Noelle Camp

Othello and the Issue of Race

In 1961, the Tomas Y. Crowell Company published A Casebook on Othello, edited by Leonard Dean. The casebook contains fourteen critical essays on Shakespeare’s Othello, including ones by Rymer and Coleridge, as well as commentary on each essay. [1] The entire book somehow manages to evade the issue of race almost entirely. Thomas Rymer’s Othello: A Bloody Farce, is reprinted in this anthology. The commentary on his essay, although, effectively avoids the issue of race Rymer flagrantly discusses. On the last page of the book, there is a passing remark that students looking for a research topic on Othello could write on Othello’s race and background (279). In contrast, the Greenwood Press published Understanding Othello, another casebook on Othello intended for students. This casebook was published in 2000 and contains an entire section on “Historical Context: Race and Religion” (Nostbakken 27-76). There is as well, under the “Contemporary Applications” section, an exert, “O. J. Simpson Case Was More About Black and White Than Finding The Killer” (181). Society has clearly, and may it be added finally, reached a period in which racism is not the issue it once was. The English and American governments, as well as communities around the world, are striving to continue a trend in eliminating racism from society. Where then, is Othello left? If the great masterpiece, by one of the English language’s greatest literary figures, is viewed as racist, it might have no place in modern society.  If the play is, or at least can be viewed as, a social commentary on racism, then it can still be accepted in today’s politically correct society. The word “correct” has multiple meanings. Correct can be a substitute for the words right, accurate, and truthful, as well as proper, acceptable, and approved. Is Othello “correct?” Some critics see Othello the Moor as an incorrect representation of blacks, and deem the play as racist. Other critics, with many a famous black actor to back their support, believe Othello is commenting on the injustice of racism, and only an authentic black actor can correctly portray the Moor, who plays the role of a minority.

First published in the First Quarto of 1622, Othello has never been removed from its discourse of race. If, over the past centuries, any particular producers decided to displace Othello from its racial dilemma, it has usually been because the producers were trying to eliminate what they believed to be the racism in the play, or they were trying to emphasize that Othello is not about race. Yet Othello is altogether about race, as the vast majority of producers and critics have acknowledged over the ages. Likewise, the discourse surrounding Othello has never shifted far beyond its ties to race.

            Racism was an issue in Elizabethan England. Often times critics of Othello focus on the racial issues of this time, as it might lend insight to what the playwright himself viewed a “Moor” as. Moors during Shakespeare’s time, as Anthony Barthelemy explains in Black Face Maligned Race, could have referred to blacks as well as whites. The term was loosely applied, and a Moor was any non-Christian (x). This could include Arabs, Asians, Native Americans, and any Muslim, despite ethnicity (x). A black African person was most probably considered a Moor, but a Moor was not necessarily a black African. Modern Shakespearian critics and historians have disproved the theory that there was not a significant enough population of Moors in Shakespeare’s time for him to have written Othello without ever having come into contact with Moors himself (Little 73). However, in Shakespeare Jungle Fever, Arthur Little Jr. attests that Shakespeare is not so influenced, or “driven,” by their existence, than by the Queen’s act to deport blacks, which marked them as “indefensibly different and dangerous” (73). On July 18, 1596, the Privy Council ordered eighty-nine black persons to be deported from England (Little 73). The reasoning in the order was that the foreign blackamoores were taking the white man’s jobs (Kolin, 15). In contrast to this idea of the white English hating blacks is what Philip Kolin, in “Blackness Made Visible”, points out as the “appealing, exotic aura” that Moors in England had during Shakespeare’s time (15). This attributes to the popularity of black characters on the Elizabethan stage (Kolin, 15). Stephen Greenblatt, in The Norton Shakespeare, affirms that during the sixteenth century blacks in England were “treated as exotic curiosities” (22). The example Greenblatt gives is of James I and Anne of Denmark’s wedding, where four young black men were commanded to dance naked in the snow as part of the celebratory festivities, and died shortly after of exposure (22). In Shakespeare Without Women: Representing Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage, Dympna Callaghan sites other documented examples of blacks on stages and in public display during 1500’s as proof of blacks exotic allure (75-76). That the English felt that blacks had an exhibitory quality that derived from their Otherness, did not make them equal as human beings to the English. Circulating during Shakespeare’s time were different popular myths to explain black’s skin color. One was that Africa’s climate, with its heat and sun, blackened the skin in a sort of extreme sunburn (Greenblatt 22). The other myth, that became even more popular, was that African’s blackness was a curse, as they were the descendants of “Chus, the son of Ham, who had, according to Genesis, wickedly exposed the nakedness of the drunken Noah” (Greenblatt 22). This was a popular origin story on why African’s were inherently evil and bad. As Barthelemy appropriately stated, “the association of evil with blackness is so much a part of Western tradition that to catalog it would belabor the point” (Black Face 2). It is enough to say that during the Elizabethan era the association of blackness with evilness had not changed. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, malignity, wickedness, baseness, and sin was associated with the color black (Kaul, 3). Kolin, in “Blackness Made Visible,” discusses how some critics have tried to view Othello’s case as a role of the “other,” or an “outsider,” that does not have anything to do with race (14). Kolin argues that Othello’s role as an outsider “inextricably” tie him to his “racial ancestry […]” (14). Kolin maintains that Shakespeare’s audience “conceivably brought unmitigated racial prejudice with them to the playhouse” (14).   Most of the discourse on Othello during this time is what recent critics only speculate and believe what the discourse of the Elizabethian Era’s perception on Othello and race was. These beliefs on the period’s viewpoint can boil down to two arguments. The first is that Elizabethans viewed Othello as evil, and therefore, Othello was black. The other interpretation could have been that although Black was evil and Othello is Black, Othello broke the racial ideologies of the times by not being evil. 

            Throughout the Restoration and eighteenth-century, Othello was cast as a black without controversy (Kolin 31). It was not until the nineteenth-century that the idea of a black Othello was trades in for Othello being represented as a lighter brown, or tawny, skinned Moor (Kolin 31-32). Kolin analyzes this change in Othello’s color as having origin in Lamb and Coleridge’s criticisms of Othello (31-32). Coleridge wrote “It would be something monstrous to conceive the beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable Negro” (qtd. in Kolin, 32). These famous lines from Coleridge, it seems, cannot escape mention in almost every current essays on Othello and race. Coleridge’s words fall into the heart of the debate, is Othello a “veritable Negro,” or not? If Othello is, is the play is as racist as Coleridge? If Othello is not, then is the play a commentary about racism? The response to Coleridge was to make Othello lighter-skinned. The racial discourse surrounding Othello had changed. Othello is noble, so Othello cannot be black. The first tawny-skinned Othello was played by Edmund Kean.  Mythili Kaul credits Kean as setting the stage, so to speak, as what Shakespeare’s Moor looked liked for nearly a century (7).  In the nineteenth century, the famous white actor Edwin Booth was a brown, as opposed to black, Othello, as well. As Kolin explains, the “tawny” colored make-up Booth wore was more suitable for the Moor that was “racially acceptable to the high Victorian audiences Booth strove to please” (34). Henry Reed lived during the first half or the nineteenth century. In his “Lectures on English History and Tragic Poetry,” Reed maintains “I cannot but think it is an error, which may be traced to either some false critical theory, or more probably to the too literal interpretation of passages in the play,” that Othello is black (Reed 393). Reed rationalizes that if Othello is black, then Desdemona was not virtuous, and the audience would not sympathize with her death, as Shakespeare had intended. He asserts “for if we are brought to believe that this bright, this fair-faced, Venetian lady was wedded to a black, we should almost be tempted to think that the monstrous alliance was filty blotted out in its fearful catastrophe” (Reed 393). “Culture,” Kolin notes, “decided make-up” (33).

            Ira Aldridge was the first major black actor to play Othello in the 1830’s. Aldridge led a successful career, which was in London and Europe, not America. Aldridge was regarded as a sort of novelty, a revelation, and true embodiment of what a real Othello should be (Kaul 15-16). Mythili Kaul, observes that Aldridge was a “rare exception” during eighteen hundreds, and that Othello continued to popularly be portrayed by white actors in light-brown make-up (14). Kaul contends that “the day for the black actor had not yet come—racism was still too potent a force” (15).

            That day was to come when the black actor Paul Robeson, in 1930 London, played Othello. Throughout most of history, Othello has challenged the cultural norms of society. During the first half or so of the twentieth century, probably the most challenged of these norms was the miscegenation the play depicted. In “Blackness Made Visible,” Kolin states that at times Othello has “exposed” prejudices among audiences (4). However, to expose means that prejudices must have been covered to begin with, and as one can safely assume, prejudices have not always been masked. In the 1930’s Paul Robeson, probably with his life in mind, declared, “Othello won’t play in Memphis” (qt. in Kolin 4). Segregation and feelings of racism were high. The New York Times published an article in May of 1930 with the title “Negro Who Kisses White Girl on London Stage Would Expect Protest in America” (Kolin 4).  The white American’s concern was not that Shakespeare might be depicting a black as noble or a General, it was an African American  “with his arm around a white woman” (Kaul 16). Robesone did finally come to America in the forties, and although his performances of Othello received a substantial amount of flack, especially in southern states, many critics accepted him as well (Kaul 16). Kaul tribute’s Robeson as the one who brought the black Othello back (18).  

            By surveying the discourse of Othello and race throughout different time periods, it becomes clear that Othello is a play about race, and has, by and large, always been viewed as such. One way to analyze the critical question is Othello racist or about racism, is by looking at a historical perspective of the play and its productions. However a historical perspective on Othello does not necessarily reveal the answer to this question, but rather what different time period’s answers have been. As Kolin remarks, “Othello has been exploited as a mirror of the times” (5). It would perhaps be possible to look at a history of Racism merely by studying the discourse of Othello. As the discourse on race and racism evolved, so did perceptions on Shakespeare’s Othello.

            Historically, the critics have debated Othello’s color with much fervor. Is the Moor black, or is he a tawny, light brown color? This academic divide directly relates to the racial issue surrounding the play. Critics that have argued for Othello as black have seen the play as racist as well as not racist. Casting Othello as brown-skinned has lead to the same divided conclusions as well. Then, there are always those critics that do not think it matters what color Othello is, that it has nothing to do with what the play is really about.

             In Barbara Everett’s “ ‘Spanish’ Othello: The Making of Shakespeare’s Moor,” the Author argues that Othello was a Spaniard, which would make him light-skinned, olive-complexioned to tawny at the darkest. It seems Everett’s focus is on proving that Othello was not the black African Moor he is commonly perceived as. Everett then asserts that it doesn’t really matter what color Othello is. In case the reader wonders the point of Everett’s argument if this is the situation, she explains that her intention “has been merely to ask some questions about the formative period of one of Shakespeare’s most brilliant plays,” as well as “to challenge our perhaps too simple ‘African’ sense of Othello” (79). The argument for a “Spanish Othello” is in the names of the characters. Both Roderigo and Iago are Spanish names (Everett 67). More importantly is that the name Iago, during Shakespeare’s time, was recognized as the Spanish name for James (Everett 67). St. James, or Santiago, beyond being the patron Saint of Spain, was known for his involvement in an eleventh-century battle against Moors (Everett 67). The Saint was in fact commonly referred to as Santiago Matamoros, or in English, St. James the Moor-killer (Everett 67). The Moor Iago is killing in Othello is not African, but a Spanish Moor (Everett 68-69). After the Moorish conquest of Spain in the eight-century, for many centuries after Spain was a conglomeration of Christian and Islamic inhabitants, with a certain degree of interbreeding among the two races (Everett 69). Following this is the history of the Catholic “Reconquest, ” which lasted from the eleventh century on into the fifteenth century (Everett  69). Othello, then, is not about simply setting a black man among white people, which has been the popular way to view Othello since the Romantic period (Everett 71). Barbara Everett’s “Spanish Othello” is an attempt to dissuade one from the, quite literally, black and white view of Othello. The play however, is still about race. The Spanish, during Shakespeare’s time, might have been prejudice to the light-skinned Moors that lived, and had been living for ages, in Spain. The issue might not be about color, but there nevertheless remains a story about prejudice. In making Othello a non-black Moor, Everett does not adequately deal with the issue or racial traits in the text. Everett claims that the racial slurs only come after characters are mad at Othello, and that they are not to be taken as literal, rather as imprecise insults caused by anger. This argument, however, seems weak. If Shakespeare did not want his Moor as an African, then why would he make references to Othello’s physical characteristics as distinctly stereotypical African traits? Iago is calling Othello thick-lips because Iago perceives Othello to be as ignoble as a black, since Iago hates Othello—but Othello is really an olive-skinned Spaniard? The stretch seems unlikely. 

It is probably a safe claim that the majority of pro-tawny-skinned Othello critics, unlike Barbara Everett, have been racist. It has generally been accepted that if one is not racist, one does not mind Othello being black. However the reverse is not true, as a racist interpretation can view Othello as the evil black Moor he is. Anthony Barthelemy, in “Ethiops Washed White: Moors of the Nonvillainous Type,” illustrates this last case, that the black Othello ultimately fulfills the period’s stereotype of what a Moor was.  Shakespeare’s audience would have associated blackness with an idea of sexuality connected to immorality. Part of the threat of a sexually aggressive black male would have to do with the possibility, and in Othello’s situation, the act of, corrupting a pure, white woman. Barthelemy maintains that in traditional belief, the villainy of blacks can be found in their “sexual desires or intrigues” (“Ethiops” 93).  However in Othello it is not the black character that is obsessed with sex, as it is not the black character that plays the villain (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 93). It is Iago, who has the preoccupation with sex, which conventionally should be given to Othello (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 93). Shakespeare does not follow the conventions of the times (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 93). Instead, he spreads what were racial stereotypes of blacks among the other non-black principal characters (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 93). Barthelemy analyzes how Iago continually returns to prurient thoughts, and only eventually stimulates similar sexual anxieties in Othello (“Ethiops” 94). Iago tries to make Othello look prurient in the eyes of the other characters, when it is Iago, and clearly not Othello, who is preoccupied with sexual thoughts and anxieties. It is conceivable to see how interpretations of Othello being a play about racism can derive from noticing Othello’s resistance to a stereotype, and Iago’s attempt to propel Othello into it. Othello, in fact, tries his hardest to not conform to this role, and has possesses the opposite of sexual prowess, which is his sexual anxiety, or the fear of being viewed as sexual.

 It is Desdemona that provides the complicated twist in the play. Desdemona “is no innocent virtue,” but rather freely expresses her sexual desire for her husband, in her plea to accompany him on his voyage (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 94).Sexuality should be seen as sinful, and indeed it is in Iago’s case. However, when Desdemona, the loving wife, possesses sexuality, it becomes Othello’s “redemption,” and Othello denying her, ironically becomes his “damnation” (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 94-95). “It is so unlikely a place as Desdemona’s embrace,” Barthelemy relates, “Shakespeare places for Othello safety from sin, temptation, and, ultimately, damnation” (“Ethiops” 94).

The stereotypical black Moor, for the Elizabethans, would have sexual power. This was seen as threatening not only in the case of a black man having relations with a white woman, but in that a black man could overpower a white man, much as a slave overpowering a master (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 95). Othello has achieved military power, and wants to make sure that the white Venetian leaders do not translate his success into sexual prowess (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 95). In his attempt to free himself from his stereotype, Othello tries to eliminate any threat his blackness might assume towards the state (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 95). What causes Othello’s downfall is when Iago persuades Othello that Othello should be jealous of Cassio (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 96). As Barthelemy shows, Othello, in fighting against the stereotypical Moor, has denied sexual interest to the point of being categorized as impotent (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 96-97). Othello begins to move into the stereotypical role he tried so hard to reject by becoming fixated on sexual thought (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 97). These sexual thoughts were not about his own lust, but in his all consuming thoughts of Cassio and Desdemona’s imagined relationship (Barthelemy, “Ethiops” 96). Barthelemy points out that Othello never becomes a pure villain, in the sense that Othello does not draw pleasure from his villainy (“Ethiops” 99). The true villain, if viewed in these terms, would of course be Iago, who pushed Othello into the stereotype of a Moor. In addressing what he thinks to be Othello’s tragic flaw and ending tragedy, Anthony Barthelemy arrives at a decisive conclusion to the problem of Othello and race: Othello is a racist play. Barthelemy insists that even though Shakespeare manipulated a stereotype, “always there to undermine the most positive aspects […] of a noble black is Othello’s lapse into the stereotype” (“Ethiops” 101).

In “Literature and Racism: The Example of Othello,” S. E. Ogude comments on influential historical criticism about Othello that focuses on the racist attitudes of different periods. Tracing the historical criticism of Othello makes evident that even if one wants to argue that Othello is not about racism, critics and audiences have made that the focus of the play. The concern here for Ogude is that the majority of influential criticism in the past not only addresses the issue of race, but is racist. In his own interpretation of the play, Ogude sees Othello’s love for Desdemona as only skin deep (160). Othello loves Desdemona for her whiteness alone. To support his claim, Ogude sites several references Othello makes about Desdemona’s fairness (161). Ogude uses this interpretation of Othello’s love towards Desdemona to suggest that the play is best seen as “an authentic racial tragedy” (162). S. E. Ogude does not just see it as a racial play: Shakespeare’s Othello is a racist play. Contemporary white critics are choosing to ignore the issue of racism that is on Othello, Ogude insists (165). Ogude accounts for the escalating “explosive nature of the racial problem in modern times” to be the reason for white critics avoiding race in Othello (165). Ogude’s essay is a part of the book Othello: New Essays by Black Writers, published in 1996. Ogude, it seems, is under the impression that only black writers who are exploring the issue of race in Othello. The view on contemporary white critics that Ogude holds does not seem justifiable in the twenty-first century. A Casebook on Othello, which was first printed in the early sixties, is an example of white critics avoiding the issue of race in Othello. However society and discourse has changes, arguably to a significant amount, over the pasty forty or so years.

            Barthelemy and Ogude see Othello as corroborating conventional cultural stereotypes, Edward Washington understands Othello to not confirm but reconfigure those stereotypes (168). Othello’s blackness is comparable to Lear’s age, Shylock’s Jewishness, or Richard III’s deformity (Washington 169). Othello’s blackness “provides the rational for why he thinks and acts the way he does in the given dramatic context,” but it is not his blackness in itself that causes his tragedy (Washington 169). Othello, indisputably, encounters racism from other character in the play, such as Iago, Roderigo, and Brabantio (Washington 171). Washington suggests that Othello, it seems, is not new to Venetian society, but rather is an established and respected figure (171). It is impossible for Othello to have survived in a racist society without having developed his reputation and respect (Washington 171). The foundation for Othello’s reputation is his military prowess, but his personality is what solidifies it (Washington 171-172). Washington asserts that Othello “achieves this acceptance by his politic behavior (172). Washington gives the example of Othello’s awe-inspiring stories, that while they focus on all his accomplishments, Othello includes “a pathos that gains him generous sympathy and tolerance from the Venetians (172).

Othello also tries to break from what the other characters would perceive as stereotypical blackness in “downplaying his sexual desires” (174). It is for these reasons that, contrary to popular belief, Othello is not isolated from Venetian society, but on the contrary he fits in rather well (Washington 174). Othello wants t fit in, he does not want to be an outsider, a black other. Although he has already established himself well in his society, it is his marriage that cements this acquisition (Washington 175). In “ ‘At the Door of Truth’: The Hollowness of Signs in Othello,” Edward Washington argues that it is Othello’s obsession with his image that is his tragic flaw. This has a relationship to his blackness, but it is not because Othello is black that his ending is tragic. Othello is known for his military accomplishments, but in the actual play his image of military prowess is not backed up with the kind of action the audience might expect from a war hero (177). Othello cannot even kill Iago when he tries to (Washington 177). The only person Othello manages to do physical harm against is a woman, which does not count “valorous” (177).

Washington then gives the example of Othello’s sexual power in the play (177). “Despite all the talk about sexuality in Othello,” Washington states, “there is little of it in the relationship between Othello and Desdemona” (177). It can only be speculated if Othello and Desdemona ever consummate their marriage. There is an image of Othello’s sexuality, with no concrete evidence to uphold it. Othello, Washington contends, has “a general propensity to treat abstract images as concrete realities (178). This is the heart of Othello’s flaw. In the bedchamber scene, while Desdemona is still sleeping Othello contemplates sleeping with he (Washington 178). Othello praises her with “Petrarchan” words of love while she lies asleep, as she is only a beautiful image (178). It is once she awakens that Othello shrinks from “the prospect of love made concrete and actual,” and kills her (Washington 178). 

Othello only perceives his environment as hostile. The leaders of the States support Othello and side with him. Othello’s leaders have confidence in Othello’s military capabilities, believe him to be a good match for Desdemona, and not one leader of the State condemns Othello when his crime is exposed (Washington 179). Lodovico has more sorrow than anger at that point for Othello (Washington 179).  It is not only the Venetian leaders that accept the Moor, Venetian society, as a whole, is more tolerant of heterogeneity than Othello understands it to be (Washington 180). Desdemona, as  “the center of moral rightness and truth in the play,” is not racist and provides a model of how society should behave towards the Moor (Washington 180). It seems too bad that critics and audiences throughout the centuries could not view Othello as Desdemona does. Desdemona does not even fall into racist views once Othello turns bad (Washington 181). Desdemona refuses to see Othello’s racial Otherness as a source for his uncharacteristically hateful behavior towards her once he believes her to be unfaithful. If the society that Othello lives in is far more accepting to the Moor as he realizes, why does he perceive himself to be in a hostile environment? Washington explains that it is Iago who is the source of the racism, and the other character’s racism derives from him (181). Iago is, after all, the villain. While other critics seem to believe that it is Othello’s blackness that accounts by and large for Othello’s problems, Washington shows that it is also the villain’s doing. Iago has such as strong influential and manipulating power over the other characters that Othello perceives society to be his enemy, when really it is Iago (Washington 181). Othello does not separate reality from the false impression of racism Iago fabricates (Washington 181).

Although Othello realizes he made a mistake in killing his wife, and in so realizes he did wrong he does not comprehend his tragic flaw (Washington 183). Othello never recognizes how his reliance on images plays a part in his downfall (Washington 183-184). This leads Washington to questioning Othello’s possibility of redemption at the end of the play (184-185). Does Othello kills himself because he has no hope that the Venetian State will forgive him, when in truth it possibly could? (Washington 185). Edward Washington concludes his essay though with restating his proposal that Othello’s tragedy is in “Othello’s dependence on image at the expense of truth, reality, and hope […]” (187). Thus, Othello’s fall is not because he lapses into a stereotypical black evilness, but rather dramatically tragic (Washington 187). There is tragedy is that Othello only perceives he has fallen into the stereotype, when in fact he has not. This tragedy partially came about because he is a Moor, but it is Othello’s perceptions, and not his color, that dooms him to ruin. Othello might be a confused Minority, but he does not fall into any conventional stereotypes of a Moor to mark Othello as a racist play.

Now, in the Contemporary and Postmodern Period, critics are not writing racially prejudice interpretations of Othello. Instead, critics as well as theatre persons are struggling to overcome past criticism. Can Othello, which has enjoyed an audience that saw the Moor as a “black devil,” now be viewed in a different light, as a play that deals with racism, but does not uphold racist views? In previous eras, criticism on Othello was, for the most part, tainted by racist views. Edward Washington makes evident that while Othello is a Moor that has a tragic fate, it is not Othello’s color that is the distinct cause of his demise. S. E. Ogude is hasty to say that a black man playing Othello “a travesty” and “an obscenity,” since “the Negro always ends up a ‘nigger’! (163). Othello thinks he is a distinguished General, only to discover his “niggerness”, Ogude believes. Othello begin deceived that he is an accepted part of society ( Ogude 166). In contrast, Playthell Benjamin, in “Did Shakespeare Intend Othello to Be Black? A Meditation on Blacks and the Bard,” Benjamin notes that there were a small group of blackamoors in England during Shakespeare’s time who “were accepted into the highest circles of the land” (96). The famous Lucy Negro, or Black Lucy, was a black actress in a street theatre. There is evidence that Shakespeare might have even felt love-struck for heart one point (Benjamin 97). Benjamin even suggests that Black Lucy could possible be the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Benjamin maintains Shakespeare was captivated by the notion of interracial sex, and quite possibly mesmerized by an actual black woman (97-98). Benjamin does not believe Shakespeare to have been racist, or written a racist play. Benjamin furthermore declares, “For the maximum dramatic effect,” only “real actors, by which I mean black actors, should be cast in the roles of Othello, Aaron, and Caliban […]” (98). In comparing Ogude to Benjamin, Barthelemy to Washington, the great academic divide regarding Othello and race can be demonstrated. Still Everett, maintaining that Othello is a Spaniard and that color doesn’t really matter, further complicated the issue. The discourse of race has continued to change and evolves dramatically over the past centuries, and now contemporary critics are left to analyze where Othello fits in modern ideologies of race. Some critics seem to wonder why the discourse surrounding Othello has to be almost entirely on Race. Perhaps this question can be answered in simple terms: Othello has a dark-skinned protagonist marry, kiss, and then kill a white woman. Not only does a dark-skinned protagonist marry, kiss, and kill a white woman, but the play is centered around this action. This is the plot of the tragedy. There is encouragement in the fact that an audience consisting of the new generation, or “X” generation, can watch a production of Othello, with a black actor cast as Othello, and not even realize the play was about race. If children now do not see interracial marriage as unordinary—forget even about immoral, then are critics belaboring the issue of race in Othello? Othello has remained a volatile work for so long due to its challenging of social norms. Is Othello still challenging norms in the twenty-first century? One perspective is to look at different cultural group’s relation to time. The dominant culture’s attitude is often in favor of forgetting the past. The dominant culture takes the stance of leaving the past behind, and “getting over it. In this case “getting over it would be the racist attitudes critics for so long had towards Othello. Minority cultures, on the other hand, often try to reconnect to the past in an effort to heal an ancient wound. Racial segregation in the United States continued into the first half of the twentieth century. Centuries of racism, as manifested in Othello, unfortunately cannot be eradicated in a few decades of equality. Many would argue that racial equality still does not fully exist. Othello, however, does not challenge traditions in society like it once did. What could be ironic is if Othello’s color is not even the key to his downfall, but rather Othello has a flaw extraneous to his color.

Works Cited

Barthelemy, Anthony Gerald. Black Face Maligned Race. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987.

Barthelemy, Anthony Gerald. “Ethiops Washed White: Moors of the Nonvillainous Type.” Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Othello. Ed. Anthony Gerald Barthelemy. New York: G. K. Hall and Co, 1994.

Benjamin, Playthell. “Did Shakespeare Intend Othello to BE Black? A Meditation on Blacks and the Bard. “ Othello: New Essays by Black Writers. Ed. Mythili Kaul. Washington, D. C.: Howard UP, 1997.

Callaghan, Dympna. Shakespeare Without Women: Representing Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Dean, Leonard F., ed. A Casebook on Othello. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co, 1961-1969.

Everett, Barbara, “‘Spanish” Othello: The Making of Shakespeare’s Moor.” Shakespeare and Race. Ed. Catherine M. S. Alexander and Stanley Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.

Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: W. W. Norton and Co, 1997.

Kaul, Mythili. “Background: Black or Tawny? Stage Representations of Othello from 1604 to the Present.” Othello: New Essays by Black Writers. Ed. Mythili Kaul. Washington, D. C.: Howard UP, 1997.

Kolin, Philip C. “Blackness Made Visible.” Othello: New Critical Essays. Ed. Philip C. Kolin. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Little, Arthur L. Jr. Shakespeare Jungle Fever. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2000.

Nostbakken, Faith, ed. Understanding Othello. Literature in Context Series. Westpoint, Connecticut: Greenwood P, 2000.

Ogude, S. E. “Literature and Racism: The Example of Othello.” Othello: New Essays by Black Writers. Ed. Mythili Kaul. Washington, D. C.: Howard UP, 1997.

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