West Indies. One of the names given them was "Caniba," and from that came "cannibal."
Actually, Shakespeare is taking a little bit out of Pliny here.
Gaius Plinius Secundus (the full name of the writer commonly called Pliny the Elder) was a Roman scholar who lived in the first century a.d. He was a prolific writer who tried to prepare a one-man encyclopedia of human knowledge culled from all the writers he could get hold of. In a.d 77 he published a thirty-seven-volume book called Natural History which digested two thousand ancient books and which was translated into English in 1601 (just two years before Othello was written) by Philemon Holland.
Pliny accepted rumors and travelers' tales and much of what he included was a farrago of legend and distortion, but all was so wondrous and interesting that the volumes survived the vicissitudes that followed the fall of the ancient world when other, more serious volumes did not.
Othello explains how Desdemona listened to his tales and came first to admire him and then to love him. Desdemona arrives and bears out Othello's tale, and Brabantio must give in. But in doing so, he sardonically warns that since Desdemona has proven capable of deceiving her father, she might deceive her husband as well.
H'as done my office
All leave but Roderigo and Iago. Roderigo is in despair, for Othello seems to have won utterly. Iago, on the other hand, is not concerned. He has contempt for women and it seems to him that Desdemona cannot long remain in love with an old Moor. All Roderigo has to do is go to Cyprus with plenty of money (which, of course, Iago intends to charm into his own pockets) and wait his chance.
Then when Roderigo leaves too, Iago ruminates on the Moor and on his own plans for revenge, saying:
/ hate the Moor
And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets
H'as done my office. I know not if't be true,
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do, as if for surety.
- Act I, scene iii, lines 377-81
This must be nonsense. From all we can guess about Othello from the picture Shakespeare paints, he is not this sort of man. But Iago, intent on revenge, is busy working up his sense of grievance and will seize upon anything to do so. The revenge must involve Cassio as well. He says:
Cassia's a proper [handsome] man.
Let me see now: To get his place...
- Act I, scene iii, lines 383-84
And he gets his idea.
... Our wars are done
The scene shifts to Cyprus, where Montano, the Venetian governor, is awaiting events. There has been a great storm, which two Gentlemen on watch have witnessed. That tempest has, however, also served to abort the Turkish menace. A Third Gentlemen enters and says:
News, lads! Our wars are done.
The desperate tempest hath so banged the Turks
That their designment [intention] halts.
- Act II, scene i, lines 20-22
There is no further mention of military matters and Othello has no chance to display his quality as a general. That is too bad, for thirty years before the play was written there had been a Venetian-Turkish war that would have offered a good model for a battle.
In 1570, when Shakespeare was six years old, Turkish forces had indeed invaded Cyprus, as in Othello they had merely threatened to do.
Venice, which controlled the island at the time, felt she could not face Turkey alone. She appealed for help to the Pope, who in turn appealed to the most dedicated of all the Catholic monarchs in Europe, Philip II of Spam.
While the Christian forces of Europe were slowly gathering for the counterattack, the Turks were advancing in Cyprus and were steadily beating back the Venetians. Nicosia, in the center of the island (and the capital of modern Cyprus), was taken on September 9, 1570, while Famagusta on the eastern shore was under siege. Turkish vessels penetrated the Adriatic.
It wasn't till the summer of 1571 that the Christian fleet was ready to sail and challenge the Turks. The fleet was put under the command of Don John of Austria, an illegitimate half brother of Philip II.
Famagusta had fallen, meanwhile, and in October 1571 the Turkish fleet was concentrated near a city on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, a city which to Italian traders was known as Lepanto. It was six hundred miles northwest of Cyprus and seven hundred miles southeast of Venice itself.
On October 7, 1571, the allied fleet reached Lepanto and attacked the Turks in the last great