Race

Race

1. Iago

   • Iago - "Even now... an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe.
     • Iago uses racist slurs when he wakens Brabantio with the news that his daughter, Desdemona, has eloped with Othello. When Iago says an "old black ram" is "tupping " Brabantio's "white ewe" he plays on Elizabethan notions that black men have an animal-like, hyper-sexuality. This seems geared at manipulating Brabantio's fears of miscegenation.
   • Iago - "Of her own clime, complexion, and degree, Whereto we see in all things nature tends...Foul disproportion thoughts unnatural"
     • Iago suggests that there's something "unnatural" about Desdemona if she would decide to marry a black man instead of a man who is of "her own clime, complexion...". So, Iago is implying her "unnatural" but also suggests that she's promiscuous and corrupt.
   • Iago - "you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse... your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs."
     • Here, Brabantio objects to Iago's middle-of-the-night assertions that Desdemona has eloped by saying his house isn't a "grange". Iago takes the opportunity to pun on the term, as he claims Desdemona is having sex with a "Barbary horse" and thus his relatives will will "neigh to him". Iago claims Othello and Desdemona are "making the beast with two backs" which is an implication that Othello's animal-like sexuality corrupts Desdemona.

2. Brabantio

   • Brabantio - "To fall in love with what she feared to look on!... Against all rules of nature"
     • Desdemona's father argues that her love for Othello is unnatural, since, according to him, Desdemona would never fall for a black man who she "feared to look on." Brabantio repeatedly insists that Othello must have "enchanted" Desdemona with "foul charms" and magic spells. Otherwise, he insists, Desdemona never would have run "to the soot bosom" of Othello.

3. Othello

   • Othello - "Her name, that was as fresh As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black As mine own face."
     • When Othello suspects that Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio, he suggests that his "name", or his reputation, is now soiled because of his wife's supposed infidelity.
   • Othello - "Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell!"
     • Othello himself associates blackness with something negative - "vengeance"
   • Othello - "Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, And smooth as monumental alabaster.
     • As Othello resolves to kill Desdemona, he noticeably preoccupied with Desdemona's "whiter" than snow skin. He implies he won't stab her because he doesn't want to "scar" her flesh. He also seems to think of her as a kind of pale statue - "monumental"