Speaking of the Moor: From "Alcazar" to "Othello"

261 Pages·2008·2.07 MB·English

by  Emily C. Bartels

Speaking of the Moor
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Speaking of the Moor
From Alcazar to Othello
Emily C. Bartels
university of pennsylvania press
philadelphia
Copyright © 2008University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly
citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104–4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN978-0-8122-4076-4
For Emma Smith
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contents
introduction
On Sitting Down to Read OthelloOnce Again 1
chapter one
Enter Barbary: The Battle of Alcazarand “the World” 21
chapter two
Imperialist Beginnings: Hakluyt’s Navigationsand the Place
and Displacement of Africa 45
chapter three
“Incorporate in Rome”: Titus Andronicusand the
Consequence of Conquest 65
chapter four
Too Many Blackamoors: Deportation, Discrimination, and Elizabeth I 100
chapter five
Banishing “all the Moors”: Lust’s Dominionand the Story of Spain 118
chapter six
Cultural Traffic: The History and Description of Africa
and the Unmooring of the Moor 138
chapter seven
The “stranger of here and everywhere”: Othelloand the Moor of Venice 155
viii contents
conclusion
A Brave New World 191
notes 195
bibliography 227
index 243
acknowledgments 251
introduction
On Sitting Down to Read Othello Once Again
“Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,/Nor aught set down in malice”
(Oth. 5.2.341–42).1 This is the instruction that Shakespeare’s “valiant Moor”
Othello offers to his audience at the end of the play that bears his name
(1.3.48). Yet, as this book—and, I will argue, that play—attempt to show, to
speak of Othello, of a “Moor of Venice,” as he is is not as easy or straightfor-
ward as it sounds. Othello himself goes on to supply a number of divergent
images, each with a different cultural edge. He is, he implies, a proper if erring
lover—“one that loved not wisely, but too well,” “one not easily jealous, but
being wrought,/Perplexed in the extreme” (5.2.343–45)—and “one” generic
or “Venetian” enough that he requires no qualification before the representa-
tives of Venice. He is also, however, an “Indian” who “threw a pearl away/
Richer than all his tribe,” and possibly (though less likely) a “Judean”
(5.2.346–47).2 His “subdued eyes” become “Arabian trees,” his “tears” their
“medicinable gum” (5.2.347–50). All “this,” he orders Lodovico, “set you
down” (5.2.350). But “this” is not all. In addition, Lodovico must “say besides
that in Aleppo once,” Othello “took by th’ throat” “a malignant and a tur-
baned Turk” (who “beat a Venetian and traduced the state”) and “smote him,”
just as Othello now stabs himself with an unnoticed weapon (5.2.351–54; em-
phasis added).
As these images mount up, it is hard to tell whether, where, or how to
draw the line between them. Othello’s directive, “set you down this;/And say
besides,” which is meaningfully enjambed in the script, at once breaks and
bridges the figures that come before and after. It teases us with the illusion of
closure and difference—an end to “this” and a start to what “besides”—where