While it might be tempting, especially given the opening of the play, to imagine that Shakespeare has some racist intentions or thoughts, we find that the character of Othello doesn’t match up to any of these terms, thus leading one to rethink Shakespeare’s possible position on the matter of race. Through the careful and complex development of Othello it is increasingly obvious that he does not match any of the terms of savagery imposed upon him by Roderigo and Iago at the beginning. It is revealing to juxtapose all of the unflattering and racist descriptions of Othello with the first time the reader is introduced. Instead of babbling or seeming like an uncouth and uncivilized animal, Othello’s first full lines convey a depth of personality, intelligence, and cultivation. He encourages his accuser in one of the important quotes fromOthello, “Keep your bright swords, for the dew will rust them / Good signor, you have more command with your years than with your weapons” (I.ii.58). One can only imagine these lines to be delivered with grace and excellent diction and now the reader is faced with two differing perceptions of Othello—the one based on the cruel representations of him offered by Iago and Roderigo and the second the “proof” of Othello’s gentleness and civility.

In a play so thematically imbued with messages about the importance and significance of proof, it only follows that in Othello by Shakespeare, things are what they are (or are not) there is some proving of character that Othello undergoes when he first introduced since it becomes up to the reader to decide between these two representations of his character. Although it would be possible to take Iago and his sidekick’s description as truth, this becomes increasingly impossible as we are confronted by the glaring reality of Iago’s villainy, which renders his opinions useless and seemingly cruel and unfounded.

Throughout the play, there are a few cases in which Othello seems to recognize and comment upon his differences from those around him. He is at once very humble and doesn’t pretend to “act” like a pompous figure and states, “Rude am I in speech, / And little blessed with the soft phrase of speech” (I.iii.83-84). This humility defines him throughout the fist half of the book. He is a man that is willing to accept that he is racially different, yet not racially inferior and in fact, he seems to recognize that his status as “other” in a world of white men can actually be helped by his race and exotic life story. He woos his friends (not to mention his lovers) with tales that they want to hear again and again and is thus forced to recognize that he is admired, at least in part, for these exotic elements of his character. We learn that the previous descriptions were wrong and he won Desdemona with his stories and greatness rather than witchcraft. Even his Duke is forced to admit that such stories would have won his daughter as well and the power of words in Othello,even in terms of storytelling is already becoming a theme. While he tends to use these elements of his “foreignness” to his advantage, he never admits (nor should he) that he is anything befitting the racist stereotypes others hold of him. Unfortunately, at the ending of the play after he commits his last brutal and even barbarous act, he refers to himself as a “base Indian” which makes the reader unable to forget the stereotypes of savagery that have been trailing him throughout the play. It is only at this final moment when he associates his act with that of a savage, does he address his race in negative terms.

When it is shown throughout the novel that Othello does not fit the racist descriptions thrust upon him by Iago and Roderigo, the reader is forced to wonder how this presentation of the “two Othellos” (the one defined at the beginning in negative terms and the one we “see for ourselves) indicates how the subject of race in Othello would also have been dealt with among Shakespeare’s contemporaries. Would they have had a rough time deciding whether he was simply a “Moor” and more like a beast than a man or would they have reacted in a more modern sense, by seeing racism as inherently wrong and resisting the descriptions offered by the villainous characters? In the end, although what Othello did was certainly barbarous, it seems impossible that he did it because of some innate savagery—rather, like many of Shakespeare’s other characters in different plays, he was simply a man (white or black) caught in a web of deceit. The fact that race is of secondary importance also demonstrates that the emphasis should be on plot, not race.

Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include :    Close Reading of a Passage in Othello by Shakespeare : Analysis of Race  •  The Power of Words in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Othello    •   Sin and Villains in Doctor Faustus and Othello   •   Prejudice in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice