Here you go:

[pinkmonkey.com] />

Les

Thanks! Your a real gem!!

Thanks, Pam.

Base (new world) Indian or Judas?

[www.shakespeare-online.com] />
[www.anotheramerica.org] />
Would Will have known some tale about an ignorant Indian who threw away a pearl? Not likely, I suspect. Doesn't matter for the interpretation, no.

I love this play. He's basically reflecting on his regret, having thrown Desdemona away for nothing. He's not easily jealous, if you think about it...Well, okay, he is. Maybe he's in denial. But what I think he's getting at is the fact that his jealousy wasn't self-inflicted. There was an obvious outside influence that "perplexed" him. Don't forget the fact that as an African American in that society, he already has quite a bit of pressure put on him to rise to expectations, to not fail. There's so much controversy with his marriage to Desdemona that people LOOK to find a reason to hate him. So I don't think he's EASILY jealous. I think the jealousy was inflicted on him by Iago on top of everything ELSE he has to take from people. So the smallest thing - and he snapped. Under different circumstances (if he was white, and not with such high status), I think he would have been more mellow about it.

He wasn't an African-American, its even questionable if he was African (very black). He's a Moor,. They were a mixed people from North Africa and Spain, a mixture of Arab and Berber (a white people who predated the Arab inhabitants of the northern coastal areas.) He will have been darker than Elizabethan English people but not significantly darker than the Italians he worked for. He will have been mistrusted for his Muslim or Jewish ancestors, even though he is probably a converso.

WS is here grafting two images upon each other: the "Indian" would be the exotic, the strange, the unknown and therefore vaguely evil; and the biblical parable of the pearl of great price. Except here, instead of the man selling all he had to buy it, Othello realizes its (the pearl, Desdemona) value all too late.

Not long ago I needed to verify some Shakespearean usage, and knowing it would be just about anywhere in the plays, I opened a one-volume Shakespeare at random. It happened to be this scene. As many times as I've read it, studied it, seen it, it hit like a ton of bricks. I have never been so emotionally touched as I was on that reading.

I guess you could be right that he refers to Matthew 13:44:

[bible.oremus.org] />
But why would 'like a base Indian' be the simile then?

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

And in the (Christian) Bible passage, the merchant didn't throw the pearl away, but acquired it.

Matthew 7:6 (King James Version)
6Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

Perhaps Othello didn't read his Bible?

pam

Othello, might not have, but I'm sure Will did.

Les

But is the character the author?

pam