Othello: A Dramatic Study in Venetian Alienation
According to Shakesperean scholar Maurice Hunt, "Shakespeare's Venice" in the play "Othello" strives to activate "a disturbing paradigm dependent upon the city's multicultural reputation." (Hunt, 2003, p.1) In other words, in Shakespeare's Venice, diversity creates a disturbing and tumultous environment, an environment where only alienation rather than harmony between different races and different people can be sustained. At the beginning of Shakespeare's drama, Othello is a Venetian general who is esteemed, yet finds his illusions of equal participation in the personal as well as the military life of his adopted city cruelly cut short when he marries Desdemona. Desdemona's father accuses the general, whom he often invited as a guest to his house -- "Her father loved me; oft invited me;" is Othello's first protest when accused -- of witchcraft. Only though witchcraft could Othello ensnare his white's daughter's heart, only a witch could cause Desdemona to love what she ought to fear, namely a black man. "She is abused, stol'n from me, and corrupted/By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks," says Brabitano. "A maiden never bold;/Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion/Blush'd at herself; and she, in spite of nature, / Of years, of country, credit, every thing, / To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on! (I.3)
Thus, "the persecutory component of Venice, the tendency activated and strengthened by having to deal with the alien in the city, neutralizes certain finer values of Venetian Renaissance culture" according to Hunt. Hunt, 2003, p.1) Shakespeare first seems to embrace multiculturalism...
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