Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 512-86.
Of Interest: RSC Resources | ISE Resources | S-O Sources | Cinthio’s Gli Hecatommithi, Pt. 1 | Hecatommithi, Pt. 2
ACT 1
Act 1, Scene 1. (512-16: Iago reveals to Roderigo his resentment of Othello since the general has promoted Michael Cassio to be his lieutenant instead of Iago; Iago enlists Roderigo as an unwitting agent; at night, the two men inform Brabanzio that his daughter has spirited herself away to marry Othello; stunned, Brabanzio gathers an armed search party.)
Iago may not be acting from grand motives, but he sets forth two reasons that he, at least, seems to find sufficient cause for his hatred of Othello: first, there’s his sense of injured merit because Othello has given the lieutenant’s job he coveted to the supposedly less experienced, more bookish Michael Cassio (513, 1.1.17-31), whom Iago puts down with the damning utterance, “Mere prattle without practice / Is all his soldiership” (513, 1.1.24-25). Second comes the mere possibility (aired in Act 1, Scene 3 on no evidence at all) that his wife has slept with Othello.
Like Shakespeare’s Richard III or Aaron the Moor in Titus Andronicus, but with a greater degree of interiority and reflexivity, Iago is a Machiavel and a consummate actor. As he says to Roderigo, “In following him [Othello], I follow but myself” and “I am not what I am” (514, 1.1.56, 63). This is a man who mostly keeps his own counsel, and speaks to others in a manner that allows him to get what he needs from them. That is exactly what he is up to with Roderigo, who of course is smitten with Brabanzio’s daughter Desdemona and would do anything to gain her affection.
To borrow a phrase from the contemporary corporate interview playbook, while Iago may be Othello’s trusted underling, that isn’t how he sees himself “five years from now.” Iago seems confident in his abilities, his superiority to most or all of the men around him, but he is not at peace with himself. There’s something impish about him, too, something of the pure evildoer: the man seems to enjoy stirring up trouble for the hell of it. [1]
Throughout the play, Iago shows no regard for the gathering destruction he visits upon Desdemona, whom he knows to be innocent. Iago maneuvers with diabolical skill in the gap between what he seems to be and what he is, turning everything that happens to his own advantage.
Outside Brabanzio’s stately home, Iago and his gull Roderigo arrive in the night to regale the wealthy, politically connected Venetian with race-baiting taunts about Desdemona’s elopement with “an old black ram.” (514, 1.1.86ff), and the ploy works all too well. Brabanzio’s trust and an offer of preferment flows to the previously despised Roderigo, and the wealthy father calls together an impromptu search party to find Desdemona and Othello.
Act 1, Scene 2. (517-19, Iago warns Othello about Brabanzio’s search party; Cassio shows up and tells Othello that he must go and discuss urgent security matters pertaining to Cyprus with the Duke and Venetian senators; Brabanzio’s search party arrives, but Othello overawes them and offers to let the angry father plead his case in the presence of the Duke and the senators at the security council.)
Iago shows up outside Othello’s lodgings and deviously warns Othello that Brabanzio’s searchers are coming after him. The general is by no means terrified by the news: he will stand, he says, on “services which I have done the signory” in Venice (517, 1.2.18), and considers himself the equal in dignity of any Venetian nobleman. Michael Cassio arrives before the search party to tell the general that his advice is needed at a private Venetian council to respond to news about the Turks in Cyprus.
Moments later, Brabanzio and his party are on the scene. Othello bears himself magnificently towards them, declaring to these apparently inexperienced men, “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them” (518, 1.2.59). This verbal gesture, at once both eloquent and terse, tells us a great deal about the charismatic appeal of this supremely competent mercenary general: this is not a man to be trifled with, particularly in matters of a fighting stamp. Indeed, that’s why the Venetians are paying him for his services, and seeking his advice on urgent matters of state security.
On the spot, Brabanzio accuses Othello of witchcraft: “thou has enchanted her” (518, 1.2.63), he tells the Moor; otherwise, he insists, the girl would never “Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou—to fear, not to delight” (518, 1.2.70-71) He can’t even imagine the attraction of the foreign or the exotic, even though he’s been listening to Othello’s stories with admiration, too. To Brabanzio, it seems, Venice is the world.
Perhaps this is strangely provincial of him, given that Venice is a cosmopolitan sea empire that has long known how to cut a deal with Arabs and Turks, but as we have seen already, Brabanzio immediately accepted Iago and Roderigo’s grotesquely reductive “devil” and bestial “ram” characterizations of Othello. The Moorish general hardly lacks charm, but Desdemona’s father welcomes demeaning, and as we would say, “race-baiting” descriptions of the man who has won his daughter’s heart.
Othello agrees to go along willingly, with the proviso that the Duke’s call trumps Brabanzio’s personal matter for the time being, so off they all go to the Duke’s council, where Othello’s advice will be required.
Act 1, Scene 3. (519-28, the Duke rejects the dubious claim that the Turks are headed for Rhodes rather than Cyprus; Brabanzio and his party arrive with Othello, and the Duke agrees to hear the evidence against his general; accused of “witchcraft,” Othello defends himself eloquently; Desdemona, summoned by the Duke at Othello’s suggestion, successfully defends her marriage, and wins the right to accompany Othello on his military ventures; Iago will help her on her way to Cyprus; Roderigo is beside himself with grief, but Iago tells Roderigo to head for Cyprus where Desdemona is going; Iago plots to shame the newly married Othello with talk about Cassio’s alleged affection for Desdemona and to get Cassio’s lieutenancy for himself.)
In council, the Duke [2] and his counselors debate the probability that the Turks are in fact headed with their fleet to Cyprus rather than to Rhodes. This matter has just been decided on when Brabanzio and his party arrive with Othello. Summoned to Venice in this manner, Othello wins the good opinions of the Duke and assembled senators because of his impressive military bearing and chivalric eloquence.
When the panicked, furious Brabanzio accuses him of witchcraft in taking Desdemona from him, the general promises to deliver “a round unvarnished tale” (521, 1.3.90) that immediately turns out to be an impressive piece of autobiographical oratory. Othello romances the assembled grandees with his beautiful, moving words, and wins them over to his side in the matter of his just-concluded marriage to Desdemona.
“The Moor” cuts a dashing figure, and he is aware of his effect upon others. He is proud of his conquest, like a soldier who has won the prize fairly. The tale he delivers is anything but “unvarnished”; it is filled with romantic extravagance. Perhaps he has been sold into slavery, fought tremendous battles, and seen many remarkable sights. But did he really see “Anthropophagi, and men whose heads / Grew beneath their shoulders” (522, 1.3.144-45)? No, these are tales he’s picked up the better to build an image of himself as an adventurer.
Othello exploits Desdemona’s interest in such romantic, far-fetched stories, crafting from that propensity a contract-in-hand to “dilate” his life’s journey and thereby “beguile her of her tears” (523, 1.3.153, 155). His summary of success speaks best: “She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them. / This only is the witchcraft I have used” (523, 1.3.167-69). Faced with such an excellent defense, Brabanzio can do little but beg the Duke to move on to discussing important matters of state.
Our first glimpse of Desdemona shows us a strong-willed young woman who is not afraid to act boldly and speak her mind, even in the presence of her powerful father and Venetian statesmen. Her strength accords well with Othello’s soldierly virtue, and shines forth when she addresses Brabanzio directly: “so much duty as my mother showed / To you, preferring you before her father, / So much do I challenge that I may profess / Due to the Moor my lord” (523, 1.3.185-88).
Desdemona also talks the Duke into agreeing that she should be allowed to accompany Othello on his dangerous military missions, lest, as she says, “The rites for why I love him are bereft me” (525, 1.3.254). Once again, Brabanzio is stymied in his dislike of Othello, and can say no more to the man than, “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee” (526, 1.3.289-90).
Soon, Iago will put Desdemona in an impossible position—her considerable aplomb as a speaker and a virtuous woman being won’t translate into an ability to charm Othello out of suspicions that Iago plants in his soul, so her goodness will actually work against her. Indeed, Iago’s creed is worth noting. Roderigo, left disconsolate by Othello’s successful defense of his right to be married to Desdemona, turns to Iago for help.
And to Roderigo’s passive, faux-suicidal blubbering about the defects of his “virtue” (in this usage, it means “nature”), Iago blurts out “Virtue? A fig! ’Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus. / Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are garden- / ers …” (526, 1.3.312-14).
In terms of Renaissance psychology, Iago means that while we are subject to the pull of our appetites (which belong to the “sensitive” part of human nature), we can control these appetites. We can let our choice-making power, our “will,” be informed by reason and thereby control the effects of appetite. [3] Iago is suggesting that while the body and its appetites may hold sway for a while in Desdemona, she is bound, in due time, to become sated with Othello, and then her rational element will lead her to despise this older man whose appearance and culture are so unlike hers. (526, 1.3.325-47.) Like will return to like.
Well, Iago hardly puts Renaissance psychology to the noble uses of the era’s great humanists, such as Pico della Mirandola, who implies that the grandest goal of humanity is to transcend itself for the greater glory of God, but he knows how to craft a cunning scheme from the premises of this psychology: Roderigo need only follow Iago’s repeated injunction, “Put money in thy purse!” (527, 1.3.329) and wait for Desdemona to turn again towards Venice, which great Italian city shaped her from infancy.
At this point, Iago’s second motive comes to light: he has heard that Othello may have cuckolded him. And although he may be patient in devising his wicked schemes, he shares Othello’s disdain of long-continued suspicion. The mere supposition that his wife Emilia may have cheated on him demands payback; the matter must be resolved. As he says, “I, for mere suspicion in that kind, / Will do as if for surety” (527, 1.3.367-68). He will wage a pre-emptive war against this man who has already frustrated his hopes of advancement and who may also have insulted his marriage.
In some cold, calculating way, Iago himself is subject to the cat-like “green-eyed monster” jealousy, and his way of dealing with the discomfort it’s caused him is to pass it along. That there’s also something to the charge of “baseless evil” often leveled against Iago, we may see from his brazen determination to “plume up” his will “in double knavery” (527, 1.3.371-72).
ACT 2
Act 2, Scenes 1-2. (528-35, the Turkish fleet is wrecked by a storm; Cassio makes it back to port, as do Desdemona, Emilia, and Iago; Iago observes Cassio and Desdemona’s innocent flirtation as she awaits the arrival of Othello; the general arrives and joyously greets Desdemona; Iago pounces: he convinces Roderigo that Cassio and Desdemona are in love, and then prods Roderigo to start a quarrel with Cassio on his watch and get him fired as Othello’s lieutenant; Iago again sets forth his suspicions about Emilia and Othello as in part the cause for his plotting against the general. In Scene 2, a herald announces an evening of triumph and feasting in Cyprus.)
The Turkish fleet is scattered at sea about as thoroughly as the famed Spanish Armada off the English coast in 1588—something that might easily have occurred to many people in Shakespeare’s audience since it had happened just two decades before Othello’s staging. Cassio’s ship has landed, but Othello’s has not yet made it back to port, and Cassio is anxious about the fate of his general. A ship’s sail is seen in the distance, and Cassio decorously praises Othello’s new wife in absentia as “a maid / That paragons description and wild fame …” (529, 2.1.61-62).
When the ship carrying Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia arrives at the harbor, Cassio himself kneels before Desdemona and, treating her like a princess, asks the surrounding men of Cyprus to do the same. A contest of wits follows between Iago, Emilia, and Desdemona, with Iago jesting about Emilia’s scolding tongue and women’s bad habits in general, and Desdemona challenging Iago, “What wouldst write of me, if thou shouldst praise me?” (531, 2.1.116-17) Iago criticizes nearly every category of woman, and suggests that a woman who always preserves her virtue and modesty in the face of temptation is downright boring.
Iago sees exactly what he has been hoping for, with the courtly Michael Cassio kissing his own fingers in a gesture of affection towards Desdemona, taking her by the palm, smiling, and so forth: “With as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as / Cassio” (532, 2.1.163-64), says Iago. Cassio obviously holds Desdemona in high regard, and finds her beautiful, and his courtly Venetian attitude is on full display, with her innocent but also Venetian approval.
Soon, Othello returns safely to port and to a lovely, if fraught, reunion with his bride Desdemona. The two are overjoyed to be back together, but Othello’s mind tends towards a certain anxiety or gloominess even in the midst of such joy: he says, “I fear / My soul hath her content so absolute / That not another comfort like to this / Succeeds in unknown fate” (532, 2.1.182-85), and a little below, sounding like Pericles in his recovery of his daughter Marina, [4] Othello can say only, “It is too much of joy” (532, 2.1.189).
With these expressions, Othello is nearly done with his military task. He simply announces to the gathered Cypriots that “The Turks are drowned” (533, 2.1.194) and pleasantly chides himself for becoming overfond of the “comforts” afforded to him as a commander.
This leaves Iago alone with his follower Roderigo, and he does not fail to make the most of the opportunity at hand. He declares to Roderigo that as for Cassio, “Desdemona is directly / in love with him” (533, 2.1.209-10). Furthermore, he insists that Othello and Desdemona’s marriage is fundamentally unsustainable: beyond the initial period of attraction, he suggests, the Moor lacks “loveliness in favor” and “sympathy in years, / manners, and beauties” (533, 2.1.219-20). In other words, Othello will not continue to seem attractive to Desdemona, and he’s too old and too foreign to her Venetian expectations.
Iago has told Roderigo, and tells him again, that if they don’t get Cassio out of the way, Roderigo himself has no chance of winning Desdemona’s heart. And what’s the specific plan that will bring all to rights? Roderigo is to walk up to Cassio on his watch at night, and find some cause to insult him. As Cassio is quick-tempered, says Iago, a fight is sure to ensue, and Iago himself will take pains to cause a general disorder among the Cypriots. Cassio will be blamed for the ruckus, and the blame will lead to his dismissal. (534, 2.1.257-64)
Iago’s soliloquy after Roderigo departs is darkly magnificent in its revelatory quality and insight. He admits to believing that Desdemona’s love for Othello is genuine, and not a mere infatuation as he characterized it to Roderigo. He also admits to the certainty that Othello “Is of a constant, loving, noble nature” (534, 2.1.272) and likely to prove a fine husband. He therefore has no illusions about the depth of the evil he is tumbling towards perpetrating.
Iago is sometimes said to be insufficiently motivated for the wrong that he does, but he actually gives us some insight into what he claims is eating away at him: “I do suspect the lusty Moor / Hath leaped into my seat, the thought whereof / Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards …” (534, 2.1.278-80). Nothing will satisfy him but some great insult: he will, he says, either sleep with Desdemona, or at least fill Othello’s soul with shattering jealously—“a jealousy so strong / That judgment cannot cure” (534, 2.1.284-85). Iago will, if he can, drive Othello mad. [5]
What’s more, Iago says—in the course of admitting that he fears Cassio’s sway with his own wife, not just that of Othello—he means to go farther: he will “Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me / For making him egregiously an ass …” (535, 2.1.291-92). His basic plan is ready, though as always, he feels his way towards ever-greater clarity: “’Tis here, but yet confused: / Knavery’s plain face is never seen till used” (535, 2.1.294-95). Iago won’t just ruin Othello and Desdemona’s lives—he will take sadistic pleasure in exercising his creative viciousness while doing so.
This scene as a whole turns on trifles: witty banter, smiles, innocently flirtatious gestures and touching between Desdemona and Cassio, and Iago’s own trifling and ungrounded but eventually deadly jealousy of his wife Emilia. How easy it is to weave an unflattering narrative, and take advantage of others’ insecurities! As Iago will say of the famous stolen handkerchief in Act 3, Scene 3, “Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (552, 3.3.319-21).
In Act 2, Scene 2, a Herald brings word of Othello’s decision to offer Cyprus a day of triumph, for the Turkish fleet has been lost and presents no further danger, and there is the happy business of his own recent marriage, too, to celebrate. From five in the afternoon until eleven at night, there will be “full liberty of feasting” (535, 2.2.8). This, of course, sets the stage for Michael Cassio’s watch at night, and Roderigo’s insult may be offered at that time.
Act 2, Scene 3. (535-43, Iago gets Cassio drunk and ripe for the quarrel that Roderigo soon picks with him; Cassio wounds Montano in the confusion; Othello, disturbed while in bed, arrives and fires Cassio, whom he holds responsible for the disorder; Iago tells Cassio to enlist Desdemona in his quest to get Othello to reinstate him; Iago insinuates to Othello that Desdemona’s support for Cassio stems from her disloyal affection for him.)
Othello tells Cassio to help Iago keep watch at night, as he goes off to celebrate his nuptials with Desdemona. Iago tries to get Cassio to confess that he’s attracted to Desdemona, without much luck. No matter—the main plan is simply to get Cassio drunk. It takes a bit of doing, but Iago succeeds in duping Cassio into having a few too many cups of wine. Iago has also taken care to drag in three Cypriot men to help keep the watch, which should be more than enough to cause a major stir tonight.
Soon enough, a brawl takes place. Cassio wounds Montano, and the alarm bell is rung, causing consternation. Iago describes the whole affair in falsely shocked words to an irked Othello, who declares imperiously, “For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl, / He that stirs next to carve for his own rage / Holds his soul light …” (538, 2.3.151-53). Iago, pressed to speak of the cause of this ruckus, implicates Cassio. Othello is easily fooled into thinking Iago speaks gingerly from love of Cassio, and the upshot is the dread sentence, “Cassio, I love thee, / But never more be officer of mine” (540, 2.3.227-28).
When he finally sobers up, Cassio is filled with shame and self-reproach, which Iago turns to account, suggesting that the way to reinstatement is to get Desdemona to plead his case. He tells the broken Cassio, “She is of so free, so kind, so apt, so blessed a disposi- / tion, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than / she is requested” (541, 2.3.293-95). This is music to Cassio’s ears, and he says he will seek out Desdemona in the morning.
Iago now takes stock in soliloquy of what he is up to. Without question, he sees himself as following the “Divinity of hell,” which he describes as follows: “When devils will the blackest sins put on, / They do suggest at first with heavenly shows, / As I do now.” (542, 2.3.321-24). As Iago says, his plot presently has him using Desdemona’s always-available generosity to plead for Cassio in a cause that would be for his good, were it not that Iago, Satan-like, will soon use Desdemona’s attempt as the means to slander her and ruin her and Othello’s life.
Iago will pour poison into Othello’s ear, telling the general that his dear wife only pleads for Cassio because she is in love with him. As he says, delighting in his own equivocations and duplicities, “So will I turn her virtue into pitch / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmesh them all …” (542, 2.3.334-36). This is about as bad as a person can be, in terms of sheer moral depravity, and it’s no wonder why some critics think that one of the great origins of Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost is none other than Iago. [6]
ACT 3
Act 3, Scenes 1-2. (543-44, with Iago’s help, Cassio pleads with Emilia to arrange a meeting between him and Desdemona; Emilia tells him that the lady has already begun to advocate for him; all the same, Emilia invites Cassio indoors so she can arrange the meeting he has requested. In Scene 2, Othello goes with some gentlemen to look over the Cyprus citadel’s fortifications.)
Emilia reports to Cassio that Desdemona is making headway on Cassio’s suit: “The Moor replies / That he you hurt is of great fame in Cyprus …. / But he protests he loves you … (544, 3.1.43-46). This sounds promising, but Cassio still wants to talk directly with Desdemona. In the very brief second scene, Othello provides some space for a meeting when he decamps to have a look at the Cyprus citadel’s fortifications.
Act 3, Scene 3. (544-55, Othello shows up while Desdemona is talking with Cassio, and Cassio leaves abruptly; Desdemona continues her suit to Othello about Cassio; Iago later suggests to Othello that Cassio’s departure was suspicious; Iago pretends to be holding something back from his general; he admonished Othello not to give way to jealousy; Desdemona offers to wrap her handkerchief around Othello’s head since he has a headache; she inadvertently drops it as they leave the room, and Emilia soon picks it up and hands it off to Iago, who she knows covets it; alone with Iago, Othello, now fallen into extreme jealousy, angrily demands strong proof of Desdemona’s disloyalty; Iago falsely claims that he has heard Cassio talking in his sleep about having sex with Desdemona and that he has seen Cassio wipe his beard with the all-important handkerchief; Othello believes this constitutes proof, and swears solemnly that he will kill Desdemona; Iago assents to do his part by murdering Cassio; Othello thereupon names Iago as his new lieutenant.)
In Emilia’s presence, Cassio and Desdemona speak for a while and she promises to do her utmost to help him regain his lieutenancy. Iago and Othello soon arrive, and Cassio makes away stealthily, but not stealthily enough to prevent both men from catching sight of him, which sighting Iago professes to find startling. Right away, Desdemona starts in with her attempt, plying Othello strongly to take Cassio back. She even brings up the fact that when Othello was her suitor and she criticized him, Cassio took his part and served as a go-between: “What, Michael Cassio / That came a-wooing with you …?” she asks pointedly (547, 3.3.68-69)
Othello seems a bit annoyed with the full-court press, saying, “I will deny thee nothing. / Whereon, I do beseech thee, grant me this: to leave me but a little to myself” (546, 3.3.82-84). At the same time, he is obviously impressed with Desdemona’s tenacity, and utters one of the play’s most memorable exclamations: “Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee; and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again” (546, 3.3.89-91).
What happens next is painful to see and hear, for Iago’s great skill in drawing on Othello to begin to doubt the virtuous woman he loves will go so far that by the end of this very scene, Act 3, Scene 3, Othello will be reduced to the astonishingly ugly outcry, “Damn her, lewd minx! Oh, damn her! Damn her!” (555, 3.3.469) followed by a vow to murder her. Chaos, which Othello has just conjured for us, is Iago’s decreative aim, his material as an artist, and out of it he will generate doubts in Othello’s mind that will destroy both him and Desdemona.
Iago’s mastery shows in his ability to take full advantage of Othello’s turn of mind, one that (at least when he isn’t waxing extravagant about his worldly experiences) would have all things spoken as they are: plainly, straightforwardly. As Iago puts the case to him, “Men should be what they seem …” (547, 3.3.125), and Othello couldn’t agree more. Men should say what they mean, and not conceal things, or hem and haw.
Othello doesn’t like half-measures, ambivalent gestures or words, and so forth, and he now starts supposing—because Iago is phrasing things “just so”—that that is exactly what his old friend and officer is doing to him. Iago has apparently long cultivated a reputation for honesty and plainspokenness with Othello, but now he seems to be hedging on the truth, holding something back. Iago has half-indicated some consternation about Cassio’s experience as a go-between for Othello, and at his sudden departure just a while ago. “If thou dost love me, / Show me thy thought” (547, 3.3.114-15), requests the general.
What happens is almost operatic: as Othello becomes more and more anxious, Iago more insistently claims he’s only doing right by hiding his thoughts. In the form of this refusal, he brilliantly introduces the operative word, jealousy, that will prove Othello’s ruin: “Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy! / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on” (548, 3.3.163-65). Better far, insists Iago, to be cheated on, “cuckolded,” and to know it than to remain in doubt while still loving.
Evidently, Iago knows that Othello lacks (to borrow a term from one of John Keats’s letters [7]) “negative capability”—he can’t exist for an extended time in the midst of uncertainty. If there’s a problem, it must be dealt with presently, not left to fester. Othello is the kind of military man who insists on gathering hard evidence and rendering a firm decision, court-martial style, the way he judged Cassio. His lack of knowledge about Venetian mores and subtlety [8] makes him vulnerable to the overblown trifles in which Iago trades, and very susceptible to the honest-sounding counsel his deceiver offers.
We may recall, too, that Iago has already acknowledged Othello to be remarkably free from petty jealousy, [9] so it is not surprising to hear the insists that his trust in Desdemona is great: “For she had eyes and chose me. No, Iago, / I’ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove; / And, on the proof, there is no more but this: / Away at once with love or jealousy” (549, 3.3.187-90).
Iago now brings in the heavy guns, so to speak: he plays Othello’s guide to Venetian culture in a way that profoundly affects the dark-skinned foreigner. Iago says ominously, “In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience / Is not to leave’t undone but kept unknown” (549, 3.3.200-02). Othello must be loathe to believe such a statement, but he cannot challenge Iago effectively since he is not a Venetian, he is either an Arab man from the Maghreb, or a black man from sub-Saharan Africa. [10]
Iago at once drives home what is bound to seem to us twenty-first-century readers like a deeply offensive point: Desdemona, he says, surely turned down many European suitors in favor of the Moorish Othello; these were men “Of her own clime, complexion, and degree, / Whereto we see in all things nature tends. / Faugh! One may smell in such a will most rank, / Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural” (549, 3.3.228-32). In other words, Iago is suggesting that something must be dreadfully wrong with Desdemona’s senses and judgment for her to choose a dark-skinned, foreign man of lower social rank than her over so many fair-skinned, aristocratic or wealthy suitors.
And yet, Iago is only picking up on what Othello himself had already suggested in saying, “And yet, how nature erring from itself—” (549, 3.3.226). In a few words, Othello states Iago’s argument that it is natural for people to prefer mates of their own race, region, and social rank. In this, Iago and Othello seem to agree, so it is no doubt devastating when Iago drives the knife in further with, “Her will, recoiling to her better judgment, / May fall to match you with her country forms, / And happily repent” (550, 3.3.235-37). She may, that is, think better of her unusual, “unnatural” match.
Iago’s deceptive advice to Othello is that he should continue to put off his decision about Cassio, and note how this affects Desdemona. With that, Iago takes his leave and Othello is alone with his churning thoughts: he worries about his color, his age, and his inexperience with “soft,” courtly Venetian conversation. His resolution? “If I do prove her haggard, / Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings, / I’d whistle her off, and let her down the wind / To prey at fortune” (550, 3.3.258-61). As the Norton marginal note points out, this is a falconry metaphor; if Othello ever found Desdemona unfaithful, “wild,” he would cut her loose forever.
Othello has shown himself to be quite the absolutist for the concept of honor, and he now considers himself doomed to the status of cuckold by a wife Iago has led him to suspect may be an all-too-typical supersubtle, untrustworthy Venetian. Othello still has some doubts to allay, but even by this point, Desdemona’s character has effectively become the miserable construction of Othello’s need for certainty. In effect, he can’t imagine her as anything but either a saint or a whore, and Iago has overrun all chance of confidently considering her the former. Othello’s reserves of resistance are rapidly diminishing. [11]
As a setup for the disastrous “handkerchief” episode in Act 3, Scene 4, Othello enters with a headache and Desdemona offers to wrap her handkerchief around his head. The thing doesn’t really fit, and together they end up dropping it on the floor. After they leave the room, Emilia picks up the handkerchief, which Iago has asked her many times to steal, though she doesn’t know why. Iago promptly demands it from her, and won’t enlighten her as to why he needs it. With this little theft and transfer, Othello, Desdemona, Emilia, and Iago himself have come much closer to disaster.
But for now, Iago knows exactly what to do, and he knows the symbolic significance of this little piece of fabric: “I will in Cassio’s lodging lose this napkin, / And let him find it. Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (552, 3.3.318-21).
The pseudo-sacramental event that occurs almost immediately after this theft is so stark as to be shocking. Othello bursts in on Iago, almost out of his mind with torment at the remaining quantum of uncertainty he still feels. He encapsulates this frantic state well when he declares, “Othello’s occupation’s gone” (552, 3.3.354). That is, he is unnerved, unmanned, no longer fit to command an army. He had until now identified as a soldier, a leader of men in battle, but that is now behind him.
Othello is filled with rage, and he turns it at once towards Iago: “Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore; / Be sure of it! Give me the ocular proof …” (552, 3.3.356-57). After some mock self-pity, Iago comes round to use this mood of Othello’s for his own advantage: “You would be satisfied?” (553, 3.3.389) he asks. Yes, Othello needs “a living reason” why he should set his view of Desdemona forevermore to “disloyal” (553, 3.3.406).
As it turns out, Iago has two dubious “proofs” of Desdemona’s supposed whoredom ready to retail. The first one is patently absurd and implausible. This was that purported incident wherein the sleeping Cassio, according to nobody but Iago, tried to make love to him in his sleep, as if he were Desdemona. The second so-called proof is somewhat more dangerous, for it concerns the handkerchief by which Othello himself holds so much store. Well, Iago claims that he recently saw Cassio wiping his beard with the thing. That settles it for Othello, whose standard for “ocular proof” evidently isn’t very high.
Othello now kneels as if her at a Church altar, and utters a blood-curdling prayer: “Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell; / Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne / To tyrannous hate” (554, 3.3.442-44). His uncertainty is gone. Iago’s protestations yield only Othello’s naming of his words “a sacred vow” (555, 3.4.455), and Iago himself now kneels alongside Othello and declares his absolute dedication to his general’s revenge. [12]
Othello rewards Iago by tasking him with the killing of Cassio, while he himself will go devise “some swift means of death / For the fair devil” (555, 3.3.471-72) Desdemona. Iago is now Othello’s lieutenant—the position he had coveted all along but had been denied.
Act 3, Scene 4. (555-60, Desdemona, still advocating for Cassio to Othello, frets about losing her handkerchief; Othello demands it of her and reproaches her when she fails to come up with it; Iago, in conversation with Desdemona and Emilia, pretends he is surprised by Iago’s discomfiture, and offers to help in any way he can; Desdemona and Emilia exchange views on what has caused Othello’s anger; Desdemona defers her attempt to help Cassio for a while due to her husband’s bad mood; while Cassio is waiting, his girlfriend Bianca shows up; Cassio discovers the handkerchief in his own room, where Iago put it, and asks Bianco to copy the pattern for him.)
Desdemona’s anxiety over the misplacing of her strawberry-patterned handkerchief soon finds its justification when Othello enters and, insulting Desdemona for her allegedly “moist” and “hot” hands (556, 3.4.36), declares that he has watery eyes and asks her for the handkerchief. Desdemona doesn’t have it. In an operatic manner, Othello recounts the alleged magical properties of the handkerchief—a gift to him from his own mother, who said its possession would guarantee loyalty [13] —and then Desdemona ratchets up her pleas on behalf of Othello even as he requires her to produce it with increasing intensity: “The handkerchief!” (557, 3.4.50) he bellows repeatedly, only to be met with renewed pleas from Desdemona.
Finally, Othello can stand no more, and stalks out of the room, leaving Emilia and Desdemona to ponder the cause of this strange, belligerent behavior on the part of the usually serene general. Emilia, ever worldly-wise, says that men “are all but stomachs” (557, 3.4.96) and women their food, to be chewed up and belched out in due time.
Just then, Iago shepherds Cassio in for a progress report from Desdemona, who is constrained to tell him that Othello is too upset to hear more on the matter at present. Iago pretends to be shocked at his general’s anger, and claims that he will go visit him right away. Desdemona defends Othello’s conduct to Emilia, saying that surely there must be some great matter of state, or some plot, that is making him so unpleasant to deal with in smaller matters.
Emilia still wonders whether it might be jealousy, but Desdemona protests that she has given her husband no cause for it. Emilia points out that jealousy doesn’t work like that: “But jealous souls will not be answered so. / They are not ever jealous for the cause, / But jealous for they’re jealous: it is a monster / Begot upon itself, born on itself” (559, 3.4.150-53). To close out the scene, Bianca enters after Emilia and Desdemona leave, and Michael Cassio asks her to make a copy of the handkerchief because he wants the pattern before he returns it to the owner. The object makes her somewhat jealous, but she agrees to do the work.
ACT 4
Act 4, Scene 1. (560-66, Iago plies Othello with graphic sexual details pertaining to Desdemona, and Othello has an epileptic seizure; Iago positions Othello where he can see Cassio and Iago talking in a sexual way about Bianca, and falsely claims that they are talking about Desdemona; Othello is enraged; Lodovico comes from Venice with the Duke and senators’ orders recalling Othello to Venice and replacing him in Cyprus with Cassio; Othello slaps Desdemona, cruelly dismisses her, and stalks out of the room as a horrified and disbelieving Lodovico looks on.)
Othello, already driven a day earlier into an epileptic fit at the loss of the handkerchief (561, 4.1.47-48), will now be subjected to additional provocation: Iago conjures a vision of Desdemona “naked with her friend in bed / An hour or more, not meaning any harm,” and brings up the lost handkerchief. (560, 4.1.3-4, 9) This, and more, with the end result being that Othello falls into a second epileptic fit. Iago chortles, “My medicine works! Thus credulous fools are caught, / And many worthy and chaste dames, even thus / All guiltless, meet reproach” (560, 4.1.42-44).
Iago has in mind one further supposed proof: he will get the now-recovered Othello to stand in a concealed place and watch (but not hear) the conversation that Iago himself will steer with Cassio. With his guidance, Othello will take what he sees for a lewd and contemptuous talk about Desdemona when in fact Cassio is making jests about his relationship with Bianca (562, 4.1.81-86).
Bianca soon arrives, bringing with her the handkerchief (563, 4.1.140-46), which leads Othello to think that Cassio must have given it to Bianca out of contempt for Desdemona. Othello sees this spectacle and becomes deranged with contradictory impulses: “O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!” and “I will chop her into messes. Cuckold me!” (564, 4.1.185, 188) Iago comes up with the idea of strangling Desdemona in her “contaminated” bed. (564, 4.1.196)
When Othello strikes Desdemona (565, stage dir. before 4.1.228), Lodovico, who has come with a letter announcing that Cassio has been installed in Othello’s place as commander in Cyprus, is there to see it, along with some very strange words and gestures besides. Lodovico assumes that Othello is an abusive husband, and says, “I am sorry that I am deceived in him” (566, 4.1.269). Othello had said earlier that his “occupation’s gone” (552, 3.3.354). If it wasn’t then, it certainly is now.
Act 4, Scene 2. (566-72, Othello interrogates Emilia about relations between Cassio and Desdemona; Othello calls Desdemona a whore; she tries to defend herself, but to no avail, so she seeks solace from Iago; Roderigo enters, angry that his expensive gifts to Desdemona have netted him nothing; threatens to demand their return; Iago claims that Desdemona will be off to Mauritania with her husband unless Roderigo can stop them; Iago tells Roderigo that he must kill Cassio to stop Othello from leaving.)
Othello questions Emilia and proceeds to structure his interaction with her and Desdemona as an assignation with a prostitute facilitated by a madam. What is so maddening about this scene is that we know Othello isn’t making a mountain out of a molehill; he’s making a planet’s worth of misdeeds from thin air. When Desdemona asks what in the world her fault may be, Othello talks a stream of insulting nonsense: “Heaven stops the nose at it, and the moon winks; / The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets, / Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth, / And will not hear’t” (568, 4.2.76-79).
Piety and honesty are manifestly the hallmarks of Desdemona’s character, but by this time, Iago has warped Othello’s mind into taking signs of virtue for their opposite: evidence of cunning whoredom. From now on, everything the lady says “can and will be used against her”: she is essentially under house arrest. Desdemona’s self-defense, while touching, is ineffectual: expressions such as “By heaven, you do me wrong” and “No, as I am a Christian!” (568, 4.2.80-81) make no impression on Othello’s conscience, and only drive him into an even greater rage than he already feels. [14]
As many people caught up in even a tolerably fair justice system like that of the United States could affirm, simply being accused of an offense may so strips a person of others’ good opinion that it’s tantamount to conviction. We solemnly intone that a person is “considered innocent until proven guilty,” but too often, the reverse is the case. What happens to Desdemona is similar to what happens to the protagonist in Kafka’s The Trial [15] or to Winston Smith and Julia under interrogation in George Orwell’s 1984: [16] to come under suspicion is already to have no identity except that constituted by one’s presumed malefactions.
Under such pressure, Desdemona is reduced to tears, and seeks solace first from Emilia, and then, chillingly, from Iago, who of course is able to frame his face to the occasion and utter the right words in the right order: “Do not weep, do not weep. Alas the day!” (569, 4.2.123). Together, Emilia, Iago, and Desdemona hash out the sorry state of affairs, with the ever-sensible Emilia suggesting that Othello must have been duped: “The Moor’s abused by some most villainous knave…” (570, 4.2.138). This ought to warn Iago that if his plan should go awry, the cause for it could well come from Emilia’s direction, but a present the villain indicates his agreement with Emilia’s assessment.
Desdemona remains prayerful, saying, “If e’er my will did trespass ‘gainst his love / … / Comfort forswear me” (491, 4.2.151-58). She is as patient as the long-suffering Griselda who is severely tested by her husband Walter in Chaucer’s “Clerk’s Tale,” [17] but alas, her patience will not deliver the “happily ever after” ending granted to Chaucer’s heroine.
To end the scene, Iago continues his work on a justifiably angry Roderigo, who half-accuses him of stealing the gems he bought for Iago to give to Desdemona for him. Iago scarcely bothers to deny it, and easily reconfigures this fool’s perspective by involving him in a plot to murder Cassio, who, as Iago says, is about to replace Othello as commander in Cyprus. If Roderigo is to have any chance with Desdemona, Iago points out, he certainly won’t have it if the Moor decamps to Mauritania. Killing Cassio, he reasons, will keep Othello in Cyprus for the time being. Roderigo agrees to hear more on the matter. (572, 4.2.235)
Act 4, Scene 3. (572-74, While strolling with Lodovico, Othello orders Desdemona to bed, and says she must dismiss Emilia, too; Emilia helps prepare Desdemona for the night’s sleep, and the two women talk about marital disloyalty; Desdemona sees infidelity as all but impossible, while Emilia insists that women’s desires are just as strong as men’s.)
Speaking with Emilia, Desdemona recalls a song of frustrated love sung by a maid that her mother employed, one who died when her lover went mad and abandoned her: “Sing willow, willow, willow” (573, 4.3.39ff). Emilia is livid with Othello, and tells Desdemona, “I would you had never seen him!” (572, 4.3.17) Desdemona, however, is not of the same mind, and her reply is a declaration of love for Othello: “my love doth so approve him / That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns / … have grace and favor” (572, 4.3.18-20).
When the talk turns to whether or not women may prove untrue to their husbands, Desdemona thinks not, but Emilia thinks there may be sufficient grounds to prove so: “Why, who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch?” (573, 4.3.71-72) [18] A fit opponent for her own controlling husband, Emilia tries to temper Desdemona’s moral absolutism, which rivals that of Othello: although not quite advocating female adultery, Emilia says bluntly to men in general, “let them know / The ills we do, their ills instruct us so” (574, 4.3.97-98).
ACT 5
Act 5, Scene 1. (574-77, at night, Roderigo unsuccessfully assaults Cassio and is in turn wounded; Iago wounds Cassio’s leg; Othello hears Cassio’s cry, and assumes that Iago has murdered him as planned, so he goes off to kill Desdemona; Iago kills Roderigo to silence him; Iago, Lodovico, and Gratiano render aid to Cassio, and Bianca arrives; Iago slanders Bianca and falsely accuses her of plotting the present violence against Cassio.)
Iago arranges for Roderigo to kill Cassio, but the bungler fails to injure him and is himself badly wounded, so Iago has to step in and knife Cassio in the leg. Othello enters unseen, and hears Cassio’s cry, which makes him think that Iago has fully succeeded at his task, which of course was to kill Cassio. “O brave Iago, honest and just, / That hast such noble sense of thy friend’s wrong; / Thou teachest me” (575, 5.1.31-33).
Iago takes advantage of the dark and the confusion as Graziano and Lodovico arrive to render aid, and stabs Roderigo to death without anyone else noticing. Iago blames Bianca for the fighting, claiming that she urged it on, and concludes the scene with a remark that shows him to be very much an actor in the play he has been scripting, working actively towards, since the very first act: “This is the night / That either makes me or fordoes me quite” (577, 5.1.127-28). He knows that the tragedy he has spun consists not just of his own will but of moving human parts.
Act 5, Scene 2. (577-86 end, Othello kisses the sleeping Desdemona, but then wakes her up and again accuses her of being unfaithful; she protests, but he smothers her nearly to death; Emilia arrives with news about the brawl outside, and Othello admits to her that he has killed Desdemona on Iago’s information; Desdemona herself briefly regains consciousness, but give conflicting information; when Emilia shouts “murder,” Iago, Montano, and Gratiano come running; Iago confesses that he first accused Desdemona of infidelity; Emilia reveals the truth about the handkerchief, and Othello thereupon tries to kill Iago; Iago knifes Emilia to death; Othello realizes his tragic mistake, declares how he wants to be remembered, and commits suicide; Iago refuses to say another word, and is dragged off to be tortured and, presumably, executed.)
Othello looks at the sleeping Desdemona and kisses her a number of times, but all the same he resolves to kill her: “I’ll not shed her blood, / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow / …Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men” (577-78, 5.2.3-6). He continues with reference to his candle and his wife’s soul, “Put out the light, and then put out the light” (578, 5.2.7). His speech is eloquent, but the deed he intends is no less damnable for the softness with which he intends to carry it out, or the indications of continued love he gives.
Othello seems surprised when Desdemona wakes up, and he turns his efforts to ensuring that she sets her soul right with God before he strangles her—but this resolution goes by the wayside the moment she tries to defend herself from his base accusations. It comes down to the handkerchief: “I saw my handkerchief in ‘s hand!” (579, 5.2.63) shouts Othello, and he is so enraged with Desdemona for denying the significance of this that he now willingly admits to being about to perpetrate “a murder, which I thought a sacrifice …” (579, 5.2.66).
Among the most chilling things about this final scene is that nothing Desdemona says has the slightest chance of changing Othello’s mind. He has cast around his wife such a web made of another man’s malice and lies that he simply can’t hear what she is saying anymore: his mind and soul are bent upon murder. Desdemona’s pleas and her evident fear have no effect upon Othello, and he smothers her in two successive bouts, the second time because he has heard her stirring back to life. When Emilia enters, Desdemona’s dying words amount to an attempt to remove all blame from Othello: “Commend me to my kind lord” (580, 5.2.122).
Othello initially wrangles with Emilia and engages in some waffling and denial: “You hear her say herself it was not I” (581, 5.2.124). When he cites Iago as the backing for what he has done, Emilia is dumbfounded and makes him repeat this new bit of information several times, and finally braves Othello’s physical threats intended to shut her up, shouting “The Moor hath killed my mistress. Murder! Murder!” (581, 5.2.362)
Emilia proves vital to the unearthing of the truth about Iago’s diabolical plot. When Othello once again refers to the handkerchief as proof of Desdemona’s adultery, Emilia blurts out that Iago had solicited her to steal it, and then received it from her when she found it in Desdemona’s room: “He begged of me to steal’t” (583, 5.2.223). Emilia is mortally wounded by Iago, and dies singing the “Willow” song she heard Desdemona sing.
Still, her final burst of truth proves devastating to Othello’s whole being—he is reduced to abject misery when he is temporarily disarmed while charging at Iago, saying, “why should honor outlive honesty? / Let it go all” (583, 5.2.238-39). Speaking with Graziano alone, Othello begs the devils in Hell to torment him for what he has done, and stabs Iago when he is captured and brought in. What Othello really wants to know is, of course, why—for what reason has Iago thus “ensnared” him in a fatal plot against his wife?
Iago now turns enigmatic, and the words he speaks seem plausible as a prediction, projected tortures notwithstanding: “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know: / From this time forth I never will speak word” (585, 5.2.296-97). Cassio reports that Roderigo, not dead after all, has confessed in a letter how “Iago hurt him; Iago set him on” (585, 5.2.321-22). Othello is duly relieved of his command by Lodovico, and told he must be held prisoner until the Venetian state is apprised of what has happened.
All that we are going to know is now known, and nothing remains but for Othello to make his quietus with whatever small weapon remains to him. The once proud general makes himself an example in all strictness, preempting Venetian justice. Supposing that his service to the state entitles him to some control over his image going forward, he characterizes himself not as a base murderer but as a man who “loved not wisely but too well” (596, 5.2.337). Othello’s eloquence and dignity reassert themselves in his final speech, and he stabs himself as soon as he is done.
Othello’s death seems necessary since his mere words and bearing, as he understands, cannot make up for the destruction of a faithful wife. His final self-description indicates a desire to control others’ interpretations of his downfall; perhaps that is a tragic hero’s right, [19] but the play’s conclusion remains disturbing. Othello had twice let loose essentially the same question: “Ha! Ha! False to me?” and “Cuckold me?” (552, 3.3.330, 4.1.188) as if incredulous that he, of all men, should suffer the indignity of betrayal. This smacks of arrogance, and most of our sympathy naturally goes to Desdemona, not to Othello, in spite of his sincere horror at what Iago’s treachery has led him to do.
How, when all is said, should we assess Othello as a tragic hero? The moral quality of Shakespeare’s protagonists varies: Richard III is a stage villain; Macbeth an introspective man who appreciates from the outset the evil nature of the path to power he contemplates; Brutus and Cassius reveal dueling motives against Julius Caesar, noble and base; Romeo and Juliet die because of pitiable misunderstandings rather than grievous faults; King Lear is brought down in part by a fundamental confusion between his public and private selves; Hamlet the revenger undergoes strange alternations of stricken dawdling and rashness; Coriolanus isolates and debases himself in his patrician rage, etc. What of Othello?
Othello takes his place alongside these protagonists. He is a warrior who becomes the victim of his own deeply ingrained all-or-nothing, “absolutist” attitude towards everything and everyone, an exotic Other who is the victim of cultural misunderstandings that put him at the mercy of the subtle Iago. Othello’s fall from grace seems classical in that he is laid low and commits his deadly errors because of his noblest qualities: a soldierly, unwavering commitment to right conduct, fidelity and truth. His absolute generosity of spirit towards Desdemona, once put in question by Iago, gives way to cruel resolution and a refusal even to hear “the accused’s” honest plea. [20]
It may be that what underlies Othello’s downfall is in part the basic fact that if we turn heroic values over and view their obverse, what we will find is an equally strong counter-sentiment or counter-anxiety against which the heroic code is posited. Only those who act from some level of awareness of this unsettling relationship have any real chance of success: they are not so likely as others to be trapped by the productions of their own heart and imagination, or indeed of other people’s selfish devices, as Othello is.
Othello, it seems, lacks that awareness and never—not even after the worst is known and all lies exposed before him—shows an ability to mediate between the ideal and the anxiety that both underwrites and threatens it. Ideals are necessary and noble, but they are also potentially lethal: “Handle with care,” this play may be understood to advise us.
Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93860-9.
Copyright © 2012, revised 2024 Alfred J. Drake
ENDNOTES
[1] Iago may be partly responsible, as some critics have long suggested, for the diabolical energy of John Milton’s Satan, the great original of the destructive, decreative power in evil. Satan says in Book 4 of Paradise Lost, “Evil be thou my Good,” and declares that his mission from the Fall onwards will be always to turn God’s good acts to bad outcomes. The fuller passage runs, So farewel Hope, and with Hope farewel Fear, / Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost; / Evil be thou my Good …” (Milton Reading Room edition, 4.108-10.) Accessed 6/16/2024.
[2] Shakespeare uses this familiar word rather than the Italian term Doge.
[3] According to Renaissance humanist theory, the elements of the rational part of human nature are “understanding” or reason and “will” or rational appetite, the inner power of motion that can incline towards God and reason or towards our lower appetites. See “The Theory of the Humours.”
[4] Shakespeare, William. The Play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 150-206. See 201, 5.1.181-83: “Give me a gash, put me to present pain, / Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me / O’erbear the shores of my mortality ….”
[5] Some critics certainly bristle at the idea of such ordinary motives as jealousy and promotion-envy. A. C. Bradley, for example, reads Iago as a character possessed of supreme intellect and supreme evil. See A. C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd ed. (Gutenberg etext.)
[6] Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998. “Satan, exploring the untracked Abyss in Paradise Lost, is truly in Iago’s spirit. Who before Iago, in literature or in life, perfected the arts of disinformation, disorientation, and derangement? All these combine in Iago’s grand program of uncreation, as Othello is returned to original chaos, to the Tohu and Bohu from which we came” (436).
[7] Keats, John. “Letter to George and Thomas Keats,” Dec. 22, 1817. Keats writes in reference to Shakespeare, “I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” In Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, by John Keats, Edited by Sidney Colvin. (Gutenberg etext.)
[8] An English stereotype for the Italians generally—subtle, devious, sly. See, for example, Marrapodi, Michele. Italian Culture in the Drama of Shakespeare & His Contemporaries: Rewriting, Remaking, Refashioning. Routledge, 2016.
[9] See Norton Tragedies 3rd edition, Othello 534, 2.1.272. Iago says that Othello “Is of a constant, noble, loving nature.”
[10] There is no critical consensus on this issue of race or ethnicity. It seems obvious from references in the play that Othello is dark-skinned, not “white,” but it’s hard to be more precise than that.
[11] Shakespeare explores this kind of rigid idealism and its effects in a number of his plays, and he appears to consider it a dangerous trap. For example, we need name only the rigidly honorable Brutus in Julius Caesar, or the starchily aristocratic, plebeian-despising title character in Coriolanus. There are many shades of gray, nuances, roles a man or woman must play, imperfections and exigencies to deal with, and idealism is a surefire way to render oneself incapable of dealing with any of it. Idealism is noble, but it is also a disabling quality in a saucy, sublunary, ever-changing world.
[12] Othello’s own damnation consists in swearing by Christian symbols to do the devil’s work.
[13] Apparently, Othello expects the same romantic extravagance from Desdemona as he lavishes upon her: the handkerchief, he tells her, is an emblem of the romantic magic, the charm, that underlies his erotic fidelity. Its loss is catastrophic now that it has come to symbolize her chaste loyalty. (Norton Tragedies 556, 3.4.53ff) Othello is a romantic idealist as well as a military idealist.
[14] It’s common in Renaissance plays for virtuous characters to prove themselves helpless when abused by the wicked and the cunning. For those who find fault with Desdemona’s seeming paucity of resources in combating Othello’s violent and deranged misprisions, it should be remembered that innocence can seldom defend itself as eloquently as evil can, even when the innocent person is as intelligent as Desdemona. Moreover, even if good people have considerable linguistic capacity and courage, the disposition we call “goodness” seldom, if ever, gains by rhetorical sleight: the problem seems intractable. King Lear’s daughter Cordelia may be rather stiff and clumsy as a speaker in Act 1, Scene one of King Lear, but we all feel the rightness of her lament, “What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent” (Norton Tragedies, 3rd ed., King Lear 766, 1.1.60). Or consider Machiavelli’s characterization of the problem: to quote from Chapter XV of The Prince, “a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.” (Gutenberg e-text.)
[15] Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Dover Thrift Editions, 2009. Orig. pub. 1925.
[16] Orwell, George. 1984. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Orig. pub. 1949.
[17] Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Clerk’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales. (Gutenberg etext.) Accessed 6/16/2024.
[18] Emilia’s bawdy pronouncements on gender relations are the stuff of Shakespearian comedy (one thinks of Portia and Nerissa’s “ring scheme” in The Merchant of Venice), but here they only deepen the sense of impending tragedy.
[19] See, for example, Hamlet’s plea towards the end of Hamlet that Horatio should tell his story: “Absent thee from felicity awhile / And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain / To tell my story” (Norton Tragedies 3rd edition, Hamlet 446, 5.2.325-27).
[20] For those interested in source materials for the play, comparing the end of the play with the conclusion of the tale in Cinthio’s Gli Hecatommithi is instructive. In that story, the Moor’s Ensign (our Iago) comes up with a very different plan for killing Desdemona, one full of devious cunning and completely devoid of dignity. To wit, he and the Moor will “beat Disdemona with a stocking filled with sand until she dies” (250), and then they will crack her head open and ensure that part of the ceiling collapses on her. It will look like a terrible accident. The two men almost succeed, but in the end the truth comes out and both the Moor and the Ensign die miserable deaths. For the fuller account, see Bullough, Geoffrey, editor. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. VII. Major Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1973. See section on Othello sources: from Gli Hecatommithi, by G. B. Giraldi Cinthio. Trans. Geoffrey Bullough. Pp. 239-53.