ABSTRACT
Negroes appear to have formed a part, albeit a small one, of the population of Great Britain for rather more than three hundred years. In the relative absence of contemporary attempts at a sociological assessment of English people’s attitudes towards them, it is as well to avoid dogmatic conclusions on this question. From a number of historical sources, more particularly the ramifications and implications of the Slave Trade, from various side-references and comments, and from occasional literary material wherein the Negro appears as a character, it is possible, nevertheless, to infer a good deal. The main impression so gained is that there was little or no colour prejudice in England in the modern sense of the expression until at least the beginning of, and perhaps quite well on in, the 19th century. Dramatic personations of the black man, and of Othello in particular, are sometimes accepted as a reasonable criterion in the matter; but how far they actually are so is by no means certain. No doubt, as most reputable modern critics suggest, Shakespeare intended the Moorish prince to be regarded as an African Negro rather than as a lighter-or even darker-skinned Moor. 1 This has been held to indicate racial tolerance on the part of the Elizabethan audience, particularly since the whole situation of the Othello-Desdemona marriage, as an eminent American critic puts it,
“is presented as in no way ‘unnatural’, whether in itself or in the eyes of the world, and Othello neither has aspirations to ally himself with the higher race, nor suffers through racial intolerance or prejudice. He is happy to marry Desdemona, but not because she is a white woman or the daughter of a magnifico. As he speaks of his blackness as the cause of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness but once—because Iago urged it—and turns immediately to other causes—his unpolished manners and his age….” 2
