Exposing Racism in William Shakespeare’s Othello

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Recommended: Discrimination in the Elizabethan era

The infectious discrimination of Elizabethan racists is derived from fear unnatural a racist’s hate plagues a vulnerable community of black slaves, with religion and war corrupting diverse cultures in the attempts to purify the existence of sin. This enlightening argument of what inspires William Shakespeare’s to compose the play Othello contaminates romantic relationships,

Before the integration of black-skinned people into Elizabethan culture, Christian ideology coalesce Satan’s appearance with babies born black, with such manifestations supported by centuries of anecdotal evidence. The demonic association to skin colour conceives through religious contempt, hierarchy seeking control, and the product of fear. Elizabethans consider men of colour to be wild animals, possessed like “The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads/ Grew beneath their shoulders" (Shakespeare 1.3.145-46). Believed to be evil, accusations of blacks exercising Satan’s tricks became common. Prior to the black existence, and their subsequent accusation of bewitching fair innocence; "white women were burned alive for alleged sex with a devil described as black" (Daileader 2). A result from the imagination of Hell scorching one's carcass to charcoal known for causing Satan’s black exterior. This is the symbolic representation of evil associated with the dark-skinned Moor in William Shakespeare’s play Othello. Antecedent to England’s theatre, records commonly exist consisting of offenses charged of white people seeking black evil for business, guidance, and even intimacy. Celia R. Daileaders study on Racism, Misogyny, and the Othello Myth: Inter-Racial Couples from Shakespeare to Spike Lee illustrates some “anecdotal evidence” of interactions between Satan by cond...

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...Habib, Imtiaz H. Black Lives In The English Archives (1500-1677): Imprints Of The Invisible. London: Ashgate Pub Co, 2008. Print.

King James Bible. Gordon Campbell, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.

Long, William R. Othello, the Moor of Venice: By William Shakespeare (1564-1616). 2007 . 02 December 2011 .

Shultz, James. Shakespeare’s Colors: Race And Culture In Elizabethan England. Old Dominion University. 5.1 (2002): n. page. Web. 2 Dec. 2011. .

Ungere, Gustav. “The Presence of Africans in Elizabethan England and the Performance of Titus Andronicus at Burley-on-the-Hill”, 1595/96" The Free Library 01 January 2008. 02 December 2011 .

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