Othello Context – Race
Venice was known for its diversity being home to people from a variety of cultural and ethnic
backgrounds including those like Othello who had migrated and accepted Venetian values.
The religious conflict is a background to Othello who has converted to Christianity from Islam and
another way how Othello stands apart from society being an “outsider”. Although he fights with the
Christian empire his Muslim background gives a cause for distrust towards him from Venetian’s.
Venice was thought as a city famous for the freedoms and the liberality it offered its inhabitants and
as a result it was thought of as a place of sexual freedom.
In fact, the primary use of ‘Moor’ in Shakespeare’s time was as a RELIGIOUS, not as a RACIAL
identification. Moor meant ‘Mohamedan’, that is to say, MUSLIM, a worshipper of ISLAM. The
second Elizabethan sense of a ‘Moor’ was racial and geographical: it referred to a native of North
Africa,
Shakespeare seems to have made use of histories of Africa and the Ottoman Empire, such as a
translation of Leo Africanus’s The History and Description of Africa. This was written by an African
Muslim who converted to Christianity, and is possibly a model for Othello.
‘Their wits are but meane, and they are so credulous, that they will believe matters
impossible which are told them…”
Shakespeare’s time stressed the importance of purity and the need to protect the ‘race’ or nation
from ‘contamination’ with the blood of other peoples, especially if they were thought to be of an
inferior breed or stock.
Othello’s racial ‘otherness’ would be apparent in the white actor’s use of black-face makeup to
represent the ‘Moor’.
black characters have all too frequently been represented as dignified and restrained only the
surface, but capable of animal savagery when provoked to anger
Othello can also be interpreted as an attack on contemporary racial stereotypes, and as an
undermining of racial prejudice.
Venice was known for its diversity being home to people from a variety of cultural and ethnic
backgrounds including those like Othello who had migrated and accepted Venetian values.
The religious conflict is a background to Othello who has converted to Christianity from Islam and
another way how Othello stands apart from society being an “outsider”. Although he fights with the
Christian empire his Muslim background gives a cause for distrust towards him from Venetian’s.
Venice was thought as a city famous for the freedoms and the liberality it offered its inhabitants and
as a result it was thought of as a place of sexual freedom.
In fact, the primary use of ‘Moor’ in Shakespeare’s time was as a RELIGIOUS, not as a RACIAL
identification. Moor meant ‘Mohamedan’, that is to say, MUSLIM, a worshipper of ISLAM. The
second Elizabethan sense of a ‘Moor’ was racial and geographical: it referred to a native of North
Africa,
Shakespeare seems to have made use of histories of Africa and the Ottoman Empire, such as a
translation of Leo Africanus’s The History and Description of Africa. This was written by an African
Muslim who converted to Christianity, and is possibly a model for Othello.
‘Their wits are but meane, and they are so credulous, that they will believe matters
impossible which are told them…”
Shakespeare’s time stressed the importance of purity and the need to protect the ‘race’ or nation
from ‘contamination’ with the blood of other peoples, especially if they were thought to be of an
inferior breed or stock.
Othello’s racial ‘otherness’ would be apparent in the white actor’s use of black-face makeup to
represent the ‘Moor’.
black characters have all too frequently been represented as dignified and restrained only the
surface, but capable of animal savagery when provoked to anger
Othello can also be interpreted as an attack on contemporary racial stereotypes, and as an
undermining of racial prejudice.
