Set you down this;
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him, thus.
– William Shakespeare
Othello, Act 5, Scene 2. In the play’s startling and tragic ending, Othello speaks this as he stabs and mortally wounds himself. His dying words show that he doesn’t see himself as human anymore, but as a dog. Othello, who grew up a Muslim warrior and converted to Christianity, recalls killing a "malignant" Muslim Turk once on the battlefield. He stabs himself while saying this, so identifying himself with the enemy Turk and acknowledging his alien status as a Moor in Venice. At the end Othello has internalized the prejudice towards black outsiders in white Venetian society.