Othello Context

• Moor context


  - derived from Mauritania which gives further weight to Othello's race and former religious beliefs as Mauritania has been an Islamic region since the 10th century
• What were black people referred to as?

  - the race of Ham - one of Noah's children, in a lot of writings at the time and commentaries on the bible, Noah cursed him saying that his children would be black - punishment for seeing Noah naked - sexuality and blackness are inextricably linked, reinforces stereotypes of black men as lusty, fuelled by their sexual desires
• what does the white and black dichotomy fuse with?

  - the white and black dichotomy fuses with the one of Islam and Christianity
• Stories about Muslims at the time

  - stories about Turkish emperors marrying and then killing Christian women - Othello succumbs to these stereotypes that circulated freely in Shakespeare's time
• How were foreign people seen?

  - seen as given to unnatural sexual practices
• When was Othello set

  late 16th century
• Iago context


  Spanish name in order to satisfy the Western European audience
• renaissance attitudes towards race

  - people of colour were believed to be less worthy than themselves

  - black people were assumed only fit to be slaves
• Who wrote A Geographical History of Africa

  Leo Africanus
• When was A Geographical History of Africa translated by John Pory

  1600s
• Links between Othello and Leo Africanus


  - both born into Islam and later converted to Christianity
• What did Leo Africanus observe about Africans


  so credulous that they believe matters impossible which are told to them
• Ottoman Empire


  A Muslim empire based in Turkey that has small pockets of Christian communities
• historical context of Othello

  - Christian Republic of Venice vs. Muslim Ottoman Empire

  - conflict heightens tensions of an intimate drama.

  - Iago's hatred of Othello mirrors Venetian hatred of Ottomans - Othello's Islamic origins could be an explanation for the prejudice against him
• stereotypes of African peoples

  - knowing the arts of black magic

  - being pagans

  - being lusty - Shakespeare ties Othello to incorrect stereotypes of a black man as a sexual predator
• English audience at the time


  - increasingly antagonistic towards foreigners

  - racially motivated riots had began
• Significance of the battle at sea according to Laurie skiba

  - the battle at sea provides a backdrop and a mirror for the smaller conflict brewing between Iago and Othello
• which character did Shakespeare mould Iago after


  the character of vice in the medieval morality plays - Vice was a villainous stock character who made his intent known through asides and soliloquies to the audience
• Who does Iago represent?

  - Iago is an emissary of the devil
• Meaning of Desdemona


  unlucky in Greek
• Rudolph Shaw - Othello and race relations in Elizabethan audience


  - 'Othello's tragedy transcends race'

  - 'based on natural human weakness
• How does Shakespeare use the presence of the Moor as a tragic hero

  - uses the presence of the Moor as a tragic hero to question and challenge Elizabethan attitudes towards race
• significance of Iago referring to Othello as the devil

  touches upon popular European fears of the peoples of the new world
• January/May marriage


  a marriage between an older person and one considerably younger
• who was Shakespeare influenced by

  Giraldi Cinthio
• result of setting the play against the background of war


  gives it greater political charge
• How was Venice viewed by Elizabethan society

  - English were often looking to Venice for models of social, political and economic prosperity

  - known for being a cosmopolitan and diverse city

  - formidable maritime power

  - enabling most of Europe's trade with Africa and the east

  - different races, ethnicities and religions lived and worked together

  - symbol of hedonistic excess

  - associated with the goddess of love, Venus

  - more liberal treatment of sexual relations where prostitution was actually regulated by the state and involved thousands of women

  - Venice had a more rigid class structure than England
• What were Venetian women reputed as being?

  - reputed as being particularly licentious
• What is the problem if you side with Othello?

  - you subscribe to negative views about women
• What is the problem if you side with Desdemona?

  - you subscribe to negative views about race
• How were men perceived if they had excessive love for a woman


  - excessive love for a woman was seen to make a man less masculine
• How would power struggles between gender be made visually obvious

  - female parts would have been played by young boys whose voices had not yet broken, when contrasted with grown adult actors, the female characters would automatically be established as having lower status
• Instance in which Iago's class envy is evident


  argues against a promotion that goes by 'preferment' rather than rewarding merit
• Significance of setting


  - liminal location - soldiers feel entitled to act differently than they might in Venice - the play seems to be asking if the violence was inherent to them in the first place, or if there was something about Cyprus that made them change
• Stereotypes associated with Turks

  - barbarous, cruel, despotic, tyrannical and sexually voracious

  - early modern English narrative was that the Turks threatened to engulf all Western civilization militarily, economically, and even sexually
• How are war and love connected?

  - the destruction of the fleet is connected with Othello's marriage

  - Cyprus is the birthplace of Aphrodite, but it is also the place where the conflict occurs
• significance of Othello's adoption of Iago's terms

  - acceptance of the social hierarchies that Iago has established/are established in Venetian society
• result of Iago's soliloquies

  - audience is made complicit - positioned as distinctly different from Othello

  - renders the audience culpable and also vulnerable - silence is complicit with mass murder
• references to Iago's homosexuality

  - his abuse of Emilia could be as a result of his closeted homosexuality

  - battered wife interpretation is linked with the interpretation of Iago as a frustrated and repressed homosexual
• significance of the hankerchief

  - knits together Othello and Desdemona with his African past and her European present

  - demise of their relationship stems from the fact that Emilia steals it to give to Iago