Page 361 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Portraits: literary

tell his friend Horatio: “Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him,
Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy...”
These lines have become a source of low comedy, but AR
probably executed this piece in the spirit of the playwright’s
intentions in the scene: to force his character to contemplate
the physical decay and recycling of the body after death, in the
same manner as Omar Khayyam did in the Rubaiyat (another of
AR’s literary favorites; see no. 7, for a considerably less morbid
existential representation, based on a well-known quatrain by
the Persian poet).

75 Othello
Wood
7.5” x 4”
Inscriptions: Othello (on front of piece, stained black)

AR (on neck, behind ear)

This bust of Shakespeare’s tragic Moor has no trace of North
African features—but AR did give it a dark stain (the hair and
spade beard are even darker). The torso is sliced flat just below
the shoulders, so it needs no base. The special appeal of
Othello for AR, if any, is not known; uxoricide was never in
the sculptor’s heart, although grief for his lost wife certainly
was.

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