notes
introduction
- Quotations from this play are from William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of
Venice, ed. Michael Neill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 ). Except where stated
otherwise, references to Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore
Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974 ). - See Neill’s appendix ( 464 – 65 ) on the debate over these well-known textual alter-
natives. - See Neill’s note to the line ( 5. 2. 338 ), which suggests the echoes in Venetian
histories. - The glosses here are from Leslie Brown, ed., The New Shorter Oxford English Dic-
tionary, ( 1973 ; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993 ). - Eldred D. Jones, Othello’s Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance
Drama(London: Oxford University Press, 1965 ) and The Elizabethan Image of Africa
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1971 ). - Michael Neill, “ ‘Mulattos,’ ‘Blacks,’ and ‘Indian Moors’: Othello and Early Mod-
ern Constructions of Difference,” Shakespeare Quarterly49,no. 4(Winter 1998 ): 364 ,
reprinted in Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics, and Society in English Renaissance
Drama(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000 ), 269 – 84 , which I cite hereafter. See
also my essay, “Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashionings
of Race,” Shakespeare Quarterly41,no. 4(Winter 1990 ): 434 – 35. - Neill, “ ‘Mulattos,’ ” 365.
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., ed., “Race,” Writing, and Difference(Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1985 ). See especially the “Editor’s Introduction: Writing ‘Race’ and the
Difference It Makes,” 1 – 20. - G. K. Hunter, English Drama, 1586–1642: The Age of Shakespeare(Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1997 ), 79. - Thomas Dekker, Lust’s Dominion; or, The Lascivious Queen, ed. J. Le Grey Brere-
ton ( 1657 ; Louvain, Belgium: Librarie Universitaire, Uystpruyst, 1931 ), 154 – 55. - Citations from The Battle of Alcazarare from The Works of George Peele, ed. A. H.
Bullen, vol. 1 ( 1888 ; Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1966 ).