Is Shakespeare Racist?
One very touchy subject bleeds off the pages of Shakespeare’s play, “Othello,” It has been a touchy subject for a lot of us for a long time now. It has caused an uproar of great controversy between multiple groups for decades and it happens to be racism. Racism has ALWAYS been around, even during the time of Shakespeare. However, it wasn’t, and still isn’t today, a subject anyone would like to talk about. So why would an experience, intelligent, famous author write a play about such a hush-hush concept? To Grab Attention. This is one of Shakespeare’s first plays to purposefully incorporate an African American man into his plays. The reason for this is not to simply poke fun or discriminate or even himself be racist; it is to show how racism can be a very ugly idea. Racism is so prominent within in the play that it becomes an antagonist in “Othello.” We never found out Iago’s true motives for deceiving Othello. Although Iago says he hates Othello for possibly sleeping with his wife (II. i. 316-323), he certainly might just be giving excuses to hide the fact that he doesn’t respect Othello for his skin color. Iago almost always refers to Othello as “the Moor,” except when his lips are in the present of the moor himself. Shakespeare does this to show Iago’s hidden disrespect for Othello and his skin color. Overall, Shakespeare is not a racist person himself. He simply explored the negative concept of racism to demonstrate how ugly and evil it can be on its own.
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Shakespeare Reading Tips Reading Shakespeare’s plays hasn't always been a stroll through the park for me. It was always a struggle to comprehend certain lines and especially certain words. Instead of giving up and quitting when I was unsure about a phrase, I decided to take action and help myself to better understand. I learned some ways to better myself in my reading and make it easier for the future While reading, there were a couple of times I had to stop and really think about what was being said. Sitting back and just thinking about what the author or speaker is trying to get across helped me to determine what was being said. To also help my comprehension, I chose to reread over previous lines to gain some in text knowledge about what the mood, setting, and other actors are saying. This will help me better to decipher the incomprehensible phrase by having a better feeling of what the tone, and setting might be. Most times I understood the phrases, yet it was the individual words that threw me for a loop. When I was unsure about a word such like “knave” (II. i. 239), I would have to look at the footnotes on the left side of the page. This small definition, or sometimes pictures, helped me to better visualize and comprehend what was happening and being said. However, some copies may not include footnotes to help reader’s comprehension. In that case, looking up the word or phrase in a dictionary or on line will do. But be careful that it is the Shakespearean definition! When you’re checking out the definition, take a sneak peek at some synonyms. If you find a word you know than you can replace that word with the word/phrase in the play that you are unsure about. After all of that and you still have no clue what is being said, try looking up some examples. I find these to be helpful because you can apply the example into certain situations to better visualize what is being said in the play. Once I had all these tricks up my sleeve, I found that reading Shakespeare wasn’t as difficult to read as I once thought. Blame it all on the Hero Often times it is everyone’s first instinct to toss all of the blame onto the antagonist of the story, play, or movie. However, most of the time it isn’t actually their fault--no matter how much some of us wish it was. There are certain occasions when the author, such as Shakespeare himself, likes to toy with readers’ minds and really get them to think about how the play unraveled. In the case of “Othello”, one of Shakespeare’s famous tragedies, the protagonist (rather than the antagonist) in fact could be the one to blame. Not only was he the literal murderer but he allowed himself to be deceived and led astray by Iago. Even if Iago was the one to lie and be the deceiver, he wasn’t the one who killed Desdemona--Othello’s new bride, Othello let himself be blinded by his emotions and let them tear him apart. First with his love for Desdemona, next by his fear of being betrayed by her. Othello loves Desdemona too much that he became paranoid. An example of this is when he says "it is too much of joy" (I,ii,56). This displays that he is an extremely emotional man and he lets it get the best of him. Causing it to affect quite greatly how he acts. Othello doesn't handle situations very well, or at least not in the right way, causing him to think irrationally and be the one to blame for all of this tragedy. |
Dawson Bartlett:
So we just stopped reading Othello - thank goodness! Here's a blog to tell you all about it. Be careful... there are spoilers! |