Editing Othello (section)

=== Race ===
As [[Ben Okri]] has said:
{{Blockquote|If ''Othello'' did not begin as a play about race, then its history has made it one.<ref>[[Ben Okri]]'s ''A Way of Being Free'' in {{harvnb|Neill|2008|p=113}}</ref>{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=146}}}}

Or, as the [[The Oxford Shakespeare|Oxford]] editor Professor Michael Neill summarises it: 
{{Blockquote|Anxieties about the treatment of race in ''Othello'' are a recurrent feature of both its critical and performance histories: where they once focused on the supposed scandal of miscegenation, they are nowadays more likely to address the play's complicity in racial stereotyping.{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=41}}}}

In plot terms, Othello's race serves to mark him as "other".<ref>Bartels, 2003, p.160.</ref> As both a Christian and a black African, Othello is (as scholar Tom McAlindon puts it) both of, and not of, Venice.{{sfn|Muir|McAlindon|2015|p=xxii}} And actor [[Paul Robeson]] considered Othello's colour as essentially secondary, as a way of emphasizing his cultural difference and consequent vulnerability in a society he does not fully understand.{{sfn|Muir|McAlindon|2015|p=lxxii}}

In the world of the play itself, Jyotsna Singh argues that Brabantio's—and others'—objection to Othello, a decorated and respected general, as a suitable husband for Desdemona, a senator's daughter, only makes sense in racist terms: reinforced by the bestial imagery used by Iago in delivering the news.<ref>Singh, Jyotsna "Post-Colonial Criticism" in Wells, Stanley and Orlin, Lena Cowen "Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide", Oxford University Press, 2003, pp.492-507 at p.493.</ref> The racist slurs used by Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio in the play suggest that Shakespeare conceived of Othello as a black African:{{sfn|Neill|2008|p=45}} "thicklips";<ref>''Othello'' 1.1.65.</ref> "an old black ram is tupping your white ewe";<ref>''Othello'' 1.1.87-88.</ref> "you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse";<ref>''Othello'' 1.1.109-110.</ref> "the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou"<ref>''Othello'' 1.2.70-71.</ref>—as do things Othello says of himself: "haply for I am black";<ref>''Othello'' 3.3.267.</ref> or "begrimed and black as mine own face".<ref>''Othello'' 3.3.390-391.</ref><ref>Mowat and Werstine, 2017, p.267.</ref>

There is critical divide over Othello's ethnic origin. A "[[Moors|Moor]]" broadly refers to someone from northwest Africa, especially if Muslim,<ref>{{Cite OED|term=Moor|id=2172406316}}</ref> but in Shakespeare's England "Moor" was used with broader connotations: sometimes referring to Africans of all regions, sometimes to [[Arab world|Arabic]] or [[Islam]]ic peoples beyond Africa, such as those of [[Turkey]] and the [[Middle East]], and sometimes to Muslims of any race or location.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bartels |first=Emily C |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/49109 |title=Shakespeare: an Oxford guide |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-924522-2 |editor-last=Wells |editor-first=Stanley |location=Oxford |pages=151–164 |chapter=Shakespeare’s view of the world |doi=10.1093/oso/9780199245222.003.0014 |access-date=2024-09-09 |editor-last2=Cowen Orlin |editor-first2=Lena |chapter-url=https://academic.oup.com/book/49109/chapter-abstract/422791945 |url-access=subscription}}</ref>{{sfn|Honigmann|Thompson|2016|p=25}}