In Discussion

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Eamonn Walker (Othello) Patrick Spottiswoode (Director, Globe Education) and Dr. Jerry Brotton, (Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London.) discuss the themes of RACE, IDENTITY and CULTURE in Othello

RACE

Eamonn: Although this play is set and written in the past, it is very definitely about the present. Three young black kids of about fifteen or sixteen came up to me after one show and said: ‘that is my life up there on the stage, right there! I have got a white girlfriend and her dad’s giving me a hard time and I don’t know what to do and I am getting really angry.’ I was able to turn around and tell them to use Othello as an example, and not to respond with anger. At the beginning of the play Othello displays his intellect and his compassion for knowing and understanding a father’s love for his daughter when confronted with the situation these kids are experiencing. That scene opens the play, which is what makes it about the here and now. As long as there is racism this play will be relevant.

Jerry: Although of course there was a time when the notion of ‘race’ as we understand it didn’t really exist as a concept. For Shakespeare’s audience, ‘race’ referred to bloodstock or breeding. So although the play exhibits what we might call ‘racism’, we need to remember that race has a history, and we need to understand that history to understand what’s going on in Othello. Perhaps the anxieties that surround Othello, particularly at the beginning of the play, are about his status as an ‘outsider’, or ‘alien’.

Eamonn: When we were sitting round and we were reading and talking about the play Wilson [Milam, the director] would open up the gate for people to come and speak their minds about what was relevant. I like stuff to be real and believable, so when he opened up the gate for people to talk, Othello the ‘outsider’ was one of the areas that I went straight to. Othello is a man who straddles two different cultures, and he took on board Venetian culture whole-heartedly. In America they ask you to pledge allegiance to the flag, and then sometimes you have to go and fight their wars for them. Othello became very good at fighting wars for his adopted culture.

Jerry: Well, the Senate have little time for Brabantio’s slurs against Othello. They want him to lead the Venetian military facing the threat of Islamic Ottoman naval power. At this stage, Othello’s identity as a Moor, as a presumed convert from Islam, is irrelevant to the Venetian elite. But gradually, once the threat of the Turks recedes and the play moves to Cyprus – a very dangerous outpost of Christianity in the Renaissance, always threatened with ‘turning Turk’ and being invaded – Othello loses his status as an ‘insider’ and Iago can portray him much more as an outsider, someone who can also easily be ‘turned Turk’.

Eamonn: And when Othello gets desperately lost in his jealousy and madness, he desperately attempts to find himself again by jumping back to what he knows, which is Islam, the Muslim side of him.

Jerry: We should also remember that the Anglo-Islamic relations looked very different when Shakespeare wrote Othello. Queen Elizabeth I established amicable relations with the Muslim world—particularly Morocco and the Turkish Ottoman empire. The enemy for the Elizabethans was Catholic Spain, not the power and might of the Islamic world. I don’t think there’s an inevitable racist or anti-Islamic logic within Shakespeare’s play, and we should always read for different, more ambiguous possibilities, rather than reaching for the stereotypes and prejudices that we see most clearly today—but might not have been there for Shakespeare and his audience. Perhaps the problem the play shows lies within Venice and its assumed superiority, rather than Othello.

CULTURE

Eamonn: The superiority complex of the Venetians is such that they don’t feel that they have to learn about other cultures. We, the outsiders, have to learn about them. And they are not the only ones who feel like that. If there is any fear involved with Othello going back to Islam, it is connected to that superiority complex. The response is: ‘I don’t understand that, therefore I fear it.’

Jerry: But is it about Islam specifically, or the fear of Ottoman, Turkish military power? The Turks were respected as possessing the finest, most fearless military machine in Europe at the time, and the audience would have seen that; and anyway, it’s doubtful that Shakespeare had such an intimate knowledge of Muslim theology to see Othello in this way.

Eamonn: I imagine Shakespeare watching Abd al-Wahid bin Masoud bin Muhammad al-Annuri, the Moroccan ambassador, who visited London in 1599, in the Elizabethan court and starting to wonder what it must be like for that man. He went down the road of the exotic with Othello and took a woman, Desdemona, the social equivalent to Princess Diana, and put her right in the middle of it.

Jerry: It’s also noticeable that the way Othello is initially attacked on the grounds of his perceived difference – be it skin colour, religion, appearance – gradually drops away and is transferred onto Desdemona. It’s she who is seen as ‘blackened’ or stained in the later sections of the play as her reputation comes into question, and she finally identifies with her mother’s Barbary maid – presumably a slave from Morocco, where Othello also comes from – who blames herself for her lover’s indiscretions. So the play is also drawing attention to the way in which women can easily internalise a sense of themselves as victims.

IDENTITY

Eamonn: Othello is a scary man. When you first meet this man he is a General. What is it that he does for a living? He kills people, and he does it well. The Venetians, for their own reasons, are going: ‘while we are using you it is all good.’ See that in itself says something, because that is what we do now.

Jerry: He is a mercenary. He’s hired to save the Venetians and kill people; that’s what people saw in the figure of the ‘Moor’ – fearlessness. But what Shakespeare does is to take that stereotype and unravel it.

Patrick: In Act 1, scene 3, Othello defends the idea of taking Desdemona with him to Cyprus by assuring the Senate that she will not distract him from his soldiership: ‘…No, when light-winged toys / Of feathered Cupid seel with wanton dullness / My speculative and officed instrument, / That my disports corrupt and taint my business, / Let housewives make a skillet of my helm …’ (1.3.269-273) He is referring to an actual custom in which women looted battlefields and took helmets from fallen soldiers to use as domestic saucepans. But when Othello finally arrives at Cyprus, he goes straight to Desdemona with ‘O my fair warrior’ ignoring the Governor of Cyprus and any mention of the defeated Turk. Desdemona has become the ‘captain’s captain’. (2.1.74) Has love not distracted the martial hero already?

Eamonn: You are absolutely right. He is completely distracted even though he says in the Senate: ‘And heaven defend your good souls that you think, / I will your serious and great business scant / When she is with me.’ (1.3.267-269)

Jerry: Othello is a more complex character than we’ve ever imagined. To start with, he’s a ‘Moor’—basically, a Moroccan, probably born a Muslim but converted at some point to Christianity. He refers to being enslaved – presumably by Muslims – and his ‘redemption’ – again, presumably a reference to his conversion to Christianity. But throughout the play his identity is uncertain. He becomes continually compared to the ‘Turk’, and by the end of the play, in his great final speech, he compares himself to a Turk, but one he imagines killing in the service of Venice. So his character remains split throughout the play: as a Moor, a convert, a Christian, a Venetian, a revert to Islam – his identity is just too overdetermined, and in the end these contradictions conspire to destroy him.

Eamonn: Othello paid Michael Cassio to help him woo Desdemona. He did not use Iago, because Iago is brash and not classy enough. That suggests as a man, in his heart, he knows who he is. He knows the difficult journey he has been on. Someone who kills people for a living has a darkness that he must walk with. He has found himself here, in Venice, doing rather well. He’s risen up through the ranks and he’s got this best friend, called Iago. Then this woman comes along and says: ‘You are more than that.’ He begins rediscovering himself, as we do when we are in love, through other people’s eyes, and particularly in Desdemona’s. Through her innocence, her light, her energy, this man is growing.

Patrick: Does Desdemona’s love provide Othello with a sense of acceptance into a society into he feels that he otherwise cannot intrude?

Eamonn: Othello is aware of the ‘exotic’, because he can see it in other people’s eyes. You know it is hard to miss that. He may have made a mistake with Brabantio, in thinking that Brabantio loved him, and that’s a big mistake, but Othello is definitely admired because he is big and powerful and exotic. He’s already socially accepted. He’s the General. It was a prerequisite for Venetian society, at the time, to have a foreigner as the General. Divide and rule, but Othello understood that.

Patrick: Is there not a difference between being accepted and feeling included as a part of the family?

Eamonn: I don’t know if Othello is looking to be ‘part of the family’. I think Othello is looking for something he has never had. He has never been in love. Othello is completely naive in his experience of love. When you first feel the euphoria of love, you fall head over heels and people can call you stupid, because you are vulnerable. You are wide open. Iago recognises this.

Patrick: Coleridge refers to Iago’s ‘motiveless malignity’. What do you think motivates Iago?

Eamonn: The relationship between Iago and Othello changed. Iago was Othello’s ensign. The ensign was the man who’s got your back. Othello goes into battle: hundreds of people with weapons; he wades his way through them. Iago is the person who has got his back. If anyone is going to come and try and stab Othello in the back, Iago kills them and he has done it for years. They drank together, bedded women together, did all the man stuff together. And then this woman appears and Othello doesn’t know him. It is not that Othello doesn’t love Iago, but he doesn’t have space for him. His world is full of Desdemona. Iago’s love turns into something else; he calls it hate.

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