
Understanding Why Shakespeare Made Othello a Moor - prismatic
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/theater/2015/11/why_is_othello_black_understanding_why_shakespeare_made_his_hero_a_moor.single.html
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clock_tower
"A Moor" in period use meant "a Muslim," primarily "a Muslim North African."
What's important and troublesome about Othello's position is that he's a
Muslim general fighting for Christian Venice, against his fellow Muslims.
(Recall that Muslims aren't supposed to kill other Muslims -- and particularly
aren't supposed to fight against the Muslim community on behalf of outsiders.)

_That_ is what makes his loyalty just barely suspect -- just suspect enough to
have him living on edge, and to allow Iago to stab him in the back. The play
says nothing about his race, one way or another; early performances could go
either way, sometimes casting Othello as black, sometimes as white (if Arabs
are white) -- a "black Moor" and "tawny Moor" respectively.

In the present day and age, with multiple half-revived Islamic Ummahs actively
at war with each other, and with the loyalties of Muslims in the US military
sometimes suspect (cf. the Fort Hood shooting, and a similar active-shooter
incident that occurred during the 2003 invasion of Iraq), it says something
unflattering about the theatrical world that every performance of _Othello_ is
about race, and none about religion.

...

And if I'd read the article, I would have discovered that it talks about
precisely that. It mentions that a king from the Maghreb came to London in
1600, and probably inspired the play...

~~~
kjs3
_The play says nothing about his race, one way or another_

Act 1, Scene 1

 _Iago_ : Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe.
Arise, arise! Awake the snorting citizens with the bell, Or else the devil
will make a grandsire of you. Arise, I say!

