Topics related to racism and sexism remain among the most ugly, taboo and controversial areas of our contemporary times, and it is safe to say that The active manipulation of national consciousness aimed at ridding people of these traits was only present in the second half of the last century, with South Africa's last apartheid state only relenting in its collective repression in 1994. However, it must be remembered that in both classical Athens and Elizabethan England, such mentalities were permitted and even sometimes actively cultivated as an appeal to the strength of a state in matters of national, cultural and ethnic homogeneity . This therefore presents an interesting parallel between the two eras and the works attributed to them. In this vein, it cannot be denied that one of the commonly underlying themes in Euripides' Medea and Shakespeare's Othello is society's new and unusual treatment of the two titular characters. to face because of their respective race, or in the specific case of Medea, also their sexual origin. This article seeks to highlight such examples of racism and sexism, as well as attempt to correlate the eras and societal and cultural situations in which the plays were written and how these atmospheres contributed to the characterizations and to the depictions of real “outsiders” in the two epic plays. In Euripides' Medea, the titular character finds himself in a very strange position in Corinthian society, and before moving on to this subject, the reader would do well to first examine the current mentality towards foreigners in the Athens of Pericles, whose citizens made up the majority of the audience for Euripides' play. The Athenian zeitgeist, in 431 BC, when Euripides' questionable magnus opus was first pro...... middle of paper ......ver. Considered as a whole and in political terms, Habib characterizes Shakespeare's plays as a kind of dialogue between the colonized and the colonizers, demonstrating the ways in which the colonized attempt to resist – but within the framework of the "performance of the cultural narrative of the colonizer ". Habib writes: that is to say, according to the majority culture's own terms. Works Cited Bushnell, Rebecca W. A Companion to Tragedy. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2005. Print. Cook, Ann Jennalie. The privileged spectators of Shakespeare's London, 1576-1642. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1981. Print. Flaceliere, Robert. La Vida Vida Cotidina En Grecia En El Siglo De Pericles. [Madrid]: Ediciones Temas De Hoy, 1996. Print. “Shakespeare's Colors: Race and Culture in Elizabethan England.” » Old Dominion University. Internet. March 24. 2010. .