If we turn to the play itself, we find many references to Othello’s colour and appearance.  Most of these are indecisive; for the word ‘black’ was of course used then where we should speak of a ‘dark’ complexion now; and even the nickname ‘thick-lips,’ appealed to as proof that Othello was a Negro, might have been applied by an enemy to what we call a Moor.  On the other hand, it is hard to believe that, if Othello had been light-brown, Brabantio would have taunted him with having a ‘sooty bosom,’ or that (as Mr. Furness observes) he himself would have used the words,

                    her name, that was as fresh
     As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black
     As mine own face.

These arguments cannot be met by pointing out that Othello was of royal blood, is not called an Ethiopian, is called a Barbary horse, and is said to be going to Mauritania.  All this would be of importance if we had reason to believe that Shakespeare shared our ideas, knowledge and terms.  Otherwise it proves nothing.  And we know that sixteenth-century writers called any dark North-African a Moor, or a black Moor, or a blackamoor.  Sir Thomas Elyot, according to Hunter,[103] calls Ethiopians Moors; and the following are the first two illustrations of ‘Blackamoor’ in the Oxford English Dictionary:  1547, ’I am a blake More borne in Barbary’; 1548, ‘Ethiopo, a blake More, or a man of Ethiope.’  Thus geographical names can tell us nothing about the question how Shakespeare imagined Othello.  He may have known that a Mauritanian is not a Negro nor black, but we cannot assume that he did.  He may have known, again, that the Prince of Morocco, who is described in the Merchant of Venice as having, like Othello, the complexion of a devil, was no Negro.  But we cannot tell:  nor is there any reason why he should not have imagined the Prince as a brown Moor and Othello as a Blackamoor.

Titus Andronicus appeared in the Folio among Shakespeare’s works.  It is believed by some good critics to be his:  hardly anyone doubts that he had a hand in it:  it is certain that he knew it, for reminiscences of it are scattered through his plays.  Now no one who reads Titus Andronicus with an open mind can doubt that Aaron was, in our sense, black; and he appears to have been a Negro.  To mention nothing else, he is twice called ‘coal-black’; his colour is compared with that of a raven and a swan’s legs; his child is coal-black and thick-lipped; he himself has a ‘fleece of woolly hair.’  Yet he is ‘Aaron the Moor,’ just as Othello is ‘Othello the Moor.’  In the Battle of Alcazar (Dyce’s Peele, p. 421) Muly the Moor is called ‘the negro’; and Shakespeare himself in a single line uses ‘negro’ and ‘Moor’ of the same person (Merchant of Venice, III. v. 42).