Othello (character) arrested, transported from Cyprus to Venice, and tortured, but refuses to admit his guilt. He is condemned to exile; Desdemona's relatives eventually put him to death. The ensign escapes any prosecution in Desdemona's death but engages in other crimes and dies after being tortured. There is no consensus over Othello's race. 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 similarly ambiguous terms as 'African',
BBC Television Shakespeare the distance is the backcloth, which is impressionistic." The backcloths were used to suggest locale without photographic representationalism; they imply air, water, sea, hills, a city, but never actually show anything specific. Geoff Feld won Best Cameraman at the 1981 BAFTAs for his work on this episode. The "Prefaces to Shakespeare" episode for "The Merchant of Venice" was presented by Timothy West who had played Shylock in a 1980 Old Vic production which he also directed. The "Shakespeare in Perspective" episode was presented by playwright and screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz. Cast In line with producer Jonathan Miller's aesthetic policy, director Elijah