Othello William Shakespeare

Jealousy

"O beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on."

Iago[55]

The influential early twentieth-century Shakespeare critic A. C. Bradley defined Othello's tragic flaw as a sexual jealousy so intense that it "converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man ... the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, grasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a bestial thirst for blood."[56]

This jealousy is symbolized in the play through animal imagery. In the early acts of the play it is Iago who mentions ass, daws, flies, ram, jennet, guinea-hen, baboon, wild-cat, snipe, monkeys, monster and wolves. But from the third act onwards Othello catches this line of imagery from Iago as his irrational jealousy takes hold.[57] The same occurs with "diabolical" imagery (i.e. images of hell and devils) of which Iago uses 14 of his 16 diabolical images in the first two acts, yet Othello uses 25 of his 26 in the last three acts.[58]

Not only Othello, but also Iago is consumed by jealousy: his is a kind of envy, which contemporary scholar Francis Bacon called "the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause, it is the proper attribute of the Devil... As it always cometh to pass, that envy worketh subtilly, and in the dark; and to the prejudice of good things."[59]

Sometimes critics have struggled to define the kind of jealousy Othello suffers, or to deny it as a motive (for example, those who claim that in Russia between 1945 and 1957 only one actor portrayed Othello as obsessed by jealousy). In fact jealousy is a wide-ranging emotion and encompasses the spectrum from lust to spiritual disillusionment within which Othello's obsession must fall.[60] And he displays many accepted aspects of jealousy: an eagerness to snatch at proofs, indulging degrading images of the jealousy's object, snatching at ambiguities to ease the mind, dread of vulgar ridicule, and a spirit of vindictiveness.[60]

Ultimately, Othello becomes persuaded that his honour is tarnished by his wife's unfaithfulness and can only be restored through Desdemona's and Cassio's deaths.[61] And this – a code of behaviour no longer considered valid – is one reason why modern critics rarely regard Othello among Shakespeare's greatest tragedies.[62]

Race

As Ben Okri has said:

If Othello did not begin as a play about race, then its history has made it one.[63][64]

Or, as the Oxford editor Professor Michael Neill summarises it:

Anxieties about the treatment of race in Othello are a recurrent feature of both its critical and performance histories: where they once focused on the supposed scandal of miscegenation, they are nowadays more likely to address the play's complicity in racial stereotyping.[65]

In plot terms, Othello's race serves to mark him as "other".[66] As both a Christian and a black African, Othello is (as scholar Tom McAlindon puts it) both of, and not of, Venice.[67] And actor Paul Robeson considered Othello's colour as essentially secondary, as a way of emphasizing his cultural difference and consequent vulnerability in a society he does not fully understand.[68]

In the world of the play itself, Jyotsna Singh argues that Brabantio's – and others' – objection to Othello, a decorated and respected general, as a suitable husband for Desdemona, a senator's daughter, only makes sense in racist terms: reinforced by the bestial imagery used by Iago in delivering the news.[69] The racist slurs used by Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio in the play suggest that Shakespeare conceived of Othello as a black African:[70] "thicklips";[71] "an old black ram is tupping your white ewe";[72] "you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse";[73] "the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou"[74] - as do things Othello says of himself: "haply for I am black";[75] or "begrimed and black as mine own face".[76][77]

But there is no consensus over Othello's ethnic origin. Strictly a "Moor" signifies a resident of the area covered by ancient Mauretania in northwest Africa – but in Shakespeare's England "Moor" was used with broader connotations: sometimes referring to Africans of all regions, sometimes to Arabic or Islamic peoples beyond Africa, such as those of Turkey and the Middle East, and sometimes to Muslims of any race or location.[78][79]

Racism

"I think this play is racist, and I think it is not."

Scholar Virginia Vaughan[80]

In Shakespeare's main source, Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi, the character Disdemona (the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona) says "I know not what to say of the Moor; he used to be all love towards me; but within these few days he has become another man; and much I fear that I shall prove a warning to young girls not to marry against the wishes of their parents, and that the Italian ladies may learn from me not to wed a man whose nature and habitude of life estrange from us".[81][82]

Similar wording was used in one of the earliest, and most negative, critiques of the play: Thomas Rymer writing in his 1693 A Short View of Tragedy suggested that one of the play's morals was "a caution to all Maidens of Quality how, without their Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors."[83][84] Rymer, however, dryly observed that another such moral might be "a warning to all good Wives, that they look well to their Linnen" - as such his comments should be read within the context of his overarching criticism of the play, as unrealistic and lacking in obvious moral conclusions.

"For this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than the features of men, with a singularity rather to be admired than imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black."

Othello in Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by Charles and Mary Lamb[85]

In the nineteenth century, such well-known writers as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb questioned whether the play could even be called a "true tragedy" when it dramatized the inviolable taboo of a white woman in a relationship with a black man.[86] Coleridge, writing in 1818, argued that Othello could not have been conceived as black:

"Can we imagine [Shakespeare] so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous negro plead royal birth, - at a time, too, when negroes were not known except as slaves? ... and most surely as an English audience was disposed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a disproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to have in the least contemplated."[87]

These sentiments were instrumental in ushering in the so-called "bronze age of Othello" (discussed further under "19th century" below).[88]

Martin Orkin's 1987 essay Othello and the "Plain Face" of Racism acknowledges the racist sentiments in the play; but vindicates Shakespeare who confines these views to discredited characters such as Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio.[89] He concludes that "in its fine scrutiny of the mechanisms underlying Iago's use of racism, and in its rejection of human pigmentation as a means of identifying human worth, the play, as it always has done, continues to oppose racism."[90]

The critical approach to racial issues in the play changed direction with the publication in 1996 by Howard University Press of Othello: New Essays by Black Writers edited by Mythili Kaul, which made clear that black readers and audience members may be experiencing a different play from white ones.[91] Questions about whether Othello is among Shakespeare's greatest plays are rendered irrelevant in the context of discussions about how the play illuminates the racial thinking of Shakespeare's time, and of the present day.[92]

The Nigerian poet Ben Okri in his 1997 A Way of Being Free included several "meditations" on Othello, arguing that because "it is possible that Othello actually is a blackened white man" he is not a fully formed character with a psychology but a "white myth or stereotype of black masculinity".[92] Even with that knowledge, Okri writes, "The black person's response to Othello is more secret, and much more anguished, than can be imagined. It makes you unbearably lonely to know that you can empathise with [white people], but they will rarely empathise with you. It hurts to watch Othello."[93]

From the 1980s, Othello became a role that only black actors performed.[94] However, in 1998 black actor Hugh Quarshie questioned whether the central role in Othello should be played by a black actor, saying:

"If a black actor plays a role written for a white actor does he not risk making racial stereotypes seem legitimate and even true ... does he not encourage the white way, or rather the wrong way, of looking at black men, namely that [they] are over-emotional, excitable and unstable."[95][96]

Scholar Virginia Vaughan made a related point in 2005:

"The danger of a black actor in the title role is that with the loss of the reminders that this is not real but an impersonation, the enactment of Othello's jealous rage and murder of his wife can strike audiences as the embodiment of their own stereotypes of black pathology rather than an actorly performance"[97]

Patriarchy

At Brabantio's first appearance towards the end of the first scene, he asks whether sinister "charms" may have abused "the property of youth and maidenhood" of Desdemona.[99] For him, Desdemona denying her father's right to choose her husband, and choosing a black man for herself, can only be explained by black magic.[100][101]

The notion of women as property pervades the play. Even after her death, Othello says of Desdemona: "Had she been true, / If heaven would make me such another world / Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, / I'd not have sold her for it."[102][103] Also pervasive is the male fear of female sexuality.[104]

The word "whore" appears 14 times in Othello, more often than in any other work by Shakespeare, often used (in Kay Stanton's words) as a "male-initiated inscription onto the female as scapegoat."[105] And it is one of only two of the plays (alongside Timon of Athens) in which the word "whore" is used with specific reference to every named female character.[106] In the world of the play, whorishness is understood as the true and essential nature of women – yet this is constantly shown to be a projection of male imaginations, completely unrelated to the women's perceptions of themselves or to their behavior.[107]

Towards the end of the play, Desdemona's goodness increasingly becomes represented by long-suffering martyrdom, perceived as a longstanding sign of acceptable femininity. In place of the headstrong heroine of the opening acts, Desdemona, increasingly stripped of agency, endures her husband's anger and humiliations – even his striking her in public – and eventually, while dying, tries to exonerate him for his murder of her.[108] Others perceive Desdemona's reaction as one of strength and dignity, not passivity.[109]

In contrast, Emilia ("the only real grown-up in the play", in the words of stage director Michael Attenborough[110]) revolts against misogyny, defying her husband Iago's demands three times in the final scene.[111][112]

The handkerchief

The over-reliance of the plot of Othello upon a trivial prop, the handkerchief, was noted in the play's earliest criticism. The same Thomas Rymer quoted above, in his 1693 A Short View of Tragedy, suggested that the play should better have been called "The Tragedy of the Handkerchief", arguing "the handkerchief is so remote a trifle, no booby on this side Mauritania could make any consequence from it."[113][114]

In spite of Othello's protestations in the first act that no magic was used in his wooing of Desdemona, he later claims magical properties for the handkerchief, his first gift to her.[115][116] A question which has interested critics is whether he himself believes these stories or is using them to pressure or test Desdemona.[117][118] There is certainly a contradiction between Othello's assertion - linked to its supposed magical properties - that his mother received the handkerchief from an Egyptian charmer in Act 3 Scene 4,[119] and his later assertion that his father gave it to his mother, made in Act 4 Scene 2.[120][121] Are we, the audience, intended to believe in the handkerchief's magical properties?[122]

The handkerchief provides many examples of how chance operates in support of Iago's plots: Desdemona loses it just when Iago is in need of evidence of the invented affair; Cassio fails to recognise that it is hers; Cassio gives it to Bianca to copy, who throws it back at him at the very moment when Othello is eavesdropping.[123]

Symbolically the handkerchief represents the bond between Othello and Desdemona, and its loss the breaking of that bond: Othello blames Desdemona for its loss when in fact he casts it aside while she is trying to use it to help him.[124][125] The whiteness of the handkerchief is often taken to represent Desdemona's purity; and the red strawberries blood from her hymen symbolising her virgin marriage.[126][127] In contrast, professor Ian Smith argues that a handkerchief "dyed in mummy"[128] would not be white but black, and therefore symbolic of Othello.[129]

In a 1997 production at the Royal National Theatre, the handkerchief fell to the ground immediately before the interval and remained onstage throughout it, as if – as the reviewer Richard Butler put it – "challenging one of us to pick it up and prevent a tragedy."[130]

Othello and Iago

Othello and Iago are two of the five longest parts in the Shakespeare canon. At 1097 lines, Iago's is the larger of the two: only Hamlet (in Hamlet) and Richard (in Richard III) are longer.[131]

Genre

Othello - although a tragedy - takes elements from other genres, including comedy. For example, there are similarities between Egeus' complaint about his daughter Hermia's lover Lysander, in the first Act of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream:

With cunning hast thou filched my daughter's heartTurned her obedience which is due to meTo stubborn harshness.[132]

And Brabantio's complaint to the Duke in Act 1 of Othello in which he asks Desdemona:

Do you perceive, in all this noble company,Where most you owe obedience?[133][134]

Iago's motivation

The word "honest" is used more than 40 times in the play, sometimes with reference to Desdemona's chastity, but in almost all other cases with reference to Iago, where it has a double meaning - as a condescending term for a social inferior, and as a reference to his supposed truthfulness.[135]

Iago's role is (in Robert Watson's words) "overdetermined in renaissance dramatic convention": he is partly the scheming Machiavel of Renaissance tragedy, partly the vengeful malcontent of revenge tragedy, partly the instigator of jealousy in domestic tragedy and partly the devil incarnate of morality plays.[136]

The character's own motives are never made clear, because Iago himself expresses too many motives:[137]

• He hates the Moor: often with reference to Othello's race.[138][139]
• He is angry that Cassio has been promoted to Lieutenant, over himself.[140][141]
• He suspects Othello of having slept with Emilia.[142][141][143]
• He suspects Cassio of having slept with Emilia.[144][145]
• He himself is in love with Desdemona.[146][147]
• He envies Cassio's virtues.[148][149]

These led Samuel Taylor Coleridge to refer to Iago's "motive-hunting of motive-less Malignity".[150]

Some critics have suggested other motives: psychologist Ernest Jones's suggestion that Iago may be motivated by a repressed homosexual desire for Othello has been influential in subsequent performances of the role.[151]

As Robert Watson summarises it: "The seemingly endless critical debate about Iago's motivation reflects a truth, rather than a confusion, about the play. ... If it is disturbing to suspect that a devil may be lurking around us in human form, perhaps within our most trusted friend, it is even more disturbing to realize that this devil may be ... a reflection of our own destructive tendencies."[152]

Ultimately Iago provides no answer – refusing, at the end of the play, to reveal his motive: "Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word."[153][154]

Double time scheme

Othello has a double time scheme – meaning that the timeframe of the play does not contain enough time for its action.[155] Its action is continuous from Othello and Desdemona's wedding night, except for the voyage from Venice to Cyprus (during which Cassio and Desdemona are not together) and the time in Cyprus covers an estimated 33 hours.[156] Yet this short timeframe does not allow any time for the supposed affair between Desdemona and Cassio to have happened.[157] In support of the short time scheme is the continuous nature of the action: the fleet arrives in Cyprus in the afternoon and the plot against Cassio proceeds that evening into the early morning; Cassio resolves to seek Desdemona's help the following morning, and does so, commencing the long "temptation scene"[158] by the end of which Othello has resolved to kill Desdemona and has ordered Iago to attempt to kill Cassio, all of which happens that same night.[159] And this urgency is underlined by the text: in particular's Iago's concern that if Othello compares notes with anyone else it will become clear that Iago is playing one character against another.[156][160]

But there is also a long time scheme. Iago persuades Othello that Desdemona and Cassio have "the act of shame a thousand times committed";[161] Emilia says Iago "hath a hundred times"[162] asked her to steal the handkerchief; Bianca complains Cassio has been away from her "a week";[163] news of the Turkish defeat needs time to reach Venice then Lodovico needs time to reach Cyprus;[164] and by Act 4 Roderigo (who sold all his land at the end of Act 1)[165] has already squandered all his money.[166][167]

Shakespeare's source story in Cinthio takes place entirely in the long time scheme: Shakespeare appears to have introduced the shorter time scheme to increase dramatic tension, while also introducing moments where Iago's plot could fall apart – for example if Emilia had given an honest answer to Desdemona's "Where should I lose that handkerchief?"[168] or if Roderigo had chosen to denounce Iago.[167]

The discovery of a double time scheme has been ascribed to articles written by John Wilson in Blackwood's Magazine in 1849 and 1850, although references to the problem predate that.[169] The whole question is sometimes rejected as "academic nit-picking".[169] (Director Michael Attenborough, asked about it in an interview, replied "I strongly suspect Shakespeare didn't think about it very much."[170]) And as Michael Neill points out, many of the problems disappear if one supposes that Othello believed Cassio and Desdemona's affair had commenced prior to Othello and Desdemona's elopement.[171] Neill summarises the issue as "no more than a particularly striking side-effect of the general indifference to naturalistic handling of time and space that Shakespeare shared with other dramatists of the period."[172]