A Study Booklet for
Year 13 ENGLISH 2012 KHPA
The rough guide to Shakespeare : the plays,
the poems, the life. Andrew Dickson
Find it in our library!!
Not as philosophically deep as some of his other plays, Shakespeare’s
second ‘great tragedy’ is said to be his most ‘gripping and tormenting
play’.
The story of a soldier propelled into murderous fury by his wife’s apparent
unfaithfulness first appears in a sensationalist Italian novella1, but Shakespeare transforms
this small-scale, domestic drama into a maelstrom2 of turbulent emotion, and he produces
the most heart-stopping of tragic finales. Othello is also about race: its hero is a black man
in a society governed by white people, and from its first days on the stage audiences have
been forced to confront the complex ethnic issues it presents. Othello is a hero, not a devil
– Shakespeare’s contemporaries would have assumed the reverse – and ends the play an
isolated and tragic figure. The calculating killer of an innocent white girl, he might easily
have been the lurid villain of racist stereotype, but instead, crucially, he becomes another
victim. For we in the audience see what Othello does not: the demonic nature of the play’s
real villain, the white Italian Iago, who, unbeknown to everyone on stage, directs every
moment of the action. It is impossible not to respond strongly to Othello, and passionate
reactions also dominate the play’s history in the theatre: there are numerous stories of
audience members fainting or screaming – or even begging the cast not to go through with
it because the events are too painful to watch. The tragedy of Othello draws us in like no
other, and for that reason it is one of Shakespeare’s very greatest achievements.
Interpreting the play
Elizabethan and Jacobean plays featuring black characters
were a rarity; ones in which they took centre-stage were
unheard of. In England there was a long tradition of
‘blacking-up’ in order to represent evil or exotic characters
for the medieval mystery and morality cycles and in courtly
entertainment acting ‘black’ became briefly fashionable with
plays such as Ben Johnson’s Masque of Blackness where
female courtiers3 often amused themselves by dressing as
‘blackamoors’. Yet in real life, even with the expansion of colonial trade involving far-flung
corners of the globe, there were few black people resident in England itself (some had been
expelled by Elizabeth) during Shakespeare’s lifetime. The theatre would have been one of
the few places where the public could experience such ‘exoticism’ first
hand.
Shakespeare turns the traditional notion of black being evil and white
being good on its head in this play. A black man is the tragic hero, the
noble ‘Moor of Venice’ for whom the play is named; it is the white Italian,
Iago, who is the villain.
1
Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi (1565)
Maelstrom: vortex, frenzy
3
Aristocrats who spend most of their time in the royal court
2
That apparent contradiction must have struck Othello’s first audiences hard, and indeed the
Duke of Venice admits to feeling it too, hearing that Desdemona, daughter of one of his
Senators, had done the unthinkable and married a black soldier. ‘Noble signor,’ he
addresses her fuming father:
If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black
1.3.289-90
The division between outward appearance and inner reality will prove a crucial – and
increasingly malignant4 – idea in Othello, but for the moment it seems that at least some
Venetians recognise that a man who happens to be black need not be a savage.
This realisation is not had by all characters – we witness some rather nasty racism in the
first scene when Iago and Roderigo break the news to Brabantio that his daughter is
‘making the beast with two backs’ with the Moor. The scene is full of unparalleled bitterness
and brutality as we watch Othello’s ensign5 and Desdemona’s rejected suitor slander his
name. Attempting, and succeeding, to drive Desdemona’s father insane with anger at the
news that she has eloped with Othello, Iago puts it in the basest6 terms he can think of: ‘a
lascivious Moor’; ‘thick lips’; ‘a “Barbary [Arab] horse’’. ‘Swounds7, sir, you’re robbed,” he
taunts Branbantio,
Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul.
Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe.
1.1.86-9
What we are soon to see described (in Othello’s rapt words)
as a love ‘too much of joy’ (2.1.198), a love upon which the
play will hinge, is here reduced to brute animal lust and
crude racist stereotype by Iago and Roderigo.
Over the four centuries that Othello has been upon the
stage, actors and audiences have likewise struggled with
the idea that Othello could be both black and the hero of the
piece – one commentator, writing in the southern United
States only a few years after the Civil War had brought an end to slavery, declared that, in
her view, ‘Shakespeare was too correct a delineator of human nature to have coloured
Othello black…Othello was a white man.’ Such colour blindness (in the worst sense of that
phrase) was hardly a lone voice in the wilderness. Critics have fussed over his ethnicity, as
if by being not a ‘veritable negro’ he could more easily be misunderstood.
The surprising thing is that apart from those deliberately shocking first scenes aside, Othello
is not a play that explores racism in any real detail. As Othello himself testifies, he is
employed as a general by the Venetian state and has every reason to expect his position to
be respected. Roderigo’s grudge against Othello is simply that Desdemona prefers her
new, more exciting, suitor to the drab Venetian.
Enmesh them all
4
Harmful, cancerous, spreading
A commissioned officer in the British army of the lowest rank
6
Offensive, ‘low brow’
7
An exclamation contracted from ‘God’s wounds’ - an interjection of concern
5
Othello has, it seems, not the slightest idea of Iago’s plot against him. Iago’s racist insults,
delivered while Iago successfully pretends to be Othello’s closest companion, take on a
more frightening aspect when the action relocates to the far flung island of Cyprus. Posted
there in order to confront the invading Turks, the
party of Venetians – Othello, his wife and Cassio,
plus soldiers – arrives to the welcome news that the
Turkish fleet has been broken up by the storm. But
though the military threat has evaporated, Iago has
not. Trapped as he is in this suffocating outpost, his
plot to devastate the fragile colony and Othello, the
man at its centre, develops and builds strength uninterrupted.
We might wonder why Iago is so desperate to destroy Othello, but the play has no real
answer – or rather, presents too many to believe. Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously
commented on Iago’s ‘motiveless malignity’, and though more literal-minded commentators
have taken up scattered (and often desperate) clues Iago tosses to the audience
(professional envy, personal jealousy). Coleridge comes closer than most in describing the
sense of absolute evil that Iago represents. There is a terrifying void at the centre of his
character, something that cannot be rationalised. In one of Iago’s most chilling soliloquies,
he even plays tricks with the one thing that is certain about him – his insatiable wickedness.
‘And what’s he then that says I play the villain?’ he taunts,
‘When this advice is free I give, and honest…?
3.1.327-8
Dispensing ‘advice’ to anyone who will listen under the cover of plain-speaking honesty,
Iago’s devilishness, as he goes on to boast, lies in his ability to produce ‘heavenly shows’
while all the time plotting the ‘blackest sins’ imaginable – a triumphant duplicity that will see
Othello calling his ensign ‘honest Iago’ until practically the last moment of the play.
Once the Venetians are settled in Cyprus, Iago sets to work. He does so by telling stories –
more specifically a single story; that Desdemona has been unfaithful with Cassio. Here the
power to transform is entirely in the service of evil, as Iago reflects, outlining his plan to set
Desdemona up:
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.
2.3.351-3
Relying on Desdemona’s open-heartedness and Othello’s absolute trust, Iago turns each
and every ‘virtue’ into a flaw, and each character into their own worst enemy. In this sense
he rewrites Othello itself, which begins like a comedy, with a marriage achieved against all
odds by a rebellious daughter (ringing any bells?) followed by a storm that presents
deliverance, not evil, and yet which turns into monstrous
tragedy, one that, as Iago boasts, does indeed trap everyone.
When we see a storm in literature it is known as a pathetic
fallacy – mirroring the emotional state of the characters. Othello
will soon be overtaken by an emotional storm of jealousy.
Shakespeare gives Iago nearly a third of the lines within the
play, many more than Othello. His control of the plot and his
willingness to improvise is masterly, a work of genius. On their first night in Cyprus, Iago
arranges for Cassio to get drunk and start a fight with Roderigo (who has only
accompanied Iago to Cyprus at Iago’s urging). As Iago knows, this night is the ‘wedding
night’ and Othello is so unimpressed at being disturbed that he strips Cassio of his post on
the spot. Cassio is mortified and desperate to recover his ‘reputation’, so Iago persuades
him to appeal to Desdemona. With all this in place, Iago begins to work on Othello. When
the two men are alone, Iago innocently asks, ‘Did Micheal Cassio, when you wooed my
lady,/ Know of your love?’ and sets about planting the idea that Cassio might be dishonest
and having an affair with Desdemona.
The audience knows that the whole thing is a set of lies but the fiction will not be exposed
until it is too late. Iago uses his control of language to run rings around Othello. He hints
and insinuates, never actually stating anything. Deniability is a key element of Iago’s
plotting, as is his technique of ensuring that Othello is left to construct his own nightmare,
breed his own ‘monsters’. And it works, horribly. ‘By the world,’ Othello rages at Iago soon
afterwards, ‘I think my wife be honest, and think she is not.’
I think that thou art just, and think thou are not,
I’ll have some proof. My name, that was as fresh
As Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black
As mine own face. If there be cords, or knives,
Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams,
I’ll not endure it.
3.3.388-95
Once Othello’s feelings are aroused they will not be assuaged, and over the next scenes of
the play his doubts about Desdemona’s faithfulness (and Cassio’s honesty) will harden into
certainty. Iago, typically, is the first to mention the word ‘jealousy’, warning his master with
apparent concern that ‘it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on’
(3.3.170-171). For his part, Othello is already becoming convinced that his ‘name’ is
destroyed and that murderous violence is inevitable.
Confirmations Strong
Othello persuades himself that he is acting rationally by demanding ‘some proof’, but he
reckons without Iago’s skill – or the workings of chance. As Iago had planned, Othello’s
jealousy is so strong, ‘that judgement cannot cure’ (2.1.301), and he will be convinced by
the flimsiest of grounds. That ‘proof’, almost farcically, is a handkerchief, ‘spotted with
strawberries’ that Desdemona happens to drop. Seized on by Emilia, who hands it to her
husband, the handkerchief makes its way to Cassio’s chamber and thereby becomes the
sum total of physical evidence proving Desdemona’s guilt. As Iago jubilantly remarks,
‘trifles light as air/ Are to the jealous confirmations strong/ As proofs of holy writ (3.3.326-7).
Even the tiniest, insignificant details are put under huge pressure by this play, and when
they fail to take the weight, the tragedy collapses with spectacular force. Desdemona’s
well-meaning eagerness to help Cassio rebounds terribly against her; Emilia’s desperate
attempts to earn her husband’s love makes her an unwitting accessory to his plot.
Perversity of structure
The play’s great perversity comes from its very structure. Othello is the site of one of
Shakespeare’s most invasive theatrical coups, the so-called ‘double time-scheme’. Othello
and Desdemona have, on one level of the play, almost implausibly little time together: their
new marriage is threatened by her father’s wild intervention, then by the news that Othello
must be sent to Cyprus; likewise their wedding night is disturbed by Cassio’s brawl and
some critics have argued that their marriage may not even be consummated. It has been
calculated from internal references in the play that the time in Cyprus takes no more than 33
hours – just under a day and a half. On stage, of course, Othello feels much longer,
apparently lengthened by Shakespeare’s scattered gestures to more extended time periods.
The effect is of a ply at once too long and too short: long enough for Othello and
Desdemona’s marriage to appear convincing, yet short enough for it to feel insecure; short
enough for Iago’s plot to remain secret, yet long enough for it to work its way to completion.
Though he is ignorant of it, Othello himself picks up on this impossible, torturing tension.
‘What sense had I of her stol’n hours of lust?’ he cries,
I saw’t not, thought it not, harmed not me…
He that is robbed, not wanting what is stol’n,
Let him not know’t and he’s not robbed at all
3.3.334-8
Those ‘stol’n hours’ are, of course, an impossibility; there is simply no time in the action of
the play (even if there were reason) for Desdemona to be unfaithful. Shakespeare steals
time from us too, just as Iago steals from Othello his mind. Time is just another ingredient
of Iago’s plot.
Nor does Shakespeare give us opportunity to draw breath. Just a few minutes after
beginning to suspect Desdemona, Othello is racked by doubt; another few minutes after that
he is swearing ‘capable and wide revenge’ with Iago’s gleeful help (3.3.462), convinced by
the evidence and resolved not to go back. After the handkerchief makes its appearance
and Cassio is framed, the effect is devastating (although some of you found it amusing).
‘Lie with her? Lie on her?’ Othello cries desperately.
We say ‘lie on her’ when they belie her. Lie with her? ‘Swounds, that’s fulsome!
Handkerchief – confessions – handkerchief. To confess and be hanged for his
labour. First to be hanged and then to confess! I tremble at it. Nature would
not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction. Is it not
words that shakes me thus. Pish! Noses, ears, and lips! Is’t possible? Confess?
Handkerchief? O devil!
He falls down in a trance
4.1.33-42
Though Othello will rapidly recover from the fit, the mental turmoil it represents will
stay with him until his death.
In the first half of the play the main conflict is merely incubating; then it bursts
into life, and goes storming without intermission or change of direction, to its
close.
A.C Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904)
But first, the blameless Desdemona must die. Although Iago
plants the idea of her infidelity in Othello’s mind, the notion of
killing her in revenge is all her husband’s. ‘O blood, blood, blood!’
he rages just moments before his wife appears, as innocent of the
knowledge as she is in character. She assumes that state
business has distracted Othello, making him unwell, but her
attempts to make him feel better do nothing but infuriate him. The
terrible cycle of jealousy does its work. After a horrific public
shaming during which Othello hits her in front of guests from
Venice, the lovers have a tearful final argument. Othello taunts her
with his own certainties, refuses to listen to her denials. ‘What, not
a whore?’ he cries incredulously.
He will not ‘scar’ her alabaster skin, but he will kill her before the scene is out. This is
perhaps the most chilling of Iago’s many malicious victories: as well as robbing Othello of
his sanity, he makes him into the villain imagined by crude racist fantasy – a black murderer
stealing into a white girl’s bedchamber. Worse still, Othello seems unaware of the fact,
drawing attention to her ‘whiter’ complexion rather than his ‘foul’, ‘filthy’ murder. Emila
informs Othello what many seventeenth-century audiences would have suspected all along:
‘O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!’ (5.2.140).
With that, the play is nearly over – but not quite. A couple more deaths to come! Though it
is too late for Desdemona (and indeed for Othello), in the dying moments the truth does
come out. Following Emilia’s furious testimony, the real story emerges. She calls him out
for his stupidity and lets him in on how the handkerchief really left Desdemona’s hand.
Realising that his fictions are collapsing, Iago makes one last attempt to rewrite the
conclusion and lunges brutally at his wife, mortally wounding her. Othello, meanwhile,
begins the slow and tragic journey to realisation. He, too, is desperate to be understood.
‘When you shall these unlucky deeds relate’ he tells the assembled throng, as it gathers
around the corpses on stage,
Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well,
Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe…
5.2.350-7
For Iago, however, the storytelling has come to an end. ‘Demand me nothing,’ he sneers.
‘What you know, you know.’ (5.2.309-10). There will be no other answers.
Notes from Garber
(Source: Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All, Anchor, New York, 2004).
• Modern (i.e. 20th and 21st Century) criticism tends to look at certain aspects of text (e.g.
race, class, gender etc) as ‘discrete elements’…
• … reflecting the issues of OUR time
• Shakespeare’s plays -400+ years old- “exhibit and record” these issues
• “Shakespeare’s time –like ours- was one of great historical changes and social
anomalies”.
• Othello “records and responds to a world in crisis, a crisis … in part through emergent
categories like race, class, gender –and sexuality.”
• As in many Shakespearean plays, the setting moves from “a civilised place to a wild one.”
• Light and darkness in the staging (common to many of his plays) –light = “a search for
control and order”; dark = chaos and evil.
• Venice is the place of reason; Cyprus of passion (Brabantio says “This is Venice. My
house is not a grange.8”)
• The play begins with a marriage; Shakespeare’s comedies normally end with a marriage
• Iago’s filth in the night to Brabantio comes “from a moral, as well as a literal, darkness”
• The “dichotomy of light and darkness will mirror the dichotomy of Venice and Cyprus.”
• “Venice and Cyprus. Light and darkness. Black and white.”
• “European languages have loaded the term ‘blackness’ with negativity, in keeping with …
‘light’ as reason and goodness.”
• This has “spilled … into racial stereotypes.”
8
= a house in the middle of the countryside.
The key dramatic point of Othello at the same time establishes and critiques a stereotype:
Othello looks black, but it is Iago who embodies immorality and evil (conventionally equated
with ‘blackness’ of soul) in the play. On the other end of this scale, the play presents both
false and true images of ‘whiteness’, since the name of the courtesan, or whore, Bianca
means ‘white’ or ‘the white one’. Thus we have “black Othello”, and really (morally) black
Iago: ‘white’ Bianca and really (morally) white Desdemona. ‘Black’ and ‘white’ demarcate
prevailing cultural, linguistic and symbolic conventions of Christian sin and virtue. It is
Desdemona’s purity of spirit that Othello mistakes for sin, just as he mistakes Iago’s
malevolence for honesty. The “honest” (that is, chaste and virtuous) Desdemona is accused
of dishonesty; the dishonest Iago (insincere, deceitful, lacking in public spirit) is labelled
“honest” over and over again in line after line. The word “honesty” becomes for the play a
pivot of meaning, an emblem for its many false assumptions.
Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All, Anchor, New York, 2004.p.593.
• “The play has … [a] struggle between two forces, a ‘good angel’ and a ‘bad angel’, for a
man’s soul.”
• “But another way of understanding this … tug-of-war with Othello at its centre –is to see
both Iago and Desdemona as reflecting aspects of Othello’s own mind.”
• Who is Othello? Where and how does he come from? (“an extravagant and wheeling
stranger”?)
• Cassio is what Othello is not (or thinks himself not to be): courteous, courtly, at ease with
whatever ‘civilised’ (i.e. not war) situation; women, diplomacy, power. Garber argues (like
Bloom) that Cassio was appointed for his diplomatic, not military, skills.
• “Love confines [Othello] rather than sets him free.”
• “There is perhaps an excess of control and rationality in the Othello of the early scenes.”
• Can Othello ever escape his ‘public persona’?
• “The actor James Earl Jones once remarked that Othello was the only Shakespearean
warrior we never see in a fight.” Yet Othello is the ultimate warrior.
• This is interesting, given that fighting- and sexual-ability are often synonymous in the plays
(although there is a big ‘but’ with Macbeth).
• Othello’s version of how he and Desdemona fell in love casts her as passive (“She loved
me for…”) –which is immediately belied by her version of events
• Othello tells wonderful “spellbinding” (Garber) stories –are they TRUE? The magic of the
handkerchief?
• “Othello … confuses the personal with the public, the outer with the inner man.”
• “Where Othello speaks of something like [Desdemona’s] hero worship, Desdemona
speaks of [a] love … that is frankly sexual as well as romantic.”
• Othello ‘denies’ his sexual appetite (i.e. he’s no longer young and randy) re: doing his job.
BUT “how soon the coin will flip the other way, and he will be convinced that Desdemona
could … be unfaithful to him, ‘for I am declined into the vale of years’.”
• Desdemona wants to –and does- act in the public (male) sphere: Othello “prefers a
posture of obedience and admiration” –he does not want her to “act like a man in the
political sphere”. Iago will later TWIST this as a sign of her deviant disposition.
“Race, class and gender become crisis points when they categorise something, or
someone, as different, and also as out of place: out of place, of course, from the point of
view of traditional society. A black man marries a white woman, and is chosen by the nation
to lead it in time of peril. A soldier, ambitious for preferment, sees his place given to another
–given to a courtly, educated snob who believes that “the lieutenant should be saved before
the ancient”. A woman asserts herself, making her own choice in marriage against her
father’s will, speaking out in public on civic matters, then daring to contradict her husband’s
view and offering him advice. These are all signs of transgression, calling boundaries into
question. Anxiety, hatred, and desire develop in part out of this sense of destabilisation and
displacement, out of the divisions and comparisons that are produced by categories like
race, class and gender –and never more than in Othello.” Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare
After All, Anchor, New York, 2004.p.588.
‘LOVE IN OTHELLO’
The play’s central theme is love (destruction of love = hate) (love and hate together
arouse jealousy).
The central conflict is between men and women and this is presented through a series
of parallel and contrasting couples.
Desdemona/Othello, Emilia/Iago, Bianca/Cassio and a number of fantasy couples:
Roderigo/Desdemona, Cassio/Desdemona, Othello/Emilia.
IDEAS AND EXAMPLES THAT OCCUR
 Sexuality is linked often with vulgarity
“an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe?”
 Being married is linked to a lack of freedom
“for know, Iago./But that I love the gentle Desdemona”
“I would not my unhoused free condition / Put into circumstance and confine”
 “love is often mentioned as a physical, sensual act (often by Desdemona, rare in a
female character) at the same time it is frequently reduced to lust especially by
Iago.
“It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will.”
 It is claimed that marriage brings together two individuals into one identity i.e.
Othello kills Desdemona to restore his identity.
“Our general’s wife is now the general”.
 Marriage means losing one’s individual power and self-determination.
“His soul is so infetter’d to her love / That she may make, unmake, do what she
list”.




Love is continually linked with deceit, unfaithfulness and misleading appearances.
“And when she seem’d to shake and fear your looks / She lov’d them most”.
111.111 21-212
The state of marriage as an institution is questioned.
“O curse of marriage / That we call these delicate creatures ours / and not their
appetites”. 111.111 272 –
The nature of being male and female.
“They are all but stomachs and we all but food”.
At the end is a rare plea for women to be treated equally in a relationship.
“Let husbands know / Their wives have sense.
OTHELLO – THEMES
1.Jealousy
“Beware the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on…”
Jealousy motivates Iago, and destroys Othello in the play. But how far can we believe
Othello when he describes himself as; “not easily jealous, but being wrought/perplexed
in the extreme” (Act V).
Desdemona agrees, when she answers Emilia.
Emilia:
“Is he (Othello) not jealous?
Desdemona: Who he? I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humours from”. (Act III)
Iago seems to also agree.
“The Moor has a free and open nature too,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so”. (Act I)
Iago also says
“The Moor, how be it that I endure him no
Is of a constant, noble, loving nature”. (Act II)
Ridley, in the introduction to the Arden edition: Even though he (Othello) is not a
jealous man, he is not only dominated but distorted by a barbaric crazed fury of
physical jealousy… and part of the very power of jealousy over him is that it is an
unfamiliar emotion, which he has no idea how to handle”.
Perhaps the play is about jealousy as an abstract force rather than a play about a
jealous man.
2.Evil
Is the play a study of Iago rather than Othello? Is it concerned with Iago as a human
being? A man frustrated with personal ambitions looking for revenge? Or is Iago more
a symbol of evil – too diabolical to be human? It is difficult to know exactly what
motivates Iago, but he emerges as a mortal man consumed by jealousy and hatred of
good.
3.Reason versus Passion
Shakespeare saw true human reason as a reflection of the divine reason of God – a
rational man was, for Shakespearian England, the best of mankind. Iago believes that
man, in his intelligence and rationality, is the sole author of his own fate.
Othello, in contrast, is the natural man who has faith in his instincts. (Thus he is able
to love “not wisely but too well”), a simple man who can be irrationally passionate.
Does Shakespeare suggest through Othello’s downfall that reason is the primary human
virtue? Or, is he suggesting that the too-rational man lacks the nobility of Othello, with
his warmth? (Iago, for example, has never really loved; he is always intellectualising,
and only sees love as bestial, irrational behaviour, and therefore inhuman).
4.Othello’s tragic flaw
There is a theory (Aristotle) that tragedy is always about a good man, possibly a great
man, who has some weakness in his character, and this is responsible for his downfall;
that this tragedy is some sort of divine justice working itself out. Has Othello fallen
through his own fault? Through his passionate, easily irrational temperament which
make shim too absolute in love? Or, as Ridley suggests, is it credulity rather than
innate jealousy which makes Othello such malleable material for Iago to work on? Is
Othello too credulous?
5.Othello as an outsider
Is the play concerned with inadequate understanding of his environment displayed by a
man from an alien culture? Does Othello fall because he has too simple a trust in a
sophisticated world that is full of intrigue, infidelity, ambition and revenge? Does
Shakespeare deliberately use a black man as his central character, to make this conflict
visually apparent? Is the Moor’s isolate responsible for his ready suspicion, in that he
knows Venetian women are strange to him?
Iago to Othello: “In Venice they do let God see the pranks
They dare not show their husbands. Their best conscience is not to
leave undone,
but to keep unknown”.
And Othello is even further isolated from social custom by his life till now as a
mercenary soldier; he know he lacks: “those soft parts of conversation/That
chamberers.” Act III
6.A Tragedy of perverted goodness
It is truly tragic that Othello’s tremendously noble qualities – persisting in him after
Iago has tempted him into delusion – increase his suffering and magnify the extent of
his tragedy:
His absoluteness --- “She’s gone, I am abused, and my relief must be to loathe her”.
His trusting nature --- (to Iago) “I am bound to thee forever”.
His judicial mind --- “Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men”.
His ability to love --- “I kissed thee ere I killed thee no way but this,
Killing myself to die upon a kiss”.
Some thoughts on Iago’s character in Othello.
He is 28, a Venetian soldier, has seen a great deal of service and has a high reputation
for courage. He is not of gentile birth or breeding, rather his manner is of a blunt, gruff
soldier who speaks his mind freely and plainly and at times crudely, and he will argue
with those who disagree or take offence. He has little tolerance of the courtesies of
fine society and hence has no conscience in mocking them or in abusing them to his
own advantage, such as the duping of Cassio through his refined ambience with
Desdemona. Iago is often rough and caustic and disparaging of human nature.
Reputation and the cares of one for another in society are ridiculed by him, especially in
his conversations with Roderigo and Cassio.
He is highly critical even of the devotions of his wife Emilia. He admits to being
fastidious in his criticism and reproach and this earns him the reputation of “honest
Iago”, Even his wife Emilia sees no deeper than this. When the very evidence is
before her that someone has poisoned Othello’s mind against Desdemona, as once
happened to Iago over a rumour of a relationship between her and Othello, she fails to
see that the logical person who has been at hand all the time and closest to Othello is
Iago.
Iago has prodigious powers of dissimulation and self-control. He finds relief from the
discomfort of hypocrisy by means of his cynical comments which, being misinterpreted, serve to heighten confidence in his honesty.
He is not a man of strong feelings and passion and is decidedly cold in temperament.
At his end he is mocking of those who have been deceived by him. He has a superficial
goodness or good nature, but gives way to the evil within and is destroyed by it. As a
study he can be compared with MacBeth who gives way eventually to a course of evil,
or to Lady MacBeth who embraces evil nature readily when chance shows itself. In
another sense he tends to be an embodiment of evil to wrought havoc on others, rather
like the figures of the witches in MacBeth (an “instrument of darkness”) or the ghost in
Hamlet.
Iago has insight into human nature and displays ingenuity in working upon his insight
into the weaknesses of others like Roderigo, Cassio and Othello. He is quick and
versatile in dealing with complex situations such as the night of the watch when he has
Roderigo “murder” Cassio, has Othello believing that it is he who is doing the deed, and
accomplishes the death of Roderigo at the same time, and quickly bringing blame upon
Bianca who unluckily stumbles onto the scene. He would have taken sensual pleasure
by choice and not from what he would call weakness and we have Cassio to compare
here. Mastery of the ill is his practice and doctrine and from this stems his despisal of
Othello’s love for Desdemona, of Cassio’s concern for lost reputation and for duty, of
Roderigo’s generosity, of Desdemona’s purity, fidelity and innocence. He is indifferent
to the suffering of others, but any threat to his superiority provokes his enmity and
hostility: jealousy over Emilia and Othello. He displays jealousy over Cassio’s
promotion and this aspect of his character helps point out the lack of jealousy in
Othello when he hears of the supposed adultery of Desdemona and Cassio. Othello
wants justice and punishment: Iago wants revenge. He sets about this revenge with a
passion and eagerness and delight, but it is more a delight in the cleverness of his
plans, than perhaps in the execution of them and the results they bring: a possible
reason for his refusal to reveal motives at his end; they are no longer real… lost in the
delight of the deceptions…
Some notes on the language and images in Othello
The language of the main character is often referred to as the “music of Othello”.
This refers to those grandiloquent speeches he makes such as in the Venetian court
where he retells the tales of his youth and war years that were the ‘magic’ that spirited
Desdemona away and entranced her to fall in love with him. Grand deeds and exotic
locations and figures such as the anthropophagi; another example is the tale he retells
to Desdemona about the origin of the handkerchief and the Sybil who spun a magical
trance into it.
There is also a kind of disturbing, loud music in the passages of wrath such as ‘be sure
thou prove my love a whore’, spoken with precision and deathly threat to Iago. There
is a quieter music too, such as that of the final scene where Othello speaks of himself
as “one who loved not wisely but too well” and sets down how he would like the
Venetian senate to hear of and record his sad, tragic acts in Cyprus.
Othello often refers to or invokes the ancient gods and the heavenly bodies and their
intense light as he builds a speech to a climactic crescendo, which is a characteristic of
his ‘music’ that build his character to one on a level with the gods themselves. All the
positions of office he assumes in the play are of the highest social order: He is a
commander of his army, he is a high and mighty judge in his quick dismissal of Cassio,
he is an executioner beyond doubt in his suffocation of Desdemona in her corrupted (in
his thinking) bed.
There is a further musical element to the play in the scene where Desdemona pleads
for Cassio to meet with Othello and he pleads with her to produce the handkerchief:
“Cassio”, “the handkerchief” – “Cassio”, “the handkerchief” repeated rhythmically in a
kind of verbal counterpoint until reaching a crescendo.
A similar structure is found in the repetition of the word “honest” both throughout the
play and in particular when Iago is taunting Othello about the suspicious nature of
Cassio “Honest, my lord? Honest… By Heaven he echoes me”. Shakespeare repeatedly
uses this crescendo effect to emphasise the quick, rash temperament of Othello.
The elements of Nature accompany this music of the play. Shakespeare frequently
has his tragic heroes play out their doomed lives against a stormy weather or a foul
and dark night. This play has its powerful descriptions of the storm which sets apart
the boats of Othello’s convoy to Cyprus and then delivers them safely to the new
country, where away from the confinements of Venice the tragic acts and
misunderstandings will be played out. Wild nature has set up a barrier between the
ordered rational pace of life in Venice with its senate and its court of the first scene and
the island of Cyprus where the characters will be swept away by their private passions.
The sea becomes a frequent image in the play and a point of reference for the
characters. Othello would not have married ‘for the sea’s worth’ in act 1.
Iago crudely refers to Othello’s elopement as “boarding a land carack”, Brabanitio’s
grief is a “floodgate”, and Roderigo will “drown” himself for his unrequited love for
Desdemona. Finally Othello desperately clinging to a belief of Desdemona being
unfaithful declares her to be “as false as water”: the sea and water are traditionally
seen as unstable and unpredictable and as such form a natural image of the ups and
downs of human nature. They are very appropriate images for these characters to be
given in their lines since the play is set in two seaports: Venice and Cyrus.
Night also features as the typical setting for acts of evil to occur and Shakespeare has
an unruly night described with loud clangings of the alarm bell and loud songs of
ribaldry for the botched murder of Cassio to be set against and his subsequent
dismissal from Othello’s service. The night has served to remove Cassio and to pave
the way for Iago to inveigle his way into Othello’s trust. Roderigo’s further attempt on
Cassio takes place at night as does Othello’s ‘execution’ of Desdemona. The evil
plotting of Iago, the dark deeds he commissions are all performed at night as if it is
natural for night to aid this evil action.
Darkness is also coupled with light in the final speech of Othello to Desdemona where
he speaks of her death as of a ‘light’ being put out, be first he must ‘put out’ the
physical light to perform such a task: “put out the light, and then, put out the light”.
The play in its images and settings of light and dark, day and night, underscores life
and death, good and evil.
Animal images pervade Shakespeare’s plays mainly with reference to the loss of
reason, to savage acts, to unnatural deeds. It is largely Iago who introduces this train
of imagery to the play and frequently the animal references are derogatory or belittling
of his associates: “an old back ram is tupping your white ewe” “the beast with two
backs” and the famous “goats and monkeys” which refers to the hot lustful passions of
Desdemona and Cassio. Cassio is the “fly” that Iago will “ensnare in his web” and the
devoted Roderigo is dismissed as “the trash of Venice whom I leash for his hunting” ie.
a dog at his master’s beck and call. There is a fitting irony in Roderigo’s dying words
when he calls Iago “inhuman dog” and when Lodovico at the end of the play refers to
Iago as “Spartan dog”. Othello himself before his suicide also berates himself as a
“circumcised dog”. Jealousy, the major driving emotion, of the play is rightly labelled
the “green-eyed monster”.
As the tragedy progresses we hear Othello more frequently lapsing into the animal
imagery so fondly expressed by Iago. Iago’s animal references to people are a
disparaging dismissal of them, but for Othello there is a different purpose and that is to
show the gradual lapse of the grandiloquent, reasoned, noble, commanding Othello into
a lesser being who is increasingly being commandeered by Iago like a trained animal in
its responses. He is virtually no different to Roderigo, but in his final words at his
death we see a reversion to the former grand, commanding Othello:
“Soft you, a word or two; I have done the state some service…
… of one whose hand like the base Indian, threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe….
…. Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees”
The imagery takes us back to Othello at the plays opening with the speech before the
Venetian Council of his ‘magical’ lands with their exotic settings, riches and peoples”.
The imagery reminds of how far the hero has fallen from his former glory.
A. C. Bradley on ‘Othello.’ Taken from Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) by
A.C. Bradley
‘Othello is…by far the most romantic figure among Shakespeare’s heroes; and he is so
partly from the strange life of war and adventure which she has lived from childhood.’
At the beginning he is ‘self-controlled, steepled by the experience of countless perils,
hardships and vicissitudes, at once simple and stately in bearing and in speech, a great
man naturally modest but fully conscious of his worth, proud of his services to the
state, unawed by dignitaries and unelated by honours, secure, it would seem, against
all dangers with or without and all rebellion from within. And he comes to have his life
crowned with the final glory of love…filling his heart with tenderness and his
imagination with ecstasy.’
‘In the first place, Othello’s mind, for all it’s poetry, is very simple. He is not
observant…Emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect…and
is ignorant of European women.’
‘…for all his dignity and massive calm, he is by nature full of the most vehement
passion.’
‘Lastly, Othello’s nature is all of one piece. His trust, where he trusts, is absolute…He is
extremely self-reliant, and decides and acts instantaneously…If such a passion as
jealousy seizes him, it will swell into a well-night incontrollable flood.’
‘This character is so noble, Othello’s feelings and actions follow so inevitably from it and
the forces brought to bear on it, and his sufferings are so heart-rending, that he stirs, I
believe, in most readers a passion of mingled love and pity which they feel for no other
hero in Shakespeare…’
‘…but it was no sign of stupidity in Othello. For his opinion of Iago was the opinion of
Iago was the opinion of practically everyone who knew him…it would have been quite
unnatural in him to be unmoved by the warnings of so honest a friend…Any husband
would have been troubled by them.’
‘Iago does not bring these warnings to a husband who had lived with a wife for months
and years and knew her like his sister or his bosom-friend…he was newly married.’
‘…any man situated as Othello was would have been disturbed by Iago’s
communications, and I add that many men would have been made wildly jealous. But
up to this point, where Iago is dismissed, Othello…does not show jealousy. His
confidence is shaken, he is confused and deeply troubled…but he is not yet troubled.’
‘The Othello of the Fourth Act is Othello in his fall. His fall is never complete, but he is
much changed… “Chaos has come” …and when Othello reappears we see at a glance
that he is changed man. He is physically exhausted, and his mind is dazed. He sees
everything blurred through a mist of blood and tears. He has actually forgotten the
incident of the handkerchief, and has to be reminded of it.’
‘His self-control has wholly deserted him, and he strikes his wife in the presence of the
Venetian envoy. He is so lost to all sense of reality that he never asks himself what will
follow the deaths of Cassio and his wife. An ineradicable instinct of justice, rather than
any last quiver of hope, leads him to question Emilia…’
‘The Othello who enters the bed-chamber is not the man of the Fourth Act. The deed he
is bound to do is no murder, but a sacrifice. He is to save Desdemona from herself, not
in hate but in honour…and also in love.’
Some thoughts about tragedy
‘We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look.’ – Aldous Huxley
The romantic poets and later Victorian viewers valued tragedy as an emotional exercise
helping viewers learn compassion
The Greeks first introduced the idea of the tragic hero: somebody of great importance
who was basically liked or had traits that were admired. Often it is this same trait that
causes the hero’s downfall. At some point the hero falls from glory. His own harmatia
(tragic flaw) linked to hubris, ensures such a fall.
Tragedy also involves a mix of personal choice (made out of free will) and fate. This
choice then results in a chain of unstoppable and unforeseen negative events.
A reversal of fortune usually brings about the hero’s tragedy.
Another important aspect of tragedy is for the hero to realise his mistake and its
horrible results. Part of a tragedy is for the character to realise their culpability but too
late to change the course of events.
Not only does tragedy effect the hero but also those around them; importantly, the
hero knows this and reacts in varied ways – for Othello it is with tears.
The Standard
Achievement
Achievement with Merit
Achievement with Excellence



Develop a critical response to
specified aspect(s) of a
Shakespearean drama using
supporting evidence.
Develop a convincing critical
response to specified aspect(s)
of a Shakespearean drama
using supporting evidence.
Develop an integrated and
perceptive critical response to
specified aspect(s) of a
Shakespearean drama using
supporting evidence.
A critical response to Shakespearean drama may refer to aspects such as theme(s),
setting, characterisation, context (social, political, historical, etc), conventions of
genre, positioning of reader; ‘methods or procedures used in crafting and shaping
text’ (EiNZC glossary), eg structure, method of narration, style, literary features.
Perceptive means with intuitive understanding and insight.
Assessment will require a critical essay that involves:analysis of a passage from a
Shakespearean text or
analysis of selected aspect(s) of a Shakespearean text.
The critical essay will include an introduction clearly stating the focus and scope of
the argument, a range of points supported by accurate and relevant
examples/evidence, and a reasoned conclusion. The essay will be expected to show
accurate use and control of writing conventions.
Critical Interpretations of ‘Othello’
Rhymer, Thomas
(1693)


Johnson, Samuel
(1765)


Coleridge,
Samuel Taylor
(1836)



Dowden, Edward
(1879)


Bradley, A.C
(1918)


Knight, G. Wilson
(1930)
Stoll, E.E. (1940)



Leavis, F.R
(1952)
Hunter, G.K
(1967)

Newman, Karen
and Eagleton,
Terry (1980’s)



McPherson,
David (1990)

Jardine, Lisa
(1996)

Out of favour with modern critics as he sees almost no redeeming
feature in the play.
States that it is impossible that anyone could be so foolish to believe
that the match between Othello-Desdemona could work.
More positive view of the play than Rhymer. Regards Shakespeare’s
insight into human nature as his principal merit.
Finds (like many subsequent critics) the process by which Iago
undermines Othello’s faith in Desdemona to be terrifying and
convincing.
First scholar to phrase Iago as having ‘motiveless malignity.’
Believes that Shakespeare’s writing expresses the essence of human
nature in its rawest state.
Like Johnson, is convinced that Iago’s plot to destroy Othello is both
authentic and powerful.
Sympathetic to Desdemona and Othello, seeing Shakespeare as the
creator as a tragic love story which would elicit the sympathy of the
audience.
Views Othello as an ‘exotic creature’ (almost like an Indian Prince
with a dark side) who captures Desdemona’s heart through his
strange nature and his air of adventure.
Helped to create our modern conception of the play. He focuses on
the claustrophobic terror created in the play, an element many
previous critics underplayed or ignored.
Believes that the omission of a sub-plot is what makes the play
powerful – we are constantly focused on the tragic action.
Tried to steer criticism away from looking at the characters towards a
reading of the play’s language, and in particular – metaphors.
Notably more sympathetic to Othello than many other critics.
Rejects the views of A.C. Bradley and others who focus on character
in their criticism, believing that is impossible to enter the minds of
the protagonists; instead, he believes Shakespeare’s should be
viewed as pieces of drama – making the case that this is what
mattered most to 16th and 17th century playwrights. His analysis of
Iago for example, centres on the character’s effect on the audience
and how this is achieved, not the interior life of the character.
Makes the case that Othello was a lesser tragic hero than
Shakespeare’s other main protagonists.
Attempts to explore Elizabethan attitudes towards race and establish
what this might have meant to a contemporary audience rather than
subsequent productions. Argues that Shakespeare was sympathetic
to his protagonist and that a black man from North Africa could be as
noble and impressive as a white man. Critics have debated this issue
ever since.
Approach the text from a feminist perspective, examining how the
female characters are perceived as ‘monstrous’ in a male dominated
world.
Also consider the play in light of ‘miscegenation,’ the production of
children of mixed race and how this might threaten established orders
in society.
Subjects the play to a historical analysis, stating that Venice was
deliberately chosen to reveal one of the plays ideas: the
lasciviousness of women.
Comes from a feminist perspective, using court records from the
1600’s to illuminate attitudes towards women in Shakespeare’s work.
Believes Othello should have been punished in the play for defaming
Desdemona, instead of Desdemona being labelled a ‘whore.’
Task One: Use your notes to define and explain the concepts of tragedy, the tragic
hero and tragic flaw. Find examples and relevant quotations from throughout the play
to support these definitions and explanations. Explain how these definitions support
your understanding of key actions and key characters within the play.
Definition
Tragedy
Tragic Hero
Tragic Flaw
Explanation of how
key characters and
key actions support
these definitions
Relevant examples
and quotations
Task Two:
a. Briefly describe the physical, political and historical settings important to the play.
You should cover Venice, Cyprus and Desdemona and Othello’s bed chamber.
Provide at least three reasons to explain why each setting is important to the text as
a whole. You should discuss how each setting influences events, characters’
behaviours, interactions and decisions. Complete a separate grid for each of the
settings to record your findings in bullet point form.
Venice
Physical
Historical
Political
Description
Reasons / Influence
1.
1.
1.
2.
2.
2.
3.
3.
3.
Othello Character Analysis through Quotes
Read the quotes and explain what they reveal about his character. Think about his
background, strengths, weaknesses. What qualities allowed his exploitation?
1. OTHELLO
“Let him do his spite: My services, which I have done the signory,
Shall out-tongue his complaints…
I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege, and my demerits
May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune
As this that I have reach’d” (1:2)
“The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so.” (Iago, 1:3)
“Most potent, grave and revered Signors…
Rude am I in my speech…” (1:3)
“For since these arms of mine had seven years pith
‘till now some nine moons wasted, they have used their dearest
action in the tented field; and little of this great world can I speak
more than pertains to feats of broil and battle.”
“Your son in law is far more fair than black.”
“Send for the lady… and let her speak of me before her father… Let
her have her voice.”
“The Moor/ is of a constant, loving, noble nature
And, I dare think he’ll prove to Desdemona / a most dear
husband.”
“Are we turned Turks and to ourselves do that
Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?
For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl!”
“I shall not dine at home. I meet the captains at the citadel.”
(3:3)
“Excellent wretch! Perdition
catch my soul / but I do love
thee! And when I do not, Chaos is
come again.”
“Arise, black vengeance, from the
hollow hell!
Yield up, O love, thy crown and
hearted throne
To tyrannous hate!” (1.3)
“Haply for I am black
and have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have; or that I am declined
Into the vale of years – yet that’s not much –
She’s gone: I am abused, and my relief must be to loathe her….
Yet tis the plague of great ones;
Prerogatived are they less than the base.
‘Tis destiny unshunnable, like death:
Even then this forked plague is fated to us
When we do quicken.”
“Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars…
Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone.” (3:3)
“I had been happy if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So had I nothing known” (3:3)
“Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore:
…Thou hadst better have been born a dog
Than answer my waked wrath”
“It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul:
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
…Yet 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” (5:2)
“.. I would not kill thy unprepared spirit
No- heaven forfend! I would not kill thy soul!” (5:2)
“There’s he that was Othello; here I am.”
“Tis happiness to die.”
“You must speak of one who loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one, not easily jealous but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme…”
“In Aleppo once
Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
beat a Venetian and traduced the state
I took by th’throat the circumcised dog
And smote him thus.”
2.
IAGO
“We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly followed…
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself.
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so for my peculiar end: … I am not what I am.” (1:1)
“Even now, now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping your white ewe.” (1:2)
“Your daughter
And the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.”
“Virtue! A fig!
Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus....
Why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.”
(1:3)
“I 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.... He holds me well;
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man...He hath a person and a smooth dispose
to be suspected... The Moor ... will be as tenderly led by th’nose
As asses are.” (1:3)
“With as little web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio.”
“O, you are well tuned no; But I’ll set down the pegs that make
this music, as honest as I am”
(2:1)
“Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on, They do
suggest at first with heavenly shows, As I do now.”
“O world, to be direct and honest is not safe. I’ll love no friend,
sith love breeds such offence. … I should be wise, for honesty’s a
fool…”
“This fellow’s of exceeding honesty, and knows all qualities, with a
learned spirit / Of human dealings.” (3:3 Othello; about Iago)
“notorious villain”
“O Damned Iago, inhuman dog”
“viper” “pernicious caitiff (evil coward)
“hellish villain” (5:2)
3. EMILIA
QUOTE
EXPLANATION
- “This was her first
- Unwittingly helps to
remembrance to the Moor …
bring down Iago through
I’ll have the work ta’en out,
stealing handkerchief
and give’t Iago. / What he
- Shows she understands
will do with it, heaven
role of women in
knows, not I: / I nothing,
society, aware of the
but to please his fantasy.
- “Ït is a common thing to
have a foolish wife”
way men use women.
- Cynical view of love
- “Desires for sport, and
frailty, as men have?
- “Then let them use us well:
else let them know the ills
we do, their ills instruct us
so.”
- “[Men] are all but stomach
and we [women] all but
food; / they eat us
hungerly, and when they
are full, / they belch us.
- “O, the more the angel she,
/ and you the blacker
devil!”
- “Thou has not half that
power to do me harm / As I
have to be hurt. O gull! O
dolt! / As ignorant as dirt!
Thou hast done a deed - / I
care not for thy sword – I’ll
make thee known / Though
I lost twenty lives.”
- “O villainy! I thought so
then; I’ll kill myself for
grief.”
- Believes women are
unfaithful in response
to men’s behaviour
crude, coarse
- sexually experienced
- realistic and knowing
- shows her love for
Desdemona, hatred for
Othello (racist
language)
- assertive – denounces
Iago and stands up for
what is right
- shows her respect for
justice: willing to risk
her husband’s rage and
her life in order to
testify for Desdemona
- feels guilty for her
earlier ignorance and
part she played in
tragedy
4. DESDEMONA
Naïve, passive victim or passionate, virtuous wife?
“so still and quiet that her motion blushed herself.” (Brabantio,
1.3)
“My downright violence and scorn of fortunes may trumpet to the
world.”(1:3)
“Free of speech, sings, plays and dances well…”( 3:3)
“hot moist palm”
“greedy ear”
“Tonight, my Lord?”
“That I did love the Moor to live with him…
And to his honours and his valiant parts
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.” (1.3)
“I have not deserved this.” (after struck by Othello)
Othello says of her:
“A fine woman! A fair woman! A sweet woman!
…O, the world hath not a sweeter creature!
….So delicate with her needle! – an admirable musician! O she will
sing the savageness out of a bear! –Of so high and plenteous wit
and invention! …
And then, of so gentle a condition!”
“Alas the day, I never gave him cause. (3:4)
“Tell me Emilia – That there be women do abuse their husbands
In such gross kind?”
“Beshrew me, if I should do such a wrong…
I do not think there is any such woman.” (4:3)
“And yet I fear you: for you’re fatal then
When your eyes roll so.” (5:2)
“A guiltless death I die…” “O who hath done this deed?”
“Nobody – I myself. Farewell.” (5.2)
“She was too fond of her most filthy bargain… This deed of thine is
no more worthy heaven /that thou wast worthy her” (Emilia to
Othello, 5:2)
RODERIGO
“I take it much unkindly that thou, Iago, who has my purse as if the
strings are thine...”
“Thus do I ever make make my fool my purse”
“I do not find that thous dealst justly with me”
“O damned Iago, O inhuman dog”
- rich fool, tricked into helping Iago
- by end of play, is contemplating adultery and murder.
- parody of Othello (Both love Desdemona, Iago tests out his
powers of corruption on him).
- However is the first to realise Iago’s villainy
The Role of Women in Othello: A Feminist Reading
William Shakespeare's "Othello” can be read from a feminist perspective. A feminist
analysis of the play Othello allows us to judge the different social values and status of
women in the Elizabethan society. Othello serves as an example to demonstrate the
expectations of the Elizabethan patriarchal society, the practice of privileges in
patriarchal marriages, and the suppression and restriction of femininity. According to
Elizabethan or Shakespeare's society built upon Renaissance beliefs, women were
meant only to marry. As their single occupation, marriage held massive
responsibilities of house management and child rearing. Additionally, women were
expected to be silent, chaste, and obedient to their husbands, fathers, brothers, and
all men in general. Patriarchal rule justified women's subordination as the natural
order because women were thought to be physiologically and psychologically inferior
to men.
As we go through Othello we find that the women characters are presented
according to this expectation of the Elizabethan society.There are only three women
in ‘Othello’: Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca. The way that these women behave and
conduct themselves is undeniably linked to the ideological expectations of
Shakespeare’s Elizabethan society and to the patriarchal Venetian society that he
creates. These notes will explore some of the ways in which the female characters are
presented in the play.
Women as possessions
Following his hearing of Brabantio’s complaint and Othello’s defence, the Duke
eventually grants permission for Desdemona to accompany Othello to Cyprus.
Othello speaks to his ensign Iago, ironically describing him as a man of ‘honesty and
trust’, informing the Duke that ‘To his conveyance I assign my wife’ (I.3.283).
Desdemona, as Othello’s wife, is treated as his possession: he implies that she is a
commodity to be guarded and transported.This is, however, by no means peculiar to
Othello: the first Senator, wishing Othello well, concludes by hoping that he will ‘use
Desdemona well’ (I.3.288). The word ‘use’ seems to connote the phrase ‘look after’,
but also supports the Venetian expectation of women - that they are to bow to the
wills of their husbands who may utilise them as they wish. Moreover, the function of
women within marriage is also delineated by Othello’s ‘loving’ words to Desdemona
in Act II: ‘Come, my dear love,/The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue’ (II.3.8-9).
Marriage is described as an act of ‘purchase’: a woman is bought by her husband,
effectively as a favour, and is expected to fulfil his sexual desires in return for the
privilege.
Iago’s desire for revenge on Othello is, in part, dictated by his view of women as
possessions. He believes that ‘it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/He’s done
my office’ (I.3.381-2), suggesting that Othello has slept with his wife Emilia. It could
be argued, however, that Iago exhibits little love for his wife, insulting her in public
and ultimately killing her himself. It is simply the thought that ‘the lusty Moor/hath
leaped into my seat’ (II.1.286-7) which drives him mad, the thought that Othello has
used a possession that belongs to him. Compounding this theory is the fact that Iago
refers to his wife metaphorically in these two instances: she is his ‘office’ and his
‘seat’; she is objectified and deprived of her humanity.
Moreover, in revenge for Othello’s supposed act, Iago wishes to be ’evened with him,
wife for wife’ (II.1.290). By sleeping with Desdemona, he believes that they will then
be equal. The feelings of Desdemona and Emilia are completely disregarded in his
plotting. The women are merely objects to be used in order to further his own
desires. Although Iago is an extreme example, he nonetheless demonstrates, through
his thinking, the fact that women, in both Elizabethan and Venetian society, are
perceived as possessions, secondary to the lofty plans and desires of men.
Women as submissive
Some modern feminist critics see Desdemona as a hideous embodiment of the
downtrodden woman. Whether this is actually the case will be explored later in these
notes. Suffice it to say, there is a large body of evidence to support this critical stance.
Desdemona herself declares that ‘I am obedient’ (III.3.89), continuing to obey
Othello’s orders from the early ‘happy’ phase of their relationship through to the
later stages of his jealous ravings. Even when he orders Desdemona to go to her bed
towards the end of Act IV, she still replies with the submissive ‘I will, my lord’ (IV.3.9).
In her final breath she still remains true to her husband, saying ‘Commend me to my
kind lord’ (V.2.125) and providing Othello with an alibi that he does not use. She
appears to have completely accepted her role as subordinate and obedientwife.
Arguably a much stronger character, Emilia also indicates that she is aware of her
‘proper’ role in society. When revealing Iago’s plotting at the end of the play, she
states that ‘Tis proper I obey him, but not now’ (V.2.195). Although going on to betray
her husband, she still feels the need to explain why she is deviating from accepted
behaviours. Bianca expresses a similar sentiment,consoling herself when Cassio
spurns her by arguing that ‘I must be circumstanced’ (III.4.199): she feels compelled
by the laws of society to be ‘circumstanced’ - to ‘put up with it’ - implying that she
has no other choice.
Society weighs heavily on the shoulders of these women; they feel that they must
support the men and defer to them, even if the actions of the men are
questionable.Brabantio’s opinions of women appear to represent Venetian
ideology.Speaking of Desdemona before she erred, he describes her as
‘perfection’,‘Of spirit still and quiet’ and ‘A maiden never bold’ (I.3.95-97).
By expressing these qualities of women in the masculine domain of the Venetian
senate,Brabantio compounds and develops the traditional expectations of women in
a patriarchal society. Moreover, when she marries Othello, going against his wishes
and therefore the ideal mould of woman, he describes her as erring ‘Against all rules
of nature’ (I.3.100). Venetian society presents its own social beliefs as immutable
laws of nature. It is ‘natural’ for women to be feminine and to do as their husbands
and fathers tell them. It is ‘unnatural’ for them to do anything else. This Venetian
concept was also an Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan belief, and was widely
understood by Shakespeare’s audiences.
Today, feminists argue that it is not ‘natural’ for women to be ‘feminine’, that history
has tried to camouflage its social expectations of women as part of the laws of
nature. The women of Othello, however, are pre-Feminism, and seem to only
compound the ideological expectations of what it is to be a woman through their own
behaviour.
Women can be powerful
This is not to say, however, that the women of the play fail to question men at all. As
she talks to Desdemona at the end of Act IV, Emilia is fairly damming in her opinion of
men. In a speech reminiscent of Shylock’s ‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’, Emilia argues that
women are physically no different to men:
‘Let husbands know,
Their wives have sense like them; they see and smell,
And have their palates both for sweet and sour
As husbands have’ (IV.3.92-5)
She goes on to say that in addition to sharing some identical physicalities,they also
suffer from the same ‘affections,/Desires for sport, and frailty’(IV.3.100) as men. The
only difference, Emilia implies, is that men are mentally weaker: it is ‘frailty that thus
errs’ (IV.3.98). This links to her earlier description of the appetite of mankind, that
‘They eat us hungerly [men], and when they are full,/They belch us’ (III.4.101-2).
Emilia suggests that men are brutish and simplistic, unable to control their desires
with logical thought. It is perhaps ironic that the actions of Iago and Othello in this
play confirm her arguments.
These opinions, however, are given to Desdemona in moments of privacy.Emilia does
not express such opinions in the company of men. Ironically, it is Desdemona who
exhibits some power in public, making powerful use of language when explaining to
her father, in front of other Venetian senators, that her ‘duty’ (I.3.182) is now owed
to Othello. It could be argued, however,that even in this instance, Desdemona still
fails to assert herself: although she disagrees with her father, she couches this in
terms of merely switching her ‘duty’ from father to husband. The issue of the ‘duty’
itself remains unquestioned. This is because it is so ideologically embedded that
women do not seem to consider any other possibility, other than, as these notes have
shown, in private conversation with one another.
Women as temptresses
This is not to say, however, that women in Othello do not exhibit any signs of
wielding power. Othello, when talking of his wife, often seems pre-occupied with
matters of the flesh. Bemoaning the fact that he did not know earlier of his wife’s
supposed infidelity, Othello argues that he would have been happier ‘if the general
camp,/Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,/So I had
nothing known’ (III.3.342-4). He appears to be obsessed with Desdemona’s sexuality.
On his way to murder his wife, he states that ‘Thy bed, lust-stained, shall with lust’s
blood be spotted’ (V.1.36). The repetition of the word ‘lust’, combined with the
sexual associations of Desdemona’s bed and the violent plosives and sibilants of this
line, reflects and draws attention to Othello’s preoccupation with sensual matters.
This preoccupation is partly driven by the fact that Desdemona wields so much sexual
power over him. Even Cassio refers, jokingly, to Desdemona as ‘our great Captain’s
Captain’ (II.1.75), implying that she is the only individual capable of controlling and
taming Othello. Desdemona uses this when attempting to persuade Othello to
reinstate Cassio: she tells the latter that ‘My lord shall never rest’ (III.3.22) until she
has changed his mind, an indication of the tenacity of the woman. Attempting to
change his mind, Desdemona is not frightened to use her position and sexuality:
‘Tell me, Othello. I wonder in my soul
What you would ask me that I should deny,
Or stand so mammering on?’ (III.3.68-70)
In this instance, she refers to her own unquestioning desire to please Othello,
implying that he cannot love her as she loves him if he is able to refuse her what she
wants. Othello responds with the interestingly oxymoronic term of endearment
‘Excellent wretch’ (III.3.90), suggesting that he is aware that her manipulation of him
is fairly ‘wretched’, yet finds it ‘excellently’ compelling.
Later in the play, however, Othello ceases to find Desdemona’s sexual power so
entertaining. Speaking to Iago about his planned murder of Desdemona, Othello is
adamant that he will ‘not expostulate with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide
my mind again’ (IV.1.203-5). As far is Othello is concerned, if he is tempted into
conversation and interaction with his wife, then her
overpowering sexuality will deter him from the right and inevitable course of action.
Her considers her to be a sexual hazard, a strumpet intent on using her body to blind
and deceive him. Male society, in addition to constructing women as second-rate
citizens, also constructs their sexual allure as evil.
Women as ‘whores’ Othello’s fear of Desdemona’s sexuality erupts into slanderous
abuse on a number of occasions. He refers to her as ‘whore’ (III.3.356), a ‘subtle
whore’ (IV.2.20) and a ‘cunning whore’ (IV.2.88), in addition to multiple references to
her as a ‘strumpet’. Bianca is described by Iago as a ‘housewife’ (IV.1.95) and
‘strumpet’ (IV.1.97), although there is no evidence to suggest that she actually is a
prostitute. When she reveals his part in the horrific events of Act V, Iago vents his
fury upon Emilia, labelling her a ‘villainous whore’ (V.2.227).
Admonishing his wife for being a nag in Act II, Iago goes on to compound this
stereotype by suggesting that all women are not as they appear. He seems to believe
that all women are, essentially, ‘wild-cats’ (II.1.109) and ‘housewives’ (II.1.111). All
three women of the play are accused of prostitution and inappropriate sexual
conduct, yet it appears that none of them are guilty. As male society falls apart in
Cyprus, its constituent members seen to vent their spleen and anger by labelling all of
the female characters ‘whore’. When things go wrong, it appears to be acceptable for
men to blame the women.
What is the role of women?
The patriarchal Venetian society presented in Othello, moulded on the ideology of
Elizabethan England, seems to put women firmly in their place. Men consider women
to be possessions, who ought to remain submissive and meek at all times. The only
power that women do seem to be able to wield – their sexual power - is considered
to be an ‘evil’ which must be resisted by the men in society. Men seem free to be able
to refer to women as ‘whores’ and get away with it. The language that Shakespeare
gives to his female characters suggests that they have internalised society’s
expectations of them, and apart from in moments of private conversation, behave as
men expect, believing this to be ‘natural’.
There is a suggestion, however, that women are beginning to question the validity of
unchecked male authority. These notes have considered Emilia’s seemingly feminist
opinions, but it is Desdemona, who in conversation with Emilia, indicates that the tide
may be finally turning:
‘Nay, we must think men are not gods’ (III.4.144) By definition, this suggests that
Desdemona has certainly perceived men to be god-like figures in the past, but
indicates that her experiences with Othello have taught her a lesson. It is a clear that
the actions and language of Shakespeare’s three female characters, although
seemingly subservient, signify a tentative step towards an egalitarian society.