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Othello's Alienation Author(s): Edward Berry Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 30, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, (Spring, 1990), pp. 315-333 Published by: Rice University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/450520 Accessed: 01/05/2008 11:43
page 319
The most dramatic reactions to Othello's blackness within the play are those of Iago and Roderigo in the opening scene. Their overt and vicious racism provides the background for Othello's first appearance. For Iago Othello is "an old black ram" (I.i.88), "the devil" (I.i.91), and a "Barbary horse" (I.i.lll); the consum-mation of his marriage is a making of "the beast with two backs" (I.i.115-16). Roderigo, who shares Iago's disgust, speaks of Desde-mona's "gross revolt" (I.i. 134) and the "gross clasps of a lascivious Moor" (I.i. 126). As Jones and Hunter have shown, these characters evoke, in a few choice epithets, the reigning stereotype of the African on the Elizabethan stage. Othello is black, and......

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Approximate Word Count: 1301
Approximate Pages: 6 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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