‘As it is credibly thought’: Conceiving ‘Monsters’ in Othello

Abstract

On 11 June 1569, a visitor with a memorable exhibition held court over the Durham citizenry: A certaine Italian brought into the Cittie … a very greate strange & monstrous serpent in length sixxteene feete in quantitie & dimensions greater than a greate horse which was taken & killed by special pollicie in Aethiopia within the Turke’s dominions. But before it was killed, it had devoured (as it is credibly thought) more than 1000 persons And Allso destroyed a Whole Countrey.l At once here it is the confused state of national boundaries that receives attention. An Italian has access to a region of the sub-Saharan continent, which itself is under Turkish control. Adding to the uncertainty is the vagueness surrounding ‘a Whole Countrey’, a fourth geographical entity which lacks a precise anchorage. Overshadowing territorial conjurations, however, is the emphasis on the preternaturally destructive capacities of the ‘serpent’. From the point of view of a theatrical performance, an elaboration of the powers and provenance of the ‘serpent’ was no doubt the centrepiece of the presenter’s ‘spiel’. A relative of the travelling mountebank, the Italian, the passage suggests, framed his description within the parameters of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century travellers’ tales, mapping a history of deliverance and conquest to extol the winning virtues of a ‘monstrous’ attraction.’ In fact, in its representation of the ‘extraordinary body’ of the ‘serpent’, the report stands as a quasi-colonial narrative, a drama in which militaristic stratagems and annihilatory appetites loom large as the distinguishing features.