Racial Discourse: Black and White | Virginia Mason Vaughn, Clark University
Racial Discourse: Black and White
Virginia Mason Vaughn, Clark University
If virtue no delighted beauty lack, / Your son-in-law in far more fair than black.
Othello (1.3.285-86)
Black/white oppositions permeate Othello. Throughout the play, Shakespeare exploits a discourse of racial difference that by 1604 had become ingrained in the English psyche. From Iago's initial racial epithets at Brabantio's window ("old black ram," "barbary horse") to Emilia's cries of outrage in the final scene ("ignorant as dirt"), Shakespeare shows that the union of a white Venetian maiden and a black Moorish general is from at least one perspective emphatically unnatural. The union is of course a central fact of the play, and to some commentators, the spectacle of the pale-skinned woman caught in Othello's black arms has indeed seemed monstrous.1 Yet that spectacle is a major...
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