Race and the Spectacle in the Monstrous Othello

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Race and the Spectacleof the Monstrous in OthelloJames R. Aubrey

Whoever believed in the Ethiopiansbefore actually seeing them? PlinyEAR the end of The Tempest, Antonio jests that thej A m onster Caliban "is a plain fish, and no dou bt mar-ketable." As an earlier rem ark in the play m ake s clear, however,Caliban would be valuable not only in a fishmarket but also as an

exotic creature for display at court, "a present for any emperor thatever trod on nea t's leather, "i W hen Shak espeare w as writingOthello, his attraction to Cinthio's narrative about a black Moor inVenice may likewise have been a playwright's recognition thatOthello's skin color would give him a "marketable," spectacularcharge on the stage, as a character whose appearance marked himas Other, as having originated somewhere beyond the boundariesof the familiar. A lthou gh blacks ha d ap peared on stage in earlierEnglish plays, such roles were still extraordinary in 1604, whenOthello w as probably first performed.^ The op enin g scene of the


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references to monstrosity would have resonated with Othello'sracial characterisfics to establish his extreme difference from typicalEu ropea ns. W hether som e biographical Shakesp eare actually con-sidered such ideas "m arketable" is not a quesfion I can answer, bu tI will show that Othello's character is constructed in a v/ay thatwould have engaged such popular associations of blacks with mon-sters and thereby would have intensified audience responses toearly performances.From the thirteenth century, monstrous races were increas-ingly reported to be living in Africa rather than in Asia, as RudolfWittkower notes.3 Other crifics have suggested that the English inthe early 1600s sfill tho ug ht of blacks m uch as they th ou gh t of m on-sters, as strange creatures from outside the boun da ries of the kn ow nw orld. Michael Neill touches the issue w he n he discusses linkagebe tw een blackn ess and mora l monstrosity.^ Em ily C . Bartels locatesOthello's pow er as a character partly in the audience's percepfion ofhis racial difference, on the basis of which people "demonize anO ther as a mean s of securing the self."5 Karen N ew m an asserts thatthere is a cultural associafion of blacks with monsters: by virtue ofhis color, "Othello is a monster in the Renaissance sense of theword."6 A lthoug h precise atdtu de s in the early seventeenlii centu-ry are not recoverable, documents from that time can enable us tounderstand more about what constituted this "Renaissance sense"of Othello's monstrousness.The most useful evidence is, of course, contemporaneouswith Othello. An example is the pamphlet translated in 1605 byEdward Gresham, who summarizes the contents in an arrestingtitle:

Strange fearful & true news, which happened a tCarlstadt, i n the kingdom of Croatia. Declaring howthe sun did shine like blood nine day s together, an d howtwo a rm ies w ere seen in the Air, the one encounteringthe other. A n d how also a W om an w as d elivered ofthree prodigious sons, which Prophesied many strange


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Race and the Spectacle of the Monstrous in Othello 173

as the contents. The cover visually repre sen ts the battle in the airand the three "prodigious sons," described inside as follows: "Thefirst of these Prodigiou s Children ha d four hea ds, which spo ke a nduttered strange things. The second Child wa s black like a Moor, andthe third Child like un to Death." Depicted as fully g row n and a rtic-ulate, these newly-born "children" prophesy eventual defeat of theTurks and a time of dearth "both here and in other places." De vou tbuyers no doubt took the pamphlet seriously; others probablybought it for the kind of textual pleasures available today fromsupe rm ark et tabloids. The pred icted conflict in Croatia m ay seemironic to historia ns of the late twentieth century, bu t of m ore h istor-ical interest is the cover's use of black sk in as a sign of m onstrosity,indeed, as the child's only mo nstrous characteristic.Social anthropologists would say that this idea, that blacksand monsters are related, if not equated, on some level of the pop-ular imagination, constituted part of early modem London's "habi-

tus," what Pierre Bourdieu defines as "a system of lasting, transpos-able dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions ate ve r y m om e n t a s a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions," ormore simply, "a socially constituted system of cognitive and moti-va ting structures."7 If there w as a social disposition in 1604-1605 toregard blacks and monsters as similar manifestations of the Other,as Strange New s implies that there was, such a disposition wouldhav e affected bo th the generation and the reception of Othello at thathistorical mo m ent. Indeed , as parts of the same habitus, each textsimultaneously reflected and reinforced that very mental linkage.

Strange New s and Othello are by no means the only docu-ments of the late-sixteenth or early-seventeenth century to connectblacks and monsters. In 1569 Histoires Prodigeuses was translated asCertain Secret Wonders ofNature, in wh ich Pierre Boiastuau rehearsedvarious explanations for "monstrous childbearing" including "theinfluence of the stars," the "sup erabun danc e or default and corrup -tion of the seed and womb," or "an ardent and obstinate imagina-tion, which the Woman hath, whilst she conceives the child."


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Emperor and king of Bohemia, there was broughtto him a maid, rough and covered with hair like abear, the which the mother had brought forth in sohideous and deformed a shape, by having toomuchregard o the picture of S[aint] John clothedwith a beast's skin, the which was tied or madefast continually during her conception at her bed'sfeet. By the like means Hippocrates saved aprincess accused of adultery, for that she wasdelivered of a child black like an Ethiopian, herhusband being of a fair and white complexion,which by the persuasion of Hippocrates, wasabsolved and pardoned, for that the child was likeunto a [picture of a] Moor, accustomably tied ather bed.8If the firsf child had been fhe offspring of hirsufe parents, or if fhesecond child had been fhe offspring of an adulferous, inferracialunio n, fhey w ould not hav e been considered monsfers. Boiasfuauconsiders fhem fo be monstrous because of fhe "unnafural" infer-venfion by fhe female im agina tion d uri ng the process of conception.Whefher or nof Shakespeare read Boiasfuau, he would have recog-nized in fhis folk-theory of feratogenesis a consisfency wifh fheBiblical sfory he cifes in The Merchant of Venice, fhe sfory of Jacob'sintervenfion fo produce parti-colored lambs by placing sfripedwands in front of ewes while fhey mate (I.iii.75-85).

Boiasfuau's confem porary Am broise P ar, in his freafise OfMonsters and Prodigies, recounfs a sfory fhat is similar fo Boiasfuau'sbuf which reverses fhe colors, as a whife child is bom fo blackparenfs:

We have read in Heliodorus that Persiana, Queen ofEthiopia, by her husband Hidustes, being also anEthiope, had a daughter of a white complexion,because in the embraces of her husband, by whichshe proved with child, she earnestly fixed her eyeand mind upon the picture of the fair Andromeda


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rule and to what is usual"as Aristotle once defined monstrosi-The illustrations in both Par and Boiastuau, however,unlike the verbal texts, suggest that black skin alone could consti-tute a sign of m onstrosity. Regardless of w ho the illustrato rs m ayhave been, or whether the second copied the first, both chose todepict as a mo nsteralong with the hairy girl the black child b ornto white parents rather than the white one bom to black parents.The illustrators m ust on so me level hav e recognized that for a wh iteaudience of readers, the representation of a white child-monsterwould appear "normal" rather than "monstrous" until one had readthe accomp anying na rratives. The illustrators' artistic decision toshow only the black child points to the existence of a deep culturalcentrism, linked w ith wh at w ould come to be kno w n as racial iden-tity, centrism of a kind which is likely also to have s hap ed aud ienceresponses to the still extraordinary sight of a black person seen on

the streetor represented on the stage of a predominantly whiteculture such as France or En gland.It is hard to imagine that Shakespeare is not deliberatelyexploiting such Anglo-centrism in the w ay he prepa res an audiencefor Othe llo's entrance. In the first scene, lago aw akens B rabantiowith the cry that "an old black ram/Is tupping your white ewe"(I.i.89-90)an image of Othello and Desdemona intended to horri-fy her father. lago next repre sen ts their sexual un ion as "your

daug hte r cover'd with a Barbary ho rse" (I.i.112). Desd em ona 'simagined mating with an African animal is the kind of act whichPar describes among the causes of monsters, a "copulation withbeasts" that leads to "the confusion of seed of diverse kinds"(25.982). Reminding her father that Othello and Desdemona may begenerating monsters, lago further baits Brabantio, "you'll have yournephews neigh to you," then reinforces the idea with a final imageof Othello and Desdemona during sexual intercourse with the con-ventional figure of "the beast w ith tw o backs" (I.i.112-118). The firstscene of the play thus prepares an audience verbally for the


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In scene 2, the metaphors applied to Othello take on moreso da l and political overtones. Brabantio add resses Othello as a"foul thief whose enchantment of his daughter has led her to fleefrom "the wealthy curled darlings of our nation" to "the sootybo so m /O f su ch a thing as thou " (I.ii.62-72). Alth ough the wo rd"thing" is in accord with Iago's earlier beauty-and -beast m etap hors,Brabantio seems to see Othello's offense as more political than per-sonal, a transgression of the boundaries of acceptable beliavior inVenetian cu lture because O thello's "sooty" color marks him as ineli-gible to compete legitimately for Desdemona with the white malesof "our nation." An throp olog ist Robin Fox has obse rved th at"[glroups speaking the sam e languag e and being alike in other w ay smigh t well exchange wives am ong themselves^but the con nub iumstopped at the boundaries of the language, territory, or colour, orw ha tever mark ed 'u s' off from 'them .'"" A m arriag e bel:ween anAfrican black and a Venetian white would have seemed clearlybeyond the bounds of acceptable exogamy to Shakespeare's audi-enceespecially to the white, aristocratic males, whose maritaloptions in England Lawrence Stone has described as "ver)' limited"in social and geographical range and reflecting "a very high degreeof sod al and econom ic endogamy.''^^ Even withou t the langua gedepicting O thello as less than hum an, then, Desdemo na's un auth o-rized choice of husband would itself have seemed socially andpolitically "monstrous."

Persons watching the play would not yet appreciateOthello's virtues wh en h e app ears at court in scene 3, so his self-jus-tification must persuade a theater audience as well as the Duke ofVenice. To indicate ho w he captivated D esdem ona, Othello men -tions two exotic races he has told her about: "The Anthropophagi,and men who se he ad s/D o grow beneath their shoulders" (I .i ii .l46-147). Desd em ona ev idently has respo nde d to his exotic stories withawe:She swore in faith 'twas strange, 'twas pa ssing strange,'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.


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Desdemona's response to the "wondrous" and "strange" narrativesis confused with her response to the wonderful stranger who nar-rates them; as she puts it, the tales themselves "woo her" (I.iii.l68).Shakespeare gives Othello's wooing additional credibili ty byincluding exofic but recognizable travel lore such as the anthro-pophagi, which Montaigne had recently written about in his essay"Of Cannibals." The headless monsters were formerly described byPliny as "some people without necks, having their eyes in theirshoulders," in ancient India; bu t they also ha d been described in themore recent, 1582 edifion of Mandeville's Travels, where they wereillustrated, and in Hakluyt's expanded Voyages published between1598 and 1600, where Sir Walter Raleigh was said to have beenassured that headless mon sters could be found just two rivers awayfrom the place he was visiting in Guiana.i3 If the existence of thismonstrous race was commonly thought to have been validated byrecent travelers to remote places, then surely theatergoerstheaud itors of Othello's auditors wo uld, like De sdem ona, have foundthe teller as exotic as his tales.

Of course, Othello's most obvious difference is his skincolor, a sign of his African origin. Pliny once rema rked , "W hoeverbelieved in the Ethiopians before actually seeing them?" (511), andblack Africans seem not to have lost their associafions with suchm arvels by 1581, w he n Stephen Bateman in his Doom W arning AllMen to the Judgment turned first to Africa in his catalogue of mon-sters whose existence tesfifies to God's continuing punishment ofm an. Bateman's catalogue includes Negritae, with lips that hangdown to their breasts, who are labeled in the margin as "BlackM onsters," and w hat seems to be som ething of a catch-all:

Ethiopes a people in the west part of Ethiopia: alsothere are of those black men, that have four eyes:and it is said that in Eripia be found very comelybodied men, notwithstanding they are longnecked, and mouthed as a crane, the other part ofthe head like a man: also sundry strange and


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Othello wa s not considered to be a Batem an-esque "black mo nster"himself, as an African he might have been assumed to know firsthand about monstrous races.There seems to have been further confusion over, or failureto distinguish betw een , trad itiona l races of m ons ters in far-(3ff lan dsand the occasional birth closer to home of a monstrous, imiividualchild. Rea ders could find discussion of bo th kin ds of m onster inJam es Rueff s treafise The Expert Midwife, translated into English in1637, whose chapter "Of Unperfect Children, Also of MonstrousBirths" contains both a descripfion of a terribly deformed, yethu m an child b o m in Oxford in 1551, and a description of a beastwith a man's head, a beast's tail, and dogs' heads at its elbows andknees followed by a description of a mythical creature v^rith twow ings and one foot. Rueff notes that such m issh apen offspringm ust be m anifestations of Go d's will bu t that "through the insight ofour reason, we may perceive also the detestable sin of Sodomy."Rueff's assumption that particular births of monsters indicatebreeding between humans and animals suggests that he considerseven animal-like monsters to be individual cases rather than off-spring of monstrous races, but he goes on to mention Pliny's"reports of living creatures in Africa that have such various formsand shapes."i5 Even Rueff seem s unwilling to let go comp letely ofthe older explanations of monsters that associates them, like Blacks,with Africa.

Anthropologists have noticed a relation between attitudestow ard such outside rs and stories of m onsters. Clau de Lvi Straussrefers to the Gobineau hypothesis as a way of accounting for theprolifera tion of fantastic be ing s in a cu lture as less the resvtlt of richimaginafion than of "the inability of fellow-citizens to conceive ofstran gers in the same wa y as themselves."^ Othe llo as "blackamoor"is visibly marked as a member of a culture different from that ofeveryo ne else on the stage or in the aud ience; he m ay havie seem edas fantastic a s the monsters associated w ith him .There is another kind of historical evidence on which to


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even fo guess, buf there is no doubt that their numbers had beengrowing over fhe forfy years since fhe first West Africans had beeninfroduced fo London in 1563.17 Ru th Cow hig has wriffen thaf"fhere were several hundreds of black people living in the house-holds of fhe arisfocracy and landed genfry, or working in Londonfaverns," so she imagines fhaf "fhe sight of black people musf havebeen familiar fo Londoners."! Even if mosf Lon don ers had seenblacks, however, fhe appearance on sfage of a black person whospoke and felf musf sfill ha ve seemed rem arkable. And even ifblacks were visible on the streets, they m ay nof ha ve been accepfedas "familiar." Parish reco rds from B arking for 1Ocfober 1599 showtwo blacks living in the parish of All Hallows: "'Clare a Negra afW iddow S[fokes?]" and "M [a]ry a Negra af Richard W ood.'" W. E.Miller used fhis in 1961 as evidence fhaf fhere were blacks inLondon in 1599, a poinf no longer in doubf; what is more interest-ing is fhaf the two blacks are furfher described nof as inhabifanfsbuf as '"Straunger's in the paris h."!' This word m ay be m erely anexpression of parochialism, a reference fo fhe facf fhaf fhey were noflocally bo m , buf fhe ferm also suggesfs fhaf fhey w ere fhoughf of interms of fheir "ofherness."

The 1601 draff of a royal proclamafion furfher indicafes fheexfenf fo which blacks in Eng land were tho ug ht of as "sfrangers" atthe tu rn of fhe sevenfeenfh cenfury. En do rsed by Queen Elizabefh,fhe docum enf au tho rize s fhe fransporfafion fo Spa in or Porfugal ofany "Negroes and blackamoors . . . wifhin fhe realm of England."She jusfifies fhis acfion parfly in ferms of fhe precedenf of prisonerexchanges, fhe fradifion thaf a capfive may be enslaved by fhe vic-for in warfare. A second jusfificafion is a percepfion of social unresf.Bofh fhese argumenfs are based on an assumpfion of cultural cen-trism and racial difference:

Whereas the Queen's majesty, tendering the goodand welfare of her own natural subjects, greatlydistressed in these hard times of dearth, is highlydiscontented to understand the great number of


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which co[vet?] the relief which these people con-sum e, as also for that the m ost of them are infidelshaving no understanding of Christ or his Gospel:hath given a special commandment that the saidkind of peop le shall be with all speed avoided anddischarged out of this her majesty's realms.^oThe proclam ation goes on to license Caspe r van Senden, a m erchan twho had rescued eighty-nine English subjects detained by Spainand Portugal, to take "such Negroes and blackamoors to be trans-ported as aforesaid as he shall find within the realm of England."Van Senden is not autho rized to us e force, but if any p erso ns "pos-sessed of any such blackamoors . . . refuse to deliver them," theproclamation authorizes him to "advise and persuade them by allgood means to satisfy her majesty's pleasure therein" and to reportthe names of anyone w ho refuses to cooperate.

The proclamafion indicates that a black perso n can only bea servant, "possessed" by a master who should hand over the pos-session. Blacks are a "kind of people," different no t only in color bu talso by virtue of their religionrather, their lack of Christian reli-gionw hich m akes them "infidels." The concern expressed in theproclamafion is perhaps over their probable lack of political as wellas religious fidelity, for the comment about infidels follows closeupon a description of the English people as Elizabeth's "liege," orloyal subjects. A nd political concern s seem to be w ha t have led atleast some pe ople to feel ann oyed that blacks are "powered" as wellas "fostered" at the expe nse of the English. The black pop ula tion issaid to be "great," bu t the do cum ent includes a parenthefical "as sheis informed," perhaps indicafing some doubt in ElizabelJi's mindover the claimed grow th in size of the black po pu latio n. Or, theabsence of a numerical estimate could be a deliberate omission, ifthe approximate number was small enough to have reduced theforce of the argument that deportation of blacks would significant-ly ease the shortages of food.The proclamafion perhaps exaggerates the problems in


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to formally delineate a social boundary based on skin color andeven to bring the power of the state to bear on racially-markedstrangers in w hat am oun ted to a kind of cultural exorcism. Giventhe presence of such an attitude am ong the English toward blacks asunwelcome intruders, the character of Othello as both differentfrom Venetians but powerful within that culture must have con-tained a particularly powerful social charge for those who original-ly watched Othello.A perception of African blacks as "not English" wou ld fur-ther have reinforced the idea that Africa is an exotic, mysteriouswor ld. In 1600 tha t wor ld w as of sufficient in teres t that John Leo 'sA Geographical History ofAfrica was translated into English and pub-lished in Lond on. Leo w as a Moor from M orocco w ho had con-verted to Christianity, acco rding to John P ory's introduction.22 Hisbook had first been pub lishe d in Italian ar ound 1526.23 Leo did no toffer just one more traveler's rehea rsal of sights m ixed w ith legends

but an ethnographer's report, sometimes describing particulardetails from particular kingdoms in a given geographical area,sometimes drawing inferences from the observations, and some-times making mo ral judg m ents. Leo's. "General Description" notesthat there are five "principal nations" in that part of the world, theCafri, the Abyssins, the Egyptians, the Arabians, and "the Africansor Moors, properly so called; which last are of two kinds, namelyw hite or tawn y M oors, and N egroes or black Moors."24 M em bers ofthese groups can be found in various regions, he goes on to pointout, bu t later, in Book Seven, he states tha t "the fifteen king dom s ofthe land of the Neg roes kno w n to us, are all situated up on the riverof Niger, and upon other rivers which fall thereunto" (285). In hisdesc ription of these kingdom s, Leo is not inclined to offer sw eep ingjudg m ents, but in his General Description he offers som e statemen tsabout the vices of the peop le of Africa wh ich w ou ld h ave reinforcedEnglish fears and stereotypes of blacks, attitudes implicit in phras-es such as Ben Jon son 's "quick Negro"25 or Shakespeare's "lasciviousmoor" (I.i.126):


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lived in a forest am ong wild beasts. They havegreat swarms of harlots among them; whereupona man may easily conjecture their manner ofliving. (42)Perh aps John Leo's tone of abhorrence is a sop to Europe an readers,or perha ps the W estern-educated Leo w as feeling a n urge to scrawlin the margin, "Exterminate all the brutes!" as Con rad's K urtz w ou lddo in his repo rt on dark Africa. In any case Leo's History of Africatended to reinforce the European view of black moors as 'beasts,"and it was probably known to Shakespeare, as it certainly was toJonson.26 The book's London publication at the turn of the seven-teenth century is one more event that helped to consfitute theLondon habitus from which Othello emerged and into which it wasreceived.Much as associations of monsters and blacks would haveaffected ho w a play go er re gard ed Othe llo in the first act of the play,ideas about how monsters were conceived, carried, and deliveredinform many other passages in the play and would further haveshaped responses to characters on stage.The languag e of mon strous ch ildbearing app ears requent-ly in the play, often in the tradifion of prodigious births hinting atsome ominous event to come. At the end of the first act of Othello,lago app eals to Roderigo to plot with him against the M oor:

[L]et us be conjunctive in our revenge againsthim; if thou canst cuckold him, thou does thyselfa pleasure, and me a sport. There are m any eventsin the wom b of time, which w ill be d eliver'd.(I.iii.369-372)Iago's descripfion of time as a womb from which events will issuegives him a role something like that of Edward Gresham, thedoomsday pamphleteer who warned that the monstrous births inStrange News portended future calamities. lago is a more cheerfulprop het, perh aps because he sees himself less as hu m an victim than


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"Hell and night" are cast in the lesser role of midwives, as enablingrather than causadve agents.Iago's metaphor is noteworthy for its implied equivalencebetween an idea and a birth, a concept and a conceptionam etapho r that will recur. The idea that the brain gives birth tothoughts as the body gives birth to childrenor monsterswaswe ll-embe dded in the culture of early m od ern England. Otherexamples of the metaphor include the dedication of Shakespeare'ssonnets to "their only begetter" and the complaint of Sidney'sAstrophil that he feels "great with child to speake," as well asThomas Underdowne's compliment to Edward DeVere: "in yourHonour is, I think, expressed the right pattern of a NobleGe ntlem an, which in my hea d I ha ve conceived."^7 In Othello themetaphor is used deliberately, almost literally, so that the compari-son becomes explicit betw een m ental conception and physical birth,lago plays with the metap hor in Act II, wh en D esdem ona asks himto compose some lines of praise; he describes how his invention istaxing his brain, then announ ces: "But my M use labo ur s,/A nd thusshe is deliver'd" (II.i.127-128). As the com pariso n is exten ded withreference to Iago's plot, however, playgoers are reminded of them etaph or's basis in ideas about biological generation, and they m ayalso recall Iago's reference at the end of Act I to the impending"birth" as "monstrous"; as the m etaph or becom es conscious, it helpsto convey the morally monstrous nature of Iago's "conception."

In Act III, lago transfers the monstrous concepfion, whichincludes the idea of Desdemona's infidelity, from his own mind toOthello's. Othello com me nts in an aside that lago seems to echoOthello's ow n d ou bts a bout Cassio, "[a]s if there were so m e m onsterin his tho ug ht ,/ Too hid eo us to be sho w n" (III.iii.111-112). H e thensays to lago that there must be some reason lago has looked con-cerned as they we re discussing Cassio:[Thou] didst contract and purse thy brow together.As if thou then had st shu t up in thy brainSome horrible co nc eit . . . .


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The firsf lines, abouf a "horrible conceif," seem an obvious confinu-afion of the metaphorical language of generafion fhaf has previous-ly represenfed Iago's fhoughfs as some hideous progeny awaifingbirfh, confined in fhe wom b of his bra in. The confracfing an d p ur s-ing of Iago's brow are sympfoms of mefaphorical labor fo bringforfh fhe offspring, fo presenf fhe idea fo Ofhellowho is afraid fosee if. The descripfion of Iago's pa us ing before giving breafh fo hisw or ds m ay also be a confinuafion of fhe birfh imagery, as well as aliferal declarafion fhaf lago fhinks before he speaks; alfhough fhe"sfops" Ofhello refers fo are whaf he senses to be Iago's hesifafions,fhat is, stoppages of fhe breafh fhaf gives voice fo his thoughts, fheyalso resemble fhe breafhing of a prospecfive mofher in labor.Indeed, fhis paffern of references fo childbirfh provides a jusfifica-fion for fhe Folio reading of "dilations" insfead of fhe Firsf Quarto's"denofem enfs," since dilafions (of fhe cervix) could b e on e mo re ref-erence fo fhe birfh process , w ho se inelucfabilify "pass ion cannofrule." All fhese images of childbirfh help to consfifufe an un de r-sfanding fhaf lago is carrying a monsfrous idea as a mofher mighfcarry a deformed child in her womb.

In sub seq uent lines of fhe play, how ever, lag o do es nof givebirth fo his monsfrous thoughts but, somehow, fransfers theme taphorical pregnan cy to Othello. Perh aps fhe mefaphor breaksdo w n, here, since pregn anc y could n ot (unfil fhe lafe fwenfiefh cen-fury) be mov ed from one w om b fo anofher. Elizabefh Sacks ha sfried fo explain the process of fransfer as mefaphorical "theft," firstby show ing fhaf w om bs were somefimes co m pared fo pu rses in fheseventeenth cenfury, then by suggesting fhat Ofhello somehow,"psychosexually," ha s sfolen Iag o's "purse" of "frashy fhoughfs."28The preg nan cy is nof necessa rily shiffed from lago fo Ofhello, h ow -ever, if one fhinks of fhis menfal concepfion, like physical concep-fion, as a process requiring fwo pa rtne rs. The idea thaf D esdem onaha s been unfaifhful is generafed by verbal infercourse befv/een parf-ners, analogous fo sexual infercourse with lago as male and Ofhelloas female, impregnafed fhrough his ear. The concepfion process can


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where the arfisan forms wood into a shape but does not join himselfwith the material; "the acfive pa rtner is not situated within the thingwhich is being formed" (113). As Thomas Laquer has summarizedthis way of un de rstan din g generafion, "conception is for the male tohave an idea, an artisfic or artisanal conception, in the brain-uterusof the female."29 Aristo tle's theory wo uld also allow the play'smetaphorical impregnafion of one male by another male to seemless strained, for in this tradifional view of hu m an generafion, nei-ther mind and body nor gender and sex were so clearly distin-guished as they have since come to be. In Othello, then, the possi-bility that Desdemona has been unfaithful is the idea acfivelyimparted by lago, like a formafive male seed, into the brain-uterusof Othello, whose tractable character provides the passive materialto be sha ped. Then, like a pregnant woman with a seemingly irra-tional desire for something, Othello insists that Desdemona showhim the misplaced handkerchief decorated with strawberriesthefruit commonly associated with maternal cravings, the frustrafionof which could supposedly result in "strawberry marks" on chil-dren.3o Othello's "maternal" imaginafion thu s deforms the gestafingconception of possible infidelity into the "green-eyed monster" ofjealousy he had been warned to bew are (III.iii.170-172).

Although the metaphorical languag e is not perfectly consis-tent, this und erlying idea that a mo nstrous birth is impending con-finues to inform the play. Later in Act III, Othello refers to cuck-oldry as a matter of destiny: "Even then this forked plague is fatedto us /Whe n we do quicken" (III.iii.282-283). The audience hears astatement capable of another consfrucfion than Othello's intendedfatalism, however, for he will be plagued when he suspects that heis a cuckold, when the green-eyed monster will "quicken" in thew omb of his own brain. A few lines later Othello says, "I have apain upo n my forehead here" (III.iii.290)as the mon strous thoughtkicks in its mental w omb , perhaps, or as Othello feels a mental con-tracfion that anficipafes the birth of the idea. In the next scene,Emilia repeats the comparison of jealousy to "a monster/Begot


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. . . confess thee freely of thy sin:For todeny each article with oathCannot remove, nor choke the strong conception.That I do groan withal. Thou art to die.(V.ii.56.59)For Othello to contemplate the murder is for his mental womb tolabor painfully to give birth to its deformed "child"; his monstrousconception will issue forth as horrifying action.Othello has always been one of Shakespeare's most movingdramas, but it moves its audiences in different ways as their men-talifies differ. A part of its effect when first performed in the earlyseventeenth-century England would have resided in the confusedmixture of powerful ideas about monsters and about blacks circu-lafing in the culture that was produdng Shakespeare and Othello, asthat culture was in turn being reproduced by them.

Metropolitan State College of Denver

NotesComplete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington, 3"^Edition (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresm an, 1980), V.i.269 (Act V, scene 1, line269), and II.ii.70-71. Subsequ ent citations to Shakespeare's w ork are from thisedition. 2See Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Dramby E ldred D. Jones (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 40-50, and M. R.Ridley, Introduction, Othello, Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1958),

XV. 3"Marvels of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters," byRudolf Wittkower, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 5 (1942):


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Race and the Spectacle of the Mo nstrous in Othello 187

*'"And wa sh the Ethiop w hite': Femininity and the Monstrous inOthello" in Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, by KarenNew ma n, edited by E. Ho wa rd and Marion F. O'Connor (New York:Methuen, 1987), 153.'^Outline of a Theory of Practice, by Pierre Bourdieu, translated byRichard Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 16 (1972; Cam bridge:Camb ridge Un iversity P ress, 1977), 76, 82-83.Certain Secret Wonders of Nature, by Pierre Boiastuau, translated byEdw ard Fenton (London, 1589), 13-14.Ambroise Par in Works, translated by Thomas Johnson (London1634), 25.lOAristotle, Generation of Animals, translated by A. L. Peck(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979), 439."Ki'ns/iip and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective, by Robin Fox(1967; Camb ridge: Cambridge U niversity Press, 1983), 178.i r/ze Family, Sex and Marriage in England: 1500-1800, by LawrenceStone (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 60.^matural History, by Pliny, translated by H. Rackham (Cambridge,

M assachusetts: Ha rvard University Press), 2:521; The Travels of Sir JohnMandeville, by John Mandeville, translated by C. W. R. D. Mosely (1582; NewYork: Penguin, 1983), 137; Voyages and Discoveries: The Principal NavigationsVoyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, by Richard Hakluyt,edited by Jack Beeching (1598-1600; New York: Penguin, 1972), 402."T/ie Doom Warning All Men to the Judgment, by Stephen Bateman(London, 1581), 6-7.i5T/ie Expert Midwife, or an Excellent and Most Necessary Treatise of theGeneration and Birth ofMan, by James Rueff, translated by E. Griffin (London

1637), 157-158. Elementary Structures of Kinship, by Claude Lvi Strauss(Boston: Beacon, 1969), 46.Black Presence: A Documentary History of the Negro in England,1555-1860, by James Walvin (London: Orbach and Cham bers, 1971), 8,12.i8"Blacks in English Drama and the Role of Shakespeare's Othello,"by Ruth Cowhig in The Black Presence in English Literature, edited by DavidDabydeen (Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press,1985), 5, 7.

""Negroes in Elizabethan London," by W. E. Miller, Notes andQueries 206 (1961): 138.


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Leo a Moor, Born in Granada and Brought Up in Barbary, t rans la ted by John P ory(London, 1600), np .23See The White Man's Burden: Historical Origins o f Racism in theUnited States, by Winthrop D. Jordan (New York: Oxford University Press,1974), 18.2M Geographical History of Africa, 6^Volpone, by Benjonson, edited by Alvin Kernan (New Haven:Yale University Press), 3.7.232.^(Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama, b yEldred D . Jones, 21.27For a discussion of Shakespeare as the begetter of the sonnets, see"Master W. H., R.LP," by Donald W. Foster, PMLA 102 (1987), 42-54; ThePoems of Sir Philip Sidney, by Philip Sidney, edited by William A . Ringler, Jr.(Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), 165; "Epistle Dedicatory, to the Right HonorableEdward DeVere," by Thom as Und erdow ne, An Ethiopian Historie (London, nodate [1569]), np.^Shakespeare's Images of Pregnancy, by El izabeth Sacks (London:

MacMillan, 1980), 71 .^^Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, b y T h o m a sLaquer (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ha rvard University Press, 1990), 42.300thello IILiii.439; see Joseph Andrews, by H enry Fielding,, edite d byHomer Goldberg (New York: Norton, 1987), 176.


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Race and the Spectacle in the Monstrous Othello

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