He can not match really them.Įven though Othello has turned into Christianity and fight against Muslim Ottomans for the sake of Christian country he can not be accepted totally And according to Brabantio a white Venetian who is high born deserves his noble daughter. According to Iago an outsider, a Moor does not deserve to hold a position on the top of the military while there are civilized whites like him. (71) Iago’s hatred for Othello and Brabantio’s disapproval of Othello as a son-in-law seems to be caused by his skin color. The moor is a member of a more interesting and more permanent people: the race of displaced and dispossesed, of Time’s always vulnerable wanderers. ![]() ‘Moor’ means to Iago and Roderigo a civilized barbarian of fierce if repressed lusts- but to dramatist himself it surely means something very different, a meaning entailed by his choice of names. The phrase “old black ram” and the word “devil” make reference in an offensive manner to dark skin color.īarbara Everett states in her article “Spanish’ Othello: the making of Shakespeare’s Moor” that: As Roderigo and Iago talk, it is not simply a ‘black man’ they are setting among ‘the whites’. Othello who just runs away with his beloved is accused of robbery. The way that Brabantio accused Othello for stealing his daughter’s heart reveals the attitudes of English men towards the Moor. William Shakespeare, Racism In Othello, Act 1, Scene 1, Line 87 “As long as Brabantio looks at Othello as a professional soldier, he has nothing but admiration and affection for him.īut forced to consider him in a more intimate relationship, he is trapped in the cultural stereotype of the black man as ugly, cruel, lustful and dangerous, near cousin to the devil himself. Shakespeare manages to give the general perception of the black in England, at his times. William Shakespeare, Racism In Othello, Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 86-89 Arise, arise Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you: Arise, I say. The lines below are a good example of the prejudices based on color.Įven now, now, very now, an old black ram Is topping your white ewe. Iago portrays the sexual relationship between Othello and Desdemona by likening Othello to and old ram and Desdemona to a white ewe as if a wild, big animal is attacking to a pure white ewe. ![]() This prejudice may be accounted for in a number of ways, including xenophobia-as one proverb first recorded in the early seventeenth century has it, “Three Moors to a Portuguese three Portuguese to an Englishman”(167) We see that in the play the colors “black” and “white” are widely used in order to reveal the differences of the two races more. Martin Orkin states in his article “Othello and the ‘plain face’ of racism” that: As such scholars as Eldred Jones and Winthrop Jordan have taught us, there is ample evidence of the existence of color prejudice in the England of Shakespeare’s day. William Shakespeare, Racism In Othello, Act 1, Scene 1, Lines 83-85 ![]() Your heart is burst you have lost half of your soul. On the night he runs away Desdemona, Iago and Roderigo alert Desdemona’s father Brabantio yelling: In the play Othello is always under attack due to his ethnic origins. He becomes the victim of a seemingly honest white character, Iago in the play. Even though the play is full of offensive definitions of black Othello, we cannot define it as a racist work since Shakespeare’s black hero is inwardly pure and innocent. In this paper I am going to analyze some episodes involving a prejudicial, racist attitude and try to discuss whether Shakespeare was a racist or not. In the tragedy, where Othello is coming from is not mentioned, yet through the descriptions the reader is informed that he belongs to one of the Eastern nationalities such as African, Ottoman Turk or Arab. There are many references that bring about the issue of racism from the very beginning to the end. ![]() Because the hero of the play is an outsider, a Moor, we have an idea how blacks were regarded in England, in Elizabethan times. Racism seems to be a big concern in Shakespeare’s tragic play, Othello.
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