Beginning of Essay
"If Othello didn’t begin as a play about race, history has made it one." The Venetian society that Othello is set in is representative of the writers context. The attitudes and values that Shakespeare reveals through the text are those same attitudes ....

Middle of Essay
.... and blacks were beginning to be used in Europe for the slave trade. During the time the play was written, the Queen of England had banned all blacks from entering the city. She spoke of them as "Negars and Moors which are crept into the realm, of which kind of people there are already here too many". It seems that Shakespeare is almost mocking the Queen by characterising Othello as a black man who has a high ranking position in the Army and who marries a white aristocratic women, against her fathers will. Ruth Cowlig suggests that the presentation of Othello as the hero must have been startling for Elizabethan audiences. This may ha ....