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OTHELLO
THE MOOR OF VENICE
by William Shakespeare
"O, beware, of jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” (III, iii)
Among the greatest of Shakespeare’s plays, Othello is a searing tragedy of love turned into hate by the murdering poisons of jealousy. Experience National Players' energized exploration of this classic text
Synopsis of Othello
Othello, a Moorish General employed by the Venetian state, has secretly married Desdemona, the daughter of Brabantio, a Venetian senator. Iago, a second Lieutenant in Othello's army, nurses a private grudge against Othello who had passed him over to promote Cassio for Lieutenant. Angry over this, Iago decides to destroy Othello. Accompanied in this plan is Roderigo, a suitor of Desdemona, who Iago has promised to help in gaining Desdemona’s love. Iago brings Brabantio to the Senate where, learning that his daughter has secretly married the Moor, Brabantio disowns her.
Othello is immediately ordered to the Venetian colony of Cyprus to repel a threatened Turkish invasion. Desdemona goes with him, accompanied by Iago’s wife Emilia, and Othello's lieutenant Cassio. Once in Cyprus, Iago plants the suspicion in Othello's mind that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with Cassio. He orchestrates a drunken brawl for which Cassio is blamed, causing Othello to dismiss Cassio from service. Iago urges Cassio to seek reinstatement through Desdemona, but attempting to help Cassio, her pleas begin to convince Othello that she is adulterous. Through Emilia, Iago acquires a treasured handkerchief from Desdemona and uses it as 'proof' of the affair. Overwhelmed by jealousy, Othello orders Iago to kill Cassio and strangles Desdemona himself. Emilia discloses her husband's plot and Othello, tormented by grief and remorse, kills himself. Iago, after murdering his own wife, is left to the justice of the Venetian state.
The plot of Shakespeare's Othello is largely taken from Giraldi Cinthio's Gli
Hecatommithi, a tale of love, jealousy, and betrayal; however, the characters, themes, and attitudes of the works are vastly different, with Shakespeare's play being a more involved study of human nature and psychology. There are, however, a few deviations from Shakespeare's source, one of which being the motivations of the Iago figure. Cithio's Iago was driven to revenge when Desdemona refused to have an affair with him; Iago's motivations are not nearly so plain in Shakespeare's version.
Othello also touches upon a major issue in Europe of this time period; the
intermingling of Muslim religion and culture with the West. Written just a century after the Muslims were driven out of Spain as a part of the Reconquista, there are obvious threads of hostility within the play about Othello's Moorish origins, and his differences in religion and culture. The hostility between the West and the East is also shown in the conflict between Venice and the Turks; the Christian Venetians want to protect Christendom from the influence of the Muslim Turks, and ironically, Moorish Othello is the one sent to complete this mission.
Othello is considered to be a prime example of Aristotelian drama; it focuses upon a very small cast of characters, one of the smallest used in Shakespeare, has few distractions from the main plot arc, and concentrates on just a few themes, like jealousy. As such, it is one of the most intense and focused plays Shakespeare wrote, and has also enjoyed a great amount of popularity from the Jacobean period to the present day.
The character of Iago is a variation on the Vice figure found in earlier morality plays; he deviates from this model because of his lack of a clear motivation, and because of his portrayal as a very malignant figure. However, Iago is less of a character than a changeable device for the plot, and in this sense, he is a clear descendant of the omnipresent "vice" figure. Iago's great cunning, manipulative abilities, and almost supernatural perception mean that he is a very formidable foe, and this makes Othello's
fall seem even more inevitable and tragic.
One reason for the overwhelming popularity of the play throughout the ages is that it focuses on two people who defied society in order to follow their own hearts. Shakespeare scholar Walter Cohen cites the popularity of Othello during times of great rebellion and upheaval; the play was most popular during the European wars of the mid-19th century, the fall of Czarist Russia, and also during World War II in America. These productions tended to emphasize the nobility and love of Othello and Desdemona, and made their fall seem more tragic and ill-deserved.
(From The Norton Shakespeare, introduction to Othello by Walter Cohen)
Appearance vs. reality: Especially relevant to the issue of Iago's character; for although he is called "honest" by almost everyone in the play, he is treacherous, deceitful, and manipulative. Also applies to Desdemona, as Othello believes that she is deceitful and impure, although she is really blameless and innocent.
Race: Race is an extremely important theme; it has a great amount of influence on how people regard Othello for those who distrust black people merely on looks never like Othello, like Iago. Race also determines how Othello perceives himself as a rough outsider, though he is nothing of the sort. Othello's race sets him apart, and makes him very self-conscious; it makes him work hard and look carefully after his reputation, so he is regarded as equal to the white people that surround him.
Pride: Especially important with regards to Othello; Othello is defensively proud of himself and his achievements, and especially proud of the honorable appearance he presents. The allegations of Desdemona's affair hurt his pride even more than they inflame his vanity and jealousy; he wants to appear powerful, accomplished, and moral at every possible instance, and when this is almost denied to him, his wounded pride becomes especially powerful.
Magic: Usually has something to do with Othello's heritage. Othello is charged with using magic to woo Desdemona, merely because he is black, and therefore, "pagan." Yet, Othello does have real magic, in the words he uses and the stories he tells. Magic also reappears when Desdemona's handkerchief cannot be found; Othello has too much trust in the symbolism and charm of the handkerchief, which is why the object is so significant to him.
Order vs. chaos: As Othello begins to abandon reason and language, chaos takes over. His world begins to be ruled by chaotic emotions and very shady allegations, with order pushed to one side. This chaos rushes him into tragedy, and once Othello has sunk into it, he is unable to stop his fate from taking him over.
Self-knowledge: Othello's lack of self-knowledge makes him easy prey for Iago. Once Iago inflames Othello's jealousy and gets the darker aspects of Othello's nature into action, there is nothing Othello can do to stop it, since he cannot even admit that he has these darker traits.
Honesty: Although the word "honest" is usually used in an ironic way throughout the text, most characters in the play go through a crisis of learning who and who not to trust. Most of them, unfortunately, trust in Iago's honesty; this leads to the downfall of many characters, as this trust in Iago's "honesty" became a crucial contributor to their undoing.
Misrepresentation: This also allows Iago to gain trust and manipulate other people; misrepresentation means that Iago is able to appear to be "honest," in order to deceive and misdirect people. Othello also misrepresents himself, as being simple and plain-spoken; this is not for deceptive effect, but also is used to present an image of himself which is not exactly the truth.
Good vs. Evil: Though there is much gray area between these two, Iago's battle against Othello and Cassio certainly counts as an embodiment of this theme. Iago and his evil battle to corrupt and turn the flawed natures of other characters, and he does succeed to some extent. By the end of the play, neither has won, as Desdemona and Emilia are both dead, and Iago revealed and punished.
Although the play is very much concerned with racial difference, the protagonist's specific race is not clearly indicated by Shakespeare. Othello is referred to as a "Moor"; for Elizabethan Englishmen, this term could refer to the Arabs of North Africa, or to the people we would now call "black" (that is, people of sub-Saharan African descent). In his other plays, Shakespeare had previously depicted an Arabic Moor (in The Merchant of Venice) and a black Moor (in Titus Andronicus). In Othello, however, the references to the character's physical features do not settle the question of which race Shakespeare envisaged (Othello's line "Haply for I am black" does not
help, since 'black' could simply mean 'swarthy' for Elizabethans). Popular consensus among average readers and theatre directors today leans towards the "black" interpretation, and Arabic Othellos have been rare.
Signifier / Signified
Othello subverts traditional theatrical symbolism. A contemporary audience would have seen black skin as a sign of barbarism or Satanism as Aaron is in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus: a "swarth Cimmerian... of body's hue spotted, detested and abominable". A white soldier would have been understood as a symbol of honesty. Iago indeed actively tries to convince other characters that Othello is a "barbary horse" that "covers" Desdemona, or a "black ram", horned and animalistically "tupping" her; and that he himself is truthful to a fault. In Othello, however, the black character is "noble" and Christian; and the white soldier is a scheming liar.
Othello thus constantly challenges the link between a physical signifier and what is signified by it. For example, Iago – whose job as standard-bearer is to hold a sign of loyalty to Othello – says, of pretending to like the Moor: "Though I do hate him as I do hell pains/ Yet for necessity of present life/ I must show out a flag and sign of love/ Which is indeed but sign". Desdemona, too, sees a distinction between signifier and signified, saying she "saw Othello's visage in his mind" – not in his actual face. The play thus argues that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary; the
plot itself hinging on the significance of an utterly "made-up" sign – a handkerchief made to signify infidelity.
When Iago tells Othello that Desdemona is an adulteress, Othello cries "Her name, that was as fresh/ As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black/ As mine own face" – leading to a suicidal conclusion: "If there be cords or knives/ Poison or fire, or suffocating streams/ I'll not endure it."
White / Black
The most basic aspects of traditional Western symbolism - that white signifies purity and black signifies evil – are thus repeatedly challenged in Othello. One example is in the character of Bianca. Her name in Italian means "white", yet, as Iago tells the audience, her name is again "but sign" of purity, as she is in fact a "hussy, that by selling her desires buys herself bread and clothes". Ironically, just before Desdemona pleads with Othello that she is not a whore, Bianca too protests to an accuser that she is "no strumpet, but of life as honest/ As you that thus abuse me" – leading the audience to realize that, just as with Desdemona, the only evidence anyone has that Bianca is a whore is Iago's word, and Cassio's (he calls her a "customer," whore).
Iago / Othello
Although the title suggests that the tragedy belongs primarily to Othello, Iago also plays an undeniably central role. For one, he speaks more lines than Othello. And some critics (most recently perhaps Harold Bloom) have captured Iago as the catalyst, as well as the veritable protagonist; after all, it is Iago who manipulates all other characters at his will, trapping them in an intricate net of lies. Other critics, most notably in the later 20th century (after F. R. Leavis), have focused on Othello. Some argue that his honor is his undoing; others address the hints of instability in his person (in Act IV Scene i, for example, he falls "into an epilepsy").
Why do we still perform and read Shakespeare’s plays while other plays have fallen into obscurity? It is not because his plays are the most well structured pieces nor is it because he is always the finest poet or most original thinker in the English language. Rather, it is his ability to empathize with and understand all of humanity in a way that is never judgmental which attracts us to his work. We often see ourselves in Shakespeare’s vital characters. Sometimes our own emotions seem more aptly expressed in his words than in our own.
It follows then that Shakespeare’s plays do not have to be produced only in
Elizabethan setting. Often, changing a play’s locale to a more familiar one helps illuminate certain aspects of the play by bringing the audiences closer to the action. Indeed, examples of Shakespeare set in other time periods are innumerable. Macbeth has been done in a contemporary corporate boardroom. The Royal Shakespeare Company placed The Merry Wives of Windsor in the 1950s and showed Mistress Ford and Mistress Page blithely chatting in pedal-pushers with their heads under huge hair dyers at the beauty parlor! The Taming of the Shrew has been done in a raucous Commedia dell’ Arte style and in a 1930s Italian mafia setting.
“Put money in your purse”
“The beast with two backs”
“but I think it is their husbands faults if wives to fall”
“Beware, my lord, of Jealousy. It is the green-eyed monster that doth mock the meat it feeds on.”
“Put out the light and put out the light”
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