Speaking of the Moor: From Alcazar to OthelloSelected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Speak of me as I am, Othello, the Moor of Venice, bids in the play that bears his name. Yet many have found it impossible to speak of his ethnicity with any certainty. What did it mean to be a Moor in the early modern period? In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when England was expanding its reach across the globe, the Moor became a central character on the English stage.