Othello on Othello. Although characters described as "moors" appear in two other Shakespeare plays ("Titus Andronicus" and "The Merchant of Venice"), such characters were a rarity in contemporary theatre, and it was unknown for them to take centre stage. There is no consensus over Othello's ethnic origin. E. A. J. Honigmann, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, concluded that Othello's race is ambiguous. "Renaissance representations of the Moor were vague, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. As critics have established, the term 'Moor' referred to dark-skinned people in general, used interchangeably with terms such as 'African', 'Somali', 'Ethiopian', 'Negro', 'Arab', 'Berber', and
Stanton Moor 1950s by the local archaeologist J.C.Heathcote and his son, J.P.Heathcote. They exhibited their finds in a private museum in nearby Birchover. The moor has four Bronze Age stone circles, of which the best known is Nine Ladies. To its north lies "Stanton Moor I" (the "North Circle"), and to its south are "Stanton Moor III" (the "Central Circle") and "Stanton Moor IV" (the "South Circle"). These other circles are largely overgrown and have few remaining stones. A further circle, Doll Tor, lies a short distance west of the moor. Elsewhere on the moor lie a number of modern-day cairns. Stanton