Romeo and Juliet 959bosom” (1.2.71) of Othello. Othello the African is
doubly indicted here as both disgustingly inferior
to his European rivals by virtue of his dark skin and
diabolically sinister by virtue of the dark magic he
has undoubtedly brought from his far-off homeland.
At the same time, the most vicious racial attacks
against Othello come from characters whom Shake-
speare shows to be stupid (Roderigo), arrogant (Bra-
bantio), or simply villainous (Iago). Indeed, the very
fact that Othello is so much a part of mainstream
Venetian life—he is their most trusted general and
invited to the homes of the most powerful and
influential—suggests that his racial difference may
not be as important as some of the vicious slurs
might suggest. In response to Othello’s magnificent
defense of himself, the duke goes so far as to sug-
gest that Othello’s racial difference is superficial and
that his mind and character effectively eliminate any
substantial difference: “Your son-in-law is far more
fair than black” (1.3.285). The duke’s line is still
suspect, of course, because it implies that Othello is
an exception, that fair is still, in general, better than
black, but it does demonstrate that the Venetians,
and the play in general, refuse to unquestioningly
accept racial stereotypes.
Nonetheless, throughout the play, Othello, even
though it is not an explicit insult, is repeatedly
referred to as “the Moor,” a linguistic token of his
apparent and unalterable difference. This difference
is not left in the abstract, either. Iago uses Othello’s
status as an outsider to manipulate Othello when
he tells the Moor that he does not understand the
sexual subtleties of Venetian women.
As for Othello himself, he uses his status as a
Christian to suggest a sense of common identity
and purpose with the other soldiers. When he finds
them brawling, for instance, he asks rhetorically,
“Are we turned Turks?” (2.3.169) Later, however,
Othello seems to play on his status as a non-
European to try to frighten Desdemona into telling
him what has become of her handkerchief, saying
that the handkerchief had been bewitched by an
Egyptian charmer and that its loss would bring ruin
to their marriage. Desdemona’s stunned response—
“Is’t possible?”—suggests that just as she was once
enthralled by Othello’s strange stories of strange
peoples, she has now become horrified by them;
indeed, she has become a horrifying part of them. At
the same time, Othello has, perhaps without realiz-
ing it, confirmed the very charge against him—using
magic in the realm of love—that he once defended
himself against so artfully.
If, in the middle parts of the play, Othello slips
into the very racist stereotype that he had initially
resisted, in the end he seeks to reaffirm his status
as a defender of Christian Europe against its infidel
enemies. His suicide is accompanied by a strange
request for the relation of one more tale: a time
when he defended a Venetian by killing a Turk-
ish enemy. Even at these last moments though,
Othello likens himself to the very “circumcised dog”
(5.2.356) that he killed as he murders himself. The
implication at the play’s end is that finally Othello
sees himself as both a foreign enemy of Christian
Europe and its sworn defender.
Todd PettigrewSHakESPEarE, wiLLiam Romeo
and Juliet (1597)
First performed in 1594 or 1595 and published
in 1597, Romeo and Juliet was perhaps a novelty
in Shakespeare’s day. His audience expected to
find young lovers in comedy, wooden characters in
the tradition of 16th-century theater. In this play,
though, the young playwright moves his lovers to
center stage, dramatizing their tragic destinies and
adding depth to their characters.
The lovers break free from the woodenness of
their earlier counterparts—and from the conven-
tional adults around them—in part through their
speech, which is filled with the intense language of
lyric poetry, striking images, and conceits—startling
and original comparisons between dissimilar things.
Both characters, at first, move like automatons
through the conventional world of early modern
Italian culture. Romeo is infatuated with the dis-
interested Rosalind and endures the jibes of his
friends, his levelheaded confidant Benvolio and the
loquacious and bawdy Mercutio among them. For
her part, Juliet is the obedient daughter in a house-
hold headed by the fair-minded but irascible Capu-
let and his cold wife. Juliet is much more at home
with the earthy and ribald Nurse, and she seems