Racism

Racism in Elizabethan times

In Elizabethan England the ideas and images of racism were only partially developed. This is reflected in Shakespeare's rather ambivalent attitude toward race.

Othello, a black Moor, is portrayed sympathetically as an articulate, intelligent and introspective human being. There is a suggestion that Othello's downfall may be rooted in his passionate and temperamental Moorish nature, but this tendency is balanced by a presentation of other, more complex aspects of his character:

"When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe...." —"Othello," Act V, Scene II