“Emblems of Folly in the
First Othello: Renaissance Blackface, Moor's Coat, and
‘Muckender’."
Hornback, Robert. “Emblems
of Folly in the First Othello : Renaissance Blackface,
Moor's Coat, and ‘Muckender’."
Comparative Drama, vol. 35, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 69-99. http://login.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/login?qurl=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41154067.
Accessed 1 July 2021.
Robert Hornback begins
with historical evidence that audiences would have understood the “emblems of
folly” presented in Othello: blackface, the Moor’s coat, and the “muckender.”
Moors in theater and pageantry were common and popular, creating a spectacle
rather than portraying reality, with blackface, black gloves and leggings, and
“a fleece of woolen hair” (Hornback 76). Historically blackness
was associated with devils and evil; it was also associated with fools. Part of
the fool’s costume was a “Mores cotte” – a flowing ankle-length robe called an
aljuba; the first Othello would have worn one, signaling his “sensational,
extravagant otherness” (Hornback 83-85). Another part of the natural fool’s
costume was the “muckender” or handkerchief. It is clear that Shakespeare
intentionally established Othello as a fool – a blackfaced Moor, wearing a
Moor’s coat, and obsessed with a handkerchief. What would have surprised
audiences was Othello the Moor being called “valiant” (1.3.48) and “noble”
(4.1.264); Othello began metaphorically “white,” but by the end of the play he
was transformed into the black fool he appeared to be. Shakespeare used a
disturbing combination of disturbing humor and tragedy to “toy” with his audience, fooling
them with “emblems of folly,” inviting them to laugh at the Moor – and then
when they sympathized with Othello, the victim of the villainous Iago, they
experienced “an awakening to a painful self-knowledge…that they had been fooled
into laughing at sadism” (Hornback 94). Hornback argues that the purposeful
construction of Othello as a fool and the butt of the joke was in reality an
innovative device to evoke empathy for the victim and make the audience members
aware of their own complicity in laughing at sadism.
--Jess Fraser
