Cyprus, where an ensign (“l’Alfiero”), “a man of the most depraved nature in
the world” (“della più scelerata natura, che mai fosse huomo del mondo”), has
been stationed ( 378 ). Unfortunately for all involved, the ensign falls in love
with Disdemona. But because she repeatedly rebuffs his advances (he thinks
because she desires the captain, the Cassio figure, instead), his love turns to
“bitterest hate” (“acerbissimo odio”) ( 379 ). Intent, above all else, on ruining her
(“intento al danno di questa misera Donna”), the ensign therefore plots to oblit-
erate the two obstacles in his way: the captain and the marriage ( 379 – 80 ).
Along the way (actually very late in the tale), the ensign must destroy the Moor
as well; but it is Disdemona’s unyielding passion that is the ensign’s prompt,
her ruin that is his goal. Tellingly, after undoing the Moor, the ensign goes on
to defame and accost another of his countrymen, who is decidedly not a Moor.
In Cinthio, Venice does register the Moor’s alterity. Although the open-
ing lines introduce the Moor as “molto valoroso,” Disdemona’s love grounded
on his “virtù,”the narrator subsequently notes that her parents “strove all
they could to induce her to take another husband” (“facessero ciò, che poterono,
perche, ella altro marito si prendesse, che lui”) ( 377 ). In the absence of any
other reason, we have only his Moorish identity to suspect. In addition,
when the horrible consequences of the ensign’s deceptions are discovered (the
captain loses a leg, Disdemona, her life), the Signoria’s first response is to tor-
ture the Moor for “the cruelty inflicted by a [B]arbarian upon a lady of their
city” (“intesa la crudeltà, usata dal Barbaro, in una lor cittadina”) ( 388 ). In the
Italian text “Barbarian” is a proper noun, not the incriminating common
noun, “barbarian,” which appears in most of the English translations cur-
rently appended to Othello.^8 The reference works nonetheless to up the ante
on the offense; that a foreigner (whose Barbarian identity comes into the nar-
rative only when his crimes come out) inflicted “cruelty” on one of “their”
city seems to make matters worse. The Moor is never exonerated; he is tor-
tured, imprisoned, banished, and then killed by Disdemona’s kin, as, the
narrator adds, “he merited” (“com’ egli meritava”) ( 388 ). Still, it is the ensign,
and not the Moor, whom the story condemns as “the wickedest of all bad
men” (“peggiore di tutti gli scelerati”), the ensign, and not the Moor, whose
designs produce social trauma and moral disdain within the fiction and
whose destiny provides its didactic vehicle ( 387 ). Cinthio’s ensign is actually
the one to strike the fatal blows against Disdemona, with a loaded sock, be-
fore he and the Moor bring the house (literally, the ceiling) down on her. If
cultural dislocation helps catalyze the catastrophe, it is the ensign’s displace-
ment from, not the Moor’s displacement within, Venice that is at fault. The
Othelloand the Moor of Venice 157