SOURCE: Orkin, Martin. “Othello and the ‘Plain Face’ of Racism.” Shakespeare Quarterly 38, no. 2 (summer 1987): 166-88.

In the following essay, Orkin considers attitudes toward race in England at the time Othello was written, focusing on the way that Shakespeare treated the subject and concluding that the playwright opposed racism. Orkin also offers a survey of other critics' opinions of the play's treatment of race and pays particular attention to the way Othello has been received in South Africa.

Solomon T. Plaatje did not come to Shakespeare's plays with the same perspective as those held, no doubt, by most of his contemporary counterparts within the white ruling group of South Africa. But he responded to significant aspects of Shakespeare more reliably than they. Plaatje, who translated several of the works, including Othello, into Tswana, observed that “Shakespeare's dramas … show that nobility and valour, like depravity and cowardice, are not the...