The Meaning Of Othello

Moor is a word with dense associations. Two meanings, as the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, jostle: one is geographical, “the Moor is an inhabitant of North-Africa, Mauritania (present day Morocco). In the 8th century they conquered the Iberian peninsula, but were finally driven out of their last stronghold in Granada at the end of the 15th century.” The second meaning which is associated, is a more general designation: Moor meaning “a muslim of mixed Berber and Arab descent.” Of course, much ink has been spilled about whether Othello is an ethnically marked inhabitant of North-Africa, a noble Arab, or from Sub-Saharan Africa (as in the epithet “black” when Iago says “we will drink the health of black Othello”). This distinction is no
more innocent now than it was then. For the generation of earlier critics who were brought up with the inferiority of black slaves in America, and the inferiority of the colonised people of the British Empire, the question of “what kind of Moor Othello was”, was crucial to the sympathy that the play might generate, and therefore crucial to the whole notion of Tragedy. A racially marked black othello was less sympathetic, and therefore less tragic than an Arabic one. The arguments that Othello is sympathetic have, therefore, tended to identify him as a noble of North Africa. A situation completely reversed in our times it seems, where sympathies for Muslims has hit rock-bottom. Thomas Rymer, one of the first critics of Shakespeare, in his 17th century critique, calls the play “the tragedy of a handkerchief” and “a bloody farce”. Therefore something unworthy of the designation of tragedy. Rhymer then helps in answering the question “Why did the Eiffel Tower not light up for Ankara, the same way it did for Brussels?” Because, ‘what is worthy for tragedy’ is a question we’re still finding an answer to.