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',
Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) Antonio (The Merchant of Venice) Antonio is the title character in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice". An influential, powerful and wealthy nobleman of Venice, he is a middle-aged man and a merchant by trade who has his financial interests tied up in overseas shipments when the play begins. He is kind, generous, honest and confident, and is loved and revered by all the Christians who know him. His willingness to die for Bassanio is a manifestation of his character. Antonio manifests anti-semitism by cursing and spitting at Shylock (anti-semitism was common in Europe in Shakespeare's days). He is a structural