![]() Iago says that Desdemona has “loveliness in favor…which the Moor is defective in” (II.i.227,229). The newlywed wife Desdemona may be more in tune with visual appearance (particularly given the color difference between her and her husband), and thus in the midst of Iago’s faux-praise speeches for imaginary types of women, she asks for praise for one who is “black and witty” (II.i.131). To this, however, the duke himself tells Brabantio, “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black” (I.iii.290). This and the comparative reference by Roderigo of Brabantio’s “fair daughter… lascivious Moor…an extravagant and wheeling stranger” (I.i.120, 124, 133) have an effect on Brabantio, who in the next two scenes refers to Othello’s “sooty bosom” (I.ii.70) and says that he cannot believe Desdemona “fll in love with what she feared to look on!” (I.iii.98) the use of the sight sense and appearance create a link to Othello’s blackness. When beginning his verbal onslaught against Brabantio, he makes the Moor not only black, but “an old black ram // Is tupping white ewe” (I.i.87-88). As if picking up a cue, in the very next speech, Iago foretells Othello’s downfall, saying the Moor’s “joy…may lose some color” (I.i.72). In the play’s first scene, Roderigo makes reference to Othello’s stereotypical facial features, reducing the entire man to calling him “the thick-lips” (I.i.65). References to color, particularly black, but taking into account Desdemona’s “fair”-ness, any comparison between the two, abound. What is “moor” important (bad pun, I know) within the play, being black or being Muslim?īased upon sheer numbers, my answer would be black. Though we know that Othello is black (or at least black-er than the other major characters on stage)–because of some descriptive (and descriptively racist) references–how important is his Muslim-ness? As I’ve mentioned before, “Moor” was Elizabethan shorthand for Muslim (though through the Middle Ages, “the Moors were widely supposed to be mostly black or very dark-skinned” ).
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