Othello : white skin, black masks

Othello’s race, Desdemona’s perfect purity, and Iago’s motives have long occupied critics of the play. For Coleridge, the survival of lago confirmed his belief that Shakespeare’s character represented motiveless malignity, a threat whose persistence is symbolized in Othello’s last scene. Coleridge’s emotions were involved, and in his criticism we feel the passion of his elevation of Desdemona, his wonder, his horror even, at the idea that Othello, Moor of Venice, could be any kind of African but a noble, northern, Arab, not black, but comely. When critics talk about the title, Moor of Venice, they concentrate on Moor rather than “of Venice”. This essay takes the problems of Othello’s origins and Desdemona’s ostensible perfection and attempts to recontextualize them as part of a play about judgement. Othello’s speed of judgement is appropriate to a soldier, but also to a foreigner ; therefore some of the audience ’s willing suspension follows from Othello’s strangeness. Desdemona, too, misjudges in ways which contrast with the care of the Venetians. Thus we see, in logo’s preservation, the readiness to be patient of good judges. The question is less one of the persistence of evil -though that is a true question and one that is always with us -than whether or not the state will be able to discover the truth.