suggested.^30 However much the earlier play raises to question “which is the
merchant here? and which the Jew?”, however much it understands the almost
inevitable fungibility of identity in a world driven by mercantilic credit and
exchange, the Venice of The Merchantholds and upholds “laws” against the
“alien” and puts them inflexibly into action against the Jew (MV 4. 1. 348 – 49 ).
In Belmont, a Moroccan prince can stand beside an assortment of European
lords (Neapolitan, Spanish, French, German, Scottish, English) as a possible
suitor for its globally acclaimed bride. But in Venice, not only is the mixed
marriage between a Christian and a Jew cause for secrecy, anxiety, and exile; a
Jew’s attempt to lay claim to law renders him a disenfranchised outlaw. It is
not clear whether or not Shakespeare knew in 1596 that early in that same cen-
tury ( 1516 ) Venice had become the site of the first official Jewish ghetto; the
available source, Thomas’s History, which emphasizes the liberty of Venice’s
strangers, makes no mention of this past.^31 Still, The Merchant’s Venice is
clearly a place where unprecedented extremes of segregation and discrimina-
tion could happen, and do—at least around the Jew.
The Moor, of course, is not the Jew, even though that figure (in the form
of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta) provides an important model for characterizations
of Moors. Set Barabas next to Aaron, the Jew who works behind the scenes
next to the Moor who acts in the proximity of the court, for example, and the
Moor stands out as having significantly more leverage and legitimacy (though
not necessarily more success). So too if we set The Merchant of Venice, whose
Jew is legally outlawed, next to Othello, whose Moor is not. In Othellothere
are no laws against the alien. The Venetian duke actually stops the irate sena-
tor, Brabantio, from throwing the “bitter letter” of the “bloody book of law”
at the Moor ( 1. 3. 68 – 69 ). Still, Othello’s opening scene displays “a society ca-
pable of treating any stranger, any ethnic outsider with the same calculating
cruelty it meted out to Shylock,” as Neill has argued.^32 The initial exchange
between Iago, Roderigo, and Brabantio is, after all, a veritable orgy of outrage,
stereotype, and defamation. When the play begins Iago is working to con-
vince a skeptical Roderigo that he, Iago, really does “hold [the Moor] in [his]
hate” ( 1. 1. 6 ). Roderigo is angry at Iago for withholding crucial knowledge
(that Desdemona and Othello have eloped, we later learn) and for serving the
Moor, and he is none too fond of “gondolier[s],” “knave[s] of common hire”
( 1. 1. 124 ). Brabantio has “charged” Roderigo “not to haunt about my doors,”
declares Iago a “villain,” and laments a daughter who “deceives me / Past
thought” ( 1. 1. 97 , 117 , 164 – 65 ). And Iago not only hates the Moor; he derogates
the “Florentine” Cassio and despises “duteous and knee-crooking knave[s]”
162 chapter seven