ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the name of the character “Bianca” in Shakespeare’s Othello indicates her place of origin. From the regal “Aethyopia” in King Darius (1561), to “Barbary,” Desdemona’s mother’s maid in Othello, the names of African characters in Elizabethan drama indicate where they came from. Bianca’s name, derived from the Italian word for North Africans, “Bianchi,” is drawn perhaps from a source for Othello, Descrittione dell’Africa (1554) by Leo Africanus and translated into English as “white or tawnie Moors.” A North African Bianca completes the multicultural setting of Mediterranean adventure plays mixing peoples and cultures in love and revenge plots. Recognizing Bianca as African highlights economies of race and gender, helping us interpret the handkerchief Othello gave Desdemona, which is held by Bianca at the end and has traveled from Africa to Italy to Cyprus through a multicultural world where people, as well as goods, are in commerce with each other.
