OTHELLO - TarvinLit



OTHELLO

This handout was prepared by Dr. William Tarvin, a retired professor of literature. Please visit my free website . Over 500 works of American and British literature are analyzed there for free.

Note: This handout uses the following text: David Bevington, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 4th ed. New York: Longman, 1997.

I. DATE

1. Written in 1603 or 1604.

2. Editions:

1622 quarto: It is an acting version with the long speeches left out.

1623 folio: It has 190 lines not in the quarto.

II. SOURCES

1. Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, published in 1565.

2. There is no translation in English known, so Shakespeare probably used a French translation or the original Italian version.

3. “Cinthio’s account may have been based on an actual incident occurring in Venice around 1508” (Bevington A-45).

III. THEMES

A. JEALOUSY

1. The major theme is the “destruction of love through jealousy” (Bevington 1117).

2. It is his jealousy which leads to Othello’s downfall.

3. Iago is the one who plants the seed of jealousy in Othello’s mind by telling Othello to “beware” “of jealousy,” a “green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on” (3.3.178-180).

4. Othello’s immediate response is that he has never been jealous because to be jealous would mean he doubts the virtue of a wife who, he asserts, had shown her devotion to him by choosing him over many suitors and even defying her father (3.3.190-206).

5. Desdemona also avers that Othello has not a bone of jealousy in him: Her husband is “made of no such baseness / as jealous creatures are” (3.4.27-28).

6. While the idealistic husband and wife succumb partly through their denial of the possibility of jealousy, Emilia, a more realistic character, easily perceives Othello’s manifestations of jealousy (3.3.29, 100).

7. Othello does not cite his personal jealousy as the reason for his killing; he says he kills Desdemona out of “justice” (5.2.17): By punishing her for her adultery, he believes he can save the moral order and restore love and faith.

8. However, in his last speech, just before his suicide, Othello recognizes that Desdemona’s death was a result of the clash of idealism with realism regarding jealousy: He speaks of “one not easily jealous [the idealistic view] but, being wrought [the realistic view], / Perplexed in the extreme [killed the one he loved out of jealousy]” (5.2.355-356).

B. EVIL

1. Bevington says the play has a “fascination with evil in its most virulent and universal aspect” (1117).

2. The play may be considered a religious allegory of good vs. evil. It presents a conflict of good and evil, in which Othello (weak humanity) opts for evil and destroys goodness through devilish prompting (Bevington 1119).

3. In Western civilization, evil is usually presented as resulting from a lack of knowledge or of education. Thus it is hard to image someone who loves evil for its own sake and who hates good simply because it is good.

4. Iago does, however. His aim is to destroy whatever is good in his world.

5. Anyone can destroy another through that person’s weakness. The challenge is to destroy through one’s strength, Iago brags.

6. Iago says he will turn Desdemona’s strength—her virtue of goodness—into evil, thus creating a net which shall ensnare all of them: “So will I turn her virtue into pitch [evil], / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmesh them all” (2.3.354-356).

7. Concerning evil, the main characters contrast:

a. Iago appears good (“honest”) on the outside, but is evil within. In that hypocritical sense, he is diabolic.

b. Desdemona is good without and good within, making her appear angelic.

c. However, Othello is more complex: At first, he is good (“noble”) in his outward actions, but after Iago has seduced him, he becomes evil in his outward actions (as when he openly strikes Desdemona); nevertheless, he never entirely loses his basic inner goodness.

Neither devil nor angel, Othello becomes a prototype of “everyman” (every human being caught in the middle state of the Great Chain of Being between God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, and Good and Evil).

C. APPEARANCE VS. REALITY

1. As the above discussion of good and evil suggests, there is a difference between really being good and only appearing as good. Thus appearance vs. reality is a third major theme of Othello, manifesting itself not only in the three major characters, but also in the play’s minor characters.

2. First, Othello is deceived by appearances, judging Iago to be honest and Desdemona false.

3. Othello, who in his earliest appearances keeps his outside actions consistent with his inside thought, changes once he comes under the control of Iago.

4. His goodnight to Desdemona (4.3) conveys outwardly that he is husband soon going to his wife’s bed, when in reality he knows he is a murderer going to kill his wife.

5. Secondly, Iago says his outward appearance has no bearing on his inner reality: “I am not what I am” (1.1.67).

6. To Iago, reality is vice; appearance is virtue. Iago says of Othello, “The Moor is of a free and open nature” (1.3.400).

This is not a compliment, for Iago believes such a nature is unreal, “That thinks men honest that but seem to be so” (1.3.401).

7. Thus, Iago appears “honest” on the outside, but inside he is diabolical.

8. Only Desdemona keeps her outside and inside the same: She is good and honest without, which mirrors her goodness and honesty within.

9. Other characters are one thing without and another within. For instance, on the outside Emilia is common clay, but this outward appearance conceals a total devotion to Desdemona.

10. Roderigo is a fine young gentleman on the outside, but inside he is rotten to the core.

11. Cassio is the profligate with a pure heart, just as Bianca is the prostitute with the heart of gold, their outer appearances disguising their inner reality.

D. MICROCOSM, MACROCOSM, AND THE POLITICAL SPHERE

1. POLITICAL SPHERE: The play opens with political disorder: The attack of the Turks on Cyrus.

In the social and familial sphere, it portrays father against daughter and husband against wife.

2. MACROCOSM: There is a reference to elemental chaos returning again: “And when I love thee not,” Othello says, “Chaos is come again” (3.2. 99-100). The great sea storm is used ironically. Usually such natural upheavals in Shakespeare’s tragedies indicate personal disaster, but in Othello the storm seems to bring happiness: Othello tells Desdemona, “If after every tempest come such calms” (2.1.184).

At the death of Desdemona, Othello says there should be a “huge eclipse of sun and moon” (5.2.102-103).

3. MICROCOSM: Night also descends on the characters of the play through madness, murder, and deceit.

Othello is figuratively put on the rack by Iago just as Iago is physically to be put on the rack at the end of the play.

Othello’s moral fall is symbolized partly by his physical fall into an epileptic fit (4.1.43).

Desdemona is said to have broken the natural order by eloping (1.3.98).

IV. STRUCTURE

A. Introduction

1. Unlike other Shakespearean tragedies, Othello has no significant subplot. The play is entirely concerned with the fate of Othello and Desdemona.

2. The play uses no supernatural elements as in Hamlet and Macbeth (Bevington 1117).

B. ACT 1

1. There is the introduction of the main characters in one-two-three fashion: Iago in 1.1, Othello (with Iago) in 1.2, and Desdemona (with Othello and Iago) in 1.3.

2. The setting of act 1 is Venice, just as in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

3. The threads of the plot are introduced. Act 1 calls attention to the similarity in these crises and conflicts:

a. Roderigo vs. Iago: Roderigo, dissatisfied that Othello has succeeded in marrying Desdemona, is ready to break off his business relationship with Iago.

b. Roderigo and Iago vs. Othello: However, in 1.1, Iago is successful in turning Roderigo against Othello by telling him of his dissatisfaction with Othello for passing him over for promotion. The two malcontents ban together to try to turn Brabantio against Othello.

c. Brabantio vs. Othello: Father-in-law vs. son-in-law.

d. Venice vs. the Turks: The military suspense over the war.

e. Desdemona vs. Brabantio: Father vs. daughter.

f. Othello vs. Desdemona: Act 1.3 establishes the great love of Othello and Desdemona for each other.

g. Iago (and Roderigo) vs. Cassio: Desdemona is to be the pawn whom Iago plans to use “to get his [Cassio’s] place” (1.3.394).

4. INCITING MOMENT: In Shakespeare’s tragedies, Act 1 usually ends with the Inciting Moment.

This occurs in Iago’s soliloquy at the end of 1.3: Iago says that he plans to bring about a “monstrous birth” (405), which will pacify Roderigo and ruin Cassio, by leading Othello to think that Cassio is “too familiar with his wife” (397).

Always at the Inciting Moment, the reader of the play asks several crucial questions. Here two stand out: Will Iago succeed in his machinations? What will be the larger effects of his plan?

C. ACT 2

1. The setting of the play shifts to Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean Sea close to Turkey and about 2,000 miles from Venice. At the time of the play (probably 1508), Venice controlled the island.

2. The political problem ends when the Turkish fleet is destroyed by a storm, freeing the play to concentrate on the love theme.

3. The reunion of Othello and Desdemona after the storm is their moment of supreme happiness (2.1.181-199), but Iago stands to one side declaring that he will destroy the relationship (2.1.200-202).

4. In 2.3, Iago achieves the first part of his plan: the cashiering of Cassio as lieutenant, although Iago does not immediately gain the second part—“To get his place” (1.3.394), that is, to be named as Cassio’s replacement.

5. Ironically, the disgraced Cassio seeks advice from Iago, the person who had unknowingly maneuvered his dismissal.

Iago is now free, even invited, to implement the second part of his scheme: He tells Cassio to convince Desdemona to plead his case for reinstatement to Othello.

6. At the end of act 3, Iago enlarges his plot, ostensibly to placate Roderigo (2.3.356-376), but more probably because the easy success against Cassio has emboldened his ego and he thinks that he can do what he wants.

In Iago’s mind, immediate practical concerns, such as duping Roderigo or removing Cassio, begin to give way to larger theoretical matters: Iago wants a victory of his philosophical outlook.

He wants to show that his inverted view of human beings, as being principally evil, deceitful, and egotistical, is superior to the conventional view represented by Desdemona and Othello, that people are basically good, open, and loving.

Thus Iago proclaims a “Divinity of hell” (2.3.344) and vows that he will use the goodness of Desdemona to destroy goodness itself as a philosophical alternative: “So will I turn her [Desdemona’s] virtue into pitch [evil], / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmesh them all” (2.3.354-356).

Since his new obsession is philosophical, even theological, Iago’s speech becomes excited by his destructive ideas. He exults, “Pleasure and action make the hours seem short” (2.3.373).

D. ACT 3

1. The CLIMAX always occurs in the third act of a Shakespearean play. It is the point of highest tension where the suspense of the audience is greatest and where the questions asked at the Inciting Moment are provisionally answered.

2. In 3.3, Iago subtly plays on Othello’s mind to make him suspicious of Desdemona’s virtue without overtly charging her with anything.

Iago’s insinuations make Othello himself the aggressor in uncovering the “proof” (3.3.205, 210) against Desdemona.

3. The birth of suspicion is marked when Iago by disparaging jealousy plants the seed of jealousy in Othello’s mind: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy. / It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on” (3.3.178-180).

4. Othello is not easily won over because he is torn between his deep love of Desdemona and his long standing trust in “honest” Iago.

5. Othello sees Desdemona for a brief moment, and we feel for an instant that he may escape Iago’s temptation, as Othello’s next speech states: “If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself! I’ll not believe it” (3.3.294-295).

6. Again ironically, in offering to comfort Othello, Desdemona brings her own destruction. She tries to tie a handkerchief around Othello’s brow to ease his headache, but he brushes the handkerchief aside, causing it to fall to the ground. Technically, Othello, not Desdemona, caused the handkerchief to be lost, and it is her concern for Othello that made her forget about the handkerchief.

7. That human goodness, love, and sympathy can put in Iago’s hands the instrument he needs, the “ocular proof” (3.3.376) of Desdemona’s infidelity which Othello had demanded, is what most excites Iago when Emilia shows the handkerchief to him (3.3.324-336).

This is proof of his philosophical position: Doing goodness hurts a person; doing evil prospers one.

8. Some critics place the CLIMAX in Iago’s exulting speech after he has the handkerchief (3.3.337-348): Here he suggests that the handkerchief will allow him to succeed in both his immediate and broader machinations. All of those whom Iago, now at the height of his power, wishes to doom will be destroyed.

9. Other critics place the CLIMAX a little later, at 3.3.476-495, where Othello and Iago make a devil’s pact by kneeling together to swear--ironically to “heaven” (476)--that Othello will be revenged against Desdemona and Cassio.

Here also Iago hears the words he has longed to hear from Othello, “Now, [Iago], art thou my lieutenant” (494).

E. ACT 4

1. As in most of Shakespeare’s tragedies, act 4 is filled with the sufferings and the partly deluded visions which are the aftermath of the terrible determinations of act 3.

2. Although the Climax of act 3 has indicated the almost certain direction of the resolution of the tragedy, in act 4 Shakespeare tries to create suspense by raising the possibility that the hero or protagonist may find means of escaping the fate that is overtaking him.

3. For instance, by 4.1, where Othello slaps Desdemona in public, and 4.2, where he treats her like a prostitute, Desdemona finally has to admit to herself that something is seriously wrong with her marriage. We wonder whether, knowing this, she can act to save her marriage as resolutely as she did in the much earlier1.3.

Yet her first step suggests she will not, since she turns for advice to Iago, the very person who had maneuvered her destruction (4.2. 115-176). Suspense is raised only to be deflated.

4. Also, in 4.2, Emilia stumbles on the truth that “some eternal villain, / some busy and insinuating rogue, [. . .] to get some office” has “devised this slander” (137-140) against Desdemona—a perfect description of Iago, we know.

However, neither Emilia nor Desdemona connects the dots, and Desdemona once again turns to Iago for counsel, “Alas, Iago, / What shall I do to win my lord again?” (4.2.155-156)

5. In 4.1, Iago incorporates a new character—Bianca--unknowingly into his plot, and her comments on the handkerchief, overheard by Othello (147-161), seem to be the coup de grace in convincing Othello that he must kill Desdemona (203-205). Yet we begin to wonder whether by adding still more people to his plot, Iago is now increasing the number of people who can expose his machinations: One word or one discovery, we realize, from either Roderigo or Cassio or Othello or Emilia or Bianca could topple Iago’s house of cards.

6. However, by the end of act 4, since Iago has been so successful to this point, since everyone has missed the clues which could have exposed him, and especially since Iago has Othello under such psychological domination, there seems to be no stopping of Iago and no real possibility of Othello’s turning back, though even in the death scene of 5.2, we still hope that Desdemona may be able to say something that will clear herself.

F. ACT 5

1. Five things are typically present in the fifth act of a Shakespearean tragedy. In Othello, they occur, by and large, in the following order: Reversal, Catastrophe, Resolution, Recognition, and Denouement.

2. Reversal: Things which have gone so well for Iago earlier now begin to go against him: Failing to kill Cassio (5.1. 26), who knows of Desdemona’s innocence, and rashly sending Emilia to the castle (“citadel”) to tell Othello what has happened (5.1.129-130) will bring Iago’s ruin.

3. Catastrophe: The deaths of Desdemona (5.2.129), of Emilia (5.2. 260), and of Othello (5.2.370).

4. Resolution: Emilia stumbles on the facts of Iago’s deception, leading to the unmasking of Iago (5.2.141-241).

5. Recognition: Othello recognizes that “honest” Iago has deceived him (5.2.242-243).

6. Denouement: A tying together of all loose ends of the plot: The announced death of Desdemona’s father (5.2.211-213), the evidence against Iago (principally Roderigo’s letters, just as in Hamlet the letters of Claudius were used), Othello’s failed attempt to kill Iago (5.2.295), the restoration of political order by Cassio’s becoming the governor of Cyprus (5.2.342), Othello’s suicide, and the announcement of the torture that awaits Iago (5.2.379-380).

V. IMAGERY

1. IAGO’S IMAGERY: He uses many images of money-bags, treachery, and animal lust and violence. These express his own faithless, envious spirit.

He also talks about baits, nets, poisons, drugs, enemas, pitch and sulphur, plague, and pestilence.

His bestiary contains helpless animals (cats and blind puppies) or symbols of stupidity and ugliness or lust (guinea-hen, baboons, goats, monkeys).

2. OTHELLO’S IMAGERY: At the beginning he is associated with spacious imagery, primitivism, the magical, and the dreamy.

This romanticism leaves him utterly defenseless in a world that contains the realistic Iago.

At the beginning his frank and forthright personality makes him speak in concrete and imagistic terms, though infrequently in metaphor. For instance his long autobiographical account (1.3) does not use one true metaphor.

Later, after he falls under Iago’s domination, he assumes Iago’s bestial imagery, speaking of a dungeon full of spiders, blindworms, and frogs. Othello says, “I had rather be a toad / And live upon the vapour of a dungeon” (3.3.286-287), of love as “a cistern for foul toads” (4.2.63), and of Desdemona as being as rank in her adultery “as summer flies are in the shambles” (4.2.68).

The animal imagery serves to degrade the human world: Human beings are no more than animals, Othello comes to assert in the last part of the play

VI. FAMOUS LINES

1. Iago: “But I will [not] wear my heart upon my sleeve

For the daws to peck at. I am not what I am.” (1.1.66-67)

2. Iago: “Virtue? A fig! ‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.” (1.3.322-323)

3. Cassio: “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.” (2.3.256-258)

4. Othello: “But I do love thee! And when I love thee not,

Chaos is come again.” (3.3.99-100)

5. Iago: “Who steals my purse steals trash.” (3.3.170)

6. Iago: “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy.

It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.” (3.3.178-180)

7. Othello: “Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!” (3.3.370) Note: The title of Edward Elgar’s musical composition, often used at graduation ceremonies, is taken from this line.

8. Iago: “He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly.” (5.1.19-20)

9. Othello: “It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!

It is the cause. [. . .]

Put out the light, and then put out the light.” (5.2. 1-3, 7)

10. Emilia: “I will play the swan, / And die in music.” (5.2.256-257)

11. Othello: “Then must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well;

Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,

Perplexed in the extreme.” (5.2.353-356)

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