https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1117 Index de Mafe fr 0 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1115 This paper analyses the manner in which the African-Canadian playwright, Djanet Sears, uses her play, Harlem Duet, to engage the issue of identity which I term orírun. It examines more closely the significance of the handkerchief given to Billie by Othello in the play to the quest for orírun. Although many scholars have in the past traced the link between Othello in Shakespeare’s Othello to Africa and the Egyptians, none has shown the possible knowledge of the Yoruba and their culture in the character’s creation and his famous handkerchief except Diana Adesola Mafe, who also links the same character to Sears’s Othello by examining what he shares in common with the protagonists of two Yoruba plays. Building on Mafe’s effort, I examine Harlem Duet and Sears’s theme of identity in the play through the lens of the Yoruba concept of orírun, by focusing on the story of the ill-fated marriage of the African-American couple, Billie and Othello. mer., 29 nov. 2017 09:52:34 +0100 sam., 28 déc. 2019 14:37:13 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=1115