Othello

1. Othello Second lecture

2. The “Othello music” cont. • See his “love aria” to Desdemona when they meet on Cyprus: II, 1, 182ff. • And Iago’s reply: “But I’ll set down the pegs that make this music.” • And the poetry of his soldiering in Othello’s farewell to his profession: III, 3, 347ff. • Or 453, where the beauty of the lines gives a kind of horror to his vow of constancy in his “bloody thoughts.” • The effect of giving Othello such eloquence? • And what happens to the “Othello music” at IV, 1, 35ff?

3. Othello and Desdemona • What to make of their love/marriage? • “She loved me for the dangers I had passed.” • “And I loved her that she did pity them.” • And what she says at I, 3, 248-254. • “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind.” • Doesn’t cancel out the sexual attraction, but does it make it more complex, more brainy? • Do we doubt the potent character of their love? • Her boldness in eloping with him is clearly a factor in our judgment of that. • She’s taking an immense chance; clearly no meek Venetian girl. • But each of these elements is challenged -- by Iago’s formulations. • So how do we judge the matter?

4. “Motiveless malignancy” • Coleridge’s description of Iago. • We noted that Shakespeare subtracted motivation from his source in Giraldi Cintio. • Iago does of course express some motivation: • His being passed over for the position of lieutenant, the first thing he mentions. • In soliloquy at I, 3, he says “And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/ He has done my office.” • Then admits he has no idea if it’s true, but will act as if it’s true “for mere suspicion.” • But how likely does it seem that Othello has been having an affair with Emilia? • No one else ever mentions it. • How much of this “motivation” seems plausible or sufficient for what Iago does?

5. “Motiveless malignancy” cont. • Besides Othello and Desdemona, we see Iago destroying Roderigo, killing Emilia, ruining Cassio’s reputation. • Others? Poisoning Brabantio’s mind. Mocking Bianca. • He’s the spokesman for and the purveyor of the racism against Othello we saw in the first scene. • And he turns things inside out: tells Roderigo that Desdemona fell in love with Othello “for bragging and telling her fantastical lies” (II, 2, 222). • And he cannot find the words to praise a good woman – Desdemona? – in the little game he plays with her and Emilia at II, 1, 148ff. • His language: the opposite of the “Othello music.” • Interestingly, Sh. seems uninterested in Iago’s motivation. Iago seems to represent a sort of evil pure and simple.

6. Who/what is Iago? • At end, when Iago is brought back, under arrest, Othello says, “I look down towards his feet – but that’s a fable./ If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee” (V, 2, 286f) • And he tries, but doesn’t kill him: “I bleed, sir, but not killed.” • Othello calls him a “demidevil” who has ensnared his soul and body. • But Iago refuses to answer and retreats into silence: “From this time forth I will never speak word” (l. 304) • Obviously Iago is not the devil. • But is there a kind of negation in him? • Back to I, 1: “It is as sure as you are Roderigo,/ Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.” • And “I am not what I am” (l. 64). • Which makes no sense . . . • . . . but expresses a kind of nothingness in him. • There was a theory of evil that the renaissance inherited from medieval philosophy that called evil the “privation of good,” the total lack of goodness. • At one level Iago seems to be the human privation of goodness, a person of total cynicism, total malevolence.

7. Iago as “Vice” • We notice that Iago is the character who most often speaks in soliloquy (end of I, 1; end of II, 1; II, 3, 324ff, and 369ff; III, 3, 321-329; IV, 1, 44-47 (perhaps an aside?), 93-99), V, 1, 11-22. • By comparison, Othello has only a couple of soliloquies, only one major one (V, 2, 1-22). • But more than just soliloquies, Iago’s speeches take the audience into his confidence. • He seems to engage the audience at II, 3, 324, as if he’s reading our minds . . . • . . . and making us in a sense complicit in what he’s doing. • Clips of Branagh and of Bob Hoskins. • Which followed the tradition of the Vice character in the allegorical morality plays that were a part of the theater in England from the 15th century to the latter half of the 16th century.

8. The Vice • In the morality plays, the Vice was a character who came onstage to tempt the central character. • Usually quite funny – lots of capering about, sometimes singing, lots of joking, scatalogical humor. • And most often in disguise as far as the characters onstage are concerned. • Always established a close relationship with the audience, often addressing audience directly. • Only the audience can see what the Vice is doing. • Purpose of the Vice is to corrupt the main character, to draw him (yes, always him) to destruction, to damnation. • The moralities were thus a kind of psychomachia, that is, a battle for the soul. • Sometimes the Virtue character saved the hero, sometimes the Vice drew him to ruin, sometimes to death and damnation.

9. Iago and Cassio • What do we make of Cassio? • Iago tells us he’s a Florentine, and so also something of an outsider to Venice. • Full of “courtesy,” or courtliness. • Somewhat idealizing? See II, 1, 74ff. • See how Iago tries to draw Cassio to possible lust for Desdemona: II, 3, 14ff. • Which Cassio parries and rejects. • And Iago immediately shifts his ground. • And tempts Cassio to drunkenness. • This time successfully – and enables us to see the non-courtly side of Cassio. • It becomes a miniature morality play . . . • . . . on the dangers and result of drunkenness. • And Cassio’s career and reputation appear ruined. • And so Iago has performed, in miniature, the role of the Vice.

10. Iago and Othello • Iago’s temptation of Othello: one long scene, III, 3: Othello’s “psychomachia,” the contest for his soul. • Which implicates theater itself, since theater is a matter of appearances. • Iago aims at a totalizing of Othello’s understanding, experience. • His entire experience of love is falsified and overturned. • Which Iago accomplishes – except for one moment: • III, 3, 277: “Look where she comes./ If she be false, O then heaven mocks itself./ I’ll not believe’t!” • For this one moment, Othello seems poised on the fulcrum of good and evil, heaven and hell. • And the next action seems decisive – and occurs without Iago.

11. The handkerchief • At III, 3, 284, Othello performs an act of Iago-like fantasy: he pretends a “pain” on his forehead, that is, that he has grown a cuckhold’s horns. • Which Desdemona, innocent of his fantasy, tries to touch, to bind with her handkerchief – • A figure of health-giving love, trying to touch his head/mind. • And Othello’s hand, pushes hers away, causing the handkerchief to fall. • And he forbids her to pick it up. • Thus forbidding her to touch his head and mind and insuring that the handkerchief will become a malevolent thing. • This is a moment at the dead center of the play.

12. Othello + Iago • Othello asks for “proof” – is “proof” of goodness/honesty ever possible? (III, 3, 383ff.) • Rather than “proof,” Iago feeds him with only more fantasy: • The fantasy image of Desdemona’s sexual relation with Cassio and the handkerchief as love token. • Which Othello accepts without question. • And vows himself to Iago’s love. • Which Iago accepts in what appears a mock marriage vow: Othello kneels at l. 460. • And Iago too kneels and vows himself to Othello. • “Now thou art my lieutenant.” • And Iago replies, “I am thine own forever.” • The “marriage” essentially replaces and cancels Othello’s marriage to Desdemona.

13. The handkerchief again • At III, 4, Othello makes of the handkerchief a fetish. • That is, an object of superstition, of conjuration. • Instead of a gift of love, a neutral object that takes its meaning from the act of gift, • It becomes an object with alleged intrinsic power. • “There’s magic in the web of it.” • A 200-year-old sibyl wove it of silk from holy silk worms, and died it in “mummy” from maidens’ hearts. • Its effect is to compel love (which cannot be compelled?). • Desdemona recoils in horror from what Othello has now made of the handkerchief: “Then would to God I had never seen’t!”