Just How Remarkable was the ‘Jealous Moor’? Othello, Jealousy and Early Modern Racial Stereotypes

It is a critical commonplace that Othello is informed by the early modern stereotype that understood Moors to be particularly inclined to jealousy. This article contextualises this stereotype, by placing it within the larger early modern racial anthropology of jealousy. I argue that the association of Moors and jealousy was not particularly notable or exceptional, because contemporary English writers similarly diagnosed many different peoples from across the global as temperamentally disposed to excessive jealousy. When historicised, the early modern stereotype of the ‘jealous Moor’ conveys somewhat less meaning than is usually thought by modern critics of Othello–but by placing it in its proper historical context, we freshly see how the intersection of race and emotion remains vital to the play, and how a fully historicised account of Shakespearean drama must be attentive to the matters of race.