Othello is one of two of Shakespeare's plays set in Venice. The other was one of his late comedies "The Merchant of Venice." the title characters in each of these plays is non-European, ethnically or racially. The reason these plays are set in Venice and Cyprus is that the Venetian republic was the most cosmopolitan European state of the 16th century. It was in Venice that East met west and Moor, Turk, Jew, Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholics and protestants met, lived and did business. There were separate dwelling and business districts for each of these groups in Venice and, in most cases, churches where all could practice their faiths. people of all creeds and colors did business in Venice. While by the sixteenth century, most of northern and western Europe was turning to the west, it was in Venice that the races and creeds of the Europe, Africa, and the Middle East met on equal terms.

In both plays Shakespeare explores the way that ethnic, political, religious, and racial differences interfere with each individual's developing full human potential. In Othello we see Castiglione's soldier/courtier running into a student of Machiavelli's The Prince. Iago uses all the techniques of the consummate politician to corrupt and destroy the noble soldier Othello. Part of what makes Othello so gullible and so willing to doubt "fair Desdemona" is his own blackness. The term Moor in Shakespeare's England referred to black Muslims from Africa. As you view acts four and five of the play (beginning on page 109 of Fiero) pay particular attention to the way in which Othello's doubts about himself lead him to see Iago as honest and Desdemona as wicked.

Compare the following statement by Othello, towards the end of the play,

"O vain boast!
Who can control his fate? Tis not so now."

with Pico Della Mirandola's words as he imagines God speaking to Adam,

"The nature of all other things is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by me; thou, coerced by no necessity, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature in accordance with thine own free will ... thou mayest ... fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer."

How does this contrast explain Lodovico's final judgment?

"O thou Othello, that was once so good,
Fall'n in the practice of a damned slave,
What shall be said to thee?"

How do Othello's character and the play call into question the differences between Renaissance ideals and the realities of renaissance life and institutions?