SOURCE: “The Importance of Othello's Race,” in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol. XII, No. 2, December, 1977, pp. 153-61.

[In the following essay, Cowhig argues that race is essential to the meaning of Othello.]

There has recently been general agreement amongst critics that Shakespeare conceived of Othello as a Negro, and not as the tawny Arab on whom Coleridge insisted with such vehemence. But there is a considerable gap between critical opinion and the ideas and assumptions that linger on, even when people have some degree of specialized interest. It is more than usually so where Othello's colour is concerned. To speak of a conspiracy of silence might be to use too strong a phrase; but there is a reluctance to disturb accepted ideas, and a Negro Othello has a greater novelty than the study either of critical writing or of stage history would lead one to expect—as I found when reading Othello with a group of adult students. The edition we were using included a series of critical essays, but none even mentioned Othello's colour; that it was an American publication had an obvious significance.

Eldred Jones's Othello's Countrymen has clearly established the familiarity of the Elizabethans with Negroes, especially in London.¹ Traders with West Africa used them as interpreters and often brought a few home as gifts, or for the family household. Thus Shakespeare must have had opportunities for contact with Negroes, although there is no direct evidence of any. There was also a strong stage tradition which made use of Negroes in the role of villain or of villain-hero. As Shakespeare had himself followed this tradition with Aaron in Titus Andronicus, first performed between 1590 and 1592, it follows that his choice of a Negro as the hero of his tragedy of Othello, thus completely breaking the tradition, must have been deliberate. It is true that the plot was taken from Cinthio's Hecatommithi; but hardly any of Shakespeare's plots were original, and there was evidently something about this tale that led him to select it out of many. The story as it stands is crude and lacking in subtlety: the only thing that distinguishes it is that it is concerned with the love between a Moor and a young Venetian girl of high birth.

The reasons for Shakespeare's choice remain obscure, and we can only speculate about them; perhaps Shakespeare felt sympathy for aliens in an intolerant society, as is suggested by his treatment of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, though here he was hampered by an inflexible story, with the result that Shylock's moving speeches burst out of the framework of the play. In Othello there is no suggestion of deliberate social injustice; but one wonders whether, as he watched the humiliation of Negro slaves and servants, Shakespeare found himself imagining the feelings of proud men, perhaps of royal descent like Othello, whose black skins betrayed no blushes. ‘Haply for I am black’, cries Othello, as the first doubts begin to torment him: it is the first of the alternative reasons that he considers in trying to account for his betrayal, so that we cannot ignore his awareness of the colour barrier. Shakespeare has moved far from his acceptance of the traditional Negro in Titus Andronicus, whose colour reflects his evil motives:

Let fools do good and fair men call for grace,
Aaron will have his soul black like his face.

(III, i, 202-5)

Whatever Shakespeare's intentions may have been, we have to take seriously the importance of Othello's race in our interpretation of the play.

The first effect of Othello's blackness is immediately grasped by the audience, but not always by the reader of the play. It is that he is, from the beginning, placed in a position of isolation from the other characters. In the same way, Hamlet's black clothes isolate him visually from the rest of the Danish court. This isolation is such an integral part of Othello's experience that it is constantly operative, even if not necessarily at a conscious level. Anyone who is black would appreciate its importance in understanding the character of Othello. Before he appears, our attention is forcibly focussed on Othello's race. The speeches of Iago and Roderigo in the first scene are full of racial antipathy. Othello is ‘the thick-lips’, ‘an old black ram’, ‘a lascivious Moor’ and ‘a Barbary horse’, and he ‘is making the beast with two backs’ with Desdemona. The language is purposely offensive and sexually coarse, and the animal images convey, as such images always do, the idea of someone who is less than human. Coriolanus expresses his contempt for the plebeians similarly, through a series of animal comparisons. Iago calculates on arousing in Brabantio all the latent prejudice of Venetian society, and he succeeds. The union is, to Brabantio, ‘a treason of the blood’, and he feels that its acceptance will reduce Venetian statesmen to ‘bondslaves and pagans’. We, the audience, are not at first given any opportunity of forming our own opinion of Othello, although Iago's personal grievances over his lack of promotion may put us on our guard against his claims to impartiality.

Brabantio occupies a strong position in society. He is ‘much beloved’, and ‘hath in his effect a voice potential / As double as the Duke's’, if we can believe Iago. His attitude to Othello's race is as prejudiced as Iago's, though it is important to realize that he represents a more liberal outlook, at least on the surface. Willing to entertain Othello in his own home, it is he who makes Othello's meetings with Desdemona possible. His reaction to the news of the elopement is predictable. He is outraged that this Negro should presume so far, and at once concludes that charms and witchcraft must have been used, since otherwise his daughter could never ‘fall in love with what she feared to look on’. To him the match is ‘against all rules of nature’; only spells and medicines could make it possible ‘for nature so prepost’rously to err’. When he confronts Othello his abuse is no less bitter than Iago's.

Before this confrontation Othello makes his first appearance, and two characteristics impress us. First his pride:

I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege

(I, ii, 21-2)

Secondly, his confidence in his own achievements:

My services which I have done the Signiory
Shall out-tongue his complaints.

(I, ii, 95-7)

It is difficult to estimate the reactions of an Elizabethan audience to this Negro, so obviously in control of the situation and so noble in his bearing. No black man remotely like him had ever appeared on the English stage before, nor has one since. However great his confidence, however, his colour makes his vulnerability plain to all. Brabantio is sure of the Duke's support, since he and the other senators ‘cannot but feel this wrong as ’twere their own’. He is disappointed, but he would probably have been right if the state had not been in danger and Othello essential for its defence. As it is, Brabantio gets cold comfort; he is to ‘take up this mangled matter at the best’. The Duke treats Othello as befits his position as Commander-in-Chief, addressing him as ‘valiant Othello’, whereas Brabantio never uses his name, calling him scornfully just ‘Moor!’. The First Senator gives Othello some support, but his parting words, ‘Adieu, brave Moor. Use Desdemona well’, while not unfriendly, reveal an attitude of superiority. Would a senator have made such an injunction to a newly-married general if he had been white, and an equal?

It is Desdemona's stand before the Senate that first breaks Othello's isolation. Her stature is immensely increased by the fact that he is black. Her passivity in later scenes cannot be seen as a natural docility after the spirited independence which she shows in her defence of the marriage. Beneath a quiet exterior lay the strength to resist the pressures of society; she was

So opposite to marriage that she shunned
The wealthy, curled darlings of our nation

(I, ii, 67-8)

The choice of words makes clear to us the kind of suitors who were unable to attract Desdemona, but there is no suggestion that Brabantio wished, like Capulet, to force his daughter against her inclination. The marriage is something that he could not anticipate, and Othello and Desdemona are trapped by their predicament, just as Romeo and Juliet were, but with the great difference that theirs is a mature match in which the couple are well aware of the seriousness of the step they have taken: ‘My downright violence and storm of fortunes’, Desdemona calls it. It is made very clear, in Othello's account of the wooing, that she had to take the initiative:

She thanked me
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake.

(I, iii, 163-6)

It is, of course, because of Othello's race; there would be no need for Desdemona to break with the long and absolute custom, that the man must speak first, in any but the rarest circumstances. Before the Senate she remains level-headed. In her speech about ‘divided duty’ she softens the blow, but does not try to avoid the issue. Finally, when she says that she ‘saw Othello's visage in his mind’, the audience has to make the effort to overcome, with her, the tendency to connect Othello's black face with evil. Brabantio's insistence that she is going against nature is repudiated. ‘Nature’ has a variety of meanings in Shakespeare's plays; in this one it is linked with Iago's cynical and materialistic outlook, whereas the love between Othello and Desdemona belongs to another plane.

The ease with which Othello succumbs to Iago's insinuations has puzzled many critics. Some have been led to a grudging admiration of Iago's ‘diabolic intellect’, while others have belittled Othello for being such easy prey. Dr. Leavis's analysis reduces Othello to a pitiable figure; he is ‘beyond any question, the nobly massive man of action’, but ‘his habit of self-approving self-dramatization’ is evidence of his egotism. Nevertheless, most playgoers have been deeply moved by Othello's suffering. Perhaps the explanation lies in Othello's colour, which Dr. Leavis does not think important: ‘his colour, whether or not “colour feeling” existed among the Elizabethans, we are certain to take as emphasizing the disparity of the match.’² I do not think that Othello's colour can be relegated to a parenthesis in this way. It is the basic cause of his insecurity, which, when the part is played by a Negro, needs no explanation. Its origin is there for us to see. If we do need words to make it clear, they are there too. Iago harps mercilessly on the unnaturalness of the match:

Not to affect many proposed matches,
Of her own clime, complexion and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tends—
Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank,
Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural.

(III, iii, 233-7)

The exclamation of disgust and the words ‘smell’ and ‘foul’ reveal a phobia so obvious that it is strange it is so often passed over. The attack demolishes Othello's defences simply because there is no defence against this kind of racial contempt. ‘For she had eyes, and chose me’, changes to:

Haply for I am black
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have, or for I am declined
Into the vale of years …

(III, iii 267-70)

It is one of the most moving moments in the play. Othello's vulnerability is no surprise to himself, for he has had to marry in secret, and his confidence is based on his knowledge that his expertise is valuable to the state, not on the expectation of being valued for himself. Given Iago's hatred and astuteness in exploiting other people's weaknesses, which we see in the trap he sets for Cassio, the black Othello is easy game. We are not watching the collapse of a self-deceiving fool, but the baiting of an alien who cannot fight back on equal terms.

Othello's stature as a tragic hero is built up mainly through his prowess as a soldier. He is unique amongst Shakespeare's soldier heroes because he has achieved his position as general on merit, after hard and bitter experience. The early history described in the account of his wooing is typical of the experience of an African of his times who has been ‘taken by the insolent foe / And sold to slavery’. His whole life, since the age of seven, has been the precarious life of the soldier, and against this background his blackness is evidence of his outstanding ability. As a Negro, employed by the state of Venice, he receives tributes from all: he is ‘the warlike Moor Othello’, ‘brave Othello’, and ‘our noble and valiant general’. The war with the Turks is presented in a businesslike way as a national emergency, and the ironic undertones that we find in the presentation of war in the history plays (even Henry V gives us Williams's speech about the legs and arms and heads joining together at the latter day to confront the warrior king) seem to be excluded from Othello. The hero is marked by his self-control and refusal to be roused to anger, as in ‘Put up your bright swords for the dew will rust them’ and ‘Were it my cue to fight I should have known it / Without a prompter’. After Othello's disintegration we are sadly reminded of this moral strength by Lodovico's words: ‘Is this the nature / Whom passion could not shake?’ (IV, i, 261-2). The portrait is of a kind of soldier who does not exist elsewhere in the plays, except in minor characters. Othello tries to control emotion, unlike Henry V, who before battle has to:

Imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage

This emphasis gives his breakdown of control in Act III a more intense effect, and is also in direct contradiction to the conception of the Negro as a man swayed by passion which was current in Shakespeare's time.

The famous ‘farewell’ speech also becomes more meaningful when spoken by a black Othello. ‘The big wars / That make ambition virtue’, a phrase which one tends to accept as a piece of rhetoric, gains a literal truth, because the sin of ambition (and ambition was still reckoned as a sin) has been purified, in Othello, by courage and endurance, and by the fact that only ambition could enable him to escape the hardships and humiliations of his early life. The speech is not merely the longing for military action of the incurable romantic. The pride, pomp and circumstance, the spirit-stirring drum, and the rest must be seen in relation to the harshly realistic conclusion, ‘Othello's occupation's gone’. This moment reduced Kean's audiences to tears; it was a part of Othello's experience which Kean, with his precarious and uneven career, was well able to understand and convey. The realization that his career is irrevocably over throws an aura of nostalgia over Othello's war experience, so that he looks back at the trappings of war as a dying man looks back at life.

As we approach the tragic climax, when jealousy has taken possession, Othello behaves very like the Moor of ancient tradition; his irrational acceptance of the flimsiest evidence, his return to superstitious beliefs, his uncontrollable anger, and his resort to violence and revenge—all these are consistent with mediaeval tradition. Nevertheless, it seems to me unlikely that Shakespeare intended to go back to an acceptance of the popular preconceptions which he had flouted in the early scenes. Othello was very closely followed by King Lear, and in both plays Shakespeare seems to be exploring the basic nature of man, and especially the effect on that nature of the subservience of reason to the passions. In Lear reason is literally overthrown when Lear becomes mad, while in Othello jealousy and rage take control. By portraying the disintegration of a black hero whose nobility had been effectively established, Shakespeare was able to show man as the prey of his uncontrollable emotions with extra dramatic effect, and it suggests another reason for the choice of a black hero. No more extreme example of jealousy could be imagined than that of a man who kills the wife he deeply loves, but there would have been difficulty in making such a theme acceptable to the audience. If, however, the jealous husband who must commit the murder is black, it removes the crime of sexual violence from everyday surroundings and experience and makes the audience more prepared to accept it. By taking an alien from a strange cultural background the dramatist would feel liberated. True, it is made quite explicit that Othello is a baptized Christian, which brings him closer to the audience and separates him from the Turkish enemy. But once subservient to Iago, and having taken his terrible vow of revenge, Othello reverts to superstitious belief. Here, I think, lies the significance of the much-discussed speech about the handkerchief, although there are other possible interpretations. The Christian veneer is thin, and Othello is left exposed to unknown forces of evil. In the same way, Macbeth succumbs to the destructive influence of the witches once he has embarked on the series of murders; the first one involves the betrayal of the most sacred laws of kinship. Shakespeare's tragedies are much concerned with the precariousness of civilized behaviour in man.

The Russian actor, Alexander Ostumov, who set himself to study the part of Othello throughout his career, identifying with him as if he were a real man, saw the problem of the final scene to be that of acting the part so as to make people love Othello and forget he is a murderer. ‘Forget’ may seem an over-statement, but Shakespeare comes near to making it possible when Othello answers Lodovico's question, ‘What shall be said of thee?’ (a question which hardly expects a reply) with the words, ‘An honourable murderer, if you will’. Rather than being outraged by such a statement, we see in it a terrible pathos. Our sympathy for Othello is never completely destroyed. Here again Othello's colour plays some part. Throughout the scene he is a lonely but dominating figure. Emilia's horror at what has happened brings her racial prejudice to the fore: ‘O my good lord’, as she enters, becomes ‘you the blacker devil!’, ‘her most filthy bargain’, and ‘O thou dull Moor’. By this time the audience is expecting the event for which they have long been waiting, the unmasking of Iago. When it comes, Othello looks down at Iago's feet for the mythical cloven hoofs, and demands an explanation from ‘that demi-devil’, and we are once more reminded that blackness of soul belongs to the white villain rather than to his black victim. The term ‘slave’ is used several times: Montano pursues Iago, ‘for ’tis a damnéd slave’; Lodovico reproaches Othello for having ‘fall’n in the practice of a curséd slave’, and later refers to Iago as ‘this slave’. Slavery here represents degraded behaviour, and it is the deed, the ‘practice’ of Othello (who was once redeemed from slavery) that is slavish, whereas in Iago's case it is the man himself.

There is no record of any controversy over the type of Moor intended by Shakespeare until late in the eighteenth century. Before that the principal actor blacked himself as far as he could. Edmund Kean was the first to play Othello as a ‘tawny’ Moor and he was so successful in the part that he dominated the stage for many years. The Romantic critics, especially Lamb and Coleridge, reacted so violently against the idea of a Negro Othello that their views became firmly established. The great Negro actor, Ira Aldridge, played in London just as Kean's career was ending. In 1833 the critics wrote scathing reviews of his performance, although the audiences received him well. He did not play again in London for many years, but he did return in 1865, after playing in Othello all over Europe and winning many awards and medals. By that time he had more favourable notices; but although no other actor had much success as Othello during the rest of the nineteenth century, the question of colour remained unresolved. In 1876 Henry Irving played him ‘slightly tinged with walnut brown, according to the Edmund Kean precedent, so much applauded by Coleridge’.³ In 1881 he acted the part again, this time as black as possible, so that Ellen Terry records: ‘Before he had done with me, I was nearly as black as he.’ Neither production was successful.

The other outstanding Negro actor to play Othello was Paul Robeson. When he first came to London he studied voice and diction with Amanda Aldridge, Ira Aldridge's youngest daughter, who was only an infant when her father died in 1867. It is thus more than likely that some of the tradition of the first great Negro actor was passed on to the next, since Amanda would know many people who had seen her father's performances. Robeson first played in London in 1930, and his last performance in England was in Stratford in 1959: Aldridge's appearances in Othello covered thirty-nine years. It is an interesting example of the potential time-span of theatrical tradition.

These Negro actors did much to change the accepted ideas about Othello's colour, as contemporary tributes show. Two examples provide enough evidence that the importance of this question is not merely hypothetical. Theophile Gautier wrote of Ira Aldridge's Othello in St. Petersburg:

L’origine d’Ira Aldrigge le dispensait de toute teinture au jus de réglisse et au marc de café; il n’avait pas besoin de mettre ses bras dans les manches d’un tricot chocolat. La peau du rôle était la sienne, et il ne lui fallait nul effort pour y entrer. Aussi son entrée en scène fut-elle magnifique: c’était Othello lui-meme comme l’a créé Shakespeare, avec ses yeux à demi-fermés comme éblouis du soleil d’Afrique, sa nonchalente attitude orientale et cette désinvolture de nègre qu’aucun Européen ne peut imiter.⁴

When John Dover Wilson wrote his introduction to the New Cambridge edition of Othello in 1943, he recorded the lasting impression which Robeson made on him. His first heading is ‘The Moor’, indicating that he felt that the question of Othello's race should be considered before everything else. He writes:

I felt I was seeing the tragedy for the first time, not merely because of Robeson's acting, which despite a few petty faults of technique was magnificent, but because the fact that he was a true Negro seemed to floodlight the whole drama. Everything was slightly different from what I had previously imagined; new points, fresh nuances, were constantly emerging; and all had, I felt, been clearly intended by the author. The performance convinced me, in short, that a Negro Othello is essential to the full understanding of the play.

It is exciting to think that the truth of this view may be demonstrated by an infinite set of variations in the interpretations of the part of Othello, as more Negro actors undertake it.

Notes

1. Eldred Jones, Othello's Countrymen, 1965.

2. F. R. Leavis, ‘Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero’, The Common Pursuit, Chatto & Windus, 1952, pp. 136-59.

3. Clement Scott, From ‘The Bells’ to ‘King Arthur’, 1897, pp. 83-8.

4. Theophile Gautier, Voyage en Russie, 1895, pp. 254-6.