Othello - A Racist Play?

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Definition of Race

3. Race in Elizabethan England
3.1 Elizabethan Images of Foreigners
3.2 Stage Representations of the Other
3.3 Elizabethan Attitudes towards Venice

4. Character's Attitudes towards Othello's Race
4.1 Desdemona
4.2 Iago
4.3 Brabantio
4.4 Cassio
4.5 Othello
4.6 The Audience

5. Importance of Othello's Race for the Play

6. Conclusion

Bibliography:

1. Introduction

Shakespeare's play Othello deals with the tragic events following and resulting from the wedding of the “Moor” Othello and the Venetian gentlewoman Desdemona. More than 400 years ago Shakespeare's play Othello already raised questions about the nature of race, its social implications and about the correlation of outer appearances and inner qualities. The matter of skin colour and racist stereotyping is evident in Othello and it is vital for the interpretation of the play. As an “extravagant and wheeling stranger/ Of here, and every where” (1.1.135-136). Othello is not just like any other man, but largely defined by his origin and colour. In this paper I want to examine the role of Othello's skin colour in the play and if we can consider the play as racist. Although these questions are today probably more relevant than ever, my main focus will be to analyse the importance of race in the context of Shakespeare's times.

In order to answer the question, whether or not Othello is a racist drama, I first have to define the term 'race'. As the concept of race has changed over time and is still changing, I will also look at Elizabethan attitudes towards race and foreigners and how strangers were portrayed on the Elizabethan stage. The play is not set in England, but in Venice, a place that serves a certain function in the play, which I will also examine. In the second part of this paper I will look at the play itself and its characters. I will analyse the different roles and their attitudes towards Othello's colour and how they influence Othello's self-perception and his personal fate. In Othello skin colour and blackness stand for more than just physical appearance or cultural background, but it is also linked to the character's inner lives and it largely determines the outcome of the play. The importance of racial concepts in Othello will be examined in the last part of this paper.

My description of the attitudes towards foreigners in Elizabethan England relies heavily on Eldred Jones “Othello's countrymen” and Virginia Mason Vaughan's “Othello – a contextual history”. While Jones gives an account of the descriptions of Africa and Africans available to the Elizabethans and how these shaped their prejudices against 'Moors', Vaughan's contextual history compiles later findings on the Elizabethan and Jacobean discourses of Race, Gender and Nationality. Essential for the analysis of the role of Othello's 'blackness' in the play were Ania Loomba's and Martin Orkin's works on Othello, which try to bring together traditional Shakespeare studies and postcolonial theories.

2. Definition of Race

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the first record of the term 'race' in English dates back to 1508. The Scottish poet William Dunbar used it with the meaning of 'groups'. In the 16th Century it was mainly used to describe familial groups and lineage. When we use the term 'race' today it mostly refers to a group of people who are perceived as sharing certain hereditary traits. The concept of race is a rather new one, as it was only, when Europeans started to colonize remote countries that they met people who looked different then themselves. Reasons were sought to explain the physical differences and it was assumed that visible differences also hint to differences in other traits like intelligence or sexuality. Race was considered a biological concept, but its definition was largely argued about. Scientists tried to classify different races by physical criteria like skin and hair colour. But, all efforts to explain the variations in human physiognomy could not and still cannot scientifically be proven and give reason for much debate, if races exist in the human species.

Michael Wintrop and Howard Omi argue that race was a central factor of a world view which was needed to justify the differences in treatment of the colonisers and the colonised:

“The expropriation of property, the denial of political rights, the introduction of slavery and other forms of coercive labor, as well as outright extermination, all presupposed a world view which distinguished Europeans .children of God, human beings, etc. - from “others”“ (Omi and Winant 2006: 20).

Race therefore always includes the notion of inferiority and superiority. This shows that the concept of race is not only problematic from a scientific point of view, but also from a social one. The social sciences consider race primarily as a social distinction between different social groups. For 'race' as a social concept, biological explanations are unnecessary, but political as well as social factors play an important role in its development. According to Omi and Winant “racial categories and the meaning of race are given concrete expression by the specific social relations and historical context in which they are embedded” (Omi and Winant 2006: 21). This also explains why still today the term 'race' has no clear definition, but a wide range of meanings, which change in the course of time and space. Racial categories are not fixed, but instead dependent on the social discourse and practise which determine the social, political and economic implications of a person's assigned race. Although 'race' is mainly a social construct and therefore not real, its implications are real. According to Ania Loomba “'race' has functioned as one of the most powerful and yet most fragile markers of social difference” (Loomba 2000: 203) for the last 200 years.

3. Race in Elizabethan England

3.1 Elizabethan Images of Foreigners

The differences between our modern perceptions of racial difference and those of the Elizabethan era are crucial. In the 16th century the knowledge about foreign cultures increased a lot. Not only did new maps of the world become available through explorers, but more importantly trading relations with other countries became more and more common. Not many English people had the chance to travel, but those who did often wrote accounts of their journeys. The most important work until then on North Africa was written by Leo Africanus, an Arabic traveller and geographer. 'The History and Description of Africa' was written in the first half of the 16th century and translated into English around 1600^[1]. But, the growing amount of information suddenly available through the accounts of explorers of the time, had to be fitted in the English mind-set and according to G. K. Hunter “this means that the facts were not received in quite the same way as they would have been in the nineteenth century” (Hunter 2000, 41). Since the Ottoman Empire expanded over more and more parts of Europe the English felt their Christendom threatened. Colonialism, meaning colonising different countries as well as the fear of being colonised, profoundly shaped English attitudes towards foreigners.

The first appearances of West Africans in London were reported in around 1550. Most of them were probably slaves. By 1600 there were so many 'Moors' in England that Queen Elizabeth I issued an order for their deportation out of the kingdom. The reasons the Queen gave for this order, were religion and the welfare of her citizens among others. This is just one indication that the rising number of blacks did not mean that the attitude towards them was less shaped by prejudices, but instead the hostility towards foreigners was even on the increase. In Shakespeare's time nationalist feelings started to emerge, people were proud of being “English”, but in order to know what exactly they could be proud of, they had to define “Englishness”. This definition of the “self” heavily depended on the definition of and disassociation from an “other”. Loomba argues that “the Orient was represented as Europe's 'other', and the difference between the two was crucial to sustaining Europe's image of itself” (Loomba 2000: 9). Turks were for example seen as barbaric and demonic, which opposed the English self-perception of the English Christian morality (cf. Vaughan 1994: 13). This of course shaped the English relationship with people from North Africa and the rest of the world.

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^[1] Africanus, Leo (translated in 1600 by John Pory) The History and Description of Africa.