ABSTRACT
Shakespeare had already invented four black African characters before Othello. First is a kind of Iago in blackface begets on a white-skinned, second a black baby who betrays their secret union. Third is the unsuccessful Moorish suitor of Portia in The Merchant of Venice, which also contains the fourth a Moorish girl whom Launcelot Gobbo has presumably gotten pregnant, and whom Shakespeare disposes of in five lines and one bad pun. The fifth is the King of Tunis, to whom Claribel, daughter of the King of Naples has been married before the action of The Tempest begins. Aaron represents the dark side of his ambivalence, which remained uppermost in his treatment of witches and Jews. Shakespeare gets into trouble, having no true believers to set against the pagan, only Titus and his sons, who are also pagans, though Roman. Aaron seems sometimes to forget a clown entering the scene to swear by "Saint Stephen", first Christian martyr to the Jews.
