and ideological investment in “the world,” was therefore short-lived, it was
not short sighted. From AlcazartoOthello, the representation of the Moor
presses on the boundaries of culture, exposing “all the world” as a work in
progress, improvised, for better or for worse, from the unpredictable variables
of exchange. Even in the face of blackness, early modern dramatists aligned
the Moor with multiple and multiplex identities. And while it would be com-
mon to imagine turning Turk, or to washing an Ethiop white, there could be
no comparable tag line for the Moor. For ultimately, to speak of the Moor “as
he was” at the turn of the sixteenth century, when England was making its
own way in the world, was necessarily to acknowledge the complexity and
contingency of cultural identity and the provisional meanings of place. In the
end, within the dramatic and historical texts that were bringing the Moor’s
story into prominence in England, the Moor is never simply the representa-
tive of a racial or cultural difference, but a figure whose dynamic engagement
with Europe makes race and culture continually different.
194 conclusion