- See Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism, 95 , who argues that “Othello ul-
timately embodies the stereotype of Moorish lust and violence—a jealous, murderous hus-
band of a Christian lady.” See also Barthelemy, Black Face, 161 – 62. For a provocative
alternative, which sees Othello’s characterizing Moorishness coming into play, through hu-
moral psychology, in a “hybrid” form, see Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity, 150 – 59. See also
Vitkus, “Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor,” Shake-
speare Quarterly 48 , no. 2 (Summer 1997 ): 145 – 76 , who, acknowledging (and usefully com-
plicating) the hybridity of Othello’s type, concludes that Othello ultimately “exhibits the
worst features of the stereotypical ‘cruel Moor’ or Turk” ( 176 ). - See, for example, Janet Adelman, “Iago’s Alter Ego: Race as Projection in Othello,”
Shakespeare Quarterly 48 , no. 2 (Summer 1997 ): 125 – 44. - Daileader’s emphasis on the gendered part of the Othellomyth is, I think, partic-
ularly apt. On the play’s misogynous discourses, see especially Valerie Wayne, “Historical
Differences: Misogyny and Othello,” in Wayne, ed., 153 – 79 ; Boose, “ ‘Let it be Hid’: The
Pornographic Aesthetic of Shakespeare’s Othello,” in Orlin, ed., 22 – 48 ; and Catherine
Belsey, “Desire’s Excess and the English Renaissance Theatre: Edward II,Troilus and Cres-
side,Othello,” in Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage, ed. Susan Zimmerman
(New York: Routledge, 1992 ), 84 – 102. Boose points out that “it isn’t just Othello who calls
the woman he loves a ‘whore’—it is every male in the drama who has any narrative rela-
tionship with a woman” ( 37 ). - From Thomas Rymer, A Short View of Tragedy( 1693 ), excerpted in Pechter, 202.
- See Boose “ ‘Let it be hid,’ ” on the pornographic, and Neill, 237 – 68 on the result-
ing scopophilia. - Defining work on the ways race and gender intersect in Othelloincludes New-
man,Fashioning Feminity, esp. 71 – 93 ; Neil, “ ‘Unproper Beds’ ”; and Parker, “Fantasies of
‘Race’ and ‘Gender’: Africa, Othelloand Bringing to Light,” in Hendricks and Parker, eds.,
84 – 100. On intersections with class, see especially Peter Stallybrass, “Patriarchal Territories:
The Body Enclosed,” in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourse of Sexual Difference in
Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret W. Ferguson et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986 ), 123 – 42. On the play of race and religion, see especially, Vitkus, “Turning Turk
inOthello.” - On the sexual contexts surrounding these marital tensions, see Robert Matz,
“Slander, Renaissance Discourses of Sodomy, and Othello,”ELH 66 , no. 2 ( 1999 ): 261 – 76. - On the ways the classical and grotesque bodies come into play here, see Stallybrass.
- See “Strategies of Submission: Desdemona, the Duchess, and the Assertion of De-
sire,” Studies in English Literature 36 (Spring 1996 ): 1 – 17 , and “Improvisation and Othello:
The play of race and gender,” in Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s Othello, ed. James R.
Andreas et al. (New York: Modern Language Association, 2005 ), 72 – 79. For a provocative
reading of female will and constancy, see Kathryn Schwarz, “ ‘My intents are fix’d: Con-
stant Will in All’s Well That Ends Well,”Shakespeare Quarterly 58 , no. 2 (Summer 2007 ):
200–27. - Harry Berger, “Impertinent Trifling: Desdemona’s Handkerchief,” in Orlin, ed.,
103 – 24 , 108.
notes to pages 181–185 225