Of Human Kindness by Paula Cohen

Author:Paula Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300256413
Publisher: Yale University Press

It is worth saying a few words here about the transmutation, as I see it, of Shylock into Othello—of one marginal figure into another. Neither Jews nor Moors would probably have been known to Shakespeare beyond their stereotypical representation in his culture. Moors existed in some pockets of society (there is a record of Moorish ambassadors to England and of black musicians and entertainers, though no evidence of any in Shakespeare’s circle). The threat of the “infidel” in the Mediterranean, where Othello goes to fight people of his own origin, was certainly present to English audiences. In addition, the slave trade had become an adjunct to discovery and conquest during this period, reinforcing prejudices against darker-skinned people.

Jews were even less likely to have crossed Shakespeare’s path. There were effectively no Jews in England at the time he was writing. Although he may have encountered them if he visited Venice, we have no concrete evidence that he did. In his speculative study of Shakespeare’s life, the critic Stephen Greenblatt suggests that he may have seen the hanging for treason of Queen Elizabeth’s physician Roderigo Lopez, the son of a converted Jew, an event that could have spurred his sympathetic rendering of a Jewish character. But the connection seems to me far-fetched. I am more attached to the idea that the plot Shakespeare stumbled on for The Merchant of Venice encouraged him to imagine the inner workings of the Jewish character’s mind, and that this, along with the instigation of Portia’s remark about the Prince of Morocco’s complexion, led him to move from the representation of a Jew to that of a black man—and from a humanized villain to a benighted hero. It is not that Jew and Moor are interchangeable in their marginality but rather that the imagination of one would lead a man of empathetic genius to imagine the other.

The shift from religion to color also had a practical value for the playwright. It allowed the exploration of the minority character to be grounded in appearance. Othello is a Christian (or, presumably, a Muslim who converted to Christianity); he functions like other Christians in the society, even if he does not look like them. Shylock, by contrast, may look like a Christian (were he to choose to do so), but his customs and beliefs separate him from them: “I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you” (1.3.29–32). This dramatic expression of difference seems necessary in The Merchant of Venice to underline the difference that drives the plot but which in Othello can be represented visually by the dark skin (and, with few exceptions until recently, “blackface”) of the character onstage.2

I should add that because Othello’s Otherness is connected to the superficial fact of his skin color, this becomes a way of making the prejudice against him seem absurd. Despite the way productions in blackface have undercut this, the play seems to me to have great potential for combating racism.

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