‘Explore the ways in which Shakespeare makes use of racial difference in “Othello”.

You must relate your discussion to relevant contextual factors and ideas from your
critical reading’.

INTRODUCTION
• Paul Robeson (played Othello): ‘‘Othello’ is a tragedy of racial conflict, a tragedy of honour,
rather than jealousy’

• racial difference in Othello and Desdemona’s marriage, is to some extent, at the heart of conflict
in the play

• Shakespeare presents racial stereotypes in ‘Othello’, which at first Othello suffers from but
eventually succumbs to

• Othello is greatly disadvantaged by his race, possibly attributable to his downfall

1. Othello’s race makes him an outsider.

• outsider status firstly because his race is unidentifiable, which means other characters do
not relate to or sympathise with him

- Caryl Phillips: isolation in Venetian society: ’life for him [Othello] is a game in which he
does not know the rules'
• critics have debated whether he is African, Arabian or Spanish (‘Othello’ is a Spanish name)

- is talked about long before he actually enters the stage. Not referred to by his actual
name until Act I, Sc 3

- simply branded as ‘The Moor’, and constantly referred to as thus

• term ‘Moor’ can refer to Arabs, North Africans and Muslim Europeans. 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica observed that ‘The term ‘Moors’ has no real ethnological
value’. Shows lack of regard for Othello’s actual origins, and perhaps that he doesn’t
belong anywhere

• furthermore, ‘The Moor’ implies that there is only one, confirming his isolated outsider
status

• he is an ‘extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and everywhere’— he doesn’t fit in

anywhere, has a permanent ‘outsider’ status

• Ania Loomba: Othello ‘cannot fully become a part of Venice’ because of his race

• isolation he suffers from because of his outsider status means he is alone with his paranoia
and therefore very susceptible to Iago’s manipulation

• Robeson: ‘[It] is because he is an alien among white people that his mind works so quickly,
for he feels dishonour more deeply’

• Cassio, who is to some extent regionally discriminated against, can be distinguished as a

‘Florentine’, and so is seen as less of an outsider than Othello

2. Shakespeare presents racial stereotypes in ‘Othello’

• Othello is a character who both conforms to and challenges Renaissance stereotypes about
race

• black characters in Renaissance drama were almost always villains

• Iago utilises these stereotypes, as well as Othello’s outsider status to attempt to harbour
distrust around Othello and isolate him

• open a debate about whether Iago is driven by discriminatory motives rather that jealousy/
revenge

• his race becomes a source of conflict. For example, Iago provokes Brabantio at the
beginning of the play using certain depictions of Othello’s race to present him in an
especially threatening and savage way

animal/savage imagery:

- ‘an old black ram is tupping your white ewe’

- ‘you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you’ll have your nephews
neigh to you’

- ‘your daughter and the Moor are making the beast with two backs’

- ‘the Moor is of a free and open nature’

- ‘erring barbarian’

- ‘these Moors are changeable in their wills’

 devil imagery:

- ‘I do hate [Othello] as I do hell’s pains’

- ‘the devil [Othello] will make a grandsire of you’

- ‘to find out practices of cunning hell’ (which made Desdemona fall in love with Othello)

• interracial relationships very uncommon at the time

- Loomba: ‘’Othello’ is both a fantasy of interracial love and social tolerance, and a
nightmare of racial hatred and male violence’

• miscegenation considered alarming by many of the characters, marriage between Othello

and Desdemona not taken seriously

- Desdemona has run to ‘the sooty bosom’

- ‘thick-lips’

- their union is supported by ‘a frail vow’

• Iago even convinces Brabantio that Othello has charmed Desdemona into falling in love
with him using black magic:

- ‘is there not charms by which the property of youth and maidhood may be abused?’

- ‘thou hast practised on her with foul charms’

- ‘thou hast enchanted her’

- Desdemona is ‘corrupted, by spells and medicine’

• this also gives the audience a certain impression of Othello as the exchange happens before
we actually meet him

• at first he completely defies Iago’s conception of him:

- speaks eloquently

- is non-violently confrontational, very gentle:

- ‘let him do his spite’

- ‘my services… shall out-tongue his complaints’

- honourable in his honesty:

- ‘it is most true; true I have married her’

- ‘I do confess the vices of my blood’, willing to address Brabantio

- trusts Desdemona:

- ‘let her speak of me before her father’

- ‘if you do find me foul in her report… let your sentence even fall upon my life’

- ‘my life upon her faith!’

- is in love with Desdemona, not driven by sexual desire:

- ‘let housewives make a skillet of my helm’

- he has also commanded respect of figures of authority

- ‘Valiant Othello’. He also speaks at the Senate

- ‘your son-in-law is more fair than black’- the Duke sees Othello from an honour and
army based perspective

- Desdemona has also refused to allow her love for Othello to be tainted by his race and
the opinions of others:

- ‘I saw Othello’s visage in his mind’

- ‘she had eyes and chose me’: more importantly, Othello is confident in Desdemona’s
love for him at the beginning, trusts her entirely

• however, as the play progresses, Othello begins to live up to the racial stereotypes he was
burdened with to begin with (lots of direct contradictions with his original character):

- Rymer: ‘Othello is not wholly noble; he is also capable of savagery and crudeness’

- he becomes less eloquent, more passionate and quick-tempered:

- ‘Zounds!’

- ‘pish!’

- so overwhelmed by emotions that he suffers physical effects:

- ‘an epilepsy’

- ‘a fit’

- ‘he foams at mouth and by and by breaks out to savage madness’

- his jealousy and paranoia overrides his strong sense of trust for Desdemona which he
displayed earlier. Verbally and physically abuses Desdemona

- from ‘gentle Desdemona’ to ‘Mistress!’

- ‘subtle whore’

- ‘simple bawd’

 - ‘[he strikes her}’

- G.K. Hunter: argued that Iago’s motives were racist, and he wanted Othello’s deeds to ‘fit
in with the prejudice’ against him, to prove a discriminatory point

3. Othello’s outsider status perhaps are what make him succumb to his stereotypes
• lots of critics have argued that Othello is innately insecure because of his race, which leads
to a weakness of character

- Phillips: Othello suffers from a ‘gross insecurity’, and ‘the pressures placed upon him
rendered his life a tragedy’. The ‘fatal mistake’ Othello makes is ‘to question his own
judgement’, and he no longer trusts his own judgement because of his insecurity

- Robeson: it is ‘because he is an alien among white people that his mind works so
quickly, for he feels dishonour more deeply’

• bring in Shakespeare’s intentions (debate about his opinions about race)?

CONCLUSION
• Othello’s downfall is to some extent attributable to his race

• his race makes him an outsider of society in which he exists, and it his isolation which makes
him so susceptible to the manipulation of Iago

• Iago uses stereotypes about Othello’s race to control him, and destroy what racial harmony
there was in Venice at the beginning of the play