Dr Bill Long and William R. Long and Othello and Job and Shakespeare and Book of Job and the great sufferer and Job 1 and the Pontic Sea

Twin realities continue to tug at Othello's psyche after he quizzes Emilia about his wife's fidelity (4.2.1-19). On the one hand he has set his mind like flint against Desdemona. Like the great Pontic Sea, whose icy current ever flows into the Hellespont and beyond and never returns, so Othello's chilly anger continues to issue forth from him, never to be recalled (cf. 3.3.453ff.). His breast has turned to stone and striking it hurts his hand (4.1.182-183). Frigid resolve fills him.

But that isn't his only preoccupation. The same heart that is hard as stone is also soft as satin: "O, the world hath not a sweeter creature," he softly intones (4.1.183-184)." Tension roils him and surges in his breast when the two incompatible notions compete for his attention. It finally gives way to tears, an expression of grief, and grief is something Iago calls "a passion most unsuiting such a man (4.1.77)." In his teary state he speaks one of his most moving speeches to Desdemona.

The Tone of the Speech (4.2.47-64)

The structure of the speech is as follows: Othello speaks two long contrart-to-fact "if" clauses ("Had it pleas'd heaven" beginning in 4.2.47 and "to make me" beginning in 4.2.53) stressing the possibilities of extreme suffering which are taken from the example of the great biblical sufferer Job. Then he finishes the "if" clauses with similar endings: 'I could have endured it.' Finally, he concludes by a statement that takes his suffering to an even deeper level than Job's ("But there," beginning in 4.2.57), which explains why he has completely fallen apart. Each subsection deserves scrutiny.

We begin with Othello's words:

"Had it pleas'd heaven/ To try me with affliction, had they rain'd/ All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head,/ Steep'd me in poverty to the very lips,/ Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,/ I should have found in some place of my soul/ A drop of patience (4.2.47-53)."

Each phrase has a rich biblical resonance. Job was struck with the multiple afflictions of loss of cattle, servants and children in Job 1. In Job 2 he endured an outbrea of "loathsome sores" from "the sole of his foot to the crown of his head (Job 2:7)." All his wealth had been taken away from him, and he was plunged into grief and anger. Job's utmost hopes were also dashed: "My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me (17:1)," and "My days are past, my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart (17:11)." The biblical tradition stresses the patience of Job in such circumstances ("You have heard of the endurance of Job--James 5:11, see Billphorism 2-- and Job 1:21, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."), and Othello stresses that he could likewise have endured that kind of suffering.*

[*However, the biblical tradition of Job as patient sufferer really is not true to the entire text of Job. Beginning in Job 3, Job is anything but patient. He screams his pain in Job 3; he feels and expresses the depth of his anguish, anger, bitterness, resentment, grief, shame and sense of betrayal in Job 3-31, and he attacks his friends relentlessly during his suffering. The Book of Job is not about patience at all, in fact, but is about the way that suffering digs craters into our emotional psyche and the possibility for regaining hope even after suffering has entered life in its vicious way. See my essays on the Book of Job for more detailed expositions.]

Thus Othello is saying that if he had faced what Job faced, he could have endured it. Though Shakespeare was probably thinking only of his kinship with Job in patiently being able to face suffering, in fact Job didn't face his suffering with much patience. Othello, therefore, would have even been superior to Job in endurance.

Dealing with Humiliation

Othello then explores an emotion that is even deeper in the soul, closer to the springs of personal identity: shame.

"but, alas, to make me/ The fixed figure for the time of scorn/ To point his slow unmoving finger at!/ Yet could I bear that too, well, very well (4.2.54-56)."

First a brief reference to a textual problem. The reading "unmoving finger" is from the 1622 Quarto. The 1623 Folio has "and moving finger." I am not convinced that there is much difference between the two. "Slow and moving finger" would be suggestive of a clock's minute (or even hour) hand that inches across the face of time. "Slow unmoving finger" might suggest a hand or arm that had slowly moved into place and was then motionless. Both images stress the unerring, unrelieved focus of the "finger" on Othello.

But it is the content of what Othello suggests that is arresting. He is saying that even if he is exposed before everyone, humiliated, a figure of scorn, a shameful creature, and even if that humiliation is not simply shown to others as a glimpse or glimmer, but is a shame that is always exposed to light, always bearing witness to the disgrace of Othello, he could not only bear it but bear it "well, very well."

His references to shame also have deep resonance with the story of Job. In his most poignant final soliloquy (Job 29-31), Job reviews the contrast between what his life was in former days and what it has become. The overriding emotion gripping him now is shame. "But now they make sport of me, those who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock (Job 30:1)."

But unlike Othello, Job cannot bear the weight of this shame. He must imagine in his mind a time when "They (those who scorn him) are driven out from society," and "in the gulliles of wadis they must live, in holes in the ground, and in the rocks (Job 30:6)." Job has to have revenge on those who delight in his misfortune. But Othello says he would not do so. "Yet could I bear that too, well, very well (4.2.56)."

What really upends Othello's life, however, is not the Joban type of suffering, which he could endure, but yet a more wrenching kind, which will be described in the next essay.

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