in recasting Imoinda as white, Southerne made a European-African sexual alliance visible, and he also, of course, then removed it from sight since Imoinda, Oroonoko and their unborn, mixed-race child all perish. The mixed race marriage of Oroonoko and Imoinda offered, perhaps, the romance of the exotic without consequences to the social order. A white Imoinda recasts the work in the Othello mold, or rather surfaces the long shadow Othello casts over Oroonoko. A new version of Oroonoko by 'Biyi Bandele, directed by Gregory Doran, was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, June 1999. Bandele's African state is a lively place, the aged king is an acerbic wit, and the functioning or non-functioning of the royal penis is a topic of much conversation.
