ABSTRACT
Othello is a play about the green-eyed monster that like all tragedies its critics jealously guard against history and topicality. A more interesting work to look at by an Irish playwright would be The Tragedie of Mustapha, by the earl of Orrery, a play riddled with jealousy, the injurious envy of a father. Patrick Tuite certainly sees Orrery's play as analogous to Othello, and Tuite adds another historical detail, namely the Irish presence at Tangier in the early 1660s, defending that supposed outpost against the Moors. A contemporary of Shakespeare and Spenser, under siege in Cork in 1598, described the Irish as quite literally 'black Moores'. Another Irish writer, one more Moore, George Moore, tackled Shakespeare in a one-act play entitled The Making of an Immortal dwelling on the authorship question, making the case for Bacon, whose lines include an allusion to Essex's post-lieutenancy encounter with Elizabeth.
