Harem and Desdemona: A Comparative Study of Shakespeare’s Othello

• In Event: Early/Modern Spaces of Shakespearean Performance

Abstract

Shakespeare could have picked up his information and understanding of culture of Islam by reading travel writers such as Richard Hakluyt and Richard Knolles who fed the public interest by describing characteristics of the Turks. The depictions of Turkish people in these travel narratives involved certain stereotypes that proved useful to Shakespeare’s depiction both of Desdemona’s and Othello’s behavior and their lives in the citadel in Cyprus, a place that has never been studied carefully for its cultural context. I argue that Othello paints a portrait of stereotypical Muslim characteristics drawn from the travel narratives of Richard Hakluyt and Richard Knolles. My objective is to show Shakespeare could have picked up the stories of increasing confinement and submissivenes mentioned in Knolles’s book, the elements that I will argue give Othello a tinge of Turkishness and create a haremlik space for Desdemona.

Author

• Tulin Ece Tosun, Purdue University