Was Othello of African or Arabic descent?
In the famous play Othello by William Shakespeare the topic of Othello’s ethnicity is a very widely discussed topic. Most people get to the, in my opinion, erroneous conclusion that Othello was of sub-Sahara African descent (black). The opposing point of view’s position is that he was of Arabic, or North African descent, which as I will attempt to explain throughout this paper is, in my opinion, correct.
The main points people who believe that he was black use is that quite simply throughout the play he is called black a number of times, and he is also called thick lipped once, and moors don’t have thick lips. He mentions he was a slave, and at the people who were slaves were the West Africans not the Arabs.
A little before Shakespeare’s time queen Elisabeth had started to make the distinction between the fair Europeans and the “blackmoors” which was supposed to be a way to classify the people from North Africa but it was......

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Title: Othello's Ethnicity
Approximate Word Count: 3408
Approximate Pages: 14 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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