context

• Primogeniture


  inheritance practice: estates and property inherited by eldest male heir only
• Elizabethan dramatists used Italianate settings for plays about:​Intrigue, secret love affairs, revenge.​ Foreign courts were associated with sexual perversion, decadence and villainy. ​
• Venice is city of wealth and sophistication. Also considered a place with loose morals. In Othello, it is representative of law and order. ​The Venetian setting helps to exemplify how Othello is an outsider.
• Significance of Cyprus

  Cyprus is a “warlike isle” under occupation. (Venetian colony: 1489-1571) Othello set in 1570-1, making him one of the last defenders of the island. ​

  Cyprus is an isolated setting and the proximity of the place (or lack thereof) to Italy, helps the ensuing chaos and tragedy to unfurl. 
• Binary opposing settings: Venice is a seat of power; Cyprus a vulnerable outpost, at risk of attack.
• Turks in Othello

  • Attacked Cyprus in 1570
  • The play references their islamic and "infidel" culture
  • Regularly imported Russian and African slaves
• Elizabethan views on race

  • Black people known as "moors" or "blackamoors" and put in villainous roles in plays
  • Elizabeth I demanded the removal of Black people from society, reiterating her “good pleasure to have those kinde of people sent out of the lande”
• Protestant reflection


  Introspection is a vital part of Protestantism. Othello contemplates the struggle between good and evil. ​Inner torment often pulls the tragic hero’s conscience apart in Shakespeare.
• Iago's reference to Othello as a Barbary horse could link him to the Barbary people of North Africa, as an ambassador visited London in 1600 to advocate for an alliance against Spain and many commented he was Muslim.
• Iago plays on fears about race mixing when he says "an old black ram/ is tupping your white ewe"
• Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi (1565)

  • A valiant Moor falls in love with a woman called Disdemona
  • An Ensign too falls in love with her, and convinces the Moor to let him kill her because she is supposedly unfaithful
  • In the original, neither men are named
• Margaret Hughes was the first woman to play a woman on the English stage in 1660, playing Desdemona
• Willows


  A symbol of Desdemona's sadness over lost love. Ophelia falls from a willow tree after being abandoned by Hamlet.
• In the Venetian army, lieutenant literally meant “place holder”, which links to Othello’s paranoia about Cassio.
• “In nothing has woman equal power with man” John Knox