Othello
BackgroundInformation
TheSourceofOthello
Shakespeare delighted in taking old stories, adding his own particular brand of genius, and creating something
new and better. He based Othello on a story in a collection of tales, called Hecatonimithi, written in 1565 by
Giraldi Cinthio, an Italian. A short synopsis of the original story gives some indication of how Shakespeare
merely borrowed stories and made them his own.
• The heroine, called Disdemona, falls in love with a Moor. Her family agrees reluctantly to her marriage
with him, and the couple lives together in Venice for awhile.
• The Moor (given no name) is sent to command the troops in Cyprus. The Moor and Disdemona travel
there together, and it's in Cyprus that the ensign (Shakespeare's lago) plots against them.
• The ensign is in love with Disdemona. He feels that her rejection of him comes from her love of the
captain (Shakespeare's Cassio). Therefore, the ensign's plot is against Disdemona, not the Moor.
• The captain loses his job when he attempts a fight with another soldier; he isn't drunk, and the character
of Roderigo has no counterpart.
• The ensign steals Disdemona's handkerchief (while she is holding his child) and places it in the captain's
house. The captain finds it and tries to return it to Desdemona, but he leaves quickly when he hears the
Moor's voice.
• Together, the Moor and the ensign kill Disdemona by hitting her on the head with a sandbag, and then
making the roof collapse to make it look like an accident, The Moor is eventually killed by a relative of
Disdemona, and the ensign is tortured to death for another crime. The ensign's wife has known the story
all along.
By making the Moor the center of his tragedy, Shakespeare created a character of nobility and sympathy. (The
Moor in the Cinthio tale is unsympathetic.) He transformed an ugly little tale of sexual jealousy into a character
study of a good man who, for all his virtue, is caught in a trap of evil and can't escape. It was Shakespeare's
genius to take the stuff of melodrama and transform it into tragedy of the highest.
WhatwasaMoor?
A Moor was a Muslim of mixed Arab and Berber descent. Berbers were North African natives who eventually
accepted Arab customs and Islam after Arabs invaded North Africa in the Seventh Century A.D. The term has
been used to refer in general to Muslims of North Africa and to Muslim conquerors of Spain. The word Moor
derives from a Latin word, Mauri, used to name the residents of the ancient Roman province of Mauritania in
North Africa. To refer to Othello as a "black Moor" is not to commit a redundancy, for there are white Moors as
well as black Moors, the latter mostly of Sudanese origin.
Racism
In the 17th century, racism was an accepted part of public life; people of color were often thought of as
"savage." Shakespeare would have encountered no societal pressures against presenting such ideas. Yet he
doesn't actually portray Othello as inferior. Although Iago and Roderigo make him sound despicable in their
disparaging first-act conversation, Shakespeare then shows Othello as a well-spoken and highly regarded
military leader who has won the hand of an aristocratic woman. Iago's treachery is what ultimately tears him
apart. Does Shakespeare mean to portray Othello as inferior? Or does he show Othello's internalization of the
harsh prejudice against him, ultimately believing himself incapable of winning Desdemona's love?
