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Discrimination in the Elizabethan era
How is william shakespeare work related to racism
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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 .
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.
Howard, Jean. "Cross-dressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern Eng- land." Shakespeare Quarterly 39 (1988): 418-40.
William Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Othello” shows how a manipulative villain can create chaos within a society. The play was written around the year 1603 and takes place in Venice Italy before it is repositioned to Cyprus. This Shakespearean tragedy shows the effects of jealousy, love, desire, betrayal and passion in a society with an imbalance of power in a race, gender, and social position.
Shakespeare, William. "The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice" The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stanley Wells & |Gary Taylor. New York/London, W.W. Norton Company,1997. 2100-2174
F. R. Leavis discusses the breakdown of sympathy for Othello, arguing that ‘Othello is too stupid to be regarded as a tragic hero’. Other critics also argue that Shakespeare ‘fully exploits the unique cultural opportunity to develop a more complex and sympathetic representation of black experience’ [The Noble Moor – Othello and Race in Elizabethan London, Roger Lees], implying that the sympathy that a contemporary audience would have felt for Othello was based oncultural context, given that the audience were predominantly white. However, it could be argued that it cannot just be the cultural context to Shakespeare’s audiences that has allowed Othello to become one of his most renowned tragedies; if this were the case, the play would have lost all critical interest by the 18th Century. It is Shakespeare’s use of the conventions of tragedy in attributing Othello with hubris that, although making it hard to empathise with at times, in the...
Texts and their appropriations reflect the context and values of their times. Within Shakespeare’s Othello and Geoffrey Sax’s appropriation of Othello, the evolution of the attitudes held by Elizabethan audiences and those held by contemporary audiences can be seen through the context of the female coupled with the context of racism. The role of the female has developed from being submissive and “obedient” in the Elizabethan era to being independent and liberated within the contemporary setting. The racism of the first text is overtly xenophobic and natural, whilst the “moor” is unnatural whereas the updated context portrays Othello’s race as natural and racism as unnatural. Therefore these examples show how Shakespeare’s Othello, and it’s appropriation, Geoffrey
Shakespeare, William. Othello, The Moor of Venice. from Literature and the Writing Process. McMahon, Day, Funk. Prentice-Hall Publishers: New Jersey, 1996. 864-947.
Cohen, Walter, J.E. Howard, K. Eisaman Maus. The Norton Shakespeare. Vol. 2 Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor. New York, London. 2008. ISBN 978-0-393-92991-1
Shakespeare, William, and Kim F. Hall. Othello, the Moor of Venice: Texts and Contexts. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. Print.
The play, Othello, is certainly, in part, the tragedy of racism. Examples of racism are common throughout the dialog. This racism is directed toward Othello, a brave soldier from Africa and currently supreme commander of the Venetian army. Nearly every character uses a racial slur to insult Othello at one point in the play. Even Emilia sinks to the level of insulting Othello based on the color of his skin. The character that most commonly makes racist remarks in Othello is Iago. It is very apparent that Iago uses racism as a scapegoat to hate and blame Othello. Societal racism takes its toll on its victims. The effect of racism on Othello is quite evident and is one of the main causes for his insecurity about his marriage. However, Othello is not wholly the tragedy of racism. The theme of jealousy is also extremely important in Othello. Racism may play a large part in the tragedy, Othello, but it certainly does not adequately explain the entire play.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Philip M. Parker. [San Diego, Calif.]: ICON Classics, 2005. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
In the Sixteenth century, as we see clearly from Othello and other works of both Shakespeare and Cinthio's original version of Othello, race was a topic of great debate and discussion. Today, in the twenty-first century the debate retains its controversy and passion. However, attitudes towards race have taken a dramatic turn during the last century. In the developed world people are now living in an increasingly cosmopolitan society would undoubtedly be more tolerant and would reject or even be offended by racial discrimination to any person or sections of the community. Openly 'racist' people today are seen as outcasts. Taking this into account, the way a modern audience would react to race and racism in Othello is dependent upon the way in which that modern audience would interpret 'Othello'. This prompts the questions of what sort of message Shakespeare wanted to send to his audience and was Othello the moor portrayed as a tragic hero or did his character eventually come to resemble the prejudices of which he was a victim. Shakespeare also discusses the issue of race with other characters such as the hateful Iago and the prejudices hidden deep in Barbantio.
Evans, G. Blakemore. Ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. by William Shakespeare. 1552- 1616. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974.
Being a mirror of the age, Elizabethan literature was not in isolation from the currents of the era including these stereotypes. All these attitudes of ethnocentrism and xenophobia was skillfully interpreted through literature in general and drama in particular. One example of this is Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice which is about a miser money-lender Jew. Portrayal ...
Othello: The Moor of Venice is probably Shakespeare's most controversial play. Throughout this work, there is a clear theme of racism, a racism that has become commonplace in Venetian society which rejects the marriage of Othello and Desdemona as anathema. The text expresses racism throughout the play within the language transaction of the dialogue to question the societal ethos established by Othello, thereby making him nothing less than a cultural "other." Furthermore, the character of Desdemona is displayed as mad, or out of her wits, for marrying such an "other," and the audience sees her slip from an angelic state of purity to that of a tainted character. Also, the menacing Iago, a mastermind of deviant rhetoric, is able to play Othello and Desdemona against one another until their marriage fails, while at the same time destroying his adversary and friend, Cassio. Thus Iago has a specific agenda, not only to get back at Othello for choosing Cassio instead of him, but also to make Cassio the victim of his plan to destroy the forbidden marriage referred to by Brabantio as a "treason of the blood" (1.2.166-167). Essentially, Iago is a representative of the white race, a pre-Nazi figure who tries to inform the public of the impurity of Othello and Desdemona's marriage. He demonstrates how this miscegenation is threatening to the existing social order. Thus, through analysis of racism, the play represents the hatred possessed by mankind -- a hate so strong that society sees the mixing with an "other" to be a curse to humanity and a terrible threat to Aryan culture.