unwittingly, by choice or force, having or knowing no other way in; it also
raises the issue of where Shakespeare stands as his author—whether he writes
Europe’s voice into the Moor’s wittingly or unwittingly, strategically exposing
or endorsing Othello’s cultural co-optation or naively exhibiting his own.^63
Within recent scholarship, the speech has become one of the most controver-
sial in the play, precisely because it invokes the exoticism that appears in Eu-
rope’s colonialist discourse and can work there to prime the colonial subject
for ideological, if not actual, alienation: here at a critical moment when Oth-
ello speaks most directly of and for himself, scholars have stressed, he seems
to “submit” to a narrative that is Europe’s, and not his own.^64
And yet, I would argue, the play gives no indication that these are
Europe’s terms. That is, while Shakespeare clearly—and, it seems, self-
consciously—borrows his exotic images from European texts, he does not sit-
uate those images as either his or Venice’s prescription for what the Moor
should be. Tell what extravagant and wheeling stories he may, the Othello
who appears before us is notan exotic adventurer, fending off cannibals and
Anthropophagi and insolent foe. He is a general for the Venetian army, who
has just married a Venetian noblewoman and established a decidedly domes-
tic and potentially permanent tie to Venice. While the method he has chosen
(elopement) is unorthodox, the social structure into which he has written
himself (marriage) inherently is not. If spectators and scholars looking just to
the “cruel hands” of Moors in Hakluyt, the “manie thousands of imminent
dangers”in Pory’s trailer, or, for that matter, Muly Mahamet or Aaron are sur-
prised by Othello’s unstinting professionalism and conventionality, Venice’s
leading political operatives are unanimously not. To the contrary, the duke ex-
pects the Moor to be a “valiant” general, better versed than anyone on the
“fortitude” of Cyprus ( 1. 3. 221 ) and insists that, to defend Cyprus, “opinion,”
the “sovereign mistress of effects,” prefers Othello as the “safer” choice over
the “substitute” (Montano) already stationed there ( 1. 3. 222 – 24 ). Montano
himself anticipates that the Moor will prove a “brave” and “worthy governor”
( 2. 1. 39 , 31 ). Cassio waits for Othello to “give renewed fire to our extincted
spirits, / And bring all Cyprus comfort” ( 2. 1. 81 – 82 ). Even Brabantio, after
dreaming of the “accident” with Desdemona, has done nothing to prevent it
until Roderigo, as it were, lights his fire ( 1. 1. 141 ). In fact, the duke expects
Othello ultimately to gain the senator’s “favour” as Desdemona’s “lover” as
well as to “privately determine” the disposition of his new wife to everyone’s
satisfaction ( 1. 3. 199 – 200 , 273 ).
Othello’s life story thus stands at an exotic remove from who he is as well
176 chapter seven