Othello's Ethnicity

Was Othello of African or Arabic descent? In the famous play Othello by William Shakespeare the topic of Othello’s ethnicity is a very widely discussed topic. Most people get to the, in my opinion, erroneous conclusion that Othello was of sub-Sahara African descent (black). The opposing point of view’s position is that he was of Arabic, or North African descent, which as I will attempt to explain throughout this paper is, in my opinion, correct. The main points people who believe that he was black use is that quite simply throughout the play he is called black a number of times, and he is also called thick lipped once, and moors don’t have thick lips. He mentions he was a slave, and at the people who were slaves were the West Africans not the Arabs. A little before Shakespeare’s time queen Elisabeth had started to make the distinction between the fair Europeans and the “blackmoors” which was supposed to be a way to classify the people from North Africa but it was really just a way to classify anyone from anywhere in Africa. She started trading these “blackmoors” as slaves. And we know for sure that at least one of these shipments of “blackmoors” was composed completely of people from West Africa, in fact they were Spanish slaves stolen by England. So the term black started being used for the “blackmoors” as well as the West Africans (because of their skin color). All this went on while England traded goods and interacted with the Moroccans or North Africans (Bartels, pg 148-150). So even though the moors obviously had a better standing in Europe than the West Africans they still could have been captured and sold as slaves. So Othello could perfectly have been a slave at some point in his life. And it only makes sense that he would be able to walk away after running away if he was a moor, because a black person would not be able to walk free, only a moor would. Moors were able to walk free in Europe and this is why Queen Elisabeth felt she needed to put this

Cited: Bartels, Emily. (2006). Othello and the Moor. In Garret A. Sullivan, Jr. (Ed.) Patrick Cheney (Ed.) Andrew Hadfield (Ed.), Early Modern English Drama (pp. 140-151). New York: Cambridge University Press. Bell, Millicent. "Shakespeare 's Moor.(Critical Essay)." Raritan: A Quarterly Review 21.4 (Spring 2002): 1(14). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Florida International University. 14 Dec. 2006 <http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.fiu.edu/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A89369185&source=gale&userGroupName=flstuniv&version=1.0>. Mafe, Diana Adesola. "From Ogun to Othello: (re)acquainting Yoruba myth and Shakespeare 's moor.(Critical Essay)." Research in African Literatures 35.3 (Fall 2004): 46(17). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Florida International University. 14 Dec. 2006 <http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.fiu.edu/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A120848583&source=gale&userGroupName=flstuniv&version=1.0>. Neill, Michael. ""Mulattos," "Blacks," and "Indian Moors": 'Othello ' and early modern constructions of human difference." Shakespeare Quarterly 49.4 (Winter 1998): 361(1). Expanded Academic ASAP. Thomson Gale. Florida International University. 14 Dec. 2006 <http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.fiu.edu/itx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=EAIM&docId=A54020071&source=gale&userGroupName=flstuniv&version=1.0>.