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Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Othello

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 25, 2020 • ( 0 )

Of all Shakespeare’s tragedies . . . Othello is the most painfully exciting and the most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader’s heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and dreadful expectation. Evil is displayed before him, not indeed with the profusion found in King Lear, but forming, as it were, the soul of a single character, and united with an intellectual superiority so great that he watches its advance fascinated and appalled. He sees it, in itself almost irresistible, aided at every step by fortunate accidents and the innocent mistakes of its victims. He seems to breathe an atmosphere as fateful as that of King Lear , but more confined and oppressive, the darkness not of night but of a close-shut murderous room. His imagination is excited to intense activity, but it is the activity of concentration rather than dilation.

—A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy

Between William Shakespeare’s most expansive and philosophical tragedies— Hamlet and King Lear —is Othello, his most constricted and heart-breaking play. Othello is a train wreck that the audience horrifyingly witnesses, helpless to prevent or look away. If Hamlet is a tragedy about youth, and Lear concerns old age, Othello is a family or domestic tragedy of a middle-aged man in which the fate of kingdoms and the cosmos that hangs in the balance in Hamlet and Lear contracts to the private world of a marriage’s destruction. Following his anatomizing of the painfully introspective intellectual Hamlet, Shakespeare, at the height of his ability to probe human nature and to dramatize it in action and language, treats Hamlet’s temperamental opposite—the man of action. Othello is decisive, confident, and secure in his identity, duty, and place in the world. By the end of the play, he has brought down his world around him with the relentless force that made him a great general turned inward, destroying both what he loved best in another and in himself. That such a man should fall so far and so fast gives the play an almost unbearable momentum. That such a man should unravel so completely, ushered by jealousy and hatred into a bestial worldview that cancels any claims of human virtue and self-less devotion, shocks and horrifies. Othello is generally regarded as Shakespeare’s greatest stage play, the closest he would ever come to conforming to the constrained rules of Aristotelian tragedy. The intensity  and  focus  of  Othello   is  unalleviated  by  subplots,  comic  relief,  or  any  mitigation  or  consolation  for  the  deterioration  of  the  “noble  Moor”  and  his  collapse into murder and suicide. At the center of the play’s intrigue is Shakespeare’s most sinister and formidable conceptions of evil in Iago, whose motives and the wellspring of his villainy continue to haunt audiences and critics alike. Indeed, the psychological resonances of the drama, along with its provocative racial and gender themes, have caused Othello, perhaps more than any other of Shakespeare’s plays, to reverberate the loudest with current audiences and commentators. As scholar Edward Pechter has argued, “During the past twenty-five years or so, Othello has become the Shakespearean tragedy of choice, replacing King Lear in the way Lear had earlier replaced Hamlet as the play that speaks most directly and powerfully to current interests.”

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Shakespeare derived his plot from Giraldi Cinthio’s “Tale of the Moor,” in the story collection Hecatommithi (1565), reshaping Cinthio’s sensational tale of jealousy, intrigue, and murder in several key ways. In Cinthio’s story, Alfiero, the scheming ensign, lusts after the Moor’s wife, named Disdemona, and after she spurns his advances, Alfiero seeks vengeance by accusing her of adultery with Cassio,  the  Moor’s  lieutenant.  Alfiero,  like  Iago,  similarly  arouses  the  Moor’s  suspicions by stealing Disdemona’s handkerchief and planting it in Cassio’s bed-room. However, the Moor and Alfiero join forces to kill Disdemona, beating her  to  death  with  a  stocking  filled  with  sand  before  pulling  down  the  ceiling  on her dead body to conceal the crime as an accident. The Moor is eventually captured,  tortured,  and  slain  by  Disdemona’s  relatives,  while  the  ensign  dies  during torture for another crime. What is striking about Shakespeare’s alteration of Cinthio’s grisly tale of murder and villainy is the shift of emphasis to the provocation for the murder, the ennobling of Othello as a figure of great stature and dignity to underscore his self-destruction, and the complication of motive for  the  ensign’s  actions.  Cinthio’s  version  of  Iago  is  conventionally  driven  by  jealousy  of  a  superior  and  lust  for  his  wife.  Iago’s  motivation  is  anything  but  explainable in conventional terms. Dramatically, Shakespeare turns the focus of the play from the shocking crime to its causes and psychic significance, trans-forming Cinthio’s intrigue story of vile murder into one of the greatest dramatic meditations on the nature of love and its destruction.

What  makes  Othello  so  unique  structurally  (and  painful  to  witness)  is  that  it  is  a  tragedy  built  on  a  comic  foundation.  The  first  two  acts  of  the  play  enact  the  standard  pattern  of  Shakespeare’s  romantic  comedies.  The  young Venetian noblewoman, Desdemona, has eloped with the middle-aged Othello, the military commander of the armed forces of Venice. Their union is opposed by Desdemona’s father, Brabantio, and by a rival for Desdemona, Roderigo,  who  in  the  play’s  opening  scenes  are  both  provoked  against Othello  by  Iago.  Desdemona  and  Othello,  therefore,  face  the  usual  challenges of the lovers in a Shakespearean comedy who must contend with the forces of authority, custom, and circumstances allied against their union. The romantic climax comes in the trial scene of act 1, in which Othello success-fully defends himself before the Venetian senate against Brabantio’s charge that  Othello  has  beguiled  his  daughter,  “stol’n  from  me,  and  corrupted  /  By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks.” Calmly and courteously Othello recounts how, despite the differences of age, race, and background, he won Desdemona’s heart by recounting the stories of his exotic life and adventures: “She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them.” Wonder at Othello’s heroic adventures and compassion for her sympathy have brought the two opposites together—the young, inexperienced  Venetian  woman  and  the  brave,  experienced  outsider.  Desdemona finally, dramatically appears before the senate to support Othello’s account of their courtship and to balance her obligation to her father and now to her husband based on the claims of love:

My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty: To you I am bound for life and education; My life and education both do learn me How to respect you; you are the lord of duty; I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband; And so much duty as my mother show’d To you, preferring you before her father, So much I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor, my lord.

Both Desdemona and Othello defy by their words and gestures the calumnies heaped upon them by Roderigo and Brabantio and vindicate the imperatives of the heart over parental authority and custom. As in a typical Shakespearean comedy, love, tested, triumphs over all opposition.

Vindicated by the duke of Venice and the senate, Othello, accompanied by Desdemona, takes up his military duties in the face of a threatened Turkish invasion, and the lovers are given a triumphal wedding-like procession and marriage ceremony when they disembark on Cyprus. The storm that divides the Venetian fleet also disperses the Turkish threat and clears the way for the lovers’ happy  reunion  and  peaceful  enjoyment  of  their  married  state.  First  Cassio lands to deliver the news of Othello’s marriage and, like the best man, supplies glowing praise for the groom and his bride; next Desdemona, accompanied by Iago and his wife, Emilia, enters but must await news of the fate of Othello’s ship. Finally, Othello arrives giving him the opportunity to renew his marriage vows to Desdemona:

It gives me wonder great as my content To see you here before me. O my soul’s joy, If after every tempest come such calms, May the wind blow till they have wakened death, And let the labouring barque climb hills of seas Olympus-high, and duck again as low As hell’s from heaven. If it were now to die ’Twere now to be most happy, for I fear My soul hath content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.

The scene crowns love triumphant. The formerly self-sufficient Othello has now  staked  his  life  to  his  faith  in  Desdemona  and  their  union,  and  she  has  done the same. The fulfillment of the wedding night that should come at the climax of the comedy is relocated to act 2, with the aftermath of the courtship and the wedding now taking  center  stage.  Having triumphantly bested  the  social and natural forces aligned against them, having staked all to the devotion of the other, Desdemona and Othello will not be left to live happily ever after, and the tragedy will grow out of the conditions that made the comedy. Othello, unlike the other Shakespearean comedies, adds three more acts to the romantic drama, shifting from comic affirmation to tragic negation.

Iago  reviews  Othello’s  performance  as  a  lover  by  stating,  “O,  you  are  well tuned now, / But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music.” Iago will now orchestrate discord and disharmony based on a life philosophy totally opposed to the ennobling and selfless concept of love demonstrated by the newlyweds. As Iago asserts to Roderigo, “Virtue? A fig!” Self-interest is all that  matters,  and  love  is  “merely  a lust  of  the  blood  and  a  permission  of  the will.” Othello and Desdemona cannot possibly remain devoted to each other, and, as Iago concludes, “If sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an err-ing barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits, and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her.” The problem of Iago’s motivation to destroy Othello and Desdemona is not that he has too few motives but too many. He offers throughout the play multiple justifi cations for his intrigue: He has been passed over in favor of Cassio; he suspects the Moor and Cassio with his wife, Emilia; he is envious of Cassio’s open nature; and he is desirous of Desdemona himself. No single motive is relied on for long, and the gap  between  cause  and  effect,  between  the  pettiness  of  Iago’s  grudges  and  the monstrousness of his behavior, prompted Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a memorable phrase to characterize Iago’s “motiveless malignity.” There is in Iago a zest for villainy and a delight in destruction, driven more by his hatred and  contempt  for  any  who  oppose  his  conception  of  jungle  law  than  by  a  conventional  naturalistic  explanation  based  on  jealousy  or  envy.  Moreover, Shakespeare, by deliberately clouding the issue of Iago’s motive, finds ever more sinister threats in such a character’s apparently bottomless and unmerited hatred and capacity for evil.

Iago will direct the remainder of the play, constructing Othello’s down-fall out of the flimsiest evidence and playing on the strengths and weaknesses of Othello’s nature and the doubts that erode Othello’s faith in Desdemona. Act 3, one of the wonders of the stage, anatomizes Othello’s psychic descent from  perfect  contentment  in  his  new  wife  to  complete  loathing,  from  a  worldview  in  which  everything  is  as  it  appears  to  one  in  which  nothing  is  as it seems. Iago leads Othello to suspect that love and devotion are shams disguising the basest of animalistic  instincts.  Misled  by  the  handkerchief,  his  love  token  to  Desdemona,  that  Iago  has  planted  in  Cassio’s  room  and  by a partially overheard conversation between Iago and Cassio, Othello, by the end of act 3, forsakes his wife and engages himself in a perverse version of the marriage ceremony of act 2 to Iago. As the pair kneels together, they exchange vows:

Iago: Witness you ever-burning lights above, You elements that clip us round about, Witness that here Iago doth give up The execution of his wit, hands, heart To wronged Othello’s service. Let him command, And to obey shall be in me remorse, What bloody business ever.

Othello: I greet thy love, Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous, And will upon the instant put thee to’t. Within these three days let me hear thee say That Cassio’s not alive.

Iago: My friend is dead. ’Tis done at your request; but let her live.

Othello: Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her, damn her! Come, go with me apart. I will withdraw To furnish me with some swift means of death For the fair devil. Now art thou my lieutenant.

Iago: I am your own for ever.

This scene has suggested to some critics that Iago’s true motivation for destroying the marriage of Desdemona and Othello is a repressed homosexual love for Othello. An equal case can be made that Iago here completes his role as Vice, borrowed from the medieval morality plays, sealing the Faustian bargain for Othello’s soul in this mock or black marriage scene.

The play moves relentlessly from here to catastrophe as Othello delivers justice to those he is convinced have wronged him. As he attempts to carry out  his  execution  of  Desdemona,  she  for  the  first  time  realizes  his  charges  against her and his utter delusion. Ignoring her appeals for mercy and avowals of innocence, Othello smothers her moments before Emilia arrives with the proof of  Desdemona’s  innocence  and  Iago’s  villainy.  Othello  must  now  face  the  realization  of  what  he  has  done.  He turns  to  Iago,  who  has  been  brought before him to know the reason for his actions. Iago replies: “Demand me  nothing;  what  you  know,  you  know:  /  From  this  time  forth  I  never  will  speak  word.”  By  Iago’s  exiting  the  stage,  closing  access  to  his  motives,  the  focus remains firmly on Othello, not as Iago’s victim, but as his own. His final speech mixes together the acknowledgment of what he was and what he has become, who he is and how he would like to be remembered:

I have done the state some service, and they know’t. No more of that. I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well, Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe.

Consistent with his role as guardian of order in the state, Othello carries out his own execution, by analogy judging his act as a violation reflected by Venice’s savage enemy:

And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk Beat a Venetian and tradu’d the state, I took by th’ throat the circumcisèd dog, And smote him—thus.

Othello, likewise, has “tradu’d the state” and has changed from noble and valiant Othello to a beast, with the passion that ennobled him shown as corrosive and demeaning. He carries out his own execution for a violation that threatens social and psychic order. For the onlookers on stage, the final tableau of the dead Desdemona and Othello “poisons sight” and provokes the command to “Let it be hid.” The witnesses on stage cannot compute rationally what has occurred nor why, but the audience has been given a privileged view of the battle between good and evil worked out in the private recesses of a bedroom and a human soul.

Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Plays

Othello Oxford Lecture by Emma Smith

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  • University of Toronto Quarterly

Othello's Sacrifice: Essays on Shakespeare and Romantic Tradition by John O'Meara (review)

  • Catherine M. Shaw
  • University of Toronto Press
  • Volume 67, Number 1, Winter 1997/98
  • View Citation

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Shakespeare Studies & Criticism

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Welcome to the home of Shakespeare Studies & Criticism on Oxford Academic. We hope you will enjoy this celebration of Shakespeare, and that this page will act as a springboard to new discoveries on your research journey.

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Latest posts on x, shakespeare on the oupblog.

research paper on shakespeare othello

Sir Stanley Wells and the First Folio

It’s often been difficult to dispel this reverence and distinguish an actual author behind it.

For enabling many readers to accomplish that, we have to thank Sir Stanley Wells, general editor of The Oxford Shakespeare and Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Birmingham University. His diligent and common-sense scholarship has done much to de-mystify Shakespeare and reposition the plays as working documents.

OUP Archivist Martin Maw examines one scholar’s immense contribution to Shakespeare Studies.

research paper on shakespeare othello

“A tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide”: Shakespeare under attack

Robert Stagg 

Around three years into his career as a dramatist, Shakespeare’s blank verse, came under attack.  

In 1592, playwright Robert Greene described William Shakespeare’s blank verse—his unrhymed iambic pentameter—as "bombastic".

Robert Stagg explores this criticism and how Shakespeare came to fend it off over the course of his career.

research paper on shakespeare othello

Why “the all-male stage” wasn’t

Pamela Allen Brown 

Why is “the all-male stage” inadequate as shorthand for the early modern stage?

Pamela Allen Brown explores gender roles on stage, and the arrival and impact of the 'innamorata accesa' (woman inflamed with passion), the trademark of the foreign diva.

research paper on shakespeare othello

How did Shakespeare become a London playwright?

Lena Cowen Orlin

Shakespeare’s first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, wrote in 1709 that the author married “while he was yet very young.” He then fell in with a bad crowd that “made a frequent practice of deer-stealing” from Warwickshire magnate Sir Thomas Lucy.

Lena Cowen Orlin traces the key events that took the playwright from Stratford to London.

research paper on shakespeare othello

Shakespeare and the sciences of emotion

Benedict S. Robinson

What role should literature have in the interdisciplinary study of emotion? The dominant answer today seems to be “not much.”

Using Shakespeare's Hamlet , Thomas Wright’s Passions of the Mind and Aristotle's Rhetoric ’ as points of departure, Benedict S. Robinson takes a wide view of emotion and "passion" to think about how passion also shaped the rise of new empirical sciences of the mind between 1600 and 1800.

research paper on shakespeare othello

Adapting Shakespeare: shattering stereotypes of Asian women onstage and onscreen

Alexa Alice Joubin

“I should like to see Miss Wong playing Shakespeare. Why not a Chinese Ophelia?”

Alexa Alice Joubin explores the perceptions and portrayal of Ophelia by Asian actors, arguing that gender roles in Shakespeare’s plays take on new meanings when they are embodied by Asian women.

research paper on shakespeare othello

To you I owe the most: tales of debt from Shakespeare’s England to the present day

In Shakespeare’s England, debts were bonds with social and emotional content alongside their economic function. Extending credit was a matter of trust. Sometimes it was a matter of love.

In stark contrast to modern day debt and credit which is owed and exchanged between banks, business, and often faceless corporations, Laura Kolb examines how in Early Modern England debt was a personal pledge, and how debt made for a good story.

research paper on shakespeare othello

Cut out characters and cracky plots: Jacob’s Room as Shakespeare play

Emily Kopley

But there is another reason, a reason outside of the novel, that Jacob is unknowable. He is the hero of a Shakespeare play.

Emily Kopley analyses Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room as a Shakespeare play, using letters between her and her brother Thoby, as an insight into the novel.

Measure for Measure

Early Modern Literary Geographies

Influenced by the work of cultural and human geographers, literary scholars have started to attend to the ways in which early modern people constructed their senses of the world out of interactions among places, spaces, and embodied practices. Early Modern Literary Geographies features innovative and agenda-setting research monographs that partake of this spatial turn.

Series Editors: Julie Sanders and Garrett Sullivan

research paper on shakespeare othello

Oxford Shakespeare Topics

Oxford Shakespeare Topics provide students and teachers with short books on important aspects of Shakespeare criticism and scholarship. Each book is written by an authority in its field, and combines accessible style with original discussion of its subject.

General Editors: Stanley Wells, Peter Holland, and Lena Cowen Orlin

research paper on shakespeare othello

Oxford Wells Shakespeare Lectures

These Lectures are derived from the series of biennial lectures established in 2008 in honour of Professor Stanley Wells. The inaugural lectures were given by Professor David Scott Kastan and since then a series of highly respected scholars have presented and published in this series.

The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition

New Oxford Shakespeare

The New Oxford Shakespeare presents an entirely new consideration of all of Shakespeare's works, edited from first principles from the base-texts themselves, and drawing on the latest textual and theatrical scholarship.

The three interconnected print publications and the online edition have been created by an international, intergenerational team of scholars. The project's scope, depth, and vision provide the perfect platform for the future of Shakespeare studies.

Edited by: Gary Taylor, John Jowett, Terri Bourus, and Gabriel Egan

research paper on shakespeare othello

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy

Edited by Heather Hirschfeld 

Offering critical and contemporary resources for studying Shakespeare's comic enterprises, the Handbook engages with perennial, yet still urgent questions raised by the comedies and looks at them from a range of new perspectives that represent the most recent methodological approaches to Shakespeare, genre, and early modern drama.

Chapters examine Shakespeare's source materials, gender and sexuality, hetero- and homoerotic desire, race, and religion, ecology, cross-species interaction, and humoral theory.

research paper on shakespeare othello

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music

Edited by Christopher R. Wilson and Mervyn Cooke

With global coverage and an extensive survey of genres embracing music for theatre, opera, ballet, musicals, the concert hall, and film, in addition to Shakespeare's ongoing afterlives in folk music, jazz, and popular music.

The Handbook showcases the latest international research into the captivating and vast subject of the many uses of music in relation to Shakespeare's plays and poems, extending from the Bard's own time to the present day.

research paper on shakespeare othello

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance

Edited by Lynsey McCulloch and Brandon Shaw

A concise reference on dance as both an integral feature of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture and as a means of translating Shakespearean text into movement - a process that raises questions of authorship and authority, cross-cultural communication, semantics, embodiment, and the relationship between word and image.

From narrative ballet adaptations to dance in musicals, physical theatre adaptations, and interpretations using non-Western dance forms this Handbook explores the relationship between William Shakespeare - his life, works, and afterlife - and dance.

research paper on shakespeare othello

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment

Edited by Valerie Traub

Extending the purview of feminist criticism, over 40 chapters offer an intersectional paradigm for considering representations of gender in the context of race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and religion.

Theoretically sophisticated and elegantly written this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of current debates.

research paper on shakespeare othello

Shakespeare Quarterly | Submit your research  

Shakespeare Quarterly (SQ)  is a leading journal in Shakespeare studies, publishing highly original, rigorously researched essays, notes, and book reviews. Published for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Oxford University Press, SQ is peer-reviewed and extremely selective.

Read our Author Guidelines to find out how to submit your work

Shakespeare’s Reading

Sir Stanley Wells, CBE, describes the many different sources Shakespeare drew upon in his work. Highlighting comparison passages, Wells explores Shakespeare’s relationship with the different texts he read throughout his life.

Shakespeare and Women

Julie Crawford, Mark van Doren Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, discusses Shakespeare’s portrayal of the power balance between the sexes, women’s contribution to the Elizabethan stage, and Renaissance ideas about gender. She also considers key speeches by Desdemona and Emilia in Othello .

Shakespeare and Religion

Rev. Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, explores the religious influences in Shakespeare’s work in the context of 16th century England - a time when the Church of England was given an established authority, Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I, and anti-Catholic laws were introduced.

Shakespeare and Sexuality

Sir Stanley Wells, CBE, analyses the references to sexuality in Shakespeare’s plays and poems. From his earlier comedies, such as The Two Gentleman of Verona or Much Ado About Nothing , where he is unafraid to play with this topic, to his middle and last texts where he demonstrates a deeper preoccupation with the destructive potential of sexual desire.

Shakespeare and Death

Laurie Maguire, Emeritus Professor, Magdalen College Oxford discusses the theme of death in Shakespeare's tragedies, histories, and comedies. She considers how Elizabethans encountered death on a daily basis, and how Shakespeare was clearly very familiar with the details of death, and murder.

Shakespeare and Music

Joseph M. Ortiz, Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas, El Paso, explains how music was experienced and understood in Shakespeare’s time, with reference to education, the emerging music publishing industry, conflicting religious views, audiences’ expectations, and music as an instrument of political power.

Shakespeare and Race

Ayanna Thompson considers the theme of race in Shakespeare’s plays, the extent to which he would have been aware of Africans, and how he introduced them into his plays. She discusses the current debate amongst black actors about whether or not to play the part of Othello .

Shakespeare and His Collaborators

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The african company and black shakespeare in 1820s new york.

Excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race , edited by Patricia Akhimie

Shakespeare & Beyond

Book cover for The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, edited by Patricia Akhimie

The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race is a forthcoming collection of essays edited by Patricia Akhimie, Director of the Folger Institute. This important new volume from Oxford University Press explores wide-ranging topics at the intersections of Shakespeare, critical race studies, and other fields.

The excerpt below comes from Chapter 8: “Shakespeare, Race, and Adaptation” by Joyce Green MacDonald. In it, she writes about the African Company’s pioneering Shakespeare productions, the difficulties of navigating racial tensions in 1820s New York, and the tactics used by white audience members and observers to harass and suppress Black theater makers.

Joyce Green MacDonald is Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of two books— Women and Race in Early Modern Texts (2002), and Shakespearean Adaptation, Race, and Memory in the New World (2020)—and the editor of Race, Ethnicity and Power in the Renaissance (1996). She has published several articles on race in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature and on women’s writing in the period, as well as on Shakespearean adaptation and performance. A former trustee of the Shakespeare Association of America, she is currently editing Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer for the University of Toronto Press and Antony and Cleopatra for Cambridge Shakespeare Editions.

“More than a decade before Ira Aldridge would become the first black actor to play Othello in England, the African Theatre’s James Hewlett was active in New York, and played Richard III for them on 24 September 1821. The story of how the African Company’s Manhattan Shakespeare performances were eventually suppressed is a primal scene in the history of the connections between race, adaptation, and Shakespeare that were forged in the United States, and between the USA and Britain. Company founder William Brown began by creating the African Grove, an entertainment space in lower Manhattan that, while pitched towards the city’s growing community of free blacks, attracted working-class whites and new immigrants as well. Brown opened a venue he called the ‘American Theatre’ in 1821, and his resident company of black actors—the first in US history—played before racially integrated audiences, at first apparently with some success. But Brown’s company soon fell afoul of the city’s increasingly tense racial climate, as black and white New Yorkers struggled to navigate tensions rising from the difficulty of defining freedom and citizenship in the new multiracial metropolis (White 2002). His intention to create an ‘American Theatre’ that included his black actors and patrons in the category of ‘American’ could not be fulfilled in a New York whose politics were increasingly roiled by anti-abolition sentiment (in 1817, the state legislature had voted to set 4 July 1827 for the full abolition of slavery in New York) and by a more generalized contempt of black people. The African Company Shakespeares of the early 1820s can be seen as part of a new solidarity and self-determination among the city’s communities of free and enslaved blacks, which might indeed help explain why it was thought necessary to use police power to contain and disrupt their performance. Their Richard III aroused increasingly aggressive heckling and disruption from white audience members influenced by nativist propaganda. These hecklers’ willingness to put their reactionary racial politics into mob action at the theatre neatly played into the hands of Brown’s well-connected white theatrical rival Stephen Price, who eyed the success of the American Company with some alarm. (Brown offered even lower ticket prices than Price— known in the city’s theatrical circles as Stephen ‘Half-Price’— did at his Park Theatre.) Before they could proceed with their plans to stage Romeo and Juliet , Brown’s actors were arrested during a performance, imprisoned, and released only after agreeing to stop playing Shakespeare (McAllister 2003, 79–207). Mordecai Noah, editor of the city’s National Advocate newspaper, used the playbill for Brown’s Richard III to imply that black people playing Shakespeare was no mere harmless public entertainment put on for the enjoyment of black and white New Yorkers alike, but could in fact signal the beginnings of the racial erasure of New York’s native-born white citizens. Was free black Manhattanites’ current ability to ‘assemble in groups’ and ‘have balls and quadrille parties’ the first step towards a dystopian future in which they would try to ‘solicit a seat in the [state] assembly’ or even mobilize to ‘outvote the whites’ (quoted in McAllister 2003, 135)?

At our distance, Noah’s warnings that black Shakespeare was the harbinger of possible full black control of civil society seem ridiculous. However, his conviction that state authority is properly white, and that free subaltern cultural expression bears within it the power to undo the racial foundations of public order, should be taken seriously. Despite nativist trumpeting of the superiority and independence of true American culture, the African Company’s adaptations and reproductions of Shakespeare—the British titan—were experienced as indications of intolerable social upheaval. Like the franchise or the right to organize politically, Shakespeare properly belonged to white people. The workingmen’s solidarity marshalled to oppose the economic consequences of New York’s changing demographics was formed in whiteness as well as in class consciousness. In popular entertainments of the 1820s and 1830s aimed at satirizing the African Company in particular, and the idea of equal black participation in the public sphere more generally, white observers heaped ridicule on black actors’ physicality and delivery of Shakespeare’s lines. Staging their cultural incompetence as a comic spectacle perhaps blunted the underlying seriousness of the assertion that William Brown’s actors were fundamentally incapable even of repeating, much less of coherently reproducing, any aspect of Shakespeare’s text. Inviting audiences to laugh at black Shakespeareans was a way of soothing the kind of racial anxiety over eventual black domination that Mordecai Noah stoked: if successful engagement with Shakespeare was a measure of civic fitness, white people clearly had nothing to fear.”

From the chapter Shakespeare, Race, and Adaptation by Joyce Green MacDonald from the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race edited by Patricia Akhimie . Copyright © 2024 by Joyce Green MacDonald and published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

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12 Best Movies You Didn't Realize Are Based on Shakespeare Plays

William Shakespeare was a late 16th-century English playwright, poet, and actor who is regarded by many as the greatest writer in history. Today, his plays are still performed on stages around the world, and studying his works is a high school right of passage.

It's not surprising that the Bard would go on to inspire future writers and their stories. Shakespeare's works have since been used as the basis for a lot of movies – and not just the straight adaptations like Romeo + Juliet or Macbeth . Modern interpretations of his plays exist in every film genre, with numerous movies inspired by Shakespeare. All you have to do is look closely, and you will find that sometimes a zombie movie is a romance, or an animated musical is a Shakespearean tragedy. From Men of Respect to The Lion King , we analyze and rank which are the best Shakespeare adaptation movies that aren't as obvious to audiences thanks to their modernized retellings .

'Men of Respect' (1990)

Based on 'macbeth'.

Men of Respect is the story of Mike Battaglia ( John Turturro ), who climbs to the top of his mafia family by killing the boss and anyone else who threatens to get in his way. The film is a 1990s crime drama that mirrors the tragedy of Macbeth, transporting the story into the world of organized crime.

Battaglia's ambitions and actions during his rise to power would ultimately become his downfall. Despite not being a masterpiece, Men of Respect is an interesting adaptation of Shakespeare's well-known play Macbeth . William C. Reilly's film has political overtones that allude to the idiom, "Be careful what you wish for," just like the famous work by the gifted poet and playwright.

Watch on Tubi

'Get Over It' (2001)

Based on 'a midsummer night's dream'.

When it comes to Shakespeare-retelling movies, Ge t Over It is a pretty loose adaptation (it is based on A Midsummer Night's Dream ), but it is well worth mentioning nonetheless. The teen romantic comedy tells the story of a high school senior who tries to win back his ex-girlfriend by joining the cast of the school play she is starring in (which happens to be the play from which the movie draws inspiration).

Tommy O'Haver 's 2001 film veers far from Shakespeare's original plot, exchanging mischievous fairies for impish but well-meaning high school boys. The film steers itself back by inserting scenes from the play, performed on stage by the high school students, while its musical performances by Vitamin C and Sisqo rooted the film firmly in the early 2000s.

Watch on Hoopla

'Deliver Us from Eva' (2003)

Based on 'the taming of the shrew'.

Eva ( Gabrielle Union ) is a little too involved in her three sisters' love lives. Their partners decide to take matters into their own hands when the men hire Ray ( LL Cool J ) to woo her. They hope that Ray can keep Eva away from her sisters and out of their business, but their plan begins to backfire when the two fall in love for real in a wonderful approach to the fake dating trope in film .

Deliver Us from Eva is loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew . This version of the play isn’t as complicated as the original text. What is complicated is the meddling of the three men in the life of the combative "shrew." Although a bit predictable, Deliver Us from Eva is still a fairly enjoyable watch.

Deliver Us From Eva

Release Date 2003-02-07

Director Gary Hardwick

Cast Robinne Lee, Essence Atkins, Gabrielle Union, Duane Martin, Meagan Good, LL Cool J

Runtime 105

Genres Drama, Romance, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Documentary

Watch on Peacock

Based on 'Othello'

In O , Odin ( Mekhi Phifer ), a Black student-athlete, is the MVP of the basketball team in a predominantly white upper-class high school. He has a beautiful girlfriend, Desi ( Julia Stiles ), and is loved by his coach and all his teammates with one exception: Hugo ( Josh Hartnett ). Hugo is jealous of the attention and affection Odin receives, especially from their coach ( Martin Sheen ) who is also Hugo's father.

Following the plot of Shakespeare's Othello , Hugo begins manipulating his "friend" and those around him, ultimately resulting in Odin's undoing. O is a perfectly executed turn-of-the-century take on Shakespeare's play Othello , which has been frequently re-adapted over the years. The play's themes of race, passion, and adversity have made it a favorite among filmmakers and audiences alike.

Rent on Amazon

'Just One of the Guys' (1985)

Based on 'twelfth night'.

The '80s high school rom-com Just One of the Guys is an adaptation of Twelfth Night starring Joyce Hyser , Clayton Rohner , and William Zabka , Terri (Hyser) is an aspiring journalist who just wants to be taken seriously in a world dominated by men. She disguises herself as a boy to gain more journalistic credibility, ditching her "good looks" for a short haircut and men's clothing.

In true Shakespearean fashion, Terri falls for a guy while she's disguised, and things get complicated. All in all, the film is a hidden gem from the '80s that fans of the Bard will likely still enjoy today. Furthermore, Just One of the Guys tackles universal teenage themes, like sexual relationships, body image, and dating.

Just One of the Guys

Release Date 1985-04-26

Director Lisa Gottlieb

Cast Leigh McCloskey, Toni Hudson, Billy Jayne, Clayton Rohner, Joyce Hyser, William Zabka

Rating PG-13

Genres Romance, Comedy

Rent on Apple TV

'Warm Bodies' (2013)

Based on 'romeo and juliet'.

In one of the best modern movies based on Shakespeare's work, R ( Nicholas Hoult ) is not your typical zombie. True, he craves human flesh, and brains are admittedly his favorite. But unlike the rest of his kind, he longs for more. Affection? Perhaps love? He finds what he's looking for when, one day, he meets Julie ( Teresa Palmer ). It's love at first sight for R, as his once-dead heart begins beating again.

Warm Bodies , at its core, is an echo of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet : a boy meets and falls in love with a girl from a different household (or species) who is the sworn enemy of his own, and, alas, the star-crossed lovers are destined for failure. The film gives the play a 21st-century twist but still throws in plenty of callbacks to the original text. R has a best friend named M ( Rob Corddry ). In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo's best friend is Mercutio. Julie is a shortened version of Juliet. Also, Julie's boyfriend, Perry ( Dave Franco ), gets his name from Count Paris. What's more, Warm Bodies , a truly underrated zombie movie , recreates the famous balcony scene.

Warm Bodies

Release Date 2013-01-31

Director Jonathan Levine

Cast Teresa Palmer, John Malkovich, Nicholas Hoult, Analeigh Tipton, Rob Corddry, Dave Franco

Genres Romance, Comedy, Horror

Watch on Hulu

'Anyone But You' (2023)

Based on 'much ado about nothing'.

When it comes to recent films based on Shakespeare's plays, Anyone But You surely deserves a spot on the list. This 2023 romantic comedy follows Bea ( Sydney Sweeney ) and Ben's ( Glen Powell ) destination wedding vacation, in which the two meet again after their complicated past. What's more, the two pretend to be a couple.

Although it isn't obvious that the Will Gluck film is based on Much Ado About Nothing , Anyone But You brings Shakespeare's characters Benedick and Beatrice to life with great results. The film is an innovative take on the romantic comedy genre and felt like a breath of fresh air, though far from being an unforgettable feature (it received mixed reviews from critics, too). Still, Gluck's movie is an entertaining one, as well as a win for rom-coms at the global box office, with Anyone But You grossing over $150 million worldwide . – Daniela Gama

Anyone But You

Release Date 2023-12-22

Director Will Gluck

Cast Darren Barnet, Alexandra Shipp, Sydney Sweeney, Glen Powell

Runtime 103 minutes

Genres Comedy

Watch in Cinemas

'She's the Man' (2006)

She's the Man , in all its early 2000s romantic comedy glory, takes its entire plot from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night . The only real difference to the play is its modern setting. The play has twins separated in a shipwreck, whereas Viola ( Amanda Bynes ) and Sebastian ( James Kirk ) are separated by different schools in the film.

The teen drama is about Viola, who disguises herself as a boy to play in an all-male soccer team. Her plan quickly becomes complicated when she falls for her roommate, Duke ( Channing Tatum ), who does not know her true identity. She's the Man was a commercial success when it came out, grossing $57.2 million against a budget of $20–25 million, and endures as a highly referenced film in popular culture.

She's the Man

Release Date 2006-03-17

Director Andy Fickman

Cast Vinnie Jones, Channing Tatum, Julie Hagerty, Amanda Bynes, Laura Ramsey, David Cross

Runtime 105 minutes

Genres Romance, Comedy, sport

'My Own Private Idaho' (1991)

Based on 'henry iv' parts i and ii.

Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix 's chemistry alone — the two were very close friends in real life — makes it worth watching My Own Private Idaho , which is among the best movies inspired by Shakespeare plays . The film follows Mike Waters, a hustler afflicted with narcolepsy, and Scott Favor, the rebellious son of a mayor. The two embark on an adventure from Portland to Idaho and ultimately to the coast of Italy to find Mike's long-lost mother.

Gus Van Sant 's road trip drama based on Henry IV is touching and tender, offering a thoughtful message about sexual identity and love — so much so that it is considered a landmark piece in queer cinema. Regarded as a cult classic these days, the avant-garde My Own Private Idaho is mandatory viewing when it comes to Shakespeare adaptations. – Daniela Gama

My Own Private Idaho

Release Date 1991-02-01

Director Gus Van Sant

Cast Chiara Caselli, Rodney Harvey, William Richert, James Russo, Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix

Runtime 104

Genres Drama, Romance, Documentary

'10 Things I Hate About You' (1999)

The 1999 high school comedy, 10 Things I Hate About You , is the story of a love-sick Cameron ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt ) and his elaborate plan to win the heart of Bianca ( Larisa Oleynik ). Bianca is not allowed to date until her sister Kat ( Julia Stiles ) begins to. Cameron convinces the self-absorbed pretty boy, Joey ( Andrew Keegan ) to pay the mysterious Patrick ( Heath Ledger ) to "tame" Kat.

Gil Junger's movie is loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and features tons of references to the play and Shakespeare himself . In the movie, Kat is referred to as "the shrew" in one of the first scenes. Kat's best friend, Mandella ( Susan May Pratt ) is Shakespeare-obsessed, with a photo of him in her locker and she can be heard quoting the playwright more than once. Being the blueprint of 1990s romantic comedies, 10 Things I Hate About You is the perfect back-to-school film everyone should check.

10 Things I Hate About You

Release Date 1999-03-31

Director Gil Junger

Cast Andrew Keegan, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larry Miller, Larisa Oleynik, Julia Stiles

Watch on Disney+

'West Side Story' (1961)

West Side Story , the musical remake of Romeo and Juliet, went from Broadway to film in an engaging play-to-big-screen adaptation in 1961. Maria ( Natalie Wood ) and Tony ( Richard Beymer ) are star-crossed lovers in New York City. The two teens come from rival gangs, the Jets and Sharks.

Just as the Montagues and Capulets of Romeo and Juliet , peace cannot be kept as Bernardo (Maria's brother, played by George Chakiris ) kills Tony's best friend, Riff ( Russ Tamblyn ), prompting Tony's immediate retaliation. Tony stabs and kills Bernardo and the deaths seem to mirror that of the play's characters, Mercutio and Tybalt. No doubt, West Side Story is an engaging story that takes place among the best Shakespeare adaptations .

'The Lion King' (1994)

Based on 'hamlet'.

Disney's The Lion King is a true classic and not the first film fans are likely to think of when identifying movies based on Shakespeare's works. With a score composed by Hans Zimmer and A-list actors like Matthew Broderick (Simba) and James Earl Jones (Mufasa) bringing the animation to life, it's almost hard to believe the story isn't completely original. But one of Disney's greatest animated classics wouldn't exist without a monumental play by The Bard.

The Lion King is the play Hamlet at its core; it is the story of a king murdered by his brother and a young prince who will someday avenge his father. Luckily, Disney decided to leave out the part where the queen marries the murderous uncle and instead made it so Sarabi ( Madge Sinclair ) and the other lionesses are servants to Scar ( Jeremy Irons ).

The Lion King (1994)

Release Date 1994-06-24

Director Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff

Cast Matthew Broderick, Jeremy Irons, James Earl Jones

Runtime 88 minutes

Genres Drama, Animation, Adventure

NEXT: The Best Shakespeare Film Adaptations, Ranked

12 Best Movies You Didn't Realize Are Based on Shakespeare Plays

Racism in Shakespeare’s “Othello” Research Paper

Introduction.

The purpose of this essay is to detect and analyze various traits of racism in Shakespeare’s famous piece Othello and how it relates to the character of Othello.

Racism in literature considerably differs from its manifestations in politics and ideology. Thus, it is useless to search for mechanical coincidences between racist postulates that are widely known and racism in literature.

First of all, one should note that literature form is something that opposes political as political. Its discourse, of course, has referents in reality like for instance racist prejudices of the author and his social and cultural environment but what is more important they come into interplay with such structural characteristics of the literature work as plot, a discourse which may be described as self-reflective components. Therefore, our strategy is to trace racism as it occurs in the description of characters and their behavior, the plot. This racism is more likely to be cultural rather than biological, placing more emphasis on specific traits of character and behavior rather than on declaring inhumanness.

The structure of Shakespeare’s play and the forms of racial representation

The racist connotations can be already found in the circumstances that oriented Shakespeare to write Othello. It doesn’t mean that Shakespeare was himself racist because racism was entirely formed as capitalist ideology, but it is more relevant to interpret his choice of the main character as the choice of ‘marketable’ spectacular material to be set on stage since Moors were regarded as exotics in England of that period.

The connotations of this attitude exemplify the cultural otherness of Moor and various prejudices that arise from the Difference; today it of course can be regarded as racism. The opening scene of the play proves our assumption. It completely exoticizes Othello referring to him not by name but as ‘Moor’ and ‘extravagant stranger’ thus putting a certain mental boundary between him and the audience.

Blacks in English society of that time were perceived with negative connotations and are regarded as monsters therefore the play has frequent references to monstrosity. Of course, this step is ideological and is needed to establish the link between audience and performance. In this way, it can be described as a ‘marketing’ strategy’. English at the beginning of the 17 century often regarded blacks as monsters from the outside world and connected black skin with moral monstrosity. Bartels (1990) for instance states that postulating racial difference was regarded as a means for protecting one’s identity.

These racial prejudices are developed within the frames of Renaissance discourse. Thus, using racist characteristics of the main character and its connotations for the perception of the play the link between the playwright and his audience is established. Such racial mood characterizing England at the beginning of the 17 century is well-documented and it is not accidentally that it found its representation in literature.

Thus, Shakespeare exploits the theme and mood presented in Englishmen’s consciousness. In the starting scene, when Iago is openly expressing his dislike or rather hatred for Othello who has chosen Cassio for lieutenancy he already plans the revenge (“I follow him to serve my turn upon him”). Roderigo is chosen by Iago as an assistant to his plan since he feels the same mixture of racial, cultural hatred that automatically transforms into personal disgust for Othello. Rodrigo and Iago, thus are the racist protagonists in Shakespeare’s play but the discourse of cultural and racial difference goes far beyond simple racial references and utterances but is embedded in the discursive fabric of the play and literary means of expression such as metaphors and allegories.

Roderigo expresses his racial prejudices in such words: “What a full fortune does the thick lips owe / If he can carry this!” The word thick lips can be described as a completely disparaging reference to the facial characteristics of the dark-skinned race’ members. The starting scenes have such examples in abundance and will later discuss them but it is important that our analysis of racism in Othello and how it refers to the character of Othello being conceptual and this we have to outline the main forms in which racial meaning are embedded.

The whole system of racial hatred presented in Othello can be divided into several main interrelated elements. The first one is a literal reference to racial characteristics or direct offensive utterance and comparisons of Othello with the ugly and inhumane beast. The second one is racial or culturally determined stereotypes used to denote the features of character peculiar to Othello. They mainly concern the available and widely used narratives of the black race existing in the English cultural space of that period, even though events of the play take place in another country. And at last, the third element of racialization is the structurally determined fabric of the play and literary expressive means. These three elements form the system of racial representation of Othello and are something that determines the unraveling of the plot.

In the first scene of the play, Iago wakes up Brabantio crying that “an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe” (1.1.89-90), the image of Othello which is aimed at horrifying Desdemona’s father. Iago then tries to represent their sexual ties saying: “your daughter covered with a Barbary horse” (1.1.112). Using reminding Desdemona’s father that with Othello they will produce monsters. Iago further continues this racist narrative saying to Brabantio that “you’ll have your nephews neigh to you,” (1.1.112-18).

The starting scenes of the play thus prepare the audience for perceiving Othello as inhumane in which Shakespeare’s irony lies since at the end of the play we will find out that Iago is less humane than Othello. This strategy of Shakespeare should be regarded as overcoming racism through racism. In the second scene metaphors and other expressive means applied to Othello have more political and social characteristics and overtones. Brabantio now refers to Othello as a foul thief’ whose emotionality that enchanted his daughter made her flee from ‘wealthy curled darlings of our nation’ to ‘the sooty bosom'(1.2.62-72).

Brabantio is more prone to see Othello’s offense as mere political claiming that due to his blackness has no moral and political rights to deserve his daughter as other worthy men of ‘our nation’. Thus, here racist connotations are sublimated to political ones. A union between African and Venetian women was something unnatural for the majority of English aristocracy which perceived relations between men and women in limited space of aristocracy and its traditions.

Aristocracy traditionally represented a high level of social endogamy preventing people from the lowest sections of populations to have access to it. Thus, for Shakespeare’s audience, such a description of Othello and the stance Brabantio took was quite natural and understanding. Desdemona’s choice in their eyes thus was something going beyond all moral rules and was regarded as politically and socially monstrous.

Othello’s self-justification when he comes to court in the third scene is aimed at persuading the English audience not of his virtues but contrary to increasing their moral and social sentiments. To tell how he had captivated Desdemona Othello has to mention several exotic races he had told her about: “The Anthropophagi and men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders” (1.3.146-47). These stories while having a frightening effect on Desdemona made her think positively about the stranger who narrated them – Othello. Thus, the exotics of the stories merged in Desdemona’s consciousness with the exoticism of Othello.

English racial and cultural consciousness at the time of staging Othello

Of course, Othello’s most obvious difference is his skin color, a sign of his African origin. Othello is a black moor is marked with a difference from the dominant cultural norms and perceptions of the audience and is different from other characters on the stage which represent white cultural and social traditions.

Therefore the audience is likely to have a negative attitude to this character and compare Othello with some mystical and frightening monster that they imagine from the existing literature on travels to Africa and other distanced lands. There exists another historical evidence of the fact that theatergoers would be astonished and confused seeing Othello on the stage. A black person was still something rarely met in the middle age England and there is well-documented evidence that their number in England was not very high and began to grow only from the beginning of the 17 century when West Africans were for the first time introduced to London.

Ruth Cowhig for instance has written that “there were several hundreds of black people living in the households of the aristocracy and landed gentry, or working in London taverns,” so she thinks that “the sight of black people must have been familiar to Londoners.” (Michael, 1989, p.45) Notwithstanding the fact, the majority of Londoners have already seen black people it was weird for them to watch Othello on the stage speaking and even expressing some thoughts and feelings.

The policy of Queen Elizabeth to bring new blacks ‘in the realm’ of England was regarded by many as a challenge to their interests and here the feeling of social, religious, cultural, and racial difference came into play. The dominant groups of society especially the rising bourgeoisie were against this policy that paralyzed the traditional social interactions.

The model of understanding of African blacks as opposite to ‘English’ further strengthened the idea of Africa and its inhabitants as an exotic, mysterious continent.

The literature of that period reinforced the idea of blacks’ otherness, low mental and moral standards. The language of Moor’s monstrosity and childbearing often appears in Shakespeare’s play, frequently following the traditions of the prodigious birth which hints at definitely ominous events to come.

Iago and racism

In the closing scenes of the first act, Iago addresses Roderigo to make a plot against this ugly Moor: ‘[L]et us be conjunctive in our revenge against him; if thou canst cuckold him, thou does thyself a pleasure, and me a sport. There are many events in the womb of time, which will be delivered’. (1.3.369-72). Iago’s perception of time as a womb that issues and reproduces events gives him a certain role similar to that of Edward Gresham, a pamphleteer who constantly warned that monstrous births predicted future tragedies and calamities.

Though Iago is a more cheerful prophet since he realized himself not as a human victim but as a universal divine ordinator putting to order various supernatural events. “I have It. It is engendered. Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light” (1.3.404-05). Iago can not be regarded as God or devil, he is conceiving offspring and ‘hell’ and ‘night’ are not causative but instead enabling moments. Iago’s desire to make a plot against Othello is motivated not only by social and economic reasons as one may think but also by purely racial hatred and contempt. It thus may be said that the interplay between vanity and racial difference constitutes Iago’s personality and his ambition to ‘destroy’ Othello.

Iago’s abovementioned metaphor is interesting in terms of equivalence between the idea and birth, the concept and conception – this is a metaphor that constantly recurs. This idea that the brain gives birth to human thoughts and the body gives birth to human children or monsters was very widespread in England of that period. The mindset that created them can be named vulgar materialism merging with religious and moral claims.

Thus, this combination of thoughts created an extraordinary negative perception of blacks and was even more barbaric than their culture. Other instances of the same problem may be found in Shakespeare’s sonnets dedicated to ‘their only begetter’. In Othello metaphors are used intentionally, sometimes almost literally so it becomes evident that the relation between mental conceptions and physical birth becomes linear – i.e. understandable for the audience.

Iago plays with this metaphor in the middle of the Second Act when Desdemona asks Iago to compose praise; he narrates how his ‘beautiful’ invention taxes his brain and then announces: “But my Muse labours, / And thus she is delivered” (2.1.127-28). As further this comparison is developed in the context of Iago plot theatergoers are once again reminded of this metaphor relation with the conceptions of biological generation and may also remember Iago’s words at the end of Act One concerning the impending ‘birth’ as being ‘monstrous’; as far as a metaphor becomes conscious it helps to understand a morally monstrous nature of Iago’s ‘conception’.

In ACT three Iago gives his monstrous conception including the basic idea of Desdemona’s infidelity to Othello and thus makes the first step for its realization. Othello makes a comment that Iago echoes his doubts concerning Cassio: “[a]s if there were some monster in his thought, / Too hideous to be shown” (3.3.111-12).

Othello then translates his idea to Iago saying that there must be reason for Iago’s being concerned when they were speaking about Cassio: [Thou] didst contract and purse thy brow together As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit…. /[Thou] weight’s thy words before thou giv’st them breathe/ Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more; /For such things in a false disloyal knave /Are tricks of custom, but in a man that’s just /They’re close dilations, working from the heart /That passion cannot rule (1.3.118-29).

The first lines where ‘horrible conceit’ figures represent an evident continuation of Iago’s language of the generation that presented Iago’s thoughts as the hideous progeny waiting for birth and reduced to the womb of his brain.

The pursuing and contracting of Iago’s brow can be regarded as certain symptoms of the metaphorical labor which is to bring force the birth of offspring and to represent this idea to Othello who certainly is afraid of it.

The description regarding Iago’s taking pauses before saying his words creates the atmosphere of the birth process which is constantly accompanied by breathing and as a literal declaration of the fact that Iago thinks properly before he says something; although ‘stops’ are something that Othello refers to be the symbols of Iago’s hesitation, namely these ‘stops’ is something that gives birth to his thought and they no doubt look similar to the breathing of the future mother.

This well-designed pattern of the references to the process of childbirth provides good justifications for the Folio reading of the ‘dilations’ and not the ‘denotements’ from the Fist Quarto because dilations may serve the role of another reference to the process of birth which ‘passion cannot rule’. These images help Shakespeare to constitute the idea that Iago gives birth to the monstrous idea as some abstract mother may carry a monstrous child in the womb (Jones, 1965).

As the play unravels Iago however does not continue to breed his monstrous thoughts but instead transfers this mental pregnancy to Othello. He gives Othello the possibility to give birth to them himself thus taking away responsibility for his monstrous plans. Many researchers claim that the metaphor breaks down with this transfer of Iago’s thought to Othello. Sacks for instance tried to explain this process of transfer as some kind of ‘theft’ since womb in the late Middle Ages was often compared with purses, which were easy to stole and become a possessor of their contents.

So according to Sacks, Othello managed to steal somewhat ‘psychosexually’ the Iago’s ‘purse’ filled with ugly and trashy thought. The pregnancy didn’t naturally shift from Iago to Othello but it was a little bit difficult process that can be described as mental and verbal communication which generates stable conceptions and patterns in the person who is ready to adopt them. Thus, it can be claimed that Othello had a thought embryo saying to his mind that Desdemona was infidel to him. But the role of Iago in giving form and substance to this idea, in making it somewhat obvious and material can not be undervalued here.

The idea of Desdemona’s infidelity was generated by mental and verbal communication and intercourse between these men which is analogous to the sexual intercourse of Iago (as a male) and Othello (as female), impregnated thoughts through his ears. This process can be understood in terms of the Aristotelian theory of Animals’ genesis which states that a male’s seed is not just left in the female, and not just joined with female seeds in the womb but on the contrary, it shapes the nature of female’s seed.

This process is described by Aristotle in comparison to the carpenter’s job when he says that the carpenter only gives form to material and not joins it himself: “the active partner is not situated within the thing which is being formed” (113). Laquer has summarized this idea saying that “conception is for the male to have an idea, an artistic or artisan conception, in the brain-uterus of the female.”(29) and thus understood something essential to Iago’s role in Shakespeare’s play. The mental impregnation postulates the sublimation of racial prejudices on the level of practical realization of the monstrous plot.

Thus, racial and cultural characteristics of ugliness are redirected from Othello to Iago as ‘practically’ monstrous person and Othello’s discursive ugliness stays aside in theatergoers’ consciousness before he realizes the impregnated ideas of Iago. This act redistributes monstrosity between Moor and ‘civilized’ Iago, showing that racially worthy can be also morally ugly but at the same time leaving the taste of racial hatred to Othello which can not be driven out by the mere theater play. Thus, it can be said that the idea that Iago tries to impose on Othello is kind of a formative seed Aristotle mentioned and Othello’s brain is a womb or simply unformed material that needs to be shaped to realize the plot of Iago.

The racial characteristics dominant in English society of this time can be traced to Othello’s behavior. Though many commentators claim that Othello was jealous it is not true since his realization of Iago’s ideas and plot may be described in terms of complete trustfulness. Jealousy may be described as a syndrome of obsessive states when every step of the object of jealousy is regarded by a jealous person as treason or infidelity.

This is not the case if we think of Othello’s behavior. Instead, he may be described as trustworthy. His complete trustfulness plays the role of ‘negative’ racism in Shakespeare’s play. It aims to show that cultural, racial, and mental differences make Othello unarmed in the encounter with the virtues of Western civilization – intrigues, rationality, and cold calculations. Othello’s naivety thus serves the role of postulating cultural difference and has positive connotations. The author of the play seems to hint to the audience that Othello is morally pure and natural in his behavior, not contaminated with false features of ‘western civilization’ such as hypocrisy and moral grubbiness.

By taking into consideration the fact that the final point of theater’s plays is audience but not the author’s ideas, there is no denying importance of the fact that this ‘negative’ racism was understood by theatergoers quite positively and they were inclined to ascribe all amoral causations to Othello rather than to Iago – their instigator.

After Iago impregnated Othello with his ideas and plot, he as a pregnant woman having irrational desires for abstract ‘something’, insists that his wife Desdemona show him the handkerchief well ornamented with strawberries – which is a fruit widely associated with maternity and frustrations of ‘strawberry marks’ on the children. Thus, from this time on the gestalt of trustfulness which was impregnated by Iago quickly transforms into a ‘green-eyed’ obsession with Desdemona’s infidelity.

But it is not jealousy because a jealous person trying to find the source of infidelity is afraid of finding it. After all, she seeks to maintain relations. For Othello, it is not jealousy but rather the fact of infidelity which is enough to transform him into a ‘green-eyed monster’. It is ‘natural’ without any taste of civilization and Shakespeare emphasizes it.

Even though the metaphorical language is discreet and sometimes is not properly consistent it continues to inform the plot of the play. Further in Act Three Othello thinks of cuckoldry as a problem of destiny: “Even then this forked plague is fated to us / When we do quicken” (3.3.282-83). The theatergoers hear the statement that has a purpose of constructing Othello’s fatalism, which makes him plagued while he is suspecting cuckoldry and thus, this reinforces his monstrosity as he is quickening the pendulum of his womb.

A few moments later Othello says: “I have a pain upon my forehead here” (3.3.290) as if the monstrous thought kicked his head seeking for freedom. It can be also described as certain anticipation of the idea’s birth. In the following scene, Emilia makes a comparison of Othello’s feelings to ‘a monster/ Begot upon itself, born on itself.” Desdemona replies to it “Heaven keep that monster from Othello’s mind!” (3.4.161-63).

Everybody watching the play already knows that Othello is bearing some ugly intentions in his mind and wants them to be realized if his doubts are confirmed and Desdemona’s is an infidel to him. The racial prejudices further transform in some form of mockery of Othello because of his ability to understand the truth but of course, they are suppressed by the tragedy of the moment. Othello following his actualized thoughts says to Desdemona in the Fifth Act:… confess thee freely of thy sin/For to deny each article with oath/Cannot remove, nor choke the strong conception/That I do groan withal/Thou art to die(5.2.56-59). The contemplation of the murder is for Othello the midwifery for his deformed and monstrous ‘child’ birth and the actualization of his monstrous conception.

Othello is one of Shakespeare’s interesting and moving dramas but its racial connotations move the audience sometimes in different directions. The mentalities of the audience who are the main interpreters and the point of the plot’s destination depend significantly on the cultural setting and conditions. If in Shakespearean England the racial prejudices were only becoming dominant, Britain in 18-19 century represented the paramount of biological and cultural racism. Notwithstanding these facts, Othello contains racial prejudices and patterns independent of their later or earlier interpretations because we possess a well-articulated notion of racism. This fact of course can’t obscure Shakespeare’s desire to overcome racism through its articulation.

Maybe he didn’t understand it but his play shows that negative features of character and bad morality are peculiar to every man notwithstanding their cultural or racial background. It may be said that Shakespeare not only reproduced the culture that created racial prejudices to blacks – he attempted to overcome them, though only we, ‘modern’ understand it.

Bartels, E. C (1990). Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashioning of Race. Shakespeare Quarterly 41: 454.

Jones, E. (1965). Othello’s Countrymen. The African in English Renaissance Drama London: Oxford UP.

Michael, N. (1989). Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, and the Hideous in Othello. Shakespeare Quarterly, 40:409.

Shakespeare, W. Othello . (1980) The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 3d edition. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman.

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IvyPanda . 2021. "Racism in Shakespeare’s "Othello"." September 9, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-shakespeares-othello/.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Racism in Shakespeare’s "Othello"." September 9, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-shakespeares-othello/.

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    Jay 2 Text Analysis Background Although Shakespeare made the story of Othello his own, it is assumed that the main textual source for the plot of the play was the Italian Giraldi Cinthio's story The Moor of Venice, in his collection of "A Hundred Tales" published in 1565. Much of the main plot

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    Between William Shakespeare's most expansive and philosophical tragedies— Hamlet and King Lear —is Othello, his most constricted and heart-breaking play. Othello is a train wreck that the audience horrifyingly witnesses, helpless to prevent or look away.

  8. Shakespeare's Othello, the Moor of Venice Research Paper

    Shakespeare's Othello, the Moor of Venice Research Paper Exclusively available on IvyPanda "Is Iago purely evil, or is Othello incredibly gullible? How does such a strong (or gullible) man become trapped in such plotting?" We will write a custom essay on your topic 809 writers online Learn More

  9. More Studies of Shakespeare on Film: A Review Essay

    review of a Shakespeare film in which they compare a part of the text to a segment of the film, as simple a request as it first seemed to me, is fraught with obstacles. Some students will announce flat out that they simply don't know how to do that. At that point, the whole shaky edifice of manipulating.

  10. Othello: Study Guide

    Othello by William Shakespeare, written around 1603, is a tragic play that delves into themes of jealousy, betrayal, and racism. Set in the Venetian Republic, the play follows Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army, and his ensign and antagonist, Iago.

  11. Pragmatic approaches to Shakespeare : essays on Othello, Coriolanus

    This book explores the intersection of linguistics and literature and offers new insight into linguistic methods of literary criticism. The methods include the analysis of questions of requests, topic analysis and its relation to the notion of dominance, and case grammar, with special reference to the concept of agentivity. Readers interested in language will value the contribution of this ...

  12. Essays and articles on Shakespeare's Othello

    Desdemona Character Introduction Othello: Essay Topics Shakespeare's Sources for Othello Shakespeare's Language Shakespeare's Metaphors and Similes Shakespeare's Reputation in Elizabethan England Shakespeare's Impact on Other Writers Why Study Shakespeare? Quotations About William Shakespeare Shakespeare's Boss Play Chronology

  13. Project MUSE

    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:. 196 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 Jolm O'Meara. Othello's Sacrifice: Essays on Shakespeare and Romantic Tradition Guemica. 128. $12.00 The first essay in this volume, 'Othello's Sacrifice as a Dialectic of Faith,' uses an Abraham and Isaac analogy to argue that there is an inward spiritual development in Shakespeare's Moor through which ...

  14. Othello Critical Essays

    Outline I. Thesis Statement: In Shakespeare's Othello, verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony are used to propel the action forward and to intensify the drama as it proceeds . II....

  15. Othello

    In Othello, William Shakespeare creates powerful drama from a marriage between the exotic Moor Othello and the Venetian lady Desdemona that begins with elopement and mutual devotion and ends with jealous rage and death. Shakespeare builds many differences into his hero…

  16. The Tragedy of Othello

    This paper endeavors to discuss what makes Othello a tragic figure and whether or not his tragedy is self inflicted or it is beyond his control. William Shakespeare's introduces the audience to his literal work by highlighting a confrontation between Roderigo, who is depicted as a wealthy and corrupt gentleman, and Iago.

  17. Shakespeare Studies & Criticism

    Latest Books & Journal Articles The Pleasures of Memory in Shakespeare's Sonnets John S. Garrison Published: 13 October 2023 Economies of Early Modern Drama: Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton Anne Enderwitz Published: 17 August 2023 Shakespeare & Collaborative Writing Will Sharpe Published: 30 June 2023

  18. ealousy in Othello

    Most importantly, the role played by Lago who is the villain distinguishes the play from others. Shakespeare addresses different themes in the play and this essay will discuss jealousy as one of the themes addressed in Othello by Shakespeare. Jealousy in Othello. Shakespeare was one of the most prominent writers who ever lived.

  19. Racism, Ethnic Discrimination, and Otherness in Shakespeare's Othello

    This study aims to present a comparative examination of the traces of racism and discrimination in two plays of Shakespeare, Othello and The Merchant of Venice, written in 1603 and around 1598 ...

  20. The African Company and Black Shakespeare in 1820s New York

    Joyce Green MacDonald is the author of this excerpt from The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race, a collection of essays edited by Patricia Akhimie. ... "More than a decade before Ira Aldridge would become the first black actor to play Othello in England, the African Theatre's James Hewlett was active in New York, and played Richard III ...

  21. Othello: Historical Context Essay

    Othello and the War of Cyprus. Shakespeare set Othello against the epic backdrop of an ongoing religious conflict between Christian Republic of Venice and the Muslim Ottoman Empire. This conflict had raged off and on since the mid-fifteenth century, and by the time the play premiered at the beginning of the seventeenth century, four Ottoman-Venetian wars had already taken place.

  22. 110 Othello Essay Topics & Examples

    1 hour! 110 Othello Essay Topics & Examples Updated: Dec 11th, 2023 14 min Most Othello essay samples analyze the plot, thesis, and characters of William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. The tragedy is based on n Cinthio's story 'Un Capitano Moro.'

  23. Manipulation In Othello By Shakespeare Free Essay Example

    Iago's manipulation in Othello (Act Scene ) Pages: 4 (1062 words) Analyzing the Tragic Tale of Othello: A Study of Jealousy and Manipulation Themes Pages: 4 (1173 words) How Othello's Personality Evolves in The Tragedy of Othello by William Shakespeare Pages: 3 (714 words) Explore Shakespeare's dramatic manipulation Pages: 7 (2082 words)

  24. 12 Best Movies You Didn't Realize Are Based on Shakespeare Plays

    William Shakespeare was a late 16th-century English playwright, poet, and actor who is regarded by many as the greatest writer in history. Today, his plays are still performed on stages around the ...

  25. Racism in Shakespeare's "Othello" Research Paper

    Shakespeare, W. Othello. (1980) The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 3d edition. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman. This research paper, "Racism in Shakespeare's "Othello"" is published exclusively on IvyPanda's free essay examples database. You can use it for research and reference purposes to write your own paper.

  26. Othello by William Shakespeare

    Shakespeare's devastating exploration of race, reputation and jealousy, The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice was a popular success when it was first performed during Shakespeare's lifetime, but in the centuries since it has provoked a wide range of responses as successive generations have grappled with the racial identity of the eponymous character.

  27. Othello: Suggested Essay Topics

    Suggested Essay Topics. 2. Discuss the importance of setting in the play, paying close attention to physical details that differentiate Venice from Cyprus and that define the particular character of each location as it pertains to the plot of the play. 3. Discuss the role of Emilia.