Othello the Moor

Written at the height of his literary powers in 1604-05, Othello is considered one of Shakespeare's "big 4" tragedies: Othello, King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth. Its action begins in the bustling urban environment of Venice but ends in the privacy of Othello and Desdemona's bedroom on the island of Cyprus, where Othello has been sent to repel a Turkish threat that never materializes. The dramatic center of the play is Act III, Scene iii (3.3), where the once proud military leader Othello falls apart under the skillful torment of Iago and vows to kill his wife Desdemona for allegedly cuckolding him. So powerful is the last scene of the play (5.2), where Othello strangles/smothers her, that an occasional theater-goer throughout history has even run on stage to try to stop this brutal killing before it happens.

Almost all scholars of the play identify Iago's jealousy or Venetian/European/human racism as two of the leading themes of the play. Taking my cue from Jane Adamson's helpful Othello as Tragedy: Some Problems of Judgment and Feeling (Cambridge UP, 1980), I am convinced that Othello ranges across broader territory than either jealousy or racism. The important issue that Shakespeare explores, in my judgment, is the variety of human reactions to debilitating loss. Othello's jealousy is just one, albeit the most prominent, of those reactions. In this regard we can draw connections between Othello and the Book of Job, probably one of Western Civilization's most vivid and mature considerations of the problem of pain. Thus, the play can be seen as the exploration of strategies to come to grips with unexpected and severe injury. Four stories are powerfully presented.

1) Iago. The play opens with Iago's dejection at being passed over for promotion to be Othello's lieutenant. Cassio, the "bean counter," got the job instead of Iago the experienced soldier. While lamenting that promotions now seem to go by "letter and affection" (i.e. who you know) rather than by competence, Iago says quite philosophically that "there's no remedy (1.1.35)." He just has to accept his loss. But, of course, he does not, and that becomes the driving force of the play. His strategy of dealing with loss is to strike back with vengeance and deception against Othello, who has humiliated him by passing over him for promotion.

2) Brabantio. He is Desdemona's father, a distinguished Venetian Senator, and a person who alternates between rage and shame because of Desdemona's elopement with Othello. He believes that their union is contrary to nature, both to Desdemona's shy and retiring nature and to what we might call the "nature of things." He can only surmise that Othello, the Moor, has worked secret potions or magic on her to get her to leave him. He tries to retaliate by bringing the issue to the attention of the Venetian Senate, but they do not support him in his contention that the Moor illicitly stole his daughter. His strategy for dealing with this rebuff and shame is to go home and die.

3) Cassio is the man who got the lieutenancy instead of Iago. Cassion was a Florentine and, instead of being a career soldier like Iago, was more of an accountant, more acquainted with "bookish theoric" than the rough and tumble of warfare. Iago plots to bring him down along with Othello, and to that end dragoons the gullible Roderigo to "brave" Cassio while he is guarding the walls of Cyprus and cause civil discord. Cassio is drunk when Roderigo baits him, and he overreacts, leading Othello to fire ("cashier") him on the spot. Instead of either seeking vengeance or laying down to die, he will seek reinstatement through the good offices of Desdemona. Iago will "help" him get an audience with Desdemona for this purpose.

4) Finally, there is Othello. He will be possessed by jealousy because of ideas planted in his mind by Iago and unusual conduct by Desdemona herself (3.3)--which lends some credibility to the notion that Cassio is sleeping with Desdemona. Though Othello's jealousy and its horrendous results is no doubt the chief theme from 3.3 until the end, the word "jealousy" isn't used in the play until one of Iago's soliloquy's in Act II (2.1.301), and is not explored at all until the great dramatic center of the play, 3.3. While Iago's rejection leads him to retaliate, Brabantio's leads him to collapse internally and die, and Cassio's causes him to seek redress, Othello's will lead him to vengeance against both Desdemona and himself. The thesis is arguable that when he kills Desdemona he is really trying to excise something in his own life. Therefore, the four great "losses" which Shakespeare explores are rejection from promotion, rejection of family (father), rejection from service and rejection in love. The four "strategies" which result are vengeance against the perpetrator (Iago), inner collapse (Brabantio), redress through personal channels (Cassio) and vengeance against the self (Othello). Each one of these losses and strategies for dealing with loss is dealt with extensively, while the focus is on Iago and Othello. Throughout the play, Shakespeare enables us to consider the question of how loss affects us and how we respond to it.

I have felt for a long time that some of Shakespeare's language in Othello is so powerful and so densely-packed that the only way to really study him is to memorize the words. To that end, when I began to study Othello closely in 2003 I committed 5.2, the powerful culminating scene, to memory. There is nothing like learning the precise flow of Shakespeare's poetry to help us become more adept at thinking and speaking, and to feel confident that we, too, can learn to express eloquently and accurately the nature of our own feelings and thoughts.

[Note on the text. Othello is available in the Folio version of 1623 as well as a Quarto edition of 1622. The latter was revised and published in 1630, 1655, 1681, 1687 and 1695. The Folio version has about 160 lines that do not appear in the Quarto, and the Quarto has about a dozen lines absent from the Folio. There are around 1000 textual variants between the two, though most of them are fairly minor. There is no "scholarly consensus" as to what lay behind the Quarto or Folio versions or which is the "better" text. Suffice it to say that when a matter of interpretation is at stake, I will state which version I use. I follow the text as printed in the Riverside Shakespeare (2nd Edition) here, and direct the reader to the brief "Note on the Text" at page 1288 of that work for further discussion and bibliography.]