1 Shakespeare’s Others
Othello, Shylock, and Caliban
Shakespeare’s Others
Caliban
Shylock
2 Master Thesis English Language, Literature, and Culture
Ahmad J. Mohamad – 6076211 ([email protected])
Supervisor: Dr. Gene M. Moore
University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Humanities
July 2011
3 Contents
Introduction: Shakespeare’s Others …………………………… 5
Chapter One: Shakespeare’s Moorish Other: Othello, or “The
extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and
everywhere” …………………………………….. 8
Chapter Two: Shakespeare’s Jewish Other: Shylock, or “The
misbeliever, cut-throat dog” …………………... 29
Chapter Three: Shakespeare’s Monstrous Other: Caliban, or
“The freckled whelp hag-born, – not honour’d
with a human shape ………………………….. 45
Conclusion ……………………………………………………….. 62
Works Cited ……………………………………………………… 67
4 Acknowledgements
I wish to thank all those who contributed to this thesis by giving me their
encouragement, advice, and practical help. My first debt of gratitude goes to my supervisor,
Dr. Gene M. Moore, who has patiently and sincerely supervised this work. I have to admit
that the merits of this work are his and the inadequacies are mine.
Special words of thanks are due to my family for their encouragement and unfailing
support during the whole years of my study.
5 Introduction: Shakespeare’s Others
In Shakespearian drama, “Others” are characters who are portrayed as different,
separated, stigmatized, and alienated. These features are supposedly inherent in them for they
are non-English/European, non-Christian, non-human, wild, savage, and/or characterized
with a strange or odd behaviour which is different from the more conventional and normal
behaviour usually adopted by people, especially the European civilized Christian society.
In Othello, Shakespeare shows his Moorish hero, Othello, as a person who is different
from the Venetian society in which he lives. Othello is a stranger not only in Venice but also
everywhere. His otherness is clearly reflected in his blackness and in his exotic behaviours
and beliefs. These factors represent haunting threats and anxieties of strangeness and
difference that characterize the Moor in Venice’s civilized Christian society which hardly
accepts and tolerates strangers.
Shakespeare’s creation of Othello as the Other in a Christian society that hated
strangers is quite peculiar. He did show the same kind of stereotypical Moor, yet in a
different fashion. He is a noble and courageous Moor upon whom the senate heavily relies to
lead their wars. He is also the leader of the Christian army that is supposed to protect
Christianity from its infidel enemies. Othello, nevertheless, is also the savage and barbarous
Moor who will violate the natural order of things and steal a “super-subtle Venetian”,
Desdemona, from her father. Othello is transgressively paired to Desdemona, a fact that will
unveil his inherent stigmatizing otherness at the end of the play.
Shylock, on the other hand, is the Jewish Other in a predominant Christian enterprise.
His stigmatizing otherness is derived from his nation and in his overwhelming preoccupation
with money. As a Jew, Shylock threatens the Christians’ notions of identity and economy.
6 Shakespeare tried to expose the Jews in anti-alien discourse as part of their racial and
religious otherness, which may embody an anti-Semitic discourse as well.
The last but not least of Shakespeare’s Others is the monster, Caliban. He is
Shakespeare’s “salvage and deformed slave” representing concerns “comical or satiric, with
the animal aspect of man symbolizing all brainless revolution, and the absurdities of mobmentality” (Knight 138). Caliban is also depicted as “an opposing force, the ‘other’ onto
whom the dominant culture projects its fears of disorder, and thus he becomes a powerful
symbol of resistance and transgression” (Vaughn xv).
Hence, what was the significance of this Elizabethan interest in “Otherness”? Why
did Shakespeare want to dramatize a certain constellation of anxieties about his Others:
blackness and culture in Othello, religion, race, and money in Shylock, and primitive
savagery in Caliban? To what extent it is possible to say that Otherness is an instrument of
terror that can result in hatred and violence? Did Shakespeare in both Othello and The
Merchant of Venice want to play upon the dynamics where Moors and Jews are seen as
dangerous figures capable of threatening the well-being of the state and its citizens? What did
Shakespeare want to express in his creation of Caliban’s rebellious and brutal mind?
Moreover, it is quite significant to discover to what extent Shakespeare was
successful in portraying Othello and Shylock as racial stereotypes. Are they represented as
being only what the stereotypes dictate or not? Are the white characters of Venice like
Antonio and Iago who trigger the discriminative attitudes towards the “Other” character any
better? It is also worthy to investigate how the two characters respond to the stream of
hearted and racism directed towards them?
I have attempted in this study to examine the “Other” as a character in Shakespeare by
showing some of the various ways in which this figure was treated and the reasons or
7 anxieties that paved the way for such a treatment. Shakespeare’s Others are notably not that
many in number, Othello, Shylock and his daughter Jessica, Caliban, Cleopatra, and Aaron,
are the most famous ones. I do not pretend to present a comprehensive account of these
figures, but rather a reading and description of some of the aspects that could have caused
Shakespeare to stigmatize them during his time. I have limited myself to only three of these
characters, namely, Othello, Shylock, and Caliban, who reflect some of the problems and
anxieties that were resonating during Shakespeare’s time.
8 Chapter One: Shakespeare’s Moorish Other: Othello, or “The extravagant and
wheeling stranger of here and everywhere”
If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black. (I.iii.291-95) 1
Othello is such a controversial play with various interpretations, evaluations, and
meanings, which is why some critics have argued that Othello is a tragic hero trying to find
his place in a racist society. Other critics maintained that Shakespeare presented a play that is
hostile to foreigners. It is possible to say that Shakespeare did hold an objective perspective
in his treatment of Othello as a play and Othello as a character. He tried to satisfy both types
of critics leaving the door open to his audiences’ minds and hearts to make a decision
regarding Othello’s nature being a Venetian general and not an ordinary Moor/man. He
introduced the Moor that feeds his audiences’ stereotypical appetites, yet in a shockingly
different way. Shakespeare furnished his Moor with a peculiar personal and public identity in
Venetian terms. Yet, he played on his audiences’ earlier conceived attitudes by painting the
Moor with such glamour that simultaneously blurred their minds and visions. In this fashion,
Shakespeare in Othello tried to expose the significance of colour and its racial discourse by
addressing a number of certain sensitive anxieties that the play tries to reveal and discuss.
These anxieties did, of course, have a direct relation to certain contexts during Shakespeare’s
time that inspired Shakespeare in his conception of Othello.
1
This and all subsequent Shakespeare quotations are from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, ed. W. J. Graig (Henry Porders:
London, 1990), unless otherwise indicated.
9 Histories of the African and Ottoman Empires seem to have been among some of the
many sources that could have helped Shakespeare in his creation of Othello. Leo Africanus’s
The History and Description of Africa, translated into English in 1600 by John Pory, is one of
these main sources used and consulted by English Renaissance readers. In his book,
Africanus shows that the Moors of North Africa are noble and honourable, yet they also have
a superstitious and gullible nature that makes them capable of savage violence, a feature
Shakespeare cunningly exploits and represents in his Moor. Africanus describes two types of
indigenous North Africans who inhabit the desert: the Moors and Arabs, and Othello belongs
to the former group. He also stresses the fact that Moors are of Muslim faith and resemble the
Turks in this respect more than their fellow Africans (Quoted in Hadfield 9).
Besides, African characters of various colours had become a common tradition by the
time Shakespeare’s Othello first appeared on stage. These Africans were called Moors and
they were classified into two broad types. The first type generally emphasized the blackness
of the Moor. Jones calls this type the “villainous Moor” (Jones 86). Notable examples of this
sort are Muly Hamet in The Battle of Alcazar (1591), and Eleazer in Lust’s Dominion (1600).
The other type was the Moor whose blackness was not emphasized, or who was referred to as
a “tawny Moor” or a “white Moor”, a “dignified oriental ruler, still capable of the cruelty
credited to all Moors, but also capable of noble conduct” (Jones 87). Shakespeare’s
representation of Othello must have been based to some extent on the writings of his time
concerning Moorish and Turkish figures.
Moreover, other plays like Thomas Greene’s Selimus, Emperor of the Turks (c.1594),
discusses the brutal way in which Selim I killed his father and two elder brothers so that he
would become the only ruler of Turkey. A similar play to Selimus is Christopher Marlow’s
Tamburlaine (c.1587). The popularity of such plays indicates that in Shakespeare’s time there
was an urgent demand for stories of a brutal and exotic nature. Shakespeare’s Titus
10 Andronicus (c.1594) is more like Selimus and Tamburlaine showing Aaron, an evil Moor
from North Africa, who is ambitious, brave, and above all violent (Hadfield 8).
On the other hand, there were scholarly and popular books about Africans along with
the gossip of sailors, traders, and slavers who had regular contacts with Africa. These stories
included descriptions of the courts of West African Negro kings, harems of the North African
rulers, and accounts of trade transactions and slave raids. Along with this information about
the Negroes, Londoners were accustomed to see Moors, whether black or tawny, in their
streets (Jones 87). This new presence of Negroes in England during Elizabeth’s time was
regarded as a threat, for why else would the Queen issue two edicts to expel “Blackmoors” in
1596 and in 1601, both for reasons of “scarcity of resources and gainful employment in
England” (Andreas 171). In this respect, blacks were linked by the “suspicion that they were
consuming resources and providing services that should be reserved for the English as a
white and ‘Christian people’, and also they were linked by association as infidels” (Andreas
171).
To begin with, Othello as a play which discusses the idea of the “Other” and Othello
as a character who represents the “Other” could have a connection with some of the
“discursive fields” (Vaughan 4) that were prevalent during many late sixteenth and early
seventeenth century texts. These “discursive fields” are discussed by Virginia Mason
Vaughan in her Othello: A Contextual History (1994). They, in turn, represent certain
anxieties which were resonating in the Elizabethan’s and Jacobean’s minds when
encountering Othello’s otherness. The first of these anxieties is the global concern about the
Ottoman threat to Europe, that is, Christian “civility” as opposed to Islamic “barbarism”
(Vaughan 4). Europeans during the sixteenth century were convinced that Christian
civilization was in a grave danger from continuous Ottoman victories (including the 1572
capture of Cyprus from Venice). Moreover, the European distrust of alien cultures was not
11 something new in 1604, which was also reflected in the figure of the “Turk” as the “alien,
barbaric, and demonic, in contrast to the Christian’s civil and moral rightness” (Vaughn 13).
The Turk, the Eastern Other, expresses anxieties of hatred and fear that haunted the Christian
Western civilization (23). Othello is the “turbaned Turk” of his own description at the end
(v.ii.352), which is also reflected in the reactions to his elopement with Desdemona.
A second discursive field resonating through Othello is that of the military and its role
in society. During the Renaissance, a new sort of professionalism emerged which is different
from the medieval image of the ‘parfit, gentil knight’. Such a new field of art should be based
on science, said the military theorists of the time, although the old chivalric ideal powerfully
continued to persist. Consequently “Venice, as a city-state that needed to protect a vast
overseas trading network, was caught between the old ideal and the new science; like
England under Elizabeth and James, Venice needed military powers but feared its subversive
potential, disbanding its armies at each war’s end” (Vaughan 5). This fluctuating position
paved the way for the Venetian State to employ foreign mercenaries, that is, condottiere, as a
professional standing army. These strangers held an ambiguous status within the State in the
sense that though they were crucially important for the State’s protection and security, they
were rarely accepted or taken in as an integral part of it (Vaughan 5). Othello’s first Act
shows the Venetians threatened by the alien Other, the barbaric Turks. Roderigo describes
Othello as an “extravagant and wheeling stranger / Of here and everywhere” (I.i.137),
emphasizing that he is the Other without a city of his own, and whose sense of self must
come from his occupation – mercenary. Othello is also a practical Renaissance military
leader. In the opening of the play, he is able to stop a street fight by his military charisma.
Moreover, the Senate throws “a safer voice” on Othello to lead its war in Cyprus (I.iii.226),
and even Iago admits that the state “cannot with safety cast him (I.i.148) because “Another of
his fathom they have none / to lead their business” (I.i.153-54). Thus, everything of Othello
12 in the first part of the play makes him a truly professional military leader, a man combining
heroic standards of virtue and courage with professional knowledge and experience.
The concept of racial difference is a third major discursive field in Othello. By the
fifteenth century, the Portuguese began their exploration and exploitation of Africa, and the
concept of race began to be globalized. The humanity of the East/West Indians and Moors
was questioned by the European whites, paving the way for a wider ethnocentric conviction
that Europeans are superior (Vaughan 5). Moreover, these explorations played their role in
triggering Elizabethans’ fascination for travellers’ amazing accounts and stories of foreign
peoples, especially “tales of monstrous creatures, heathen customs, sexual orgies, and
cannibalism” (Vaughan 51). Such alien characteristics to the Elizabethan mind were all
associated with blackness as a “colour suggesting negation, dirt, sin, and death, which in turn
joined additional signs of Otherness – nakedness, savagery, and general depravity” (Vaughan
52).
Shakespeare makes use of the discourse of racial difference in two ways: first by
introducing his hero loaded with the expected stereotypical attitudes from Iago’s initial racial
epithets to references to the “old black ram” and “Barbary horse” (I.i.88;112) to Emilia’s
cries of outrage in the final scene “ignorant and dirt” (V.ii.162), and second in his tragedy’s
fundamental basis by showing that the union of a white Venetian girl and a black Moorish
general is something unnatural.
Othello, the Moorish general, is portrayed in a fashion that satisfies Elizabethans’
stereotypical racial attitudes about Moors. The first scene of the play is replete with racist
prejudices and attitudes. Roderigo refers to Othello as “the thick-lips” (I.i.66), and Iago’s
shouts below Brabantio’s window stress the association between blackness and bestial
sexuality:
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise!
13 Awake the snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you. (I.i.88-91)
You’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse;
you’ll have your nephews neigh to you; you’ll have
coursers for cousins and gennets for germans. (I.i.112-14)
Roderigo describes the Moor as “lascivious” (I.i.127), while Iago cries, “the devil will make a
grandsire of you”. Iago arouses Brabantio’s anger with verbal images of his daughter
copulating unnaturally with a bestial creature.
Roderigo and Iago have obvious reasons to hate the Moor: Iago believes that he has
been deprived of a deserved promotion, while Roderigo is a rival for Desdemona’s love. But,
Brabantio’s motives for scorning Othello are quite different. He responds to Roderigo’s and
Iago’s curses and charges against Othello by saying: “This accident is not unlike my dream”
(I.i.143). Apparently, Brabantio has been haunted by nightmares of his daughter copulating
with the Moor. He invites Othello to his house to hear his stories as a noble Moor, yet Othello
is not the kind of man who can marry a senator’s daughter. Brabantio concludes that only
witchcraft could have enchanted his daughter to “run from her guardage to the sooty bosom /
Of such a thing as [Othello] – to fear, not to delight” (I.ii.70-71).
The union of Othello and Desdemona stigmatizes Othello as the savage and barbarous
Other. As Gillies claims: “Othello is a character who is displaced from his native milieu and
he is above all transgressively paired to Desdemona” (Gillies 26). Othello’s nobility and
courage are highly regarded by almost everyone in Venice, yet the social status is quite
unequal. Othello, on the one hand, is a black “thick-lips”, and is somewhat “declined / Into
the vale of years” (III.iii.265-66). Desdemona, on the other hand, is young, white, and the
daughter of a senator. Thus, Othello’s union with Desdemona is purely Shakespeare’s
creation. In the source (Cinthio’s Heccatomithi), Desdemona and her nameless Moor are both
14 commoners of the same age. Therefore, it is “Shakespeare’s idea to introduce the age
discrepancy, to make the girl the senator’s daughter and to make the Moor a Venetian
general” (Gillies 26).
Othello’s tragedy is thus not accidental but rather follows straight from his otherness.
The contradiction in the first act of the play is between Othello’s Otherness in the minds of
the Venetians as well as Elizabethan audiences, and his virtue and nobility. Although
Desdemona professes that “[She] saw Othello’s visage in his mind” (I.iii.254), Othello’s
otherness is not redeemed by either his virtue or his nobility. Desdemona’s speech, however,
already hides the fact of Othello’s otherness in his black visage. The Duke makes a similar
contradiction when addressing Brabantio: “If virtue no delighted beauty lack / Your son in
law is far more fair than black” (I.iii.291-92). Desdemona’s act of miscegenation with her
lascivious Moor have threatened not just Brabantio, but the Venetian social order. Her father
as a Venetian Senator warns:
If such actions may have passage free,
Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be. (I.ii.98-99)
Why did Desdemona want to marry Othello and vice versa? And how can this help to
say something about Othello’s otherness? I would argue that Desdemona’s will to marry
Othello is not that of real or sincere love from first sight but rather that of innocent, childish,
and irrational admiration and fascination for the otherness expressed both in his travels and
his black sexuality. Karen Newman has shown that “Othello is a conventional representation
of black sexuality evoked by other characters and by himself in his travel’s tales and through
his passionate action” (49). Part of Othello’s otherness is his sexual difference represented in
the black man’s power, which is different from the white male norm represented in the play
by Iago (50). It is also possible to suggest that the same sexuality of Othello’s black power
15 fascinates the white female sexual appetite represented in the play most emphatically by
Desdemona. Again, I would disagree partially with Karen Newman’s suggestion that “plots
of desire conventionally figure woman as erotic object, but in Othello the iconic centre of the
spectacle is shifted from the woman to the monstrous Othello, whose blackness charms and
threatens … ” (53). I would suggest that it is mutual, a point that I shall shortly discuss in
relation to Othello and how it can be seen as part of his otherness.
To turn to Othello, the noble Moor is to discover his real nobility concealed under his
military gabardine. Brabantio courteously invites Othello to his house. Othello in turn betrays
this invitation which marks his otherness. At the beginning of the play Othello appears as a
noble and courageous figure. He is the leader of a Christian army in face of the barbarous and
savage Turks. He seems in a great harmony as a general and husband. Yet, there is one
serious contradiction which disintegrates this harmonious personality, that is, he never feels
ashamed of betraying Brabantio’s courteous invitation and marrying his daughter secretly.
Allardyce Nicoll observes that this contradiction is Shakespeare’s invention since there is no
such secrecy in the source (Cinthio’s Heccatomithi), where the two couples marry publicly
though with fierce paternal opposition (Quoted in Gerard 101). Yet, what is most significant
and most disturbing, too, is Othello’s reaction to his marriage showing no repentance or
remorse for such an amoral conduct. Othello’s otherness is reflected in his disrespect of the
proper morals and ethics that he as a professed civilized Christian (and not a barbarian)
should hold and maintain.
Why did Othello behave in such a disgraceful way for himself and his host –
Brabantio? If one is to suppose that Othello loved Desdemona for herself, then this is
something quite not true, for he violated her Venetian pride and honour by getting married
without her father’s permission. He should be careful in his behaviour being a Venetian
general and not an ordinary man. Hence, there is a certain motive that lurks behind such a
16 disgraceful action. Othello here proves that he is not a worthy suitor but rather the strange
Other in a society that rejects him. Othello’s plan thus is to woo Desdemona, for he being a
black man and an extravagant stranger, he cannot believe himself to gain such a fair lady with
all the characteristics that even white Venetians find attractive and alluring. Moreover and
above all, this will help him to secure a much more stable position in Venice and inside
himself. His plan is to tell his travel’s history while making sure that:
This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
…………………………………………….
And with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate. (I.iii.145;153)
Othello thus knows how to play on Desdemona’s innocence that:
She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank’d me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. (I.iii.162-6)
Why did not Othello ask for Desdemona’s hand publically from her father? Surely he knows
that he will be rejected for both his blackness and racial difference, but at least he would
prove himself the noble Moor that the Venetians and the audience are supposed to believe.
Then and only then part of his savagery and otherness would be lifted since her father and the
public by now know about his desire to marry her.
17 Finally, Othello states before the Senate that Desdemona “loved [him] for the dangers
[he] had pass’d” (167), dangers that he subtly managed to exploit in order to reach his end,
making Desdemona admire him. Othello states also that “[he] loved her that she did pity
them”(168). Desdemona pitied Othello for his savage and barbarous past that would even
woo the Duke’s daughter, yet “to feel pity” does not necessarily mean to love. Her free, fair,
and innocent Venetian self makes her feel sorry for Othello’s past to the extent that she was
fascinated by such a wondrous and adventurous life. The marriage thus in Evans’s words is
“a magical power that ends Othello’s isolation and satisfies his regal state for self approval”
(133).
In Desdemona, it is Othello’s exoticism associated with his tales about monstrous
creatures and his past adventures that aroused her sexual desires:
… , the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
……………………………………………….
Of moving accidents by flood and field
Of hair-breadth scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
……………………………………………….
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. (I.iii.130-45)
A few lines later, Desdemona frankly declares before the Senate her sexual passions:
That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world: my heart’s subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord. (I.iii.250-54)
18 The same point of Desdemona’s sexual appetite is tackled by Iago explaining that it is not
possible for Desdemona to continue in her copulation with the Moor for:
When the blood is made dull with the act of
sport, there should be, again to inflame it and to
give satiety a fresh appetite, loveliness in favour,
sympathy in years, manners and beauties; all which
the Moor is defective in. (II.i.230-4)
According to Iago, handsome Cassio is the nearest candidate for Desdemona’s next appetite:
“Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hands?”, he asks Roderigo who counters
that it was “but courtesy”, a point to which Iago explains that it is “Lechery, by this hand: an
index and prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts” (II.i.262-5). This conversation
between the two aims to establish the idea that Desdemona’s Moor cannot long satisfy her
youthful desires and hence she would turn to the white Venetian, Cassio, as the most
probable candidate.
At the beginning of the temptation scene Iago succeeds in rising suspicion in
Othello’s “tranquil mind” about Desdemona’s chastity. By now half of the play has passed
with Othello appearing as the noble and courageous Christian general whom the audience did
not expect. The only stigma that is being questioned is his marriage to Desdemona without
her father’s approval. The second half of the play takes place in Cyprus where another part of
Othello’s personality is about to be revealed. Here begins the struggle between Othello’s two
personalities: the professed Venetian Christian general, and the savage and barbarous Other
that Iago tries to bring to the world’s light. Shakespeare introduces a very sensitive issue
about the Moors’ overwhelming concern with pride and honour in relation to Desdemona’s
chastity to the extent that Othello starts cursing his marriage and doubts Desdemona’s
motives:
19 O curse of marriage!
That we can call these delicate creatures ours,
And not their appetites. (III.iii.268-70)
Othello considers himself as the appetite, the play toy with which Desdemona wants to
experience or discover new things, especially after being wooed by his stories. The irony is
that he thought he has owned Desdemona, but the reality is that he is exploited not only by
the State but also by the only person whom he thought loved him – Desdemona. This
negative attitude of pleasure is so important in establishing the way he is going to act later
concerning his relation with Desdemona. Othello thinks that Desdemona uses him for
different sexual and pleasurable reasons. She wants to try something different from the white
Venetian or even European male norm, a fact Rodrigo and other suitors do confirm in Iago’s
words:
Ay, there’s the point: as, to be bold with you,
Not to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tends,
Foh! One may smell in such a will most rank,
Foul disproportion thoughts unnatural. (III.iii.228-32)
Which, in turn, confirm Othello’s “appetite thought” about his marriage:
Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless
Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds. (III.iii.242-3)
Othello’s knowledge of Desdemona is focused on outside appearances, and his admiration for
her is that of the outsider longing for some romantic ideal which he has not experienced
before. Othello thinks that Desdemona is the kind and fair lady he seeks or dreams of. Yet,
her mind is a mystery for him for he is a stranger who knows little about the Venetian
20 customs and habits, especially when the matter comes to women and their chastity. This is a
disadvantage on Othello’s part which later helps to transform Desdemona from “this fair
paper, this most goodly book” to something “to write whore upon” (IV.ii.71-72).
Iago, as the catalyst, provokes Othello’s jealousy and seizes on Desdemona’s pleasure
by awaking Othello’s sexual anxiety that manifests itself in the form of imaginary adultery
which eventually leads to Desdemona’s savage death. Iago’s objective is to transform
Othello, making him completely believe that he is being cuckolded: “I will chop her into
messes! Cuckold me!” (IV.i.210-11). Stephen Greenblatt shows that “such is the achievement
of Iago’s improvisation on the religious sexual doctrine in which Othello believes; true to that
doctrine, pleasure itself becomes for Othello pollution, a defilement of his property in
Desdemona and himself. It is at the level of this dark, sexual revulsion that Iago has access to
Othello” (Greenblatt 251). In turn, Othello in reaction to this “sexual revulsion” is completely
transformed from his “complicity in erotic excess and his fear of engulfment into a
‘purifying’ saving violence” (Greenblatt 251):
Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up. (III.iii.454-61)
From Othello’s lack of enough knowledge and experience arises his “black vengeance, from
the hollow hell” (447) which serves as his hopeless final resolution engulfing not only
himself and the supposed adulterous Desdemona, but also his painful “bloody thoughts”, the
21 same thoughts that both Brabantio and Iago tried earlier in the play to warn Othello about,
that is, Desdemona’s marriage implies deception:
Brab. Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
Iago. She did deceive her father, marrying you;
And when she seem’d to shake and fear your looks,
She loved them most. (I.iii.94-5; III.iii.205-6)
Why did Shakespeare play on this sensitive and peculiar issue in Othello’s nature?
Africanus reports that Moors’ “wits are but meane, and they so credulous, that they will
believe matters impossible, which are told to them” (Quoted in Vaughan 68). Iago reiterates
this theme stating that:
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are. (I.iii.305-8)
Othello as a Moor desires to possess Desdemona as part of his new status, identity, and most
importantly his pride and honour. Hence, it was prominent among supposed Moorish
qualities to have a savagely jealous regard for chastity in their wives, and astonishing
credulity (Jones 22). Africanus states some points about the Moors’ regard for chastity:
“whomsoever they finde but talking with their wives they presently go about to murther
them”. Also “by reason of jealousie you may see them daily one to be the death and
destruction of another, … they will by no means match themselves unto an harlot” (Quoted in
Jones 22).
Evidently, it is Othello’s Moorishness that is under attack by Iago as his real
weakness, a weakness that shows Othello’s vulnerability stemming from the credulity of a
22 Negro which is now characterized in his regard for Desdemona. This is part of the fact that
Othello’s view of European society is external, seeing it as it professes to be. In addition,
Iago in exploiting Othello’s credulity and causing his mistrust in Desdemona’s chastity has to
suggest that Venice is also a permissive society in which adultery is endured if not
encouraged. This is a crucial factor for the Moor which he has inadequate experience and
understanding of. Iago cleverly plays on Venice’s reputation as a place where lust and
pleasure are abundantly available and permissible:
I know our country disposition well;
In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks
They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience
Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown. (III.iii.200-4)
Indeed, Desdemona has rejected matches of “her own clime, complexion, and degree, /
Whereto we see in all things nature tends” (III.iii.228-9). Her marriage to Othello not only
violates the State but the order of nature itself, demonstrating “a will most rank, / Foul
disproportion, thoughts unnatural” (III.iii.228-32). Therefore, Othello admits that he is unVenetian since he has “not those soft parts of conversation / That chambers have” (III.iii.26465), and above all he does not understand Venetian ways and customs. In this sense, as
Vaughan noted, “if Othello is not Venetian, he must perforce be Turkish”(32). His
transformation into Turk begins when he tells Desdemona that an Egyptian charmer gave his
mother the missing handkerchief which denotes “Othello’s exotic Otherness, his alienation
from Christian, hence Venetian culture” (Vaughan 32).
By now Othello is trying to know the secrets which Iago supposedly knows and tries
to hide from him. This very technique of Iago is quite effective by putting Othello under his
control. Iago uses a number of antitheses and contradictions which trigger inside Othello the
desire that he knows something that belongs to him and hence he must know it. Iago does no
23 more than reveal Othello’s savage and barbarous nature which Othello tries to hide. Othello’s
secret monstrosity is recognized by the handkerchief’s occult demonstration – the “ocular
proof” (III.iii.361) of Desdemona’s adultery.
When Othello charges Desdemona with whoredom, she replies, “No, as I am
Christian”. Yet, Othello’s reaction is significant showing how his transformation into Turk is
complete, and thus Venice is no longer Christian in his mind for “[He] took … that cunning
whore of Venice / That married with Othello” (IV.ii.81-88). The focal point here is the
question of Othello’s real Christianity or paganism especially in relation to his accusations of
adultery. Othello’s conversion to Christianity is one of his ways to establish his fake identity
– his savage and barbarous otherness in a Christian society, a society that is so wary and
cautious not only of his blackness but also of other religions and cultures. Such a hypocritical
Christianity is a key point in contrast to his innate barbarous and savage otherness: “An
honourable murderer, if you will / For nought I did in hate, but all in honour” (V.ii.292-94).
His honour is now his religion and it is the only catalyst driving him to mercilessly kill
Desdemona after seeing the handkerchief – the “ocular proof” of her adultery. Yet, this
antithetical picture can be clearly seen when looking at Othello’s final acts in which he fails
to apply the most fundamental commandments of Christianity by granting mercy to poor
Desdemona. Othello savagely murders Desdemona without mercy though she asked for it
believing that it may still in him, initiating the monster that Iago tried to bring to the world’s
light:
Oth. Thou art to die.
Des. Then Lord have mercy on me!
Oth. I say, amen.
Des. And have you mercy too! (V.ii.56-59)
24 Although Othello admits Christianity here, he does not really believe in it, and he may hope
that God will have mercy on Desdemona, but he does not really feel its obligation inside
himself. He finally repeats his accusation and savagely murders his wife.
Nonetheless, Shakespeare gave Othello another chance to prove himself as a civilized
Christian before killing Desdemona. When Lodovico appears in Cyprus informing Othello
that he is summoned back to Venice, Othello’s corrupted mind with his honour forces him to
strike Desdemona in front of both Lodovico and her uncle, who act as surrogates for both the
Duke and Desdemona’s father. Why did not Othello try to act in a civilized manner by
holding a mini-trial scene in which he exposes the matter to these two gentlemen about
Desdemona’s supposed infidelity? This is the least he should have done before killing or even
striking Desdemona. The poet is so clever in showing this cultural difference between the real
Christian (Brabantio in the first Act before the Senate) and the false Christian (Othello before
the State’s representatives in Cyprus), between civilization and barbarism in the sense that
Othello neither waited to go back to Venice and expose the matter before the Duke nor tried
it in Cyprus before the Duke’s delegate. He reverts to his code of honour – his own
“[barbarian] bloody book” (I.iii.69) that (in Othello’s mind) justifies his brutal murder of
Desdemona: “It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul, / Let me not name it to you, you chaste
stars! / It is the cause” (V.ii.1-3).
The murder scene shows Othello’s eventual transformation, the falling of the noble
Moor to the savage and barbarous “blacker devil”. Here “Othello imagines his own
catastrophe in rhetoric of eschatological confusion” (Neill 162):
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
Of sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration. (V.ii.98-100)
At this point Othello is pleading for any salvation because he as the Moor:
25 envisages a kind of anti-apocalypse, a covering of himself against the horror of light;
and, through his absolute internalization of the very values that define his alienation
from the Venetian order, his language yields to the symbolism that identifies his
colour as the badge of both indelible wickedness and secret vice. On one level this is
simply part of the process by which the play produces a peculiarly European idea of
racial difference, but it also has to do with the psychological process through which a
man learns to look inside himself and uncovers the tokens of his own damnability and
death. (Neill 162)
Before his death, at the very end of the play (after Othello’s act of revenge which can
be seen as an eliminating factor of his jealousy, and what I argue as his pride and honour),
Othello, the Moor, defends his savage and barbarous murder. He returns once again to his
first autobiographic mode of narration about himself and his travel’s history:
in your letters,
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; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
26 I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him, thus. (V.ii.341-355)
Othello in his final speech introduces his otherness from the Venetian state and society whom
he chooses to serve. He painfully relates to Lodovico the factors that differentiate him from
the Venetians and hence mark his otherness. Othello as a Moor is a person who loved
Desdemona the same way any Moor would love his wife as part of his newly acquired pride
and honour. This is something natural for Moors once they get married, but it is something
different in the Venetian society. He loved Desdemona in such a possessive way that blinds
his mind and wisdom from seeing what women actually want and the way they behave in
Venice. He is “one that loved not wisely but too well”, for his simple mind and ignorance of
European customs make him vulnerable to Iago’s lies, something that Iago confidently tells:
“The Moor is of a free and open nature, / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so, /
And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose / as asses are.”(I.iii.405-48). Othello also relates that
he is “one [who is] not easily jealous, but being wrought / Perplex’d in the extreme”. He is
worked upon and perplexed by the customary cunning of a European, whom he never
doubted till the very end. This is another side of Othello’s otherness for he only sees and
believes the ideals of the Christians and the civilized European society as they profess to be.
Othello is the “base Indian” and/or “Judean” who threw away the pearl – Desdemona.
Othello’s characterization of himself as a “base Judean” in the first Folio reading is a
characterization in which Othello sees himself as both a black-moor and Judean. Of course,
the base “Indian” / “Judean” controversy continues to be unresolved in editions of the play.
The former is the reading adopted in the Folio edition of the play, the latter in the Quarto.
Honigmann concludes in his “Longer notes” to The Arden Shakespeare Othello that Richard
Levin’s analysis of ‘The Indian/Iudean crux in Othello’ is the best one. He states that “it is
appropriate for Othello to compare himself with the Indian, whose actions results from
27 ignorance, and ‘very inappropriate for him to compare himself to Judas, whose action was
regarded as a conscious choice of evil’ ” (Quoted in Honigmann 343).
The Folio’s reading, however, seems to be the most probable one since (for a Judean)
there is definitely nothing richer than his tribe, not even the whole world’s jewellery and
wealth. Shakespeare must have been aware of the fact that the Jews are known for their riches
and wealth which they work hard to collect and get to serve their tribes. Besides, the
association between the word “circumcised” and the Jews is quite plausible, but it does not
necessarily confine the meaning only to them, it could also refer to Othello himself as well as
the Turks as Muslims. As for the word “tribe”, it is quite applicable to both, the Indians and
Jews, but it seems to be that Shakespeare wanted to allude to the new information associated
with the New World savages or Indians since “by the time Othello was written, the first
English explorations of the new world had already occurred, and the audiences had learned to
associate the word “tribe” not only with Jews but with those red men whose contempt for
gold and precious stones had already become proverbial” (Fiedler 196). Othello is thus the
ignorant and credulous Moor like the Indian whose ignorance of the value of the precious
pearl that he has in his hand marks his otherness from others – civilized Europeans – who
know the value of it and hence would not throw it away.
Furthermore, Othello breaks his narration about the many factors that stigmatize his
otherness to emphasize that he was once in Aleppo. What was he doing there? Was he then a
Muslim, a Christian, or maybe a pagan? And when he killed the “turbaned Turk” was he also
a mercenary trying to offer his services to the Turkish state? Was he rejected and is that why
he chooses to turn to Venice? And was his choice good or not? And if not, why? Othello’s
presence in Aleppo, which was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time, sheds light on the fact
that Othello is really the stranger of here and everywhere. His occupation is mercenary
offering his military service and experience to those who want and can pay for it. But why
28 did he first turn to the Turks and not the Venetians? And why does he tell this important piece
of information at the very end of the play and then kill himself? Of course, if the Venetian
state knows that he has been to Aleppo, then they will reject him. And if one is to accept
Iago’s idea that Othello is from Mauritania: “O, no! he goes into Mauritania, and / takes away
with him the fair Desdemona”(IV.ii.229-230), then Othello was either a Muslim or pagan.
His presence in Aleppo was in order to offer his services to the Turkish state which was a key
military power at the time. So, Othello first wanted to join the Turkish side for they are much
closer to him in customs and traditions, and that cannot happen unless he professes to be
Muslim. Notwithstanding, it seems that the Turks fiercely rejected him due to his strangeness,
which in turn makes him unleash his rage on the poor “turbaned Turk” who “traduced the
[Venetian] state”. Othello’s choice, however, proved to be wrong at the end since he remains
the same stranger who is rejected everywhere. His choice of Venice was obligatory for he
would love to serve the Turks who are much closer to him than the Venetians. Othello relates
that in Venice he has witnessed something new that emphasized his otherness from the
Christians; they appeared to be a society where women’s virtue and chastity is not respected
and easily violated, which differentiates it from its Turkish counterpart. This is a crucial
factor for the Moor if he wants to have a normal life, for it would bring “chaos again” to his
“tranquil mind”. At the end, Othello, the Moor – the savage and barbarous “Other” is
expelled from Venice and commits suicide, the only emblem of his nobility which partially
redeems his otherness in the same way as Shylock, the Jew, the alien “Other” would be
banished from Venice losing his daughter and ducats.
29 Chapter Two: Shakespeare’s Jewish Other: Shylock, or “The misbeliever, cut-throat
dog”
‘My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!
Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! (II.viii.15-16)
Shakespeare’s Shylock is one of his many peculiar characters and the only prominent
Jewish figure that received so much attention in Shakespearian scholarship and criticism.
Therefore, any discussion of Shakespeare’s Shylock should include the soil from which this
Jewish figure grew, that is, the stage tradition, as well as examining the opinions or the
antipathies of the time in relation to the Jews. Stoll shows that “In the Elizabethan drama and
character-writing tradition, the Jew is both moneylender and miser, a villain who hankers
after Christian’s blood, a gross egoist, even an atheist (though charged with dealings with the
devil), and at the same time a butt, a hooked-nose niggard” (50). So, Shylock is a threatening
villainous figure, persistently a figure of horror and mockery in both real life and on stage.
Shylock is portrayed as a Jew who has “the traits of craft and cruelty, the hidden unfriendliness thirst for a Christian’s blood outreaching his greed for gold, and the spirit of unrelieved
egoism which thrusts aside the claims of his family, his nation, or even his faith” (Stoll 47).
Traditional commentary sees Shylock as the villain whose attempt to kill Antonio by
taking a pound of flesh near his heart is a justified action. Therefore, racism and bigotry are
key elements in the play. In allegorical interpretations of the play, “Shylock represents the
Old Law (judgment) opposed to the New (sacrifice). This kind of view focuses on Shylock as
the marginalized ‘Other’ ” (Mahon 12). Conversely, the more recent commentary emphasized
Shylock’s role as a scapegoat and victim. René Girard proclaims that “in the city of Venice,
no Antonio or Bassanio will ever suffer as long as there is a Shylock do the suffering for
30 them” (Quoted in Mahon 12). He viewed Shylock as a scapegoat in two ways. Shakespeare,
on the one hand, shows Shylock as the Jewish villain finally defeated and banished from
Venice after his confrontation with the good forces of Christianity, and hence he provides his
simpletons in the audience with the Aristotelian catharsis they expected. On the other hand,
more sophisticated audiences will recognize the profound irony in Shylock’s scapegoating
and appreciate that the Christians are the real villains (Quoted in Mahon 12). So, what is the
reason behind such a villainous Christian behaviour towards Shylock as a Jew? In his book,
Shakespeare and the Jews (1996), James Shapiro discusses what Shakespeare and his
contemporaries thought about Jews in early modern England. He states that:
While there were not many Jews in early modern England, it was nonetheless a
society surprisingly preoccupied with Jewish questions … It needs to be said …
that the English turned to Jewish questions in order to answer English ones. … Their
interest in Jews provides unusual insights into the cultural anxieties felt by English
men and women at a time when their nation was experiencing extraordinary social,
religious, and political beliefs. (1)
Such an overwhelming preoccupation stems, on the one hand, from the idea that “one of the
things that most distinguishes medieval from early modern conceptions of Jews is that Jewish
identity had been unquestioned in medieval Europe – on biological, social, and religious
grounds – by both Jews and Christians”(Shapiro 5). The early modern Jew, on the other hand,
experienced unprecedented categorizations by those aiming at establishing more accurate
definitions concerning Jews’ apparently “emerging notions of nationhood and race” (Shapiro
5).
Shylock’s first appearance in his aside marks Shakespeare’s subtle portrayal of one of
the major themes of his play, the ancient and persisting hatred between two religions, two
nations, and two races:
31 How like a fawning publican he looks!
I hate him for he is a Christian,
But more for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis and brings down
The rate of usance here with us in Venice.
If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails,
Even there where merchants most do congregate,
On me, my bargains and my well-won thrift,
Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe,
If I forgive him! (I.iii.42-52)
Shakespeare here emphasizes the difference between Christians and Jews along with their
mutual hatred and prejudices. Shylock’s first words: “for he is a Christian”, “feed fat the
ancient grudge”, “hates our sacred nation”, and “Cursed be my tribe” express a very deeprooted enmity not only between two men but between two nations as well. Later, Shylock’s
hatred is intensified by his daughter’s elopement (and consequent betrayal of his blood and
nation) and marriage to a Christian – Lorenzo – who shamelessly steals Shylock’s daughter
and ducats. Shylock’s daughter and ducats are Shakespeare’s key points in his play.
Shylock’s daughter is the representation of the female Jewish mother who is supposed to get
married to another male Jewish father to preserve the continuity of the nation and its
livelihood which is always threatened by the male Christian figure. Shakespeare’s first
introduction of Shylock’s Jewish personality comes in the form of an aside which not only
shows the enmity between the two nations, but most importantly shows two things that
distinguishes Shylock’s otherness: first his nation and/or tribe, and second his business,
usury.
32 Shylock’s usury, therefore, is no less a motive and an impulse for his hatred towards
the Christians for it is a means of survival amidst a hostile Christian nation. Shylock testifies
that one of the reasons why he hates Antonio is because he lends money without interest
which in turn causes Shylock to lose his business and profession, that is, usury. As Shapiro
notes “there can be no doubt that Jews were commonly identified as usurers and financial
brokers in early modern England, as indeed they were throughout Europe. Thus, usury was a
confirmed Jewish practice” (Shapiro 98). In addition, “by the end of the sixteenth century,
Jews were increasingly identified not with usury per se, but with outrages and exploitative
lending for profit” (Shapiro 99). In this respect, “usury is considered as a broad category of
Jewish criminality encompassing economic transgression” (Shapiro 98).
In the seventeenth century Jewish usury was regarded as “an insufficiently unnerving
act in and of itself to the extent of stimulating the kind of irrational prejudices still produced
by the charge of ritual murder” (Shapiro 100). Hence, many portrayals of Jewish usurers
show them in a deeply frightening way with their continuous longing for Christians’ blood
and flesh as reflected in The Merchant of Venice. Such was then as Palmer notes “the first
intimation that Shakespeare under[took] to supply his audience with, a Jew committed to a
barbarous enterprise, engendering his own plan to take the life of a Christian, putting his case
with a deadly logic, sharpened by persecution to the finest edge, and with a passion which no
amount of sufferance can conceal” (117). He further explains that Shylock’s “conduct was
more than psychologically credible but also that he has it already realised in his imagination
of what it means to wear the Star of David” (117):
Shy. Why, look you, how you storm!
I would be friends with you and have your love,
Forget the shames that you have stain’d me with,
Supply your present wants and take no doit
33 Of usance for my moneys, and you’ll not hear me:
This is kind I offer.
Bass. This were kindness.
Shy. This kindness will I show.
Go with me to a notary, seal me there
Your single bond; and, in a merry sport,
If you repay me not on such a day,
In such a place, such sum or sums as are
Express’d in the condition, let the forfeit
Be nominated for an equal pound
Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken
In what part of your body pleaseth me.
Anto. Content, I’ faith: I’ll seal to such a bond
And say there is much kindness in the Jew. (I.iii.137-153)
Shylock’s threat to cut a pound of Antonio’s “fair flesh” falls within the larger discourse of
ritual murder, which informs Shakespeare’s play. According to Shapiro the story of the
pound of flesh falls within a broad category of myths and legends concerning what is said to
be the “Jewish villainies” (Shapiro 100). These Jewish threats include poisoning wells,
desecrating hosts, and marching against Christendom. However, long before all these threats
posed by the Jews against Christians is Christians’ belief that Jews abducted children and
killed them, using their blood for ritual purposes (100).
To begin with, abduction which entails the mutual anxiety and fear of losing one’s
child and subsequently his true identity, explains a lot about the persisting notions of ritual
murder accusations. Elizabethan dramatists like Marlowe in, The Jew of Malta, and
Shakespeare in, The Merchant of Venice, tried to discuss these anxious accusations in order to
shed light on the kind of relations between Christians and Jews during Elizabethan England.
Both writers include Jewish daughter figures who are eventually abducted from their Jewish
34 fathers. Marlow’s Jewess Abigail, abandons her father, Barabas, to enter a “new-made
nunnery” at her father’s earnest request for he wants her to find the treasure he has hidden
there. Shakespeare’s Jewess Jessica, on the other hand, abandons her father, Shylock, and is
stolen by Lorenzo, the Christian.
Jessica’s elopement with Lorenzo has its own peculiar significance for Jessica is the
only female Jewish figure in the play. What did Shakespeare want to address in her
elopement with Lorenzo, the Christian? Shakespeare’s treatment of Jessica in the play along
with her elopement and conversion are sensitive points in which the poet discusses the
anxiety of the Jews as a different nation and race living with us. In Act II, scene IV, Shylock
calls Jessica and tells her that he is going to dine with the Christians:
I am bid forth to supper, Jessica:
There are my keys. But wherefore should I go?
I am not bid for love; they flatter me:
But yet I’ll go in hate, to feed upon
The prodigal Christian. Jessica, my girl,
Look to my house. I am right loath to go:
There is some ill a-brewing towards my rest,
For I did dream of money-bags to-night. (II.iv.11-18)
Shylock here responds to Bassanio’s invitation though he hates him and the other Christians.
However, what is important is Shylock’s order to Jessica to look to his house as if he foresees
something wrong is about to happen. He has dreamed of “money-bags” last night and that is
why he does not feel comfortable to leave his house. Later, Shylock bids Jessica to “Lock up
[his] doors” and not to “gaze on Christian fools with varnish’d faces / But stop [his] house’s
ears, [he means his] casements / Let not the sound of shallow foppery enter / [his] sober
house” (92-36). Shylock’s orders to his daughter are precise and clear; he emphasizes the
importance of two of his dearest Jewish possessions, first his money and house, and second
35 his daughter. Finally, Shylock still bids Jessica for the third time to lock the doors behind him
and says that he might come back sooner than he expects. Yet, he still emphasizes that she
must lock the doors, a fact that he reiterates for three times. Why does Shylock order Jessica
in such an obsessive and urgent way? It seems to be that the Jew is aware enough of his
vulnerable alien state in Venice which makes him worried all the time. He does not feel safe
enough with the Christians in Venice who try to seize upon every possible opportunity to
persecute and humiliate the Jews. Moreover, Shylock’s dream of losing his house, ducats,
and daughter is something which he shares with Brabantio in Othello. Brabantio dreamed of
his daughter copulating with the Moor the night before her elopement: “This accident is not
unlike my dream” (I.i.144). Othello steals Desdemona because he is treated as a stranger and
Other. Shylock’s daughter and ducats, on the other hand, are stolen because he is the alien
Other. Both fathers have their precious and dear daughters stolen from them, one by the
Moor, the other by Lorenzo, Shylock’s Christian enemy. Jessica’s transformation with
Shylock’s ducats takes place when she tells Lorenzo that “[She] will make fast the doors, and
gild [her]self / With some more ducats, and be with [Lorenzo] straight” (II.vi.49-50).
Gratiano’s next vehement statement marks this transformation as the Christians’ victory over
the Jews for they managed to convert Shylock’s daughter and ducats: “Now, by my hood, a
Gentile and no Jew” (51). Thus, Jessica adopts Christianity at the cost of stealing her father’s
ducats and renouncing her Jewishness.
Consequently Jessica’s elopement with Shylock’s ducats causes Shylock’s passion to
be “so confused, / So strange, outrageous, and so variable”, crying in the streets of Venice:
“My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! / Fled with a Christian! O my Christian
ducats!”. It is very important here to notice Shylock’s words, especially the reiterated words
“My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!”, to then notice the full transformation of both
his daughter and ducats to Christianity in the sense that they are no longer part of his Jewish
36 possession and they are by now Christianized. Later, Shylock is seen with “all the boys in
Venice follow him, / Crying, his stones, his daughter, and his ducats” (II.viii.12-16; 23-24). If
we are to accept Shapiro’s symbolism of “stones” here that they allude to “Shylock’s
testicles” (122), then we are introduced to another element that represents Jewish masculinity
and manhood which are also stolen along with the nation, that is, his daughter, and his
nation’s wealth – his ducats.
Besides, Shakespeare seems to be so sensitive in his treatment of Jessica’s elopement,
especially after considering Shylock’s desire that he would not mind having his daughter
dead so long as his jewels and ducats are with her:
Why, there, there, there, there! a diamond gone,
cost me two thousand ducats in Frankfort! The curse
never fell upon our nation till now; I never felt it
till now: two thousand ducats in that; and other
precious, precious jewels. I would my daughter
were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear!
would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in
her coffin! (III.i.90-97)
Shylock condemns the “curse” that is still on his nation even to that day when he has lost his
daughter and jewels for Christianity. He would not mind to have his daughter and his jewels
in a coffin as long as they are still within his reach, that is, within his Jewish grasp. A few
lines later Tubal gives Shylock another shock telling him that Jessica had given “his
turquoise; [that he] had it of Leah when [he] was a bachelor” “for a monkey” (126-130). The
ring symbolizes the intimate relationship between two Jewish couples which ended in
Shylock’s only offspring, Jessica. Once Jessica has given this symbol of the holy union away,
Shakespeare shows a threatening act to the continuity of the Jewish nation. The monkey as an
animal could symbolize something so cheap for such a priceless thing as the ring to be
exchanged with, especially when considering Shylock’s reaction to Jessica’s act that “[he]
37 would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys” (130-131). Yet, it could also refer to
Lorenzo as a Christian wreaking havoc upon Shylock’s Jewish identity and his nation.
Moreover, Lorenzo’s motives are questionable, for why should he be interested in Shylock’s
money if he really loves Jessica for herself? The least that he should have done if he has any
Christian pride is that he would refuse to take anything, but it is one of the many parts of
Shakespeare’s plan to deprive Shylock of what he dearly possesses – his daughter and ducats
– the means whereby his nation will survive: hence Shylock’s aside: “These be the Christian
husbands. I have a daughter; / Would any of the stock of Barrabas / Had been her husband
rather than a Christian!” (IV.i.295-98). Hence, it is possible to argue, as Shapiro did, that
Shylock’s pound of flesh story is the Jewish reaction to the Christians’ efforts to convert
Jews to Christianity. Shylock tries symbolically to convert Antonio to Judaism by “cutting his
Christian adversary in that part of the body where the Christians believe themselves to be
truly circumcised: the heart” (Shapiro 127).
In this respect, Shapiro argues that “Elizabethans held a sense of fascination and
importance for circumcision, and that in The Merchant of Venice there is an occluded threat
of circumcision informing Shylock’s desire to cut a pound of Antonio’s flesh” (114). The
Elizabethans were anxious about this threat since it touches on sensitive issues of sexuality
and gender not only in the play but during Shakespeare’s time as well. Such an anxiety
emphasizes the idea that the assignment of gender is quite unstable, which in turn underlies
feminizing and castrating notions for the identity of the Christian individual. Therefore, it is
not something unusual to find Shakespeare’s audiences in The Merchant of Venice confronted
with Antonio describing himself as a “tainted wether” (IV.i.113), or even with the familiar
cross-dressing of women like Portia, Nerissa, and Jessica. Circumcision was then a deeply
unsettled problematic issue that kept haunting Christians’ notions of identity on various
theological and sexual levels (120). In addition, Shakespeare’s choice of the word flesh in the
38 pound of flesh story also hints that Shylock may have a different part of Antonio’s body in
his mind for in the late sixteenth century the word flesh was frequently used to refer to the
penis (121). Shylock’s decision to have his pound of flesh near Antonio’s heart: “So says the
bond: doth it not, noble judge? / Nearest his heart: those are the very words” (IV.i.252-53),
symbolizes “his Jewish revenge by threatening to transform not just Antonio’s physical but
his religious identity” (Shapiro 130).
Shakespeare’s play provides another important glimpse into the larger religious and
social concerns associated with the conversion of the Jews, a glimpse that comes in the trial
scene with Shylock’s invocation of Portia as a “Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel!”
(IV.i.224), which is turned successfully back upon him by Gratiano after Shylock is thwarted:
“A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew!” and again, “A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel!”
(IV.i.234-41). The invocation of Daniel refers to the fact that “Daniel is first and foremost the
Jewish prophet who foresaw the final judgment, an event precipitated by the conversion of
the Jews” (Shapiro 133). Hence, it seems to be that the Elizabethans have such an
overwhelming importance and fascination in the conversion of the Jews at a time when so
many religious debates and controversies were taking place producing a crisis of faith, which,
in turn, was hoped to be mitigated by the conversion of the Jews (133).
In Shakespeare’s depiction of Jessica’s conversion, the poet provides a tiny glimpse
of the possibility that this Jewess might renounce her newly embraced Christianity. At the
beginning of Act five of The Merchant of Venice, the two couples, Jessica and Lorenzo
engage in a conversion in which Jessica expresses how:
Jes. In such a night
Medea gather’d the enchanted herbs
That did renew old Aeson.
39 Lor. In such a night
Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice
As far as Belmont.
What is important here as Shapiro notes is the mention of the story of Medea because for
Elizabethan audiences at the time such a figure was the symbol of a disobedient daughter
who abandoned her father and culture in marrying her husband (158). Shakespeare’s
audience are thus reminded of Jessica’s infidelity to her father which makes them wonder
how long her own religious and martial vows of faith would remain firm. Lorenzo’s
exchange with Jessica raises the probability that “the obedient and converted Jewess who had
to disobey one man and one set of religious principles to embrace another might revert to her
true Jewish nature” (Shapiro 159). Shapiro’s idea about Jessica’s potential apostasy seems to
be plausible since her conversion to Christianity may not be exclusively based on her sincere
belief in Jesus Christ. She rather wants to flee her father’s Jewish life which is imposed on
her by her Jewish blood:
Alack, what heinous sin is it in me
To be ashamed to be my father’s child!
But though I am a daughter to his blood,
I am not to his manners. O Lorenzo,
If thou keep promise, I shall end this strife,
Become a Christian and thy loving wife. (II.ii.15-20) 1
Here, Jessica is admitting the sin of being ashamed to be Jewish, which means being the alien
Other in a Christian world. She does admit that it is an unchangeable fact being a Jewess by
1
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. J. H. Walter. (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980). p. 79.
40 her blood, yet she does not accept her father’s manners. As against Jessica and the Christians
of Venice, Shylock’s manners are those of:
a stranger, proud of his race and its traditions, strict in his religion, sober rather than
miserly in his domestic life, and filled with the idea of the sanctity of the family and
family loyalty. Around him is the society of Venice, a world of golden youth, richly
dressed, accustomed to luxury, to feasting, to masking, of a comparatively easy virtue
and of a religious outlook which, though orthodox, hardly strikes one as deep, a
society faithful and courteous in its own circle and observing a formal politeness of
manner and address, but quite insufferable to those outside its own circle, where
Shylock is so obviously placed. (Midgley 196)
Hence, Jessica’s Jewishness is one of the main motives behind her conversion which she
plainly confesses. She can be Christian only when gets married to Lorenzo and then and only
then this stigmatizing “strife” shall end. Jessica admits the persistence of her Jewish blood,
yet what can be changed through Christianity is her struggle to reject her father’s manners –
her Jewish religious otherness – but never her national or racial affiliation. Moreover, this
affiliation is a threat to Christian efforts to impose a rigid Christian identity, for Jessica’s
apostasy could cause (for her children with Lorenzo) contradictory allegiances between their
father’s Christianity and their mother’s Jewishness.
In the same national, racial, and religious otherness is Shakespeare’s depiction of
Shylock’s conversion. Shylock’s Jewishness seems to be quite fixed and immutable in spite
of his final conversion. In the first encounter between Antonio and Shylock, Antonio
welcomes Shylock’s proposition of the “merry bond” with the words: “Hie thee, gentle Jew /
The Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind” (I.iii.178–79). What Antonio really means
and underscores in his “the Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind” is that though
Shylock may be forced to convert, he will never, according to the suggestion of Antonio’s set
41 of puns, change his nature and “grow kind”. Therefore, “like his nature (kind), his nation
(gens) and type ( genus) are reassuringly fixed; whatever his pretence of gentility or kindness,
everyone knows that this Jew can never join the kind of the Christian” (Adelman 10). Such
an idea emphasizes “the important distinction between Christian and Jew by securing … an
appeal to a protoracial difference” for again “the puns through which Antonio introduces the
topic of conversion into the play suggest the set of anxieties – about sameness and difference,
about nature and nations – for which racialized thinking provides a remedy” (Adelman 10).
Yet, even if Jewish conversion to Christianity were sincere, theoretical obstacles such
as Jews’ racial, national, and alien otherness remain in question. Therefore, “it was one thing
to claim that Jews were, as John Foxe and others put it, aromatized by their conversion; it
was quite another to figure out what happened to their, for example, racial otherness when
they converted and entered, or tried to enter, a Christian commonwealth” (Shapiro 170). In
the conventional critical point of view, however, Shylock’s otherness is defined primarily in
religious terms. Shakespeare’s contemporaries identified Jews not only by their religion, but
by their national and racial affiliation as well (170). According to Adelman:
Despite claims that “Jew” was purely a theological category in Shakespeare’s
England, and that racialized thinking about Jews is an inappropriate piece of
anachronism, protoracialized thinking about the conversos appears to have been
both conceptually available and conceptually useful to Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
For whatever theological category those Jews fit into, whether or not they were
thought to practice secret Jewish rites, they were typically described not only in terms
of their “sect” (religious belief) and their “nation” (in this context, usually the country
in which they had most recently lived) but also in terms of their “descent”; and the
genealogical language of “descent” shades into what would become the newer
language of “race”. (9)
42 Furthermore, along with their racial and national otherness, the Jews in early modern
England were regarded as aliens. The “alien” question seems to have been a social problem
of an acute and burning nature for Elizabethan London at the time. Anti-alien riots happened
three times at short intervals, in 1588, 1593 and 1595 (Tretiak 402). Shakespeare’s “alien”
Shylock is a representation of the socio-economic tension in London in the mid-1590s. The
most vivid example to express this tension is in Act five in The Merchant of Venice, when
Portia defends Antonio telling Shylock that his bond specifies a pound, no more no less, of
Antonio’s flesh:
if thou tak’st more
Or less than a just pound, be it but so much
As makes it light or heavy in the substance,
Or the division of the twentieth part
Of one poor scruple, nay, if the scale do turn
But in the estimation of a hair,
Thou diest and all thy goods are confiscate. (IV.i.326-33)
At this point in the play, Shylock is content accepting to get just his “principal”: “Thou shalt
have nothing but the forfeiture / To be so taken at thy peril, Jew” (IV.i.344-45). Shylock is
seen defeated by Christian mercy and righteousness muttering: “Why then the devil give him
good of it! / I’ll stay no longer question” (46-47). The play seems to have reached a happy
end: Antonio’s life is speared, and most importantly is the fact that Shylock is completely
helpless and defeated at this point. And yet, it does not end there for Portia calls the departed
Jew back, invoking a law against aliens:
Tarry, Jew:
The law hath yet another hold on you.
It is enacted in the laws of Venice,
If it be proved against an alien
That by direct or indirect attempts
He seek the life of any citizen,
43 The party ’gainst the which he doth contrive
Shall seize one half his goods; the other half
Comes to the privy coffer of the state;
And the offender’s life lies in the mercy
Of the duke only, ’gainst all other voice. (IV.i.348- 56)
Portia’s speech to Shylock shows how Venetian society is prepared to protect its citizens.
Although the state’s laws allow for a certain equality and toleration between subjects and
aliens, this quality is quite provisional when the matter comes to the real integrity and safety
of its subjects. In addition, the Venetian state cannot punish Shylock for being a Jew, but it
can convict him as the alien Other who threatens Christians’ lives. Shylock’s life is at the
mercy of the Duke who pardons him even before he asks for it: “I pardon thee thy life before
thou ask it: / For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s; / The other half comes to the general state,”
(IV.i.370-72). Yet, the Duke puts Shylock at Antonio’s mercy, granting him half of his
wealth. Shylock’s reaction is remarkable, showing the same kind of prosecution and
intolerance he experienced from the very beginning of the play when Antonio spat on his
Jewish gaberdine. Shylock declares that the Christians are depriving him of everything that
he dearly possesses, from his daughter and ducats, to finally what is left of his wealth and his
own house:
Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that:
You take my house when you do take the prop
That doth sustain my house; you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live. (IV.i.374-77)
Hence, the Duke metaphorically kills Shylock by turning him from a wealth Jew into a
humiliated Jewish beggar. Then comes Antonio’s part of humiliation when he is supposed to
render mercy to the Jew. Antonio’s act of mercy does not differ from the Duke’s, for he also
renders part of Shylock’s wealth to “the gentleman / That lately stole his daughter”(385).
44 Moreover, Antonio adds another important condition to Shylock’s mercy: that Shylock must
“… presently become a Christian” (388). Antonio is not ashamed of calling Lorenzo as a
“gentleman” though he stole Shylock’s daughter. Of course, to steal from the alien Jew is
permissible in Venice as long as the matter is in favour of the Christians. Even the Duke
himself gives a blind eye to such an action which contradicts the state’s freedom and law.
Shylock accused Lorenzo of stealing his daughter and ducats earlier in the play when Salanio
relates that: “The villain Jew with outcries raised the duke, / Who went with him to search
Bassanio’s ship” (II.viii.4-5). The Duke also plainly states that if Shylock would not comply
with Antonio’s conditions, then the Duke will “recant/ The pardon that [he] late pronounced
here” (393). Shylock’s final confrontation with the supposedly good forces of Christendom
could have caused his death, for he feels “not well”. The whole issue goes around Shylock’s
money and Jewishness, which the Christians try relentlessly to reclaim either by choice, as in
Jessica’s case, or by force, as now with Shylock.
Shylock’s Jewish otherness is something inherent and part of his nature which neither
conversion to Christianity nor any act of toleration can possibly resolve. In the same way in
the next chapter, Caliban’s otherness is to prevail through his brutal mind and monstrous
behaviour, markers which are deeply inherent in his nature for he is “A devil, a born devil, on
whose nature / Nurture can never stick” (IV.i.188-89).
45 Chapter Three: Shakespeare’s Monstrous Other: Caliban, or “The freckled whelp hagborn, – not honour’d with a human shape
’tis ‘a custom with him,
I’ th’ afternoon to sleep: there thou mayst brain him,
Having first seized his books, or with a log
Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,
Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember
First to possess his books; for without them
He’s but a sot, as I am. (III.ii.98-104)
Caliban fascinates because he violates the order of things. In Shakespeare’s
drama, Prospero represents western European hierarchy and the primacy
of language. Caliban has learned his language but only to curse what
it signifies. Caliban appeals to rebellious instincts because he challenges
a dominant culture. His very opposition to Prospero’s hegemony helps
to redefine the appropriator’s assumptions and values. As an opposing
force, the “other” onto whom the dominant culture projects its fears of
disorder, Caliban thus becomes a powerful symbol of resistance and
transgression. (Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, xv)
In their book Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History (1991), Vaughan and
Vaughan see “Shakespeare’s monster as an important ‘expressive symbol’, a natural signifier
that changes through space and time, geography and chronology” as part of his “enigmatic”
nature (xvii; xix). Such an enigmatic nature has been seen by critics and scholars as “a
fascinating a sign of humanity’s continuing concern with the order of things and with the
acceptable boundaries of ‘we’ and ‘they’ ” (xxii). Kermode claims that “Caliban is the
46 ground of the play” (xxv), a play in which “Shakespeare uses Caliban partly to indicate how
much baser the corrupt civilised world can be than the bestiality of the natural”. The key is
Caliban: “the poetic definition of Nature in the play is achieved largely by a series of
antitheses with Caliban constantly recurring as one term. He represents the natural man. This
figure is not, as in pastoral generally, a virtuous shepherd, but a salvage and deformed slave”
(xxxviii).
Shakespeare’s first introduction of his “salvage and deformed slave” (the Folio
edition of 1623 simply describes Caliban in the cast of characters as “a savage and deformed
slave) is important in establishing an impression that will haunt the audience throughout the
play, an impression of mistrust and enmity between a master and his disobedient slave.
Prospero tells Miranda:
Shake it off. Come on;
We’ll visit Caliban my slave, who never
Yields us kind answer. (I.ii.308-09)
Then comes the question: why does Caliban, who is supposed to be Prospero’s slave, never
give Prospero what a master should expect from a slave: a “kind answer”? The audience is
left with the idea that there is something wrong between the two inhabitants of the island. In
the same way, Miranda, the third inhabitant of the island shows her refusal to see Caliban:
“Tis a villain, sir, / I do not love to look on” (310). Once again, the audiences’ responses are
tainted by her response that there must be by now something wrong on Caliban’s part rather
than on the two Europeans. A few lines later Caliban appears, and this time it is his role to
hold the floor, showing his resistance and disobedience to his master:
As wicked dew as e’er my mother brush’d
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both! a south-west blow on ye
And blister you all o’er!
47 ……………………………………………..
This island’s mine, by Sycorax my mother,
Which thou takest from me. When thou camest first,
Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me
Water with berries in’t, and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee
And show’d thee all the qualities o’ the isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile:
Cursed be I that did so! All the charms
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you!
For I am all the subjects that you have,
Which first was mine own king: and here you sty me
In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from
The rest o’ the island. (I.ii.321-343)
By now some of the mystery in the relation between master-slave is being known to the
audience by Caliban’s curses and his contempt for Prospero who betrayed him. Caliban
admits that Prospero has taught him language to name things with but he also realizes that
this gift is not for free, for it is part of Prospero’s exploitive plan, the customary cunning of a
European who first sets foot on a strange island. The same language that Prospero taught
Caliban will be later used by Caliban not only in verbal threatening when Caliban says to
Prospero “You taught me language; and my profit on’t / Is, I know how to curse” ( I.ii.36364), but also as an essential part (in addition to Caliban’s brutal mind) of his linguistic or
communicative knowledge to conspire with Stepheno and Trinculo to kill Prospero. Caliban
showed Prospero all the secrets of his island, especially those that are so vital for human
existence. Prospero first treats Caliban well in order to learn from him all the possible
information about the island. Once Prospero suddenly abandons Caliban, the monster feels so
48 angry to discover Prospero’s real motives. Once found, that knowledge is put to Prospero’s
use while Caliban is confined to “The rest o’th island”.
Prospero’s sees Caliban as a brutal creature “Whom stripes may move, not kindness!”
for though Prospero “have used [him], / with human care, and lodged [him] / In [his] own
cell”, Caliban “seek[s] to violate / The honour of [his] child”. Caliban, on the other hand,
never denies it: “O ho, O ho! wouldn’t had been done! / Thou didst prevent me; I had peopled
else / This isle with Calibans” (I.ii.338-340). What is important here is the idea that these two
unequal parties are never on good terms. As Jan Kott says, “characters in Shakespearian
dramas are never introduced by chance. ... . The first appearance of Caliban makes a
recollection of revolt. It is the entry of a slave. The cruelty of this scene is wholly deliberate;
so is its brutal materialist quality” (248). So, what are Shakespeare’s possible intentions in
creating such a “brutal quality” of Caliban, and what historical and literary sources did he
consult or use in his creation of Caliban?
Caliban’s name, to begin with, may reveal Shakespeare’s intentions. Caliban, critics
generally agree:
cannot be meaningless; it is too distinctive to be indifferently chosen, too important
to be misleading. Shakespeare must have meant it to signify, however subtly,
Caliban’s geographic or symbolic roots or, more likely, the essence of his character.
Even critics who insist that Shakespeare meant to convey a meaning in “Caliban”
cannot agree on what it is; they merely share the assumption that he seized upon some
word – a descriptive or ethnic label, or a place name, or a foreign term – to signify
Prospero’s “savage and deformed slave” (Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, 26).
Wilson and Kermode show that Caliban’s name can be considered as a development
of the word ‘Carib’, meaning a savage inhabitant of the New World; ‘cannibal’ derives from
this, and ‘Caliban’ is possibly a simple anagram of the word (126;xxxviii). Kermode adds
49 that “though he is thus connected with the Indian savage, he is also associated, as were the
uncivilized inhabitants of the Indies, with the wild or salvage man of Europe, formerly the
most familiar image without the ordination of civility”(xxxix). However, if what Shakespeare
had in mind is “Caliban” as an anagram of “cannibal”, then he may also intend to suggest
anthropophagism. Yet, there seems to be no clear-cut evidence in the play that links Caliban
to eaters of human flesh.
In 1895, Albert Kluyver, a Dutch scholar, rejected the previous explanation proposing
a second one in which he says: “it is improbable that Shakespeare should have known
Caliban as an English name for a cannibal”. Rather, he claims that Shakespeare may have
derived the name from the gypsy language which was widespread in England at the time.
Accordingly, Cauliban (or Kaliban) meant “black” or things associated with blackness, and
“Prospero does not consider Caliban as a person, for he addresses him as earth and filth, i.e.,
mud, dirt” (Quoted in Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, 34). The plausibility of the gypsy
word here as a possible source for “Caliban” bears a great resemblance both in spelling and
pejorative association. Yet, such a similarity is more dependent on historical evidence than on
a linguistic one. From the historical perspective, the gypsies were regarded as a lively and
disturbing issue in Tudor-Stuart England, for documents of various kinds – laws, dramas,
decrees, sermons, poetry, and most importantly Crown and parliament, all regarded them as a
menace (Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, 34).
The government’s first proscription appeared in 1530, in which further immigration of
these European vagabonds (commonly styled Egyptians but in fact originally from northern
India) was strictly prohibited. The gypsies were widely suspected of idleness and thievery. In
addition, the English were concerned that these European vagabonds could also attract their
own subjects to join the wandering European gypsies who have an attractive life-style. Thus,
in 1562, a law imposed new burdens on gypsies, because, “many of them had begun to pose
50 as English vagabonds to escape the more severe legislation against gypsies” (Vaughan and
Vaughan, Caliban, 35). Such confusion between England’s own vagabonds and those alien
gypsies blurred the distinction between the two groups. Yet, both groups were regarded as
threatening the health of the state for they were jobless and landless people. They were
frequently governed, especially in 1630, when James I, in his campaign for social order,
“demanded rigorous enforcement of the existing laws against gypsies” (Vaughan and
Vaughan, Caliban, 35).
From the literary perspective, on the other hand, Renaissance literature was also
permeated by the current disruptive threat and fear of gypsies’ overwhelming presence in
England. Ben Johnson’s Volpone (1607) rebuked the gypsies, addressing them as a menace.
Thomas Dekker’s Lanthorne and Candle-light (1608), also castigated gypsies as “a people
more scattered than the Jewes, and more hated: beggarly in parallel, barbarous in condition,
beastly in behaviour: and bloudy if they meete advantage” (Quoted in Vaughan and Vaughan,
Caliban, 35).
Whatever the origins of Caliban’s name, other broader contexts could have helped
Shakespeare in his creation of Caliban. Caliban’s role and character may have been drawn
from some of the contemporaneous historical texts concerning New World natives and maybe
Africa. Part of Caliban’s probable origin is his African genesis. According to Prospero,
Caliban’s mother, Sycorax, was a witch from Algeria, who bore the “freckled whelp”
(I.ii.283) before she was expelled to the island. This is another suggestion of the proximity of
the island to Africa. The play, however, never tackles Caliban’s real colour, and the only
reference is Prospero’s “this thing of darkness” (V.i.275). This, in turn, suggests the
monster’s possible association with Africa, for if his name is to be derived from the town of
Calibia on the African coast, Caliban could represent English perceptions of Africans as of
Native Americans (Vaughan and Vaughan, Tempest, 48). Furthermore, Sebastian’s
51 dissatisfaction of Caribel’s marriage to an African (II.i.130-32), and Prospero’s contempt for
“The foul witch Sycorax”, “from Algiers” (I.ii.258;264) would be quite plausible to an
Elizabethan audience of the time, for they reflect the usual shortcomings associated with
Africa, which are also symptomatic in Caliban’s ethnic origin, his physical and social
monstrosity, and possibly in his name (51).
Besides, most of these historical documents suggest a relation between The Tempest
and England’s overseas Empire at a time when European’s “discovery” of the Western
Hemisphere had already begun. The documents hint at “Caliban as Shakespeare’s
emblemization of New World natives” (Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, 36). The American
context could have inspired the poet in his conception of Caliban as an Indian, of course, after
Columbus’s accounts of his first transatlantic voyage (37). The temptation to see Caliban as
an emblem of American Indians stems partly from The Tempest’s geographical ambiguity,
for if the play is metaphorically about America or else set in America, Caliban can be
somewhat considered as an American native (Vaughan and Vaughan, Tempest, 44). A
reading of (II.ii) can help shed light on Caliban in which Trinculo and Stephano are said to
have identified him as an Indian. Trinculo says in his first encounter with the monster under
the gabardine that “Were [he] in England … and had but this fish painted”, he could earn a
small fortune, for while its people “will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay
out ten to see a dead Indian” (24-33). After inspecting the creature, Trinculo, two lines later,
comes to the conclusion that “this is no fish, but an islander that hath lately suffered by a
thunderbolt” (35). A moment later, Trinculo himself goes under the gabardine, and Stephano,
the drunken butler wonders if the creature is a devil or perhaps a trick put on by “savages and
men of Ind” (62). Finally, the two men conclude that the thing under the gabardine is a
“monster of the isle, with four legs” (69). Shakespeare’s Indian allusions remain vague and
52 Shakespeare’s text offers few hints to his perception of Caliban as belonging to New World
natives (Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, 45).
If Shakespeare nevertheless intended an Indian for his Caliban, the amount of
contemporaneous verbal and visual signifiers was huge: Caliban could be linked, on the one
hand, with the golden-age, handsome, and virtuous innocents, to, on the other hand, the ugly
and immoral beasts. Shakespeare’s description of Caliban as lustful, drunken, and barbarous,
could be in connection with some of the sixteenth-century accounts like Andre Thevet’s
description of the American natives of the far north as “wild and brutish people, without
Fayth, without Lawe, without Religion, and without any civilization: but living like brute
beasts” (Quoted in Vaughan and Vaughan, Tempest, 44). In relation to Caliban’s ownership
of the island till overthrown by Prospero and finally corrupted by Stephano and Trinculo,
Shakespeare may have consulted Montaigne’s description of Brazilians in John Florio’s
translation of 1603, who “are yet neere their originall naturalitie, The laws of nature do yet
commaund them, which are but little bastardized by ours” (Quoted in Vaughan and Vaughan,
Tempest, 44).
The Tempest also portrays Caliban as an ignorant and ungrateful savage. Caliban’s
savageness is reflected in his attempt to rape Miranda. Caliban later plots with Stephano and
Trinculo to take the life of his master, Prospero. Although their conspiracy fails, Caliban’s
attempt to overthrow Prospero bringing chaos and disorder to the island can also reflect some
of the political and social problems that were current during Shakespeare’s time.
The Tempest consequently discusses some of the social and political issues of
Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. Gary Schmidgall, for example, sees The Tempest as
a political allegory in which Caliban reflects the contradiction between order and degree as
well as the abundant Tudor homilies on disobedience that provoked the evil of rebellion and
53 disorder (91). Therefore, Shakespeare has focused his plot on issues of royal concern, that is,
treason, conspiracy, and possible usurpation. Such acts of chaos and disorder have had a
connection with the monarchy at the time who had escaped annihilation during the
Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Prospero as the ruler of the island, who has lost power because of
his indulgence in his studies, may be a surrogate for King James who was fascinated by
hunting and collecting precious and rare animals rather than governing (Vaughn and Vaughn,
Caliban, 52). As for Caliban, he could represent the forces of disorder and chaos that could
threaten to destabilize James’s reign. Caliban’s role reflects the rebellious impulses and
forces that Prospero, as surrogate for King James, is obliged to keep under control and punish
(Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, 53).
The subject of local rebellions and revolts has recently been clarified to a great extent
by Roger Manning, who claims that “popular disorder became a serious problem only after
1580” (191) in London, and that “during the period from about 1586 to 1608 England was
troubled by economic crises, political crises, social tension, and popular disorder” (157).
Hence, as Breight shows that “there are potentially fascinating connections to be made
between London revolts, rural enclosure riots, and politico-religious conspiracies on all levels
of the social spectrum” (28). He also claims that “If recontextualized within one aspect of
English history, The Tempest is a politically radical intervention in the vast discourse of
treason that became an increasingly central response to different social problems in late
Elizabethan and early Jacobean London”(1). And “Caliban’s rebellious conspiracy appears to
present a precise of Elizabethan fears regarding masterless men, and the drunkenness of the
conspirators enforces specific official beliefs that subversion sprang from the local alehouse”
(Breight 17).
54 In the same context, Prospero explicitly brings the drunken lower-class conspirators,
Trinculo and Stephano, to the attention of the supposedly civilized upper-class conspirators,
Antonio and Sebastian:
Mark but the badges of these men, my lords,
Then say if they be true. This mis-shapen knave,
His mother was a witch, and one so strong
That could control the moon, make flows and ebbs,
And deal in her command without her power.
These three have robb’d me; and this demi-devil –
For he’s a bastard one – had plotted with them
To take my life. (V.i.266-73)
Prospero here uses these conspirators as negative examples for the aristocrats. Caliban,
Stephano, and Trinculo are Prospero’s subtle demonstration of the triviality of any conspiracy
against his divinely protected figure, and in turn against his regained political power once he
returns to Italy. In the same way, the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean regimes “refined
and exploited coercive and ideological apparatuses that facilitated their dominance” (Breight
23). Yet, when James’s regime failed to apply enough repression, “problems seething yet
suppressed in the Elizabethan period arose to haunt the Stuart monarchs, arguably leading (at
least in part) to the decapitation of Charles I” (Breight 23). Prospero’s presentation of his
power in his characterization of the Europeans lower-class conspirators unfolds two
conclusions: firstly is his recommendation for “intelligent rule”, and secondly is his
representation of “strategies involving treason, spies, torture, dubious claims of providential
support, and manipulated conspiracies [which] could be said to constitute a brilliant and
relentless exposure of Renaissance Realpolitik” (Breight 23).
A wider and more specific set of socio-political Tempest contexts has recently been
argued by Donna Hamilton. Prospero, she writes, is:
55 A ruler with magical and thus transcendent powers stands in homologous
Relationship to King James and his concerns about rights to a certain amount
of power and to be served (and supplied) properly. Ariel and Caliban, who are
in bondage and who continually express their longing for freedom, are homologous to the metaphors, idioms, and rhetoric used in the Commons to express
the subjects’ right to liberty and freedom, their right to present grievances or to
“complain” and their fears of “restraint” and loss of property. (Hamilton 48)
Caliban’s role in Hamilton’s reconstruction of The Tempest’s historical context is to represent
not only “the English fears of being made ‘slaves’ in their own land” (Hamilton 53), but also
the dispossessed natives of Ireland. She writes that “Caliban’s compulsion to raise a rebellion
is… as analogous to the native Irish inclined to call again for Tyrone as to the English
Parliament refusing to grant supply [to the king] when so few of their grievances had been
addressed” (Hamilton 64). Ireland is never mentioned in the play, however, it may be implied
in some of The Tempest’s themes, characters, or references. In addition, during the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, English descriptions of Ireland were always
derogatory, and in the clear lack of evidence for any prototype for Caliban, he could also
reflect the Irish people whom England tried to control, both culturally and militarily
(Vaughan and Vaughan, Tempest, 52). And again at the same period, English writers
castigated the wild Irish as thoroughly as they did the Africans and the American natives. In
A New Description of Ireland, published the same year that Shakespeare probably finished
The Tempest, Barnabe Rich complained that the Irish were “rude, uncleanlie, and uncivill, …
cruell, bloudie minded, apt and ready to commit any kind mischief”, even “to rebel against
their [English] princes; … [N]either may age nor honour so protect any [person], that Rape be
not mingled with murder, nor murder with Rape” (Quoted in Vaughan and Vaughan,
56 Tempest, 51). Caliban, thus, could be a candidate for the English characterization of the Irish
people as unlettered, uncouth, inebriated, and rebellious (51).
Caliban’s rebellious impulses depict another type of treason that resonates throughout
early modern social order in which Caliban’s plot “To take [Prospero’s] life” is linked within
the domestic discourse/narrative of petty treason proposed by Frances E. Dolan. She argues
that “petty treason shapes and articulates the fear of insubordination and records the rival
stories and plots that compete with and threaten to displace Prospero as the master and his
story” (320). Caliban’s plot does have its own lethal consequences, exemplified in
threatening Prospero’s agenda to regain Milan, marry his daughter to Ferdinand, and finally
punishing his usurping brother, Antonio. Such threats are serious to Prospero’s prospective
plans, for they undermine the political and social system in the play, and the mere fact that
they come from inside Prospero’s household, is overwhelmingly dangerous (Dolan 320).
Caliban’s role as a slave within Prospero’s household partly matches the status of the early
modern household servant. As Michael MacDonald argues, “many households in early
modern England harboured a Caliban, a ‘servant-monster,’ partly adult, partly child, and
partly domestic beast of burden” (MacDonald 85). MacDonald here discusses the status of
these domestic servants who were eventually regarded as both familiar and yet strange. These
servants were seen as an integral part of the household in which they live or work. They were
also looked upon in relation to their stark opposition to their masters or their otherness (8586). Nevertheless, these were lesser threats if compared with the more devastating peril of
their very “familiarity and their insinuation into all social groups and situations” (Dolan 323).
Caliban’s position as such is a key point that he fully exploits in his plot to murder his master,
which consequently marks Prospero’s vulnerability.
Caliban’s plan to kill Prospero is heavily dependent on his position as an included and
familiar member of Prospero’s household, as well as an estranged and monstrous “other”. As
57 Warton shows “it is scarcely possible for any speech to be more expressive of the manners
and sentiments, than that in which our poet has painted brutal barbarity and unfeeling
savageness of this son of Sycorax, by making him enumerate, with a kind of horrible delight,
the various ways in which it was possible for the drunken sailors to surprise and kill his
master” (44). Caliban suggests to his confederates that:
’tis a custom with him,
I’ th’ afternoon to sleep: there thou mayst brain him,
Having first seized his books, or with a log
Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,
Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember
First to possess his books; for without them
He’s but a sot, as I am, nor hath not
One spirit to command: they all do hate him
As rootedly as I. Burn but his books. (III.ii.98-104)
Caliban’s plot (which he derives from his inside observation as a servant in his master’s
service) shows Prospero as an exposed and fragile magician to Caliban’s plans since he
knows everything about his strengths and most importantly his weaknesses. Moreover,
Stephano and Trinculo are jesters who are drunken and silly; they can be diverted from their
usurpation by the sight of few glittering garments, but Caliban is an active evil. He is never
diverted from his task insistently telling them “When Prospero’s destroyed”, and “Let’s
along, and do the murder first” (V.i.233-34). Caliban’s mind here is set to bring chaos and
disorder though his main motive is to replace one master for another, but one of his choice
this time (Zimbardo 240).
Furthermore, Caliban insists in his plot that in order for his plan to succeed, the two
other European conspirators need first to seize Prospero’s “books”, a fact that made
Shakespeare through Caliban reiterate it three times in the above speech. Prospero’s books
58 are a key point in the play. Prospero’s vulnerability is seen not only in Caliban’s knowledge
of his daily customs, but rather in his acquaintance with some of the knowledge about the
importance of these books for without them “[Prospero] is but a sot, as [Caliban is]”
(III.ii.104). Prospero’s gift of language to Caliban, which is seen as a threatening weapon
against the stability of his agenda, is contrasted with the “celestial liquor” (II.ii.126) given by
Stephano to control Caliban’s appetites even for a short time. The contrast is not only
between the two kinds of gifts, but rather between the two types of men who gave these gifts:
Prospero is a European aristocrat and the right Duke of Milan, while Stephano is just a lower
class drunken butler. Yet, they do have the same ambitions and impulses inherent in human
beings, for Prospero usurped the island by torture and his magical art. Stephano, on the other
hand, wants to usurp the island from Prospero by a much more savage force – by killing
Prospero and seizing his daughter: “Monster, I will kill / this man: his daughter and I / will be
king and queen” (III.ii.117-190).
Finally, Terence Hawkes suggests another sort of domestic anxiety in The Tempest, in
which he shows that “… the roots of the Prospero–Caliban relationship extend beyond that of
Planter to Slave to find their true nourishment in the ancient home-grown European relationships of master and servant, landlord and tenant” (Hawkes 3). He argues that this was seen as
a kind of domestic colonization which was quite available during Shakespeare’s time. It also
refers to parts of the country such as the Fens, which have echoes in Caliban’s curses:
“wicked dew … / from unwholesome fen / Drop on you both” (I.ii.321-3), and in the play’s
almost excessive concern with stagnant and dirty water.
Furthermore, Shakespeare may have used some literary sources in his dramaturgy of
Caliban. Poetry, drama, civic pageantry, and folklore probably influenced Shakespeare’s
eclectic imagination when he created Caliban. The wild man, a figure from popular folklore,
civic pageantry, and sixteenth-century drama, receives greater attention. Shakespeare may
59 have read Homer’s classic story, Odyssey, in which Odysseus and his men enter the cave of
Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, whom they later discover is a cannibal. Odysseus’s men
exaggerate are not afraid of the cannibal, Polyphemus. The cannibal captures several of them
and tears them apart to make his meal. Odysseus as the leader tries to counter with a special
drink that can confuse the monster, which he calls divine, consequently leading to the
monster’s intoxication. Odysseus takes advantage of the monster’s drunkenness to blind him
and escape. Polyphemus is a prototype of the wild man, he lives apart from civilized society
and embodies barbaric qualities. The analogy between Caliban and Polyphemus is quite
apparent in a number of things: he lives in a cave, is morally blind, he yields to Stephano’s
“Celestial liquor”, and he is depicted as a monster throughout the play. In these respects,
Shakespeare may have borrowed from Homer’s one-eyed giant (Vaughan and Vaughan,
Caliban, 57).
Shakespeare may have read Ovid’s Metamorphoses, especially Arthur Golding’s
translation of 1567, which was probably the source for Prospero’s “Ye elves” (V.i.33-56).
Caliban’s animal-like nature is linked with traditional Roman satyrs, creatures half-goat, halfhuman, symbolizing the vague distinctive boundaries between bestiality and humanity, as
well as their sexual impulses. They also represent the early European wild man with his
various drawbacks: he has no knowledge of God, no right reason, degenerated into
beastliness, and finally has no true language (63).
Another source that may have influenced Shakespeare is the close parallel between
Shakespeare’s Caliban and Montaigne’s cannibal. Both authors created wild characters who
“once set against the civilized world, could prompt reflection upon the civilized European
Renaissance society” (Barta 172). Shakespeare thus adopted Montaigne’s cannibal figure to
construct one of the most famous wild men created by the European imagination: Caliban.
Caliban represents “a wildness that threats Christian civilization from the inside, and, unlike
60 Montaigne’s cannibal, Caliban is a dangerous and menacing figure from whom one must be
protected, on the one hand, and who must be redeemed, on the other” (Barta 176). He further
argues that three main tendencies converge in Caliban:
the earliest is represented by the traditional image of the European wild man
contributing to the establishment of a civil society confronted by the undomesticated
instincts of the plebeian ranks. The second tendency, which frequently manifests the
positive side of the wild man, is the one Shakespeare takes from Montaigne: the acute
need to reconstruct the individuality of modern man by delving deep into his natural
or original wild state. Third, we find the increasing influence of colonial expansionism, which begins to profile the civilizing attitude vis-à-vis the exotic wild state that
must be destroyed, domesticated, or exploited. (Barta 178-179)
Caliban may also be an antimasque figure in Shakespeare’s most masque-like play.
Stephen Orgel explains that the formal court masque was generally separated into two
sections. The first section, the antimasque, represented a world of disorder or vice.
Antimasque figures designed by Inigo Jones included wild men, satyrs, phantasms, Indians,
tumblers, pygmies, and jugglers. The second part, or masque proper, was acted by members
of the court and represented the triumph of their artistic community and their belief in
hierarchy. The masque might begin with scenery portraying untamed nature, but it usually
ends with images of earthly and cosmic harmony. This scheme parallels the Elizabethan
entertainments in which the royal presence tames and civilizes the natural forces represented
by the wild man (Quoted in Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban, 80).
Caliban as an antimasque figure reverses the masque’s normal order. His conspiracy
provokes the disappearance of Prospero’s own entertainment when Ceres, Iris, and Juno
vanish. Caliban is not tamed or simply disappeared as usually accustomed in a masque. The
61 antimasque, nonetheless, continues after the masque’s interruption. The three conspirators:
Caliban, Stepheno, and Trinculo are fascinated by the garments hanging before Prospero’s
cave. Caliban is the only one who realizes the illusion and the folly of fascination on “such
luggage.” Vaughan and Vaughan illustrate that in Act IV, Shakespeare presents an exact
reversal of the normal order of Jacobean masque. The antimasque here may represent the
forces that could disrupt James’s ordered hierarchy, especially when considering the
possibility of Prospero as a surrogate for him. Prospero acknowledges Caliban as his own;
James, on the other hand, ignored the unruly forces in his own kingdom (81).
Hence, of all the possible literary genres and sources that might have influenced The
Tempest, the Jacobean court masque seems the most likely candidate. Caliban may be an
antimasque figure, and his plot to overthrow Prospero is clearly in analogy with the twelveyear-old usurpation against Prospero, as well as Sebastian’s and Antonio’s plans against
Alonso. Moreover, wild men were used in Elizabethan spectacles and Jacobean masques.
Caliban’s final promise “be wise hereafter / And seek for grace” may indeed “parallel earlier
wild men’s yielding to Elizabeth’s ‘civility’; or it may reflect the Jacobean antimasquer’s cooperation into a final dance of universal celestial harmony” (Vaughan and Vaughan, Caliban,
277). Caliban’s final speech that “[He]’ll be wise hereafter /And seek for grace” (V.i.294-95)
can also shed light on Shakespeare’s lesson that which he wants to deliver about those brutal
forces whether in Caliban as a monster or in the other supposedly civilized Milanese
conspirators: Antonio and Sebastian, Stephano and Trinculo, with Caliban in the centre, who
are the creators of disorder, the same disorder that threatens Elizabethan and early Jacobean
life from inside. Shakespeare’s emphasis is thus on grace, as opposed to revenge, since it is
the only possible remedy for the corruption inside man, and it is this time uttered by Caliban
himself as the monstrous “Other” after realizing “What a thrice-double ass / Was [he], to take
this drunkard for a god / And worship this dull fool!” (V.i.296-97).
62 Conclusion
Shakespeare’s Others are portrayed as figures of terror that can result in violence and
hatred. In this regard, Shakespeare, as John Gillies shows was “informed by a rich geographic
tradition which is already moralized, already inherently ‘poetic’ in the sense of being alive
with human and dramaturgical meaning: specifically, with the meaning of human difference”
(4). Such difference paves the way for categorizing and evaluating Others on the basis of
certain assumptions, biases, and mythologies about them.
All three of Shakespeare’s Others have the monster inside them, awaiting for
something to trigger it. In Othello, Iago instigates the monster by poisoning Othello’s mind
about his wife’s chastity and possible adultery, a sensitive issue that brought chaos to
Othello’s tranquil mind. Othello as a play is entirely focused upon Othello’s unnatural
marriage to Desdemona. Their marriage is the freakish union between black and white, ugly
and fair, savage and civilized, with its consequences on the European civilized society,
whether in Venice or in the Renaissance. Othello killed Desdemona, whom he supposedly
loved so much, based on false evidence. Then, every black Moor Othello would behave or
kill according to his cultural customs and beliefs. Othello is a dangerous figure according to
the Venetians because he may revert to his barbarian code once his inner pride and honour
are touched.
Shakespeare is so great a dramatist, he chooses Othello – the black Moor as his hero –
makes him appear as a person full of courage and nobility, and at the same time married to
Desdemona – a super-subtle Venetian – who does not belong to his species. Yet, this noble
Moor follows a tragic path by the same marriage that he thought would uplift his stigmatizing
otherness. If Shakespeare, however, intended a white Venetian or European male character
for Othello, Desdemona will most likely not be killed; instead the most penalty she could get
63 is divorce or a simple trial to defend herself. The play introduces Othello as the unnatural
match to Desdemona, with its central idea of how Othello will unconsciously reveal his
otherness, especially when his Moorish pride and honour are at stake. These factors are innate
in him and cannot be easily overcome even though he is a Venetian general. Sensitive indeed
the issue of honour for the Moors which is why Shakespeare purposely used it to show the
difference between them, savage and barbarous– and us, civilized Europeans. When Iago
suspects that the Moor had a relation with his wife (II.i.305-11), he tried to revenge by
destroying Othello’s marriage, but he never goes to question his wife or kill her, since as a
civilized European, this is the way he handles the matter.
Shylock, on the other hand, tried to live as any normal human being though with the
fierce hatred and disgust of the Venetian Christian society. His pound of flesh story, which he
professes to be a merry sport, is mainly provoked to humiliate Antonio and the Christians in
Venice. Yet, when he feels betrayed and humiliated by his daughter who also steals his
precious jewellery and ducats to give to his Christian enemy, Lorenzo, then and only then the
real Jewish monster is brought to light insisting on his bond which is so dear to him. Here,
Shylock is completely transformed to his Jewish monstrosity triggering the mythological
figure of the Jew hankering for Christians’ blood.
In addition, Shakespeare shows Shylock as the alien Jew to shed light on his strengths
and the strengths of the Jewish nation, residing in money and the female Jewish figure. Once
these two are converted to Christianity, the Christians can guarantee some control over these
aliens who live with us here in Europe. The Jews are not few in number the same as the
Moors; rather they are an entire nation that should be handled with care. Jessica as a
representative of the female Jewish mother is so essential a figure that her conversion to
Christianity can help to diminish the threat posed by these aliens. Shakespeare shows the
64 Jews as a menace that is capable of multiplying and controlling capital which will in turn
weaken the Christians in Europe.
Shakespeare’s monstrous Other, Caliban, is taught language by Prospero and Miranda
only in order to serve these two civilized Europeans when they first arrived on the island.
Caliban bettered the instruction, used the same language to curse Prospero and Miranda,
attempted to rape his mistress, and conspired to take his master’s life. Caliban appears to be
savage and monstrous with his inherent brutal mind. Yet, his monstrosity is not triggered only
after he feels robbed by Prospero of what he considers his own kingdom.
All three characters are introduced whether directly or indirectly as indicators of
transgression. Their transgressions result from the civilized Christians themselves. Othello’s
transgression comes from the fact of his otherness, for he married Desdemona secretly
without her father’s permission. This is so because he is an “extravagant and wheeling
stranger of here and everywhere”, which is why he is rejected as a suitor. Shylock is
portrayed from the very beginning as the Jewish usurer in a Christian world that rejects him
and his profession. Thus, once he has the opportunity, he commits his transgression against a
fellow Christian and a human being, Antonio. Caliban is first introduced cursing Prospero.
This shows a hostile relationship between him and his master, for Caliban tried to rape
Miranda after Prospero deprived him of his island. In all these cases the transgression leads to
fatal ends: Othello’s marriage is never really accepted leading to Desdemona’s and Othello’s
deaths; Shylock’s Jewishness and wealth are taken from him by the superior Christian State
after he threatens to kill one of its citizens; and Caliban plots to kill his master.
These Others constitute a “polluting danger” (Gillies 27) to the Europeans’ peaceful
and harmonious life. Othello is a savage and barbarous Moor, a feature not only of Othello
but other strangers as well, like Turks, Arabs, Jews, Indians, wild men, savages, etc.
Shylock’s danger is manifested in his capital and his Jewish nation. Caliban can be
65 considered as a noble savage who cannot be easily controlled because of the nature of his
brutal mind. The otherness of all these characters is already inherent in them, in the sense that
Othello is a black Moor in a civilized society that does not really like strangers. His otherness
is already manifested in his rejection as an equal suitor for Desdemona which leads to his
stealing the girl without her father’s consent. If Othello wanted to prove himself worthy, then
he should not have acted in such a disgraceful way even to his own culture and tradition
whether being an African or an Arab. Shylock’s transgression is already there as the alien
Jew, the moneylender who lives by usury. Caliban’s otherness is manifested in his brutal and
monstrous creation being capable of taking his master’s life. All these characters are
motivated by their basic innate attitudes or features: Othello as a Moor by his honour;
Shylock as a Jew by persecution and intolerance against his Jewishness and usury; and
Caliban as a wild beast by his instincts.
Shakespeare’s Others are all fooled by the civilized European society. Othello
believes only what he sees of the righteousness of Venice, and his real otherness is revealed
only with the help of Iago as the motivator triggering Othello’s “monstrous birth to the
world’s light” (I.iii.409). Otherwise, Othello could have lived a normal life in Venice though
he may not be fully accepted. Shylock, on the other hand, tried to live in a predominant
Christian society which persecutes Jews and their usury. He is never tolerated and always
alienated even in the eyes of the Venetian law. Finally, Caliban’s brutal action is triggered
only after he realizes that he is the subject to a tyrant who has deceived him of his island. His
transgression appears first in his attempt to rape Miranda in order to people the island with
Calibans: creatures who are like their father, Caliban, and who would help him regain his
kingdom. Nonetheless, even after the failure of his rape, and Prospero’s subsequent
punishment, Caliban persists in his vengeance and attempts a much more severe and brutal
action this time. He conspires with Trinculo and Stephano to kill his master. Thus, Caliban’s
66 mind is active and focused to get his island. Moreover, his reaction to Prospero’s usurpation
can be considered as analogous to Prospero’s reaction to get Milan from his usurping brother,
Antonio. The difference between the two is that Prospero uses his European cunning and
magical powers to regain his dukedom. Caliban, on the other hand, is uncivilized and
monstrous which is why he follows a violent path in order to regain his island. His means are
rape and murder to get what he believes his rightful inheritance from his mother, Sycorax.
Caliban is deceived and betrayed by Prospero’s cunning, deprived of what he considers his
own island though Caliban in his first encounter with Prospero welcomed the magician and
showed him all its secrets.
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