The Marriage of Cultures in Shakespeare

“The Marriage of Cultures in Shakespeare:

Miscegenation or Peacemaking?”

By

Xenia Georgopoulou

The presence of a stranger of some sort is a very common phenomenon in Shakespeare’s dramatic canon. Apart from the Moor in Othello or Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, who are undoubtedly Shakespeare’s most prominent strangers considering not only their external features but also their cultural difference, it is of note that most Shakespearean strangers are actually white European, who nevertheless bear their own stereotypes. No matter whether white or other, Shakespeare’s strangers seem to belong to a separate world, which is located either away from or within the world described in his plays. However, the two worlds sometimes merge, which raises various issues. In this paper I will examine the merging of different cultures through marriage in two of Shakespeare’s plays. In Othello Desdemona’s secret wedding with the Moor raises questions related to compatibility of race and culture, as well as important issues such as miscegenation. In Henry V the king of England marries the French princess, a political move which may consolidate peace between the two countries, but poses questions concerning communication between the members of a couple that do not speak the same language. Last, but not least, considering Shakespeare’s politics for the stage, I will explore how the presence of different cultures in the above plays is also used to please the audience; the Moor’s cultural otherness in Othello provides an exotic element that was so popular at the time, and Catherine’s broken English as well as Harry’s broken French in Henry V follow an old comic tradition, where linguistic otherness provides comic relief.

In Othello the title hero obviously comes from a different world, whose culture he inevitably carries with him; however, not only is he integrated in the Venetian community but he also seems to be one of its indispensable members, considered as the only military leader who can protect Venice from the Turk. Still, the Moor’s reassuring presence in a time of crisis does not seem enough to efface his racial difference. Shakespeare makes several allusions to contemporary stereotypes, myths and anxieties related to Africans through the characters of the play who feel threatened by the Moor.

Amongst the typically Moorish characteristics (Marienstras 202-07) attributed to Othello monstrous sexuality is apparently the most prominent.[1] Roderigo, his rival in Desdemona’s love, describes him as “a lascivious Moor” (1.1.128),[2] and the hero’s characterization by Iago as the “Barbary horse” Desdemona is “covered with” (113-14) relates to a moor’s sexual activity as well as to the monstrosity of his reproductive organ.[3] Othello’s supposed bestial sexuality is underlined by more metaphors of the kind. Iago graphically describes to Brabanzio the Moor’s monstrous lasciviousness put to practice: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe” (88-89). Although Desdemona is also presented as a beasthere, Richard Marienstras observes that in the ram and ewe metaphor there is no symmetry, since the ewe connotes a virtue, whereas the ram a nefast quality (204).

Elsewhere, however, when Iago warns Brabanzio that “[his] daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs” (1.1.117-19), Desdemona also seems to have become a beast through her intercourse with the Moor. “Tupped or ‘covered’ by such a thick-lipped animal, Desdemona, too, becomes (in Iago’s mind and mouth) a beast”, remarks Leslie Fiedler (122); and if Othello’s supposed sexual monstrosity is seen as part of his nature, Desdemona becomes a more threatening figure, as her supposedly unnatural choice appears more monstrous than the object of her desire itself. Karen Newman argues that in Othello “femininity is not opposed to blackness and monstrosity, as white is to black, but identified with the monstrous, an identification that makes miscegenation doubly fearful” (145).

Regarding his daughter’s relationship with the Moor as unnatural, thus subscribing to the early modern view of blackness as both ugly and fearful (Hunter, “Othello” 142), Brabanzio attempts to explain Desdemona’s affection for Othello by accusing him repeatedly of using witchcraft to win her. This statement obviously alludes to the hero’s exotic background, which, being remote and unknown, becomes dark and fearful. Othello explains in front of the Senate that he won Desdemona’s love with his stories about his journeys, which is confirmed by his wife, and convinces the Senate that he never used witchcraft to seduce her. However, magic seems to be indeed part of Othello’s culture, which also adds, along with the narration of his travels, to his exotic figure, as we shall see below.

Before leaving the Senate, Brabanzio refers to two more major stereotypes about moors (Newman 147), projecting Othello’s blackness as a threat to the Venetian community: “if such actions may have passage free, / Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be” (1.2.99-100). This threat of miscegenation, whose consequences are seen as both social and religious, does not seem to affect the present statesmen; for the Signory the “noble Moor” (4.1.266) is “far more fair than black” (1.3.290) for being “valiant” (47, 48).Moreover, the myth of the monstrously lascivious and base infidel is overthrown in Othello (Newman 157): the Moor displays a restricted sexuality that prevents a hurried consummation of his marriage (Newman 150), he is of royal descent (Ridley liv) and a Christian convert (Vitkus 161).

If the Venetian Duke and Senators encourage Othello’s assimilation, untouched by Brabanzio’s generalization about the future statesmen, for Desdemona’s father miscegenation is clearly an imminent threat, which is underscored by Iago’s graphic description of the outcome of Desdemona’s wedding with the Moor: sticking to the horse metaphor, Othello’s ensign warns Brabanzio that he will be metamorphosed in his descendants (Marienstras 204): “you’ll have your nephews neigh to you, you’ll have coursers for cousins and jennets for germans” (1.1.114-15). But blacks were not only seen as bestial; they were also related to the Devil himself (Hunter, “Othello” 142), and this is something Iago also reminds Brabanzio about when talking of miscegenation: “the devil will make a grandsire of you” (1.1.91). As Ania Loomba remarks, “Iago, Brabanzio, and Roderigo do not worry that Othello will assimilate unnoticed, but that he will produce, with a white woman, spectacular evidence of miscegenation” (106-07).

The fear of miscegenation is found in various writings of Shakespeare’s time. George Best, an English traveler, in his Discourse,written in 1578, reports the case of an Ethiopian man “as black as coal” whose child with an Englishwoman was born “as black as the father”; “whereby it seemeth”, concludes Best, “this blackness proceedeth rather of some natural infection of that man”.[4] “As the word ‘infection’ suggests”, comments Stephen Greenblatt, “Elizabethans frequently regarded blackness as a physical defect” (22). Thus, miscegenation was seen as contamination (Loomba 89; Newman 151).[5] Ironically, the Moor is the one who feels polluted by his white wife when he is finally convinced about her adultery: “My name, that was as fresh / As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black / As mine own face” (3.3.392-93).

However, the threat of miscegenation is annihilated at the end of the play with the death of the “unnatural” couple, which may pose questions that regard not Othello’s cultural difference, but rather the status quo of the Venetian society: “The destruction of the love and lives of Othello and Desdemona”, argues Kiernan Ryan, “lays bare the barbarity of a culture whose ruling preconceptions about race and sexuality deny the human right of such a love to exist and flourish” (51).

In Henry V, on the contrary, the marriage of the two worlds is encouraged. Marriages between members of different royal families were often seen as a means to consolidate peace, and this is a matter that emerges in more Shakespearean histories. In King John, for example, the marriage of the French prince Lewis with John’s niece Blanche of Spain is seen as a way of uniting the two opposing parties. In Henry V Harry’s marriage with Catherine is suggested at first by the king of France as a means to avoid war altogether, as we are informed by the Chorus before act 3. Although Harry does not agree with the princess’s poor dowry of a few dukedoms and proceeds to war, he will eventually marry her at the end of the play.

Even with no marriage yet in sight, Catherine receives a lesson of English from her waiting-woman Alicein 3.4. But what she learns is less than ten words, which would make no conversation possible. And if “hand” is an important word, as the princess’s hand will eventually be given to Harry, the fingers or the nails, the arm and the elbow, and so on, do not constitute a crucial vocabulary. At this point on the play, this scene seems to serve nothing more than to provide a comic relief in the middle of the war between the French and the English described in the scenes that precede and follow.

In 5.2, however, when the marriage is agreed, the actual problem of communication between the princess of France and the king of England is revealed, when the couple is eventually left alone—in fact, with the indispensable presence of Alice, who plays the role of the interpreter. “I cannot speak your England”, says the princess (102-03), although she has apparently learnt more by now, which is obviously due more to Shakespeare’s dramatic need to make conversation possible and less to Alice’s effectiveness as a teacher. The English king also finds difficulty in translating his words into French several lines later, although both he and the princess seem to understand, more or less, each other’s words, obviously for dramatic economy, so that Alice does not have to translate everything.

The merging of the two different backgrounds to which Catherine and Harry belong seems to puzzle the princess: “Is it possible dat I sould love de ennemi of France?” (5.2.169-70). What Harry has then to translate also sounds puzzling, even in his own language: “when France is mine, and I am yours, then yours is France, and you are mine” (175-76). Translated, with mistakes added, and interrupted by the king’s anxious address to a local saint, it sounds like this: “Je quand suis le possesseur de France, et quand vous avez le possession de moi—let me see, what then? Saint Denis be my speed!—donc vôtre est France, et vous êtes mienne” (181-83).

Laurie E. Maguire argues that the couple knows enough of each other’s language to be engaged in “a stimulating wit-combat”; still, Catherine makes use of her supposed ignorance when she wants to avoid answering to embarrassing questions (149). “Do you like me, Kate?”, asks Harry, and Catherine replies: “Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell vat is ‘like me’” (5.2.106-08). However, Catherine eventually marries Harry, and no matter whether their relationship proves a success (which we never get to know in the play), it certainly serves an important cause: the consolidation of peace between France and England, as it is made clear by the words of the French king in the same scene:

Take her, fair son, and from her blood raise up

Issue to me, that the contending kingdoms

Of France and England, whose very shores look pale

With envy of each other’s happiness,

May cease their hatred, and this dear conjunction

Plant neighbourhood and Christian-like accord

In their sweet bosoms, that never war advance

His bleeding sword ’twixt England and fair France (343-50).

As in Othello, the theme of issue emerges once more; only here there is no matter of miscegenation, but rather the blessed union of two Christian peoples that will fight the Infidel together, as proposed by Harry earlier in the same scene: “Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half-French half-English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard?” (204-207).

In Shakespeare the merging of two worlds is not impossible; nevertheless, the success of such a union may be doubtful. For the audience, however, the presence of a different world in the play is always successful. Discussing Othello Kim F. Hall reminds us that in Shakespeare’s time “[t]he reputed sexual license of African cultures was a source of fascination for readers and play-goers” (176). In addition to that, the Moor’s exotic background as well as his narratives, which won Desdemona’s heart, were equally stimulating for Shakespeare’s audience.

Apart from his racial difference, Othello’s occupation also relates to the exotic; in his accounts of his travels the Moor talks “of the cannibals that each other eat, / The Anthropofagi, and men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders” (1.3.142-44). Although such creatures, whose description dates from ancient times, were also reported by white travelers of the early modern era (Stenou 20-23), Othello’s narration of his voyages undoubtedly adds to the exoticism of his figure.

As Cedric Watts aptly remarks, the history of the handkerchief, Othello’s first gift to Desdemona, also fits Othello’s description of his travels, as it shares with them the same exotic context, located “between history and legend, the factual and the mythical” (77). Although we do not see the handkerchief in the making, as we can see the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth, the description of the ingredients of the fabric as well as the context clearly allude to a pagan culture. Witchcraft, another popular theme for the audiences of the time, also touched on in plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, such as Middleton’s The Witch (1613) or Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton(1621), also seems to be an issue here: Othello himself, talking of the handkerchief, says that “[t]here’s magic in the web of it” (3.4.69); it was “dyed in mummy, which the skilful / Conserved of maidens’ hearts” (74-75). The human ingredients remind us of the contents of the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth, where we find “Witches’ mummy” (4.1.23); “Liver of blaspheming Jew” (26); “Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips” (29); “Finger of birth-strangled babe / Ditch-delivered by a drab” (30). The curse that goes with the handkerchief also alludes to magic: “To lose’t or give’t away were such perdition / As nothing else could match” (67-68). Seeing Othello’s fury when the handkerchief is lost, Desdemona concludes that “[s]ure there’s some wonder in this handkerchief” (3.4.99).

In Othello what stimulates the audience is the rather dark nature and background of the leading hero, which is no surprise in a tragedy. In Henry V, on the contrary, the comic element used by the playwright to please his audience is rather original in a history play.

In Henry V the French princess’s broken English and the English king’s broken French[6] seem to follow an ancient dramatic tradition that regards language difference as comic, a tradition that dates from Aristophanes, with the broken Greek of caricature figures such as the archer from Skythia at the end of his Thesmophoriazusae. The king himself is aware of the comic outcome of his attempts to speak the language of the princess, to whom he declares: “I shall never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me” (5.2.185-86). As it becomes obvious in the scene between Catherine and Alice, Shakespeare’s French is no good, either; however, it is good enough for his audience.

But Alice’s and Catherine’s English and Harry’s French is not the only comic element in the conversations among them. E. A. M. Colman traces examples of obscene language, also popular among early modern spectators considering its frequent use in plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In Catherine’s English lesson Colman reads two sexual puns in the words “cown”, spelled “count” in the Folio, and “foot”, relating the former to the English word for the female reproductive organ and the latter to foutre, the French word for sexual intercourse(105).[7]

Although the princess’s English is apparently almost non-existent, at least at that point of the play, it seems that she can tell what is improper, and even articulates this impropriety, in case the audience hasn’t noticed:“De foot et de cown? O Seigneur Dieu! Ils sont des mots de son mauvais, corruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d’ honneur d’ user. Je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France pour tout le monde” (48-52).[8]Craik translates: “De foot, and de coun? O Lord God, they are words of evil sound, corrupting, gross, and immodest, and not for ladies of honour to use. I would not pronounce these words before the lords of France for all the world” (224). Of course, the audience’s French in Shakespeare’s theatre would probably be as poor as Catherine’s English; however, the vocabulary of the two languages is common to a great extent, so that words like“corruptible”, “gros” and“impudique” can easily be understood as “corruptible”, “gross”, and “impudent”, even with slight differences in meaning. Colman makes an interesting audience-oriented observation regarding both the puns and Catherine’s reaction: “At the lowest level, these quibbles would please the most stridently anti-French section of a popular Elizabethan audience. For the more sophisticated, Catherine’s embarrassment would foreshadow the engaging modesty with which she later meets the advances of King Henry” (105).