ABSTRACT
Early on in Othello it is made clear that Othello's chief attribute is his generalship: his narratives of military success win over Desdemona, and his reputation is such that, as the Duke implies, his role is crucial if Venice is to prevent the Turks capturing Cyprus. 1 Yet Othello's position has already been undermined by Iago, who has primed Brabanzio even before Othello first appears on stage, and it is clear to the audience that even as an 'international' conflict seems likely, a 'domestic' intrigue is in the offing. The play thus suggests that it will dramatize Othello's domestic weakness against the backdrop of the more pressing, international concern - the impending Turkish attack. For the audience, witness to Brabanzio's anger and !ago's plotting, it is apparent that Othello is wholly dependent on this opportunity to display his military prowess: when the Turkish fleet is destroyed by a storm, his position is jeopardized.2 Subsequent events illustrate how absolute his military value is, and yet equally how that value, unexchangeable, becomes worthless under the changed conditions of a peacetime economy. The play's abrupt transformation of Othello from successful general to vulnerable, jealous husband unfolds a 'domestic' drama that, reasonably enough, demands the attention of most critics; yet the deployment of the traditional Turkish threat to Europe in the play requires rather more interrogation than scholars have allowed. Indeed, while critics may find the 'psychological' material of betrayal or the treatment of race particularly interesting, the audience in 1604 may well have focused instead on the dramatically attractive offering of a Turkish invasion of Cyprus which the play enticingly (and with historical accuracy) advertises but does not deliver. Insofar as the play operates on the premise that its audience recognizes the potency of the Turkish threat to Mediterranean Europe, it seems reasonable therefore to investigate further
Despite the importance of the Turkish threat to Venice in Othello, a threat of such historical force for its contemporary audience that it must have been recognized for the 'Renaissance commonplace'3 it was, the role of Turks in the play has elicited little discussion from scholars. Critics have tended to follow the implied logic of the text: the Turkish threat disappears so that the main business may begin, as in the New Cambridge Shakespeare editor's view that while the shift from Venice to Cyprus
is motivated on the narrative level by the continuing Christian crusade against Turks[,] . . . this matter is hurried from the audience's attention in a couple of scenes. Its dramatic value lies largely in enabling Shakespeare to have the ideal conditions for his domestic drama.4
