ticular “Moor of Venice” as the ineluctable destiny of theMoor, any Moor, in
Venice. We could imagine, that is, that Shakespeare attributes to Othello be-
haviors, desires, or humors that are essentially, categorically “Moorish” and
that, though they may have been repressed or suppressed for a while within
Venice, inevitably return to prove him vulnerable and his presence untenable
there.^71 Even if we grant that the Moor’s difference initially gives him lever-
age within Venice, we could argue that, under the pressure of Iago’s racist dis-
course, Othello learns rather to understand that difference as a liability and to
read himself categorically and derogatorily as Moor.^72 Either way, whether the
ending produces an Othello who finally is, or merely believes himself to be,
an unaccommodated black stranger, his Moorishness nonetheless would ex-
plain his tragic transformation, now “graz[ing]” and “pierc[ing]” his “solid
virtue” where before, Lodovico asserts, “shot of accident” and “dart of chance”
could not ( 4. 1. 258 – 60 ).
Iago, after all, picks up in Cyprus where Brabantio left off in Venice and
encourages Othello to view Desdemona’s miscegenous desire as “rank,”
“foul,” and “unnatural” ( 3. 3. 236 – 37 ). Iago first suggests, by not suggesting,
that beneath her love she “seemed” to “fear [Othello’s] looks” ( 3. 3. 210 ). He
then seizes on Othello’s ambiguous hypothesis that, though he “do[es] not
think but Desdemona’s honest,” “nature” has somehow “err[ed] from itself ”
( 3. 3. 229 , 231 ), and craftily pins that erring on her choice of a spouse not“of
her own clime, complexion, and degree” ( 3. 3. 234 ). He further cautions Oth-
ello to anticipate that Desdemona’s “will” ultimately “may fall to match you
with her country forms, / And happily repent” ( 3. 3. 240 – 42 ). Miscegenation is,
of course, our term, not Shakespeare’s, and here the articulation of a cross-race
union is blurred into the vaguer denotation of “country forms” and difference
of “degree.” Still, these insinuations prompt Othello toward a self-consciousness
about his distinctive skin color and, in that sense, his race. When he first tries
to understand Desdemona’s alleged betrayal, he reasons: “Haply,...I am
black / And have not those soft parts of conversation / That chamberers have”
( 3. 3. 266 – 68 )—a marked turn from his earlier more positive, even prideful as-
sociation of his “rude” “speech” with his all-consuming military career
( 1. 3. 82 ). He does speculate on an alternative reason (his age) only to dismiss
that, and maybe everything, as “not much,” and he may initially be grasping
at straws here to make credible what otherwise seems incredible ( 3. 3. 269 ).
Nonetheless, he later uses the blackness of his “own face” to declare Desde-
mona’s “name,” once “as fresh / As Dian’s visage,” morally “begrimed and
black” ( 3. 3. 388 – 89 ), and he calls on “black Vengeance” to replace his “fond
Othelloand the Moor of Venice 181