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Othello: The Beast With Two Backs

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Shakespeare’s Mortal Knowledge
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Abstract

Although he is almost exclusively the subject of the dialogue in the first scene of the play, Othello is not once mentioned in it by name. It is not till line 40, when Iago refers to the Moor, that one has any idea of who the third person is that Iago and Roderigo have been talking about so animatedly, and even then the idea purchased by the mind is a general one of a racial type and not of an individual.

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© 1993 Zulfikar Ghose

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Ghose, Z. (1993). Othello: The Beast With Two Backs. In: Shakespeare’s Mortal Knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22570-5_3

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