Othello as a "Moor" One term that is often disguised in the play but the reader finds out early is that Othello is a "Moor" or a black man in love with a white woman. This is scandalous for the time Shakespeare wrote the play, and it still shocking today, and yet Shakespeare does not make the love affair between Othello and Desdemona shocking, he just makes it tragic. The interpretation and even the play's events might have been different if Othello was not black, however. The difference in race between Othello and Desdemona does not seem to drive them apart, but because it is mentioned, it was clearly important....

It shows the differences between Desdemona, a rich Italian, and Othello, a black, foreign Moor of a different religion and background. They were too different to ever really understand each other, and that is one reason Othello found it so easy not to trust Desdemona, and feel like she was betraying him.
There are many issues that this term raises. Of course, some of them have to do with relations between the races, and it seems they have not really changed that much from Shakespeare's time. The fact that Othello was a Moor was important to the story because he was of a different race, but also…