Page "Othello" Paragraph 32

There is no consensus over Othello's race.

E. A. J.

Honigmann, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, concluded that Othello's race is ambiguous.

" Renaissance representations of the Moor were vague, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory.

As critics have established, the term ' Moor ' referred to dark-skinned people in general, used interchangeably with similarly ambiguous terms as ' African ', ' Ethiopian ', ' Negro ', and even ' Indian ' to designate a figure from Africa ( or beyond ).

" Various uses of the word ' black ' ( for example, " Haply for I am black ") are insufficient evidence for any accurate racial classification, Honigmann argues, since ' black ' could simply mean ' swarthy ' to Elizabethans.

Iago twice uses the word ' Barbary ' or ' Barbarian ' to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by the " tawny " Moors.

Roderigo calls Othello ' the thicklips ', which seems to refer to European conceptions of Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally.