ABSTRACT
When Morocco challenges a hypothetical fair-skinned suitor ‘to make incision for [Portia’s] love,/To prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine’ (II.i.6-7),1 he invokes the human body as a place where certain disputed questions can be tested and decided: ‘What is Morocco’s real nature?’, ‘What is Morocco’s real value?’ The question who the better man is, the ‘fairest creature northward born’ (II.i.4) or the ‘tawny Moor’ (s.d. II.i), might be settled by cutting their bodies and comparing their blood: Morocco’s redder blood will show his greater courage, and prove his personal value despite his devalued skin colour. His challenge is couched in the Petrarchan rhetoric he uses throughout this scene, and the ‘body’ is merely verbal; yet a fleeting threat to bring his real body into the scene is voiced. Morocco is challenging the prevailing racist depreciation of his ‘complexion’ by turning to another conventional corporeal sign, redness of blood. The call for incision invokes a figurative body as a means of asserting personal value, and is typical of many moments in the play when a body is invoked.
