● Othello: context - social and historical context

● Key messages and themes that emerge from othello: it is clear that race, sex, reputation,
and even geography play their part in explaining and shedding light in the context
around this narrative
● First watched play in 1604
● 1602 edition of Abraham Ortelius’s Epitome of the theatre of the world - it is a series of
maps with commentaries alongside that are generally accepted today as the first modern
atlas - now this specific description are describing the people of north africa
○ It says ‘barbary’ - barbary horse is a patronising, offensive term to describe
people from north africa in the play
○ ‘The people are generally all tawny moors, very sturdy and strong of body. The
citizens are skillful in Architecture, and the mathematic and other sciences, as by
they’re buildings ay be jeduged they are good of nature, (so they were Christians)
without dissimulation, loving the truth, and obsuriing their promises with all faits.
They are very jealous of their wives: ambitious, greedy, and cautious of wealth,
and therefore are great merchants: they are collericke, proud and very hardly can
they forget any injury offered them. The country swaynes are better, more lounge
and patient, but so simple that they will believe any incredible fiction, and
generally so ignorant, that they esteem the divine things to be all natural
operations.’
■ Straight away, there are some ambivalent mixed feelings around the
foreigners
■ The qualities of these people: of a moor: they are strong, they have a light
tan, they are skilled at maths, science, and architecture; good and
trustworthy; known for keeping their promises; but they also have a
propensity for being jealous; they are cautious with their money; they are
emotional and hot tempered, they are proud and stubborn; they can be
ignorant too
■ Description does not straight forwardly define those from exotic parts of
the world like north africa as stupi but it does describe them as different
with positive and negative attitudes that don’t seem to be at peace with
each other
● Widely accepted then as this first atlas
● Shakespearean attitudes towards the moor: moor would have
been someone from north africa, yet its not the complexion or race
of the moor that is the most important feature we glean from this
source; its actually the fact that they were known for their
impulsiveness and their ability to get jealous
● If nothing else, to be the fatal flaw of our protagonist Othello
● Portrait of the moorish ambassador to the queen of england around 1600 → other was
not just different but exotic
○ Brooding, intense, powerful
○ But also someone who looks exotic
 ○ Not convinced that the moorish ambassador to queen elizabeth would have
allowed to have their painting taken if they werebt impressive, if they didn’t leave
a positive mark on the queen
○ Whilst elizabethan britain was and remained to be throughout the Jacobean time
an incredibly divided and xenophobic place, the people of this era are fascinated
by the exotic peoples of other lands
○ Whilst the queen herself has awkward attitudes to wards race and colour and
wanted famously fo rblack people to be taken out of her country - it is clear to us
that even she had a fascination with the exotic other
● 1 nov 1604 - first showing of othello
○ The casting of othello as black draws parallels with the discrimintation against
Othello in the play, specifically this idea that the contrast between the casting of
one character as black and the others as white may be accentuating the idea that
race is the issue
○ Yet, if we were to take ourselves back to the first opening night - Richard burbage
a very established actor across the kings men was dressed up in fact as a white
man blacked up
■ That is chilling but i wonder if it accentuates the idea that for the audience
first watching this - race was seen as the biggest issue, not just the idea
that this person was jealous
● Women:
○ At this time, women were considered to be both mentally and physically inferior
to men
○ That meant that it was believed necessary athte time that women should be
controlled, looked after and protected by men for their own and society’s good
○ Women were seen as both chased and ideally pious, maternal and poor but they
were also suspectedof being these devious, promiscuous and over-emotional
figures
○ It is these contrasting expectations that we can bound up in the conflicting
images in the bible of women whether that is the virgin mary in her pure innocent
self or Mary magdalene (idk if she was pious acc) or Eve, in fact, who does the
wrong thing and falls short of societal expectations
■ So we call itthe virgin-whore dichotomy
■ But also, because of this perceived inferiority, while we couldnt really trust
women, it made sense actually that only very few women, only the very
richest indeed, could be educated - and so it meant that the skills that
would make them intellectual by the world standard at this time were not
offered to women and instead, the richest women would seek to learn
languages, music and skills that would get them a great husband by
making them a desirable wife
● Landscape of the theatre + the role of women in that
○ It is important to acknowledge that whilst men were the actors, women were not
excluded entirely from the culture of theatres
 ○ Many of the women would be working alongside the production fo the plays and it
wouldn’t just be women who were prostitutes or worldly women attending the
theatres - women of all classes would go
○ And just because at this time, patriarchal expectations were around and
misogynistic discourse of women being inferior and men being allowed to hate
women → that doesnt mean that amny of the institutions in society didn’t
question or challenge these ideas and in mayn ways, the theatre was a great
opportunity to challenge some of that discourse
● Iago → super misogynistic - often shares the cliches that we know by today, exist, but it
doesn’t necessarily mean just because iago holds these views that these were realities
or even genuine opinions → his increasingly misogynistic view of women then as now
indicate to the audience that he is the villain of this play
● It is important for us to realise that sexual difference was seen as more fluid at that tiem
and this was in part played out by men playing women in performance, by the kind of
costume being used but also through the understanding of the four humours that people
held → very dear to their hearts
● Another important dimension to the social context of this time is reputation and the rise
of the mercantile class:
○ Royalty → Nobility → Merchants → Common Man
■ Merchants, during the renaissance were on the rise - they were dealers,
hustlers, they are free to negotiate between the common man and nobility
■ This is important because to be noble in this time was to have a status
that was really only yours because of some great attributes that your
forefathers had - character traits, or some sort of dominance that they
had, or political favour in terms of strength, monetarily or politically
■ Superiority = breeding = cassio talks fondly of his reputation → and
historical reputation meant a lot at this time
● Nobility were really in that position due to a web of links and
connections that they hadand ultimately, they sought to prove that
they were in some way close to royalty → it was about nepotism,
knowing who you knew, mattering more than what you do
● They believed, absolutely as a society at this time, that royalty
were chosen by god - the idea of the divine right of kings meant so
much
● So that authority meant a huge amount - wanting to be close to
royalty was critical
○ ‘The Divine Right of Kings’ - royalty had authority bestowed
upon them by god
■ Interestnongly, merchants were gaining huge influence, power and status
without needing the baggage of historical reputation or character traits of
your ancestors - they were gaining their status power and influence by
their own ingenious plans and their own sense of business scheming and
plotting - allowed them huge access to education, influence and positions
that shook the foundations of renaissance britain
 ■ But more importantly, they became a great negotiate between the
common man who was not noble and the nobility that wanted to be able
to understand the ways of the merchant and get the altest goods
■ Mercantile class: Noble had inherited place in society but it became
difficult to distinguish nobility from the merchant class in terms of wealth,
lifestyle and influence but it is interesting to consider that somebody who
was self made in the merchant class was entitled to some critical
privileges and yet simultaneously, they were aware of the struggle of
those in the common man position - perhaps, for many of them, because
they had been common men once themselves.
● Geography of this play
○ Shakespeare sets Act 1 in venice - the cultural capital of the renaissance as it
was seen
○ Then moves the whole story to cyprus from Act 2
■ Cyprus could be a symbol of the vulnerability and isolation that actually
mirrors our own protagonist → othello, after all, is vulnerable and isolated
in cyprus because of his otherness
■ Whilst cyprus really isolated and vulnerable because of this imminent
attack from the turks
■ More than anything, shakespeare is very intentional with his decision to
place the narrative in its opening in venice but why?
● Venice: cultural capital or carnage?
● Venice was a bustling italian city with huge reputation → it was a
key trading destination and it was host to many a wealthy
merchant who was seeking to come from across europe and
beyond to do business
● It was also known as a pleasure city - it was full of casinos and
brothels but as it is today, it was also a centre of culture and
excellence and learning
● At this time in history, shakespeare was writing in protestant
england and italy was sto;; very much a catholic country, and so
the catholic church at this time was considered a huge influence,
most probably the most influential institution in the world;
specifically for venice, as catholic city, it was steeped in tradition
and superstition with a huge relay of medieval customs that had
surivved alongside more modern and progressive ideals
● So there was this interesting melting pot between what was
catholic and orthodox alongside, living much more loose, relatively
moral freedoms
● During the renaissance, playwrights set their plays very much so
in catholic italy and particularly in venice to allow their storylines to
be more fruity and unrestricted by stricter protestant standards
 ○ This would be either to pass comment on the catholic
church - and its decadence + excess + corruption of the
catholic church
○ Or to use this as a foil/ veil to disguise for commentary on
society closer to home
● Most precious thing about venice was its special autonomy that
allowed it to operate as its own entity really → and this meant that
it was in many ways a microcosm of society at largein which all
sections of society existed in close proximity and to some extent,
thatdiversity led to a much richer understanding of the
mutlilculturalism that we seek today in our world
● Ultimately, context runs deeper than just naming the geogra[hy’s relevance or
considering the importance of reputation at the time of shakespeare’s writing or even the
commentary on women and race
● Reputation, race, sex, and geography play their own little part to a bigger tapestry
around this tragedy
● Tragedy
○ Aristotle’s theories were written more than a century after the golden age of
Athenian drama
● Aristotle:
○ Born in 384 BCE and lived in Greece and Macedonia
○ Spent many years studying with Plato, a philosopher who wasnt a big fan of
drama or poetry
○ Plato wrote that poets encouraged a false vision of reality and should all be
excluded from the ideal state
○ Aristotle was more open-minded → in 335 BCE, a little whole after he had
finished tutoring Alexander the Great, Aristotle sat down to write The Poetics, the
first substantial work of literary criticism
○ Originally, The Poetics was in two parts: a section on tragedy and a section on
comedy but only the tragedy part survives
○ Aristotle was writing 200 years after the City Dionysia really got going and 150
years after the beginning of the golden age of Greek Drama
○ The Poetics isnt really about analyzing contemporary work, it is about looking at
the work that came before aristotle, deciding what was great about it and
providing a handbook for future playwrights and audiences
○ Aristotle was trying to stick it to Plato by proving poetry and theatre could be
useful to society
○ Aristotle was a big fan of Sophocles and the rules Aristotle set out apply most
closely to Sophocles’s own ‘Oedipus Rex’
○ But his theories apply, in many ways, to all of the works of Greek tragedy and
often we can gain a lot of insgith through how ancient plays do or do not tick the
boves tha aristotle set up
● The Poetics:
 ○ The tragedy portion considers several forms of poetry including the tragedy, and
the epic which is different in that it’s mostly descriptive rather than imitative → it
tells rather than shows
● Aristotle’s big definition on tragedy:
○ ‘An imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in
language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being
found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through
pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.’
■ ‘Serious’ = there probably aren’t a lot of satires or phallyses
■ ‘Complete’ = each play in a tragedy has to stand independent from other
works in its trilogy
■ ‘Of a certain magnitude’ = greek tragedies deal with legendary heroes or
royal families, characters whose lives have a sizeable impact
● Also, their difficulties are not minor - these stories are about
murder, vengeance, and betrayal
■ ‘Language embellished’ = aristotle means not only poetry but also song
■ ‘In the form of action, not of narrative’ = means showing rather than telling
■ ‘And through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of those
emotions’ = that is catharsis → its kept scholars fearful an dpitious
creatures
● It could be argued that plays help make people better citizens by
purging them of emotions unhelpful to the city-state → if you have
a good cry at the theatre, you’re not crying whenit comes to
making political decisions
● But scholars have argued that catharsis is actually supposed to
happen for the characters on stage - there is a lot of debate about
whether the goal of catharsis is an emotional purgation or an
intellectual clarification - is catharsis supposed to awaken your
emotions or trigger some deeply rational thoughts? Experts
disagree
○ Aristotle also said that tragedy is composed of six parts:
■ Plot
● He argues that although it is characters we care about, its actually
the plot, the tragic action that is most important
■ Character
■ Diction
■ Thought
■ Spectacle
■ Song
● They are important pretty much in that order though he says that
song matters more then spectacle → you don’t want too much
spectacle because that’s cheap and although tragedy should be
enjoyable, it shouldn’t be too enjoyable → interesting isn’t it how
Iago could be seen as a spectacle and its the fact that his
 spectacle is duplicitious that allows for othello to become a
tragedy as opposed to a comedy → the way shakespeare
employs spectacle ensures that the seriousness of the tragedy is
not lost all the while creating this motivelessly malign character
○ Aristotle believes that in order for a tragedy to really work, it needs to focus on a
mostly good character who, through the tragic action, is then brought low
■ Aristotle writes that the ideal is to have a mostly noble and illustrious
character ‘whose misfortune is brought about noy by vice or depravity, but
by some error or frailty’
■ So the character needs to be a specially proportioned moral blend to
ensure that the catharsis is viable
○ Hamartia = the greek word for frailty
■ The tragic character does not have some horrible inborn flaw but more
like tries to do a good job and whiffs it → interesting because Othello
basically does have an inborn flaw that arises from the fact that he is
black and the stereotypes that surround that → so is he not a tragic hero
then in the full sense as the cathartic release isn’t quite as poignant as it
would have been, had it been another flaw? Idk im dumb
○ Aristotle also thought that a tragic plot needed to have three main elements:
reversal, recognition, and a scene of suffering
○ Peripeteia = Greek word for reversal (comes in english word, peripatetic, which
means walking back and forth)
■ Reversal means just when you think something’s going okay, there is a
change and it is usually signaled by the arrival of a MESSENGER, and
then everything gets terrible again
○ Anagnorisis = recognition
■ Happens when character finally recognizes something - ie. That was my
mother! Or That was my son!
● Anagnorisis combined with Peripeteia is best as it automatically
produces pity and fear
○ Shortly after recognition, comes the scene of suffering: exile, suicide, huge
psychological trauma
○ Catharsis = release of emotions
● Cassio and Iago are both middlemen within the play - Iago, the middle man between
Roderigo and Desdemona, and Cassio, the middle man between Desdemona and
Othello = both are ambitious, and could this be shakespeare’s criticism of the country for
not having a proper outlet for the ambitions of wild men

Paul Cantor notes

● Shakesepeare loves about the Ancient Roman Republic because it provides an outlet for
the spirit, ambitions, the thumas of its young men - shakespeare worries about the
roman empire as it begins to close it down - Julius Caeser
● In Henry V< Shakespeare hoped that england might learn this from the roman republic -
that henry v is a youthful king who understands the youthful ambitions of his nobles and
brings the youth of england back to life
● Hamlet reflects a disillusionment on Shakespeare’s part - that is why you can correlate it
with the Earl of Essex, his failure, and his execution in 1601
○ Elizabethan regime - all these images of greatness but on this issue, it was really
bad - morality and these executions - Essex ended up executing Sir Walter
Rowley, the Earl of South Hampton, ended up in prison, then freed
○ In Elizabethan England, there seemed to be a sense of rivalry among the young
men that took them away from channeling their ambitions towards a foreign
enemy such as Spain - Hamlet reflects this - the images of Le ertes and Hamlet
at each other’s throats is not a healthy image for a regime and it seems to reflect
exactly what Shakespeare must have seen within his own experience and it
might have been what made him think of republics as an alternative to monarchy
○ There is a real sense by 1600 that the elizabethan regime was old and that
elizabeth was old - she died in 1603
○ But Shakespeare had alrger fish to fry - namely the Rennaissance - this
remarkable effort to revive classical antiquity within a christian civilisation which
therefore created tragic tensions:
■ Tensions between the christian view of the world and the classical view of
the world - shakespeare went back to try to observe the classical world in
its purest form in corielus in anne and cleopatra, tried to explore it got to
the classical world to the christian world and now he looks at the way that
politics gets transformed within a christian community - in very complex
ways - hamlet is a very complex figure - a rennaissance man - a christian
in so many deep ways and nevertheless he has this kind of classical
humanist education, refers to greek and roman gods → all of these
creates tensions within him
■ Shakespeare creates the greatest irony for his hero - put him in an
icelandic saga - to put THIS MODERN CHRISTIAN INTO THE MOST
PAGAN SITUATION NAMELY THE NEED FOR REVENGE - THE PLACE
WHERE A PAGAN HERO IS AT HOME - WHERE ONE OF THESE
NORSEMEN WOULD TAKE THE LIGHT LIKE CONAN THE
BARBARIAN
■ For hamlet this is right at the fallblind at his being when he is asked to
perform revenge - connection between hamlet as a renaissance man and
his tragedy
● Venice
○ Is the renaissance city
○ Its the city (now agin, florence would say it was the most rennaissance city)
○ Venice, in its cosmopolitanism is a pure reflection of the renaissance period -
Hamlet tries to be everything for everybody, the people like him, hes a good
courtier, the theatre company likes him, he is able to please everybody, he is
such a multiple person
 ○ But in the case of venice, the whole city is that way - it is this strange city in
european standards that tries to bring together people fundamentally different
outlooks - christians and jews, and christians and moors
○ Venice has that same synthesising power that i associate with hamlet and the
renaissance AND VENICE SOWS THE SEEDS OF TRAGEDY BY BRINGING
CONFLCITING RELAMS OF VALUE INTO JUXTAPOSITION
○ In MofV we had a comedy - shakespeare had to strain to keep that play comic -
the tensions in the MofV ran really deep for a comedy - it was very hard for him to
brign about a comic ending
● IN OTHELLO he now explores the tragic implications of this whole venetian situation
● He also explores what ill call the ‘mirror-image of hamlet’ - Paul Cantor
● In hamlet, we have a christian whose placed in a situation of the classical pagan hero -
the achilles-like situation, revenge the alternate to that would be to take a classical hero
and place him in christian circumstances - now that would require a time machine but
shakespeare understoods that the turk was a pagan object
● Turks - muslim - but its interesting and it comes up in othello that the turk is the
barbarian, the pagan - that is how the christians imaged their muslim opponents
○ They were seen as fierce warriors, as barbarian warriors, inhumane
○ In othello, shakespeare portrays the interesting possibility of the turk turned
Christian
● There was a play that came out in 1612, called The Christian Turned Turk by an
extremely obscure playwright named Goerge Dayborn - you really dont have to now
much about them- it showed the fascination with religious conversion, indeed a lot of it
was going on in the Mediterranean world and quite frankly, it was much more frequent
for a christian to turn turk than a turk to turn christian but that did happen and Othello is a
name for it
● Moor and Turk were used interchangeably
● Othello’s conversion is the challenge that Shakespeare explores in this play - what would
happen if you took an epic hero - a great warrior who steps out of an epic world and
introduced him into the complexities of the christian world - especially the complexities of
psychology, the interior world as we go through this play, always ask what Corealanus
would have done? (okay idk lol) he is not used to the complexities of love affairs and to
the inner depths of psychology - in many ways, that is what shakespeare is exploring in
this play and indeed, it is the formulation that iago himself gives it what he calls othello
an ‘erring barbarian’ and desdemona a ‘super subtle venetian’
○ ‘Erring barbarian’ and super subtle venetian really goes to the heart of the
tensionin this play: for all his christianity, othello is still thought of as an erring
barbarian - a WANDERING BARBARIAN - a barbarian who has wandered into
Venice, and then he is met with these super subtle venetian, the most subtle of
whom is Iago - and that will be the cause of othello’s tragedy
○ Once again, we can invoke the geography of the play to suggest this - it is very
similar to that o hamlet inthis respect - the two poles in which the play turns
imaginatively are venice and the world of the turks (the ottoman empire) an
deven geographically, in between them is Cyprus - although Cyprus is tucked
 under Turkey - but CYPRUS IS THIS ISLAND FLOATING IN EBTWEEN THE
CHRISTIAN WEST AND THE MUSLIM EAST - AND IT IS VERY MUCH LIKE
SHAKESPEARE’S DENMARK - WHICH WAS CAUGHT BETWEEN A
BARBARIAN NORWAY OTU OF WHICH THESE EPIC BARBARIANS LIKE
FORTINBRAS AND NOW THE SUPER SUBTLE SOPHISTICATED EUROPE
OF PARIS
○ Shakespeare is fascinated in his tragedies by the phenomenon of borderlands -
we’re dealing with the fringes of europe here - they are the flashpoints where
european christianity confronts the other - the viking world in the north and in this
case, the world of the turks and cyprus during shakespeare’s lifetime was a
flashpoint between christians and muslims
■ Cyprus had passed into the hands of the ottoman turks in 1571 but venice
had controlled it but a while back but the ottomans had regained control of
it, i believe famagusto was the last to go - 7 year old shakespeare may
have heard the news of cyprus falling to the turks
■ Cyprus was then held by the turks for 400 years
■ In the geography here, we see the ethical divide in the world: betweent he
world of the turks and the world of the christians
● Venice turns out to be a perfect place for shakespeare to explore further the issues he
had explored in hamlet - especially the tension between this epic, heroic notion of
heroism and christian civilisation - we really see repeated in othello, the problem we saw
in venice IN THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
○ This issue of the second class citizen in Venice - Venice is a christian commercial
republic, it needs a money market and christians are forbidden to take money
from other christians and so venice needs Jews and it brings jews into the city
but it doesn treally - it doesn give them full status inthe city - it both needs them
and exploits but it never gives them full citizenship and indeed, the thing they ask
them to do, which is lend money, makes ti clear that they are not christians - and
so we get all the hypocrisy of venice - including the fact that Shylock is treated as
an alien - clearly a sign that he is not a pure citizen
○ Something similar happens with OTHELLO: we have this christian commercial
community of venice and it seems to be lacking in warriors - you might think that
shakespeare’s plays is filled with warrior types but other than the prince of
morocco, there isn’t any warrior types in the merchant of venice - there isn’t much
spiritedness in the city - shylock is the one concerned with revenge, the aim of
thumas, but the ordinary venetians are too funloving
○ Shakespeare, when he shows young men, they are usually in contention and in
rivalry - spirited young men looking for fights - WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE
THUMAS TURNS INWARDS
○ Merchant of venice there is not much of that - its all well and good and it makes
venice a great commercial community but unfortunately it is operating in a very
dangerous world: in the mediterranean and they have the problem of the turks
and the ottoman empire
■ The venetians traded with the ottoman empire, they had a special position
with the turks - to this day, you can go to istanbul and there is a venetian
corner called Gelata - there is a huge spice market, symbolic of what
venice was interested in, through istanbul to europe
■ At some point, venice must have decided that they eneded their own turk
to fight - we are not barbarian enough, we are just christian merchants,
how can we fight these turkish barbarians and so OTHELLO IS THE
MOOR OF VENICE
● He is christian
● He could not be fighting for venice if he were still muslim - we’re
fighting moors, we’re fighting turks, we need our own moor to fight
for us - they have 2nd class citizenship
● YOU WANT THIS MAN FOR THE SAKE OF QUALITIES THAT
YOU ACTUALLY DESPISE - SAME PROBLEM OVER SHYLOCK
- YOU NEED A GUY TO FIGHT BARBARICALLY BUT YOU
HATE BARBARIANS - WELL AND GOOD WHEN HE IS
FIGHTING BUT THEY WILL ALWAYS REGARD HIM AS A
BARBARIAN
○ We see his 2nd class citizenship most clearly in the fact
that you can fight for our city but we dont want you
marrying our daughters - it is very strong, that is what the
play begins with, Brabantio’s anger at the idea that his
daughter will marry Othello; Othello a very much admired
man in Venice and yet we really ssee that when push
comes to shove, the city does not regard him as a full
citizen because if they did, it would be natural for him to
marry a venetian woman
○ If you pu these two plays together, you see shakespeare’s
understanding of venice: venice relies on a very
problematic basis: it requires human activities that it then
turns around and questions and that it treats very shabbily
these men that it depends upon
○ When charged with a real problem here, that othello is
called upon, they are very much of afraid of the threat of
the turks (tot he island of rhodes no cyprus) brabantio
comes to the Doge’s court here and we see the faith in law
in venice - the citizen’s feel they can appeal to the law but
it looks bad for brabantio
■ Brabantio and othello enter simultaneousl y- the
duke says ‘Valiant Othello” and then to Brabantio,
he says ‘I did not see you’
● Under the pressure of war, venice turns to
the moor, and notice ‘Valiant’ othello - he
 has that kind of epithet there and ‘we must
employ you against the general enemy’
● When you have a general enemy, you need
othello
● Brabantio sees that he is not going to get
what he needs
● Inthe course of the play, you get a sense of what othello means to venice:
○ A4S1: Lodovico says as he sees Othello strike desdemona ‘Is this the noble
Moor whom our Senate call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature whose passion
could not shake..’ Iago says ‘He is much changed’ → that is what othello
represents to Venice - the self-sufficient hero, the great sole/soul man - this is
why he is compared to Corealanus - Othello plays the role to Venice that
Corealanus plays for Rome - you want that ONE GUY who makes the difference
in battle, who is all sufficient and you cannot shake his nature
○ Iago himself gives this image of him - A3S4: ‘Cant he be angry I have seen the
cannon when it had blown his cannons in the air’ and he saw his brother killed -
Corealanus could do that and you get that type of man in Othello - that is the kind
of man you want leading your army - you need that, he has to exude self
confidence in order to impart confidence in his own troops
○ Alan Bloom: there is no hard evidence of Othello having done anything
■ Corealanus - conquest city
■ Henry V wins the battle of agincourt
■ We only have othello ‘s claims for all of this - now we are not diminishing
him - but he does not do much with the turkish fleet
■ Whether it is true or not, the othello myth is very strong in this play -
cyprus is threatened, you SEND OTHELLO THERE - which is how you
know he comes up in the terms of the epic hero
● A1S3 - seducing desdemona - her father loved me oft invited me - the battle seiges
fortunes i have passed - ‘hairbreadth escapes…antres vast… shoulders’ - this is almost
romance now, it is like the Odyssey - this is the world that Othello steps out of, it is the
world of achilles, odysseus, the epic hero and that is why the city needs him - and that is
where there is going to be the sourc eof tension
○ The qualities that make you valuable in war do not necessarily make you popular
in peace time- you saw this in corealanus, and henry V though henry V is
remarkable in how smooth his transition was into peacetime
● Othello is another one of these portraits in shakespeare of a man whose very qualities
as a warrior are going to be the source of tragedy as he tries to make it in the domestic
world
● This play sharpens the opposition between the warriors world and the domestic world -
at the very heart of this play, there is the tension between these worlds
○ A1S3: ‘Let housewives make a skillet of my helm’ = YOU TAKE A WARRIOR’S
HELMET AND YOU COOK DINNER IN IT
 ■ It is grotesque, it is absurd - it goes to the fundamental tension in this play
- it is in a way, Othello’s deepest fear that his whole heroic world might be
bastardized by being reduced to the domestic
■ That housewives might take his epic helmet and cook meals in it
● Othello’s romance with desdemona in light of this tension: (without Iago - he is the great
destructive force in this place, there is no question of that) → that way it is apparent that
the relationship between othello and desdemona is doomed from the start
○ By not analysing the love of desdemona and othello, you can see them as pure
innocents - as having no role at all - as being the mere victims of iago’s scheming
○ There is something extraordinary about their love that makes them susceptible to
iago’s machinations
■ This is a tragedy of both desdemona and othello and so therefore, they
are not purely passive victims
■ Shakespeare’s heroes and heroines are not passive, they take an actie
role, there is something about them that makes the tragedy happen -
thesea re not issues of moral blame in shakespeare because his
tragedies are beyong good and evil in any conventional sense
■ There is something extraordinary about othello and desdemona that
made their love a tragic love without iago even getting involved
● Desdemona contrast to portia
○ Portia wanted the ‘boy next door’, desdemona does not → Desdemona opts for
the prince of morocco - othello is not the prince of morocco but you do see that
sharp contrast between desdemona and portia that turns her into a tragic heroine
■ Marriage between old man and young woman
■ Marriage between different races
■ Marriage between a stranger and a homegrown venetian
■ In every way, they are opposite and opposites do attract → something
that shakespeare portrays again and again → Romeo and Juliet - they fall
in love for all sorts of reasons but one of the main reasons is that one is a
montague whilst the other is a capulet
■ Shakespeare again and again shows us that there is something strange
about love that actively craves opposites eg. Antony and Cleopatra → the
ROman and the Egyptian
● The kindling of their love:
○ Othello has been accused of using witchcraft by Brabantio, and othello tells him
his witchcraft: ‘These things to hear was desdemona seriously inclined but still
the house affairs would draw her thence’ → we are getting this epic narrative of
othello as the great hero and yet desdemona has these house affairs that take
her away
○ ‘She gave me for my pains a world of sighs… she wish she had not heard it yet
she wished that heaven ahd made her such a man’ → there is the clue to
desdemona → she wished that heavens made her such a man → OTHELLO IS
A MAN A MANLY MAN - that is what you want in warfare - ‘valour is the chiefest
virtue’ → she is responding to this and she wishes that heaven had made her
 such a man and again you see this frustration of the female characters → THEY
ARE IN A WORLD WHERE WOMEN’S OPPORTUNITIES ARE RESTRAINED
and what she is responding to is the manliness of Othello and the manliness of
un her is attracted to the manliness of Othello → ‘Heaven had made her such a
man’ could be read as she wishes god had made her a man → this is
desdemona’s ambition and this is why she goes with Othello → desdemona is a
non-conformist individual - she cant be a man and so she does the next best
thing by marrying him and then advising him → there is a great sense of loss for
Desdemona as a woman but at the same time shakespeare condemns maybe
going for the second best?
● Thumas is not a quality confined to men and we have seen a lot of manly women in this
course - eg. corealanus’s mother
● ‘She loved me for the dangers that I had passed and I loved her that she did pity them.’
→ that is a remarkable formulation of this love and whay it turns out to eb a tragic love →
desdemona is responding to all those epic aspects of othello, exactly the characteristics
he would share with corealanus
○ She is responding to his pure foreignness → she has been hearing these stories
of cannibals and men whose heads do grow beneath theri shoulders all this
exotic stuff and notive that unlike portia, she doesnt make fun of the exotic - she
is not interested in marrying a venetian
■ And we can see why when we think back to bassanio and gratiano and
we see why she does not want a venetian - they are not the manly men
that othello is - they are kind of frivolous compared to a man like othello
■ But othello is responding to her pity - this is one thing that tells you his
difference from corealanus - that othello was in a christian world,
responding to pity (corealanus does not respond well to pity) and you
cannot picture corealanus loving pity - he is a bit tough minded
● Being a corealanus type in a christian world - valour is othello’s
deepest virtue but pity now is a virtue in this christian world
● In this one speech, you see this society that is alternating between
valour and compassion → maybe the fact that othello responds
the most to pity could be seen as symptomatic of his treatment in
venice → he has been commodified and treated like a commodity
(tautologic i know) and so when he is presented with this humane
value of pity, he is humanised and so othello’s ultimate tragedy is
that he wishes to conform, become a human like them, in a world
that treats him differently? And could we then say that this is
shakespeare criticising the conforming non-conformist →
criticising the hypocrisy of the venetian? Criticising the fact that it
is not the behaviour that makes one venetian but the superficial
appearance that does so?
○ Again,t his tension between classical and christian values
is at the heart of this moment: Desdemona is responding to
othello as a classical hero, whereas othello is responding
 to this woman who pities whim for the dangers he ahd
passed
○ It goes even deeper than that when you think about this
relationship and what it means: A1S3 → othello has to go
to cyprus here for teh good of venice and he’s just gotten
married and the marriage has not been consummated →
Desdemona’s answer is that she wants to go to cyprus
with him ‘That I love the moor to live with him / my
downright violent and storms’
■ That is not feminine ASPECTS HERE -T HE
VIOLENCE, THE TRUMPET - THERE IS
SOMETHING WAR-LIKE ABOUT DESDEMONA -
SHE IS A YOUNG WOMAN, WHAT HAPPENS TO
HER IS HORRIFIC BUT THERE IS A TENDENCY
TO BE PATRONISING TO HER BECAUSE SHE IS
JUST A BLAMELESS VICTIM → but we have to
remember that she wanted danger,r that is what
attracted him to othello → Portia did not want a
dangerous husband, she wanted a nice christian
merchant, with the emphasis on merchant → she’ll
be in control and she does everything to ensure this
control
■ Desdemona is a more heroic figure than Portia →
she is a tragic figure whereas portia is a comic
figure → desdemona has that character that
shakespeare’s tragic figures have that she is not
ordinary, she wants something out of the ordinary
→ the language here is violent and warrior-like
● ‘My heart subdued even to the very quality of my lord, I saw Othello’s visage in his mind
and to his honours and his valiant parts did I my sould and fortunes consecrates… the
rites of why i love him are bereft me’
○ She wants to go to war with her husband - it is very heroic and very admirable →
both in terms of loyalty to her husband, he is my husband, i will go with him but
also it shows an amazing disposition on her part → people talk about her like a
frail little girl but she is very heroic and she is responding to this heroism that she
sees in othello - and she doesnt care if he’s black or if he’s old → none of these
things matter to her because what she sees is a hero, a war-like hero and that is
what she wants
■ HE IS HER TICKET OUT OF VENICE
■ But here is the problem: othello is desdemona’s ticket out of venice but
desdemona is othello’s ticket into venice
■ Their love is deep and heroic but in a certain sense it is at cross-purposes
● Roderigo, A1S1: ‘tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes in an extravagant and wheeling
stranger of here and everywhere’ → THAT IS THE COMMON VENETIAN VIEW OF
 OTHELLO - HE IS A KIND OF MERCENARY → HE IS THE MOOR OF VENICE, HOW
CAN YOU BE THE MOOR OF VENICE? HOW CAN YOU BE THE JEW OF VENICE?
Venice is not fundamentallly a city of jews or a city of moors → to be a moor of venice is
always not quite to fit in, to be seen as a stranger and so clearly, othello loves
desdemona but he also loves what she would represent - FULL VENETIAN
CITIZENSHIP → if a venetian woman would marry him, that is full acceptance into the
community → this is one of the most attractive, one of the most sought after venetian
women
● Desdemona is rebellious - she rebels against her father and we learn that she effectively
kills him as he dies of grief - she wants to get out of this ordinary world of venice, she
doesnt want to marry the cassio-types or the roderigo types → othello is her chance to
do something heroic and she jumps at it the first moment she says LET ME GO TO
CYPRUS IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS WAR → and we really have to see that as heroic
● At the same time, othello is trying to gain full acceptance in venice by this moment of
marrying a venetian woman → it is the marriage of true opposites, it is the attraction of
like for unlike but you can see how problematic it is from thes tart as in a way they are at
cross-purposes if desdemona would have her way, othello would be travelling all around
the mediterranean, fighting those battles and she could go from cyprus to rhodes to
malta to sicily and she would never have to see venice again and she would never have
to put up with her father
○ But if othello could settle down in venice, he would - she wants him because he is
not a venetian but he wants her because ethat would make her a venetian
○ and at the same time, there is a kind of resistance here → there is a very telling
speech, A1S2: when othello is talking about his background and really he is the
only source we have for this information: ‘it is yet to know which when i know that
boasting is an honour i shall promulgate I fetch my life and being from men of
royal siege and my demerits may speak… as proud a fortune for this as i have
reached… but that i love the gentle desdemona i would not my unhoused free
condition put into circumscription and confine for the seas worth.’ → that is a very
revealing statement there → othello really does think in terms of his unhoused
free condition – HE IS THIS EXTRAVAGANT AND WHEELING STRANGER OF
HERE AND EVERYWHERE HE IS NOT TIED TO ANY ONE COMMUNITY - HE
IS THE IMAGE OF THE SELF-SUFFICIENT HERO… corealanus was not
dependent on rome if he could → othello has that kind of status, that is his
unhoused free condition → a man who goes from city to city who has no roots in
one city and prove his valour by the fact that he wins for that city
○ But notice what desdemona means her: desdemona has put into circumscription
and confined a being → its almost as though othello is giving up his state of
foreignness for a state of venetian domesticity → so you get this sense of othello
moving from a state of moorishness and becoming a venetian through marrying
her → he stops becoming this ‘extravagant and wheeling stranger from here and
everywhere’ → make sure to use this and link it to roderigo’s commentary → he
really ist rying to fit in
● He is willing to, in a sense abandon his self-sufficiency → refuse becoming a soldier →
we see this self-sufficiency in the warrior type: corealanus, ‘I stand alone’ → desdemona
presents precisely a challenge to othello’s self-sufficiency → he is saying i am not
ocmplete without this woman and there are all these ways in which she completes him -
she is his opposite and supplies everything that is lacking and especially supplies that
pity
○ ‘She loved me for the dangers i had passed and i loved her that she did pity
them’
● This is what has been absent in his life, some sense of pity → in general of the domestic
○ When othello’s mind is very much shaken, A4S1, line 190 where he is developing
this great hate for desdemona: ‘Hang her I do but she what she is, so delicate
with her needle an admirable musician for she will sing the savageness out of a
bear, of so high and plenty as wit and invention, she is the worse for all this.’
■ He thinks he’s lost her now, he’s grown to hate her, he’s getting the idea
of killing her
● She is a wonderful seamstress - remember, she would leave his
talks and go about the household affairs and maybe sew
something up
● Othello is that bear - what he craved was for desdemona to sign
that savageness out of him but in a way its what he most feared or
did not want to happen, this theme of singing the savageness out
of the bear is very much at the heart of the play: IT IS WHAT
OTHELLO WANTS BUT HE DOES NOT WANT → We must
picture him as a corealanus type but even more → one who does
not have a mother, does not have a wife → corealanus at least
had attachments to rome
● We must picture him as a man who is totally the product of war
● A1S3: reveals a lot as he speaks her → ‘Rude am I in my speech
and little blessed with the soft phrase of peace for since these
arms of mine hath seven years pith… they have used their dearest
action in the tented fields’ → that is a very important admission
○ Remember, Henry V had said this to catherine when he
was wooing her - i am a soldier i dont know how to woo
you and he was half-joking there but he was wooing her
very well → that is what makes Henry V so distinctive: he
can make that transition from war to peace and although
he can give great speeches ont he battlefields he knows
how to talk to a woman and indeed he uses the
awkwardness as a soldier to his advantage
● But this serious stuff here: this is in the town of venice which is
filled with characters like Cassio, with smooth-talking courtier
types
● This is going to be his problem → the fact that othello does not
understand the domestic world, he ha sbeen absent from it a bit
 too long here → A1S3: the duke reveals how much venice reveals
how much venice needs othello, ‘the Turk with the most might
preparation makes for cyprus, Othello the for to the place is best
known to you’ → we need you and WE NEED YOUR
REPUTATION → it doesnt say that you are the better soldier, the
duke says that everyone thinks you are the better soldier
● ‘The tyrant custom… thrice driven bed of down’ → a daring image
→ othello replies that his bed is really the flinty steel couch of war
- this is a man who loves war and has live dhis life with war → and
that is why he is so attracted to desdemona - she IS SO GOOD
WITH HER NEEDLE, SHE IS SUCH A GOOD MUSICIAN → this
is everything that has been lacking from his life, and yet he is not
comfortable with these aspects of life as they are not familiar to
him
● Also interesting is the way he views even the domestic in such a
military light - a couch has become militarized by his sleeping on it
→ shows how closely interlinked he is with the military
○ This is how iago is able to exploit othello’s suspicions →
and indeed, there is an undercurrent in the play that shows
othello’s reluctance to succumb to the domestic world →
this is a tragedy because he is attracted to it but at the
same time, repelled by it
■ A2S1: Cassio says of Desdemoona ‘She that I
spake of our great captain’s captain’ → othello now
has a captain but she is a woman and again it is
what he wanted but it turns out that this is not what
he wanted and that there is something in him that
repels this
● So you’ve got this dichotomous desire that
othello has that ultimately leads to his
downfall → it speaks to the outsider-nature
of Othello…
■ Interesting motif in the play - it is repeated - this is
A2S3 → Iago speaking this time, ‘our general’s wife
is now the general’ → this could be itnerpreted
innocently but there is a problem for othello → this
is a man who is used to ruling, he not used to
taking orders and he has worked hismelf into a
situation in which he now does have a captain and
a general and it is a woman
● You can see how this plays out, in a sequence Shakespeare works out:
○ Cassio comes to desdemona to give him his position back precisely because
iago says that our general’s wife is now the general and with a totally good heart,
desdemona tries to help cassio regain his position:
 ■ ‘My lord shall never rest, I’ll watch him tame’ → REFERS TO THE TAME
THE SAVAGENESS OF THE BEAR COMMENT
● ‘I’ll watch him tame and talk him out of patience, his beg shall
seem a school his board a shrift, I’ll intermingle everything he
does with cassio’s suit’ → this is a tragic error as it is playing right
into Iago’s hands and this is what is going to convince othello that
cassio and desdemona are having an affair → it is totally innocent
in a moral sense, what desdemona is doing here is a good thing,
she is trying to help out a decent man, Cassio
● But the terms used are interesting: this is not what othello wants
→ it is to thrust the DOMESTIC ON HIM IN AN OVERWHELMING
WAY → this is a man who is used to having his way on a
battlefield, he does nto want to be patronised and treated like a
schoolboy
● And then on the next page, A3S3: ‘Good love call him back’
Desdemona wants him to speak to Cassio… ‘Not now sweet
Desdemon, some other time’
○ ‘But shall it be shortly?’
○ The sooner sweet for you….
○ She pesters him → ‘I prithee name the time but let it not
exceed three days’
○ Desdemona is nagging othello here - her insistence, he
does not want to hear about this now and she keeps
pressing him on the matter and states that she wont stop
talking about this until she gets what she wants
○ She says: ‘I’ll meet the captains at the citadel’ → he is
trying to say, this si still wartime, and we still have war with
the turks and i can’t be bothered with this right now and
she presses him → Othello wanted a domestic life which
he had been denied all his life, but now he does not want it
→ the tragedy of acceptance, it is almost as though
acceptance into this society is in its own way, a kind of
tragedy in itself → as acceptance is always undermined by
stereotypes and so even Venice, a multi-cultural society
cannot function with the existence of stereotypes
● Shakespeare really goes over the top with the domesticity: still A3S3: ‘Why this is not a
boon… wear your gloves or feed on nourishing dishes’ → this is what he wanted, he
wanted pity, he wanted someone to take care of him and now she is telling him to take
care of himself, she is pitying him, mothering him and his response is: ‘Leave me but a
little to myself’ → that is the corealanus in him speaking, the all-sufficient hero →
whether he had his gloves on, whether he was dressed right for the weather → now that
othello has gotten what he wanted he has realised it is not what he wanted
● Shakespeare emphasises the aspect: this lion, this great epic hero is being trapped in
this cage of marriage → the epic hero wanted this and is now faced with the fact that he
is not self-sufficient any more
○ Othello is being tormented by iago in A3S3 ‘How now my dear Othello, your
dinner and the generous islanders by you invited…’ → classic thing when
corealanus goes out to kill volskies but his wife reminds him that he is supposed
to be having the dinner party → Othello replies ‘I am to blame’ → then comes the
moment with the handkerchief
■ Othello points to the pain upon his head which desdemona tries to bind
with the handkerchief, but Othello states that the handkerchief is too little
and pushes the handkerchief away and it falls → now, this is in a way, the
turning point of the play → its right here at the centre of the play → it was
a gesture of compassion on Desdemona’s part, she senses othello is in
pain and she tries to bind his head with the handkerchief and he rejects it,
he rejects this moment of kindness on the part of his wife → she is really
just trying to help him and with a kind of contempt he thrusts it away → IT
IS A REJECTION OF HER PITY HERE THAT PITY THAT HE SO MUCH
CRAVED AND NOW SHE’S PITYING HIM → and he has rejected it
■ It is fascinating that everything turns on this
● Thomas Rhymer, critic of shakespeare from his time, and he writes these critical essays
talking about how stupid Shakespeare’s plays are and he aprticularly hated othello
because he says that the whole plaay turns on this handkerchief → the moral of this play
is ‘housewives look to your linens’ → don’t lose your handkerchiefs, that leads to tragedy
● Rhymer is useful in highlighting the importance of the handkerchief → THE MOMENT IS
THE CULMINATION OF OTHELLO’S REJECTION OF DOMESTICATION OF BEING
TAMED, OF THIS WOMAN PITYING HIM, TRYING TO HEAL HIS WOUND - IT IS AS
THOUGH HE IS ABOUT TO PUT A BANDAID ON HIM
○ COREALANUS comes back from battle and he has a nick then his wife says
she’ll put a bandaid on it and he shrugs her off → hypothetical
● Handkerchief is important later on too → when othello raises the issue in A3S4 → ‘That
handkerchief did an egyptian to my mother give… subdue my father entirely to her
love...’
○ But then we have another account of hte handkerchief in the play: right towards
the end, where he says that it was something my father gave my mother → later
in the play, othello just dismisses it, and so we have two accounts of the
handkerchief in the play → one something that his mother gave to him and one
that his father face to his mother → we have seen this sort of thing before with
the double revelation of portia’s ring and we have to get suspicious whenever we
see this thing
○ Later in the play, when O has no particular reason to be lying in the play, he
dismisses it but for desdemona, he builds it up to be something very important
because once othello has made the handkerchief into such a pertinent symbol of
their marriage, desdemona cannot simply say that she has lost it → it would be
so easy if she did bt othello has invested the handkerhchief with so much
 mystical significance that he has made it very difficult for desdemona to admit
that she simply lost it and this is what leads to the whole crisis over the
handkerchief and the death of both of them
○ Shakespeare supplies us with a VERY INTERESTING RULE ON HOW TO
READ HIM IN THIS WORK → IF WE LOOK AT PAGE 15, WHEN THE NEWS IS
COMING TO THE VENETIAN COUNCIL OF THE TURKISH THREAT, FIRST
THEY ARE ATTACKING RHODES, THEN THEY ARE ATTACKING CYPRUS,
THEN THEY ARE ATTACKING RHODES → A1S3
■ When news is coming that the turks are attacking Rhodes, one of the
senators says that this cannot be ‘I know a say of reason, tis a pageant,
when we see the importancy of cyprus to the turk… if we make a thought
of this, we must not think that the turk is so unskilful to leave that latest
which concerns him first, neglecting attempt of ease and gain to wake and
wage a danger profitless… in all confidence, he is not for rhodes’
● This senator essentially says that if your enemy seems to be
making an obvious mistake, he’s not → cyprus is more important
than rhodes, cyprus is more defended than rhodes is → ‘we must
not think that the turk is so unskilful’ → we must not think that
shakespeare is so unskilful
● Machiavelli gives this rule for reading him in his discourses: when
you see your enemy make an obvious mistake, don’t be taken in
by it it’s probably a deception, look to some other way
● Shakespeare says - don’t ever count on the unskilfulness of
someone and so we can say, don’t ever count on the unskilfulness
of shakespeare
● When we see him make an obvious mistake → two accounts fo
the handkerchief, we must assume there is something going on
here and in this case, shakespeare indicates that the second
account is true and the first account is a farce →
INTERESTINGLY, IN THE FIRST ACCOUNT, OTHELLO TAKES
UP AN IAGO-ISTIC STORYTELLING THAT CREATES THIS
SCENARIO THAT PLAYS ON DESDEMONA’S EMOTIONS, JUST
AS IAGO CREATES SCENARIOS THAT PLAY ON RODERIGO’S
EMOTIONS → Othello’s tragedy is, in a way, that he has become
more like the venetian Iago, and that his attempt at fitting in and
conforming is what turns him into a tragic hero - ironic because the
tragic hero is usually a non-conformist… shakespeare underlines
and emphasises the tragedy in the system itself, and not within
othello - criticism of racism
● Othello puffing up the importance of the handkerchief is the first
account and here, Rhymer in all his thick-headedness really tells
us something: How does this tell us that the moral of the story is
‘housewives look to your linen’? Well, Othello says ‘let housewives
make a skillet of my helm’ this play is somehow about housewives
 and their relation to epic heroes and the tension that occurs →
desdemona was heade to being a housewife and instead she
wanted to maryy othello and experience something of the heroic
world → othello wanted a housewife, having lived this life on the
road as an extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and
everywhere, he wanted to settle down, he wanted to have a
woman to pity him and take care of him and now that he is faced
with it, it turns out to be not so much of what he wanted
● A4S3: desdemona in the scene with emilia, ‘This Lodovico is a
proper man’, ‘He speaks well’ → why in the world is desdemona
noticing Lodovico at this point? Lodovico is bassanio, he is
gratiano, he is the kind of man in venice that portia went for →
there is this recognition by desdemona that maybe she made a
mistake → othello is about to kill her → there are otoher kinds of
men in venice, they are not all like othello → this is a proper man
who speaks well who wouldn’t call me whore → it is kind of a
belated recognition that maybe the ‘curled young darlings of our
nations’ are not that bad → Desdemona gains her anagnorisis
here and it spotlights what choice she makes
● This play at its heart is the tension between the warrior’s way of
life and the domestic way of life and the tragedy that grows out of
that.
○ Desdemona is thinking of alternatives by the end
● A1S3: brabantio, her own father says ‘So opposite to marriage that she shunned the
wealthy curled darlings of our nation’ → Desdemona does not want the weak effeminate,
merchant-like men of venice, she wants a hero → EMILIA POINTS THIS OUT TOO: ‘has
she forsook so many noble matches, her father her country and her friends to be called
whore’ → she did not want the noble matches, Desdemona is a rebel - she is quite
extraordinary - she wants the great heroic man othello and she got him __> and then
she discovers that he cannot be tamed, she finds that heroes are difficult they dont
always do what you want them to do and they want to be alone sometimes →
self-suffcieicny
○ By the same toke, othello wants a woman to pity him, he has led a long difficult
life on the road as a mercenary, sold into slavery and no one has ever pities him
and suddenly this woman pities him and so he marries her, gets what he wanted
→ but this pitying grates on him → pitying turns into mothering and threatens to
become a form of smothering → Othello is a man who wants to stand alone like
coriolanus and suddenly he has this woman who is telling him about his social
calendar and the parties he will have to attend and he sensed this → ‘For know
Iago… i would not my unhoused free condition’ into circumscription and confine
→ othello changes under that, it grates against his very heroic qualities → ‘She
loved me for the dangers that I had passed and I loved her that she did pity them’
■ This si a formula for tragedy because they are coming into the marriage
with different goals
 ■ This marriage therefore is a microcosm of othello’s relationship to Venice,
and indeed the individual hero’s relationship to the political community
■ To think back to coriolanus: the hero’s relationship to the city cantor
described as a marriage → in that, you can’t live with him but you can’t
live without them
■ Othello, you can’t live with him, you can’t live without him, and the same
goes with desdemona → this common vulgar phrase for marriag eis
exactly what we see in Othello
● The deepest tragedy in the play is that othello cannot live without
desdemona → once he falls in love with her, he can’t live without
her… but at the same time, he can’t live with her either because
ther she is, making these demands that don’t fit into his self-image
→ that self-sufficient hero that we see in coriolanus, and the
war-like general who does not need anyone to command him
● By the same token for desdemona: once she falls in love with him,
she can’t live with him but she can’t live without him: she can’t live
with him because he is too bristly, there is too much of the
savageness of a bear in him but at the same time, she can’t live
without him because she has devoted her entire life to thim
● The same image we have been seeing with the whole problem of
the hero and the city: venice needs othello, Iago says this from the
beginning: ‘For i do know the state however this may gall him with
some check, cannot with safety cast him… the cyprus wars… that
for their souls, another of his fathom they have none to lead this
business’ → venice needs him so much this way, and he is, A4S1:
‘Is this the noble war whom our senate call all in all sufficient?’
● They want this great heroic figure and he is that → that is the
language that is used of him, eg A5S2: ‘For he was great of heart’
→ that is magnanimous, greatness of soul, this is the great soul
man and venice recognizes and needs him
● OTHELLO IS EVEN PRESENTED IN EPIC TERMS → the language of elizabethan
translations of homer get worked up in the texture of Othello eg. A3S3 ‘Never Iago, in my
dreams like to the Pontic sea whose icy current and compulsive curse… propontic and
the hellspawn.’ → THAT IS A HOMERIC SIMILE → COMPARING SOMETHING IN A
HUMAN BEING TO SOMETHING IN NATURE IS A HOMERIC SIMILE AND THE
PONTIC SEA IS THE BLACK SEA, THE PROPONTIC IS THE BOSPHOROUS, EVEN
THE NAMES ARE TAKEN FROM THE CLASSICAL WORLD, THIS IS A CLASSICAL
SIMILE, AND THIS IS THE KIND OF HERO WE SEE IN THE EPIC
● A5S2: recalling his own greatness othello says ’I have seen the day with this little arm
and this good sword I hav emade my way through more impediments than twenty times
your stop’ → REMEMBER CORIOLANUS, ‘ON FAIR GROUND I COULD BEAT FORTY
OF THEM’ → Othello can only beat 20 of them but it is the same gesture → you have
tehse heroic, even epic gestures → this is why the city needs him so much but it news
him only in wartime though
 ○ The very last apge in A5S2, Gratiano: ‘Keep the house and seize upon the
fortunes of the moor’ → they are having trouble with the turks so immediately
appoint him to cyprus but as soon as the turkish threat is gone, they relieve him
and put in place someone more tame, cassio → someone they are not afraid of.
○ There is an englishman named FINES MORYSON → he wrote TRAVEL
CCOUNDS , whether shakespeare knew of this or not we do not know but this is
something he said about venice,
■ ‘Besides that this state is not sufficiently furnished with men and more
especially with native commanders and generals to undertake of their
own power without assistance a war against the SUltan of Turkey. This
want of courage and especially the fear lest any citizen become a great
and popular commander in the wars might thereby have means to usurp
upon the liberty of their state seem to be the causes that for their land
forces they seldom have any native commanders and always use a
foreign general.’
● And amazing passage that seems to describe the situation with
Othello and again with Venice → Venice is deficient of spirited
warriors and having to hire one and its interesting that Fynes
Moryson supplies this extra motive that this commercial republic
would not like for a general to become so powerful that he might
take over the whole city and so they hire foreign generals and you
do see othello as disposable → they even seize his money at the
end just as shylock’s money is seized
○ Again, you see that venice’s relation to Othello is exactly parallel to Desdemona’s
relationship to Othello → Venice wants a great warrior hero and yet it can’t quite
live with him → he is great at fighting their enemies but in the city they worry that
he is a barbarian, that he is too dangerous and too bloody and they are happy to
get rid of him once they don’t need him against the turks anymore and once they
can seize his wealth
● Othello, on the other hand, needs this city → he does not have roots anymore, he is an
‘extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and everywhere’ → to be a great general, he
needs an army to be a great general
● This love is unique and extraordinary - it is perfect - and othello’s quest for perfection is
at the heart of his heroic stature
○ A1S2: Othello si not worried about defending himself: ‘I must be found my part,
my title and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly’ → now you have this
signet, ‘my perfect soul’ is glossed here has clear, forward conscience but Cantor
thinks that Othello refers to his ‘perfect soul’ → this is an extraordinary claim and
I think it is meant to be an extraordinary claim that what Othello is looking for is
perfection in souls and he thinks he has found it in Desdemona → AND THIS IS
WHY THERE IS SO MUCH AT STAKE HERE AS THE TAINT TO
DESDEMONA’S IMAGE TURNS HER AWAY FROM THE PERFECT WOMAN
HE THOUGHT SHE WAS → THIS IS WHY THIS IS NOT LIKE THE
RELATIONSHIP OF CORIOLANUS AND VIRGILIO, IT IS MUCH MORE LIKE
THE RELATIONSHIP OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA → THAT IS,
CORIOLANUS AND VIRGILIA IS A VERY ROMAN MARRIAGE THAT TAKES
PLACE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE CITY → remember what portia complains
about to Brutus: that she was only in the suburbs of her love that she was no tin
at the centre of his life where Rome was and then we saw that when the republic
collapses, love takes on this much greater importanc eint he lives of antony and
cleopatra so that they think of it as representing new heaven and new earth - it
becomes the focus of their lives, they demand so much more of love, therefore
faithfulness in that love becomes so much of an issue for them → it is the same
thing with othello → he is a heroic man, he now looks for a heroic love that is a
new form of perfection fo rhim; it saturates his language about the love, even in
retrospect: A5S2: ‘Had she been true (at this moment, othello does not realise
that she was true), if heaven would make me such another world of one entire
and perfect crysallite I’d not have sold her for it’ - and there is the language of
perfection as well as the language of the infinite that Antony and cleopatra
introduce, that love becomes something infinite → in the roman republic it was
decidedly something finite very much contained in the larger context of the
regime but here is the idea of a love which is worth the whole world just as it was
in anthony and cleopatra and that ‘s what makes it so dangerous, so heroic and
yet so dangerous → othello has an all or nothing attitude, a woman must be
perfect or she is a whore
■ Remember that in Hamlet → there is a new notion of the absolute in this
christian world, introduced by the ideas of the absolute and infinite which
christianity introduces into the world → hamlet had a very hard time
finding the middle ground in life, he counted the king of infinite space - ‘I
could be bounded into a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space
were it not that i had bad dreams’ → hamlet’s mind thinks of infinite space
and it contrasts it with little pieces of ground that are dirt - spacious in the
possession of dirt
● Othello’s mind works similarly especially after iago goes to work
on it: that is expecting a love that is perfect → this happens so
often int he play, A1S3: ‘My life upon her faith’ → at this poin tin
her play, it is a kind of throaway line and yet as the keynote of the
wholep [lay, brabantio has challenged othello with words that will
come back to haunt him → she deceived me her father and she
will you → ‘my life upon her faith’ - a simple oath here but that is
indeed what othello ahs done → he has placed his whole life upon
her faith → IT DOES MEANT THA TMORE IS AT STAKE UPON
THEIR LOVE THAN WHAT IS NORMALLY TRUE - YOU
CANNOT PICTURE CORIOLANUS SAYING OF VIRGILIA ‘MY
LIFE UPON HER FATH’ – you might see him saying ‘My life upon
the roman republic’ but not my life upon my wife’s faith → one
cannot even picture caesar or brutus saying it
 ■ Antony does say it → in effect, the whole of antony
and cleopatra is about this notion
■ And this is what happens when you have no
political context eg. othello has no homeland and
you put your faith in this woman as VALIDATING
YOU - and you see it again in A2S1: they are
greeting in cyprus: ‘Oh my fair warrior’ - othello
says to desdemona ‘ my dear othello’ - desdemona
says to othello
● You have this role reversal here →
desdemona should be the dear and othello
the warrior
● Shows how they are trying to bring together
these antithetical worlds: the domestic world
of marriage and the military world of the
battlefield → and so you see the dometic
being referred to as a battlefield and you
see the military being referred to in
domestic terms
● Indeed, desdemona always thinks of herself
as a warrior: again, we see them reaching
out for opposite aims
○ In a away it also shows just how much Othello’s sense of
being is based upon acceptance by venice → if his
relationship with D is taken as a microcosm of his
relationship with venice then the fact that it is his life upon
her faith suggests that he puts his life upon venice and
how true it remains to its traditional values → shows
othello’s need for acceptance and it presents his tragedy
as venice is a state that is hypocritical
● Othello portrays his love: ‘if it were now to die, twere now to be most happy for i fear…
content so absolute that not another comfort like this succeeds natural fate’ → this is the
quest for the absolute → that antony and cleopatra, hamlet, amd macbeth engage in
● ‘It is too much a joy’ → he is demanding everything of htis love → gives him an absolute
happiness; ‘Excellent wretch, perdition catch my soul but i do love thee and when i love
thee not chaos will come again’ → that is indeed what will happen when othello ceases
to believe that desdemona loves him → this is the all or nothing attitude we saw in
hamlet, a woman is either an angel or a whore, the world is either heavenly or dust →
there is not middle ground,--> the city has provided the middle ground in the ancient
world eg in corioanus but antony and cleopatra was a world with no midway between
these extremes
● If he loves her and she loves him then he has everything, but if she doesn’t then
everything falls apart
● A3S3: ‘For she had eyes and chose me’ → there you see how much this love has come
to mean to him, it is his ultimate validation, he senses that he is a second class citizen,
○ He is a stranger in Venice, he is not fully accepted in the city, for Desdemona to
choose him would be the ultimate validation as she had the choice of any young
eligible man in the city and she chose him and he knows it
○ And therefore, A3S3, ‘If she be false, heaven mocked itself I’ll not believe it’ →
her faith in him, which is almost like faith in a god, it now becomes the source of
his self worth → THIS IS A MAN WHO FO RYEARS WAS LIKE CORIOLANUS,
WHO VALIDATES HIMSELF ON THE BATTLEFIELD, THE BATTLEFIELD
ALLOWS FOR A FAIRLY CLEAR METHOD OF VALIDATION: THE LAST MAN
STANDING WINS AND THAT IS THE HERO - A NICE OBJECTIVE STANDARD
OF VALUE THAT YOU SEE AT WORK IN HOMER
■ LOVE INTRODUCES SUCH A SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT WHERE YOUR
GREATNESS DEPENDS NOT ON ANYTHING YOU CAN DO WITH
YOUR OWN HANDS, YOUR OWN SWORD BUT ON WHETHER THIS
WOMAN LOVES YOU - HER FAITH IN YOU BECOMES WOUND UP IN
YOUR FAITH IN YOURSELF AND SO IF SHE’LL BE FALSE, HEAVEN
MOCKS ITSELF → AND THAT IS WHY HE IS SO TORTURED WTH
THE IDEA THAT SHE HAS BETRAYED HIM
● A4S2: ‘Had it pleased heaven to try me with affliction had they rained all kinds of…
captivity me and my utmost hopes… soul a drop of patience’ → you see a similar
moment in Macbeth where he asks just give me a real opponent who I can fight and I’ll
handle it, this is the torment of the epic hero who has been used to battling other men in
the most dangerous circumstances with his life endangered and he can handle that but
alas, → ‘but there were i’ve garnered up my heart.. The fount from the which my current
runs… to knot and gender in…’ - he never completes this sentence but you see here
what this love has come to mean to him, it is where he has farnered up his heart → this
bears on the issue of why both othello andd esdemona let this go on → why they are
locked into this love… wh y othello doesn’t say that he will get a divorce → he has
staked too much on this, they have staked too much on this marriage → they have done
this on the defiance of desdemona’s father and presumably on the public opinion in
venice
○ Presumably this has been tolerated because they need othello in venice
○ And they dont want to be proven wrong: in some ways, their deep tragedy is that
they have such a big stake in this marriage - othello does not want to have to say
i made a bad choice, and above all, desdemona does not want to question her
choice: A4S3: desdemona explains to emilia, ‘my ove does so approve him…
has grace and favour’ → this man has just called her a whore and has slapped
her in public – this is spousal abuse
■ Many women do justify domestic abuse when it comes to real life
marriages → she justifies his ill treatment by pointing at their love, that
even his stubbornness has ‘grace and favour’
 ■ In this beautiful willow song: ‘Let nobody blame him his scorn I approve’ -
that is the deepest problem with desdemona here, that she is so invested
in her choice in othello that she does not question it
● But SHE DOES QUESTION HER LOVE WITH OTHELLO: ‘This lodovico is a proper
man… he speaks well’ → this is a touch that shakespeare supplies that is so deep
● A1S3: Iago says ‘Cassio’S a PROPER MAN’ → OMG CASSIO AND LODOVICO ARE
PROPER MEN → THAT IS A FASCINATING ECHO → LODOVICO IS MADE A
PARALLEL TO CASSIO AND SO A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DESDEMONA AND
LODOVICO IS INSINUATED: shows that by the end of the play Desdemona’s love for
Othello really has faded and that she indeed is not as in love with Othello as she
seemed → could this then be used to argue the nature of Desdemona’s love; she is not
in love with othello but she is in love with the idea of what othello represents, the epic
hero, and once he has done away with her and she has realised the error of her choice
of epic hero, she reverts back to the ‘curled darlings of our nation’ → both films make the
mistake of making lodovico an older man
○ There is a part of desdemona that is now taking the portia side of things → portia
did not choose Othello, she did not choose morocco, and you can imagine what
desdemona needed was a friend like portia who would tell you that a man from
venice is manageable
○ In a way, the weakness of Cassio, the way that he loves to be associated with
and talk to women, makes him the perfect match for desdemona who is a warrior
type, who does wish to control and to command and to aid → shakespeare
shows how desdemona is a tragic hero in that she has made the mistake of
marrying someone like Othello, and the anagnorisis of when she realises at the
end that she should’ve have been with someone like Lodovico is too late and it
amplifies her position as a tragic hero
○ Portia turns down prince of Arragon, prince of Morocco, she turns down these
princes and chooses a manageable man and indeed she makes him very
maangeably by the end of the play
● In shakespeare, according to Paul Cantor, destiny is ‘character plus circumstances’ →
put portia in desdemona’s circumstances and no problem, no iago would fool portia, the
minute othello starts showing signs of jealousy, portia would call him on it and organise it
→ GREAT example would be othello and hamlet, othello would go down and cut off
claudius’s head.
● The tragedy of desdemona is that she is too invested in the ohtello myth.
● AMAZON.COM HAS A GREAT COMMENT ON OTHELLO → comedy is where women
run the world, tragedy is where men run the world
○ It really works for merchant of venice and othello: in MofV, it is a world run by
women, chiefly portia and hence the men get led around by women; in othello we
see what happens when the women don’t run the world and the men do with all
their contentiousness and competitiveness → portia and desdemona are
complete opposites and portia wants happiness, a subtle place in society and a
true domestic world, on ein which she will run the family
 ○ Whereas desdemona is looking for this world where she gets to go to war with
othello, to go off to the battles with him, and so she is deeply invested in her
belief in othell and this si why the handkerchief scene is so important A5S2: this
is othello’s honest account of the handkerchief ‘a handkerchief, an antique token
my father gave my mother’ - he has not reason to be lying at this point, it is a
rather off hand comment, this si likely the true account but it is very different from
the account he gives in A3S4: his mother gives it to her father originally
■ Othello here deliberately builds up a myth around this handkerchief ot
make it a serious issue for desdemona, and she believes it ‘Ist possible,
indeed is it true?’ → she believes it, she believes how INVESTED SHE IS
IN THE OTHELLO MYTH → he who controls the story controls the play
● Alan Bloom’s essay on Othello, the etymology for Desdemona’s name → the normal
etymology is Desedimonia; whereas the normal etymology is Ducsdimonia which is
unfortunate in greek, badly demoned → to have a bad fortune
○ It is interesting that in teh source material, Desdemona’s name is Disdemona
which suggests more Dicsdimonia → BLOOM ARGUES THAT THE CHANGE
TO DESDEMONA MEANS DESIDIMONIA WHICH IS GREEK FOR
SUPERSTITUOUS → again, this is hard to prove but it would be very interesting
if there was something superstitious about Desdemona, independent of that
etymology is that part of her problem is that she has too much belief in othello
she is so invested that this is the great heroic epic hero she marries that she tries
NOT EVEN TO HAVE BAD THOUGHTS OF HIM in the most awful situations that
he presents her with
○ Othello and desdemona are magnificent figure → it is arguably the greatest love
presented in all of shakespeare → it is no surprise that the greates opera ever
amde of a shakespearean play is Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello because it is such an
operatic subject - this love between othello and desdemona and yet, that is what
makes this so tragic - the fact that they both are so heavily invested in this as
perfection, as giving them their absolute content, giving them all that they want →
giving them PERFECTION, especially love → love does not live up to othello’s
expectations, things turn out deeply tragic

IAGO

● It is iago who destroys their love and he does it with incredible psychological intensity
● Samuel Coleridge: refers to the ‘motive hunting of a motiveless malignity’ and that has
become in the way, the standard question
● He is a deeply devilisih figure → the inverse ‘I am not what I am’ → but, shakespeare
does give him a lot of motives, that is coleridge’s point that there are too many motives:
its over determined but I think from what we have been seeing in this class, it is not all
that incomprehensible that iago fits into a type we have been seeing: the discontented,
ambitious man
○ A1S1: the issue is preferment in military promotion: ‘Three great ones of the city
in personal suit… I am worthy no worse a place’ - he was not chosen as
lieutenant but ‘bombast circumstance horribly stuffed with epithets of war’ → this
is incredibly daring of Shakespeare because it allows aigo to give us the first view
of othello and it is kind of dangerous from shakespeare’s point of view because
iago threatens to poison the view of othello from the beginning and he is actually
the prince of morocco and not othello
■ Indeed, this is the way Othello speaks: ‘horribly stuffed with epithets of
war’ as glorious, epic rhetoric → both Ian McKellan and Frank Finlay in
the film adaptations imitate othello ‘For certes, I have already chose my
officer’ → that is a profound insight here that iago questions othello’s
GREATNESS, THIS GREAT MAN IS REALLY JUST FULL OF
BOMBAST, HE IS HORIRBLY STUFFED WITH EPITHETS OF WAR
AND IAGO LOVES TO MAKE FUN OF HIM BEHIND HIS BACK
■ ‘Preferment goes by letter and affection…’ this si the dissatisfied and
ambitious man who feels he has been denied the place he deserves - if
this is true then the Venetian republic is not functioning like the roman
republic, it is not rewarding merit, now again this is iago speaking so why
should it be true but from iago’s perspective, merit is not being rewarded
■ But it is interesting that Iago objects to the fact that cassio seems to be a
theoretician, the ‘bookish theoric’, mere ‘prattle without practise is all his
soldiership’ that in the case of iago, he has proven himself in the
battlefield ‘whose eyes had seen the truth’ (OMG OCULAR PROOF) →
but we see here a man who objects to choosing a military official on the
basis of just his theoretical background, who wants practise as the
indication here
■ Now ther are lots of other reasons that iago gives: eg. A1S3: “ ihate the
Moor… he’s done my office I know not if it be true’ → what we do learn
several times, and it comes up again A2S1: ‘i do suspect the lust moor
has lept into my seeat’, and then again ‘I fear Cassio with my nightcap
too’ -> this is the obsessive, repetitive character of Iago’s statement of his
motive that has led people like Coleridge to speak about the
motive-hunting motiveless malignity
■ But let me suggest that the erotic component to this is subordinate to
what we would call the thumotic component → what is at the heart of all
this is Iago’s masculine competitiveness, he is very frustrated that cassio
has gotten the position that iago thought belonged to him and that is
fundamental → you see that a lot in shakespeare and you see in venice
the problem you see in a lot of communities where the
COMPETITIVENESS OF THE MEN IS NOT CHANNELED AGAINST A
FOREIGN ENEMY BUT GETS DIRECTED WITHIN THE CITY AGAINST
RIOTERS and i do believe THAT THE EROTIC RIVALRY FOLLOWS
FROM THAT - BECAUSE YOU FEEL THE COMPEITION AGAINST
MEN, YOU FEEL THE COMPETITION IN ALL ASPECTS, IT IS NOT AS
DIVERSE A SET OF MOTIVES AS IT APPEARS AT FIRST
● THE PSYCHOLOGY OF IAGO IS NOT ALL THAT MYSTERIOUS:
HE LOOKS AT, IN VENICE, PEOPLE WHO ARE AWARDED FOR
SOMETHING OTHER THAN MERIT - iago is a very intelligent
man - he uses his intelligence in an evil way - great emtnal talent
and agility
● AC Bradley analyses this aspect of iago, this is a man who is
frustrated by living in the world where merit does not fo by sheer
intelligence and cassio is a particular frustration to him: because
cassio has conventional merit, his social standing is higher than
that of Iago, A2S1: when cassio goes to kiss emilia ‘Let it not gall
your patience good Iago that I extend my manners tis my breeding
that gives me this bold show of courtesy’ → it does gall his
patience that cassio is better bred than iago and thus has the right
to kiss his wife or in tha drunken moment A2S3, Cassio is drunk
and iago is getting this fight started, he is another one of these
courtiers, ‘And there be souls must be saved and there must be
souls that must not be saved… Aye but by your leave not befor
eme’ → NOW THAT REALLY GALLS IAGO BECAUSE IAGO
SHOULD BE THE LIEUTENANT AND NOW HE IS BEING TOLD
THAT IT WILL COST HIM HEAVEN I KNEW THIS WAS
SIGNIFICANT THE FIRST TIME I SAW IT AND SHE DIDN’T SAY
ANYTHING ABOUT THIS
○ A5S1: Iago says of cassio, ‘He had the daily beauty in his
life that makes me ugly’ → the women fall for casiso, they
don’t fall for Iago → when you add all this up, there is a
real psychological truth here about iago, he is a deeply
frustrated man, eh is a man of great talents especially
talents at plotting, he shapes this great plot of the play,
even as shakespeare plays it, he has many of
Shaespeare’s great dramatic skills, his great sense of
timing for example, and he is frurstrated when he looks
around venice and sees who is honoured: this flornteine
cassio and this foreigner othello
○ And above all, Cantor argues, that he attacks Othello as a
fraud → to him, Othello is some kind of liar → A2S1: ‘Mark
me with what violence you first loved the Moor but for
bragging and telling her fantastical lies’ → this is one of the
remarkable things shakespeare does in this play, when
othello gives that speech before the senate about how he
wooed desdmona, we are under the spell of the beautiful
language of it - we never have any proof of these great
deeds of Othello, unlike with Coriolanus where he defeated
the Volskies → we don’t need to doubt the realities of
othello, in fact, when he shows up at Cyprus ,the soldiers
 are happy and they feel saved but so much depends upon
reputation and iago raises the question of whether or not
there is any truth to this and we refer back to the idea of
‘bombast’ and ‘epithets of war’ → Shakespeare ahs shown
us in the prince of morocco what bombast is - that in that
comedy when we hear the great warrior speak, it is
supposed to sound to us as made up and phoney but iago
raises the question about the othello myth - desdemona
never questions it but iago does
○ A1S1: ‘We cannot all be master nor all masters cannot be
truly followed’
○ A5S2: ‘Oh thou Othello that was once so good fallen in the
practise of a cursed slave’ - Lodovico
○ Othello is the master and iago the slave and we have seen
this in antony and cleopatra, that in fact what iago does is
to enact the slave revolt → that he destroys the master that
this is the revenge of the slave, of the subordinate of the
master
○ What iago sees is that there is something rotten in the
state of venice, this hierarchy is not authentic, there is
people that are ruling and they don’t deserve it in his eye -
there is something conventional and artificial about it and
he is going to bring it all down
○ Cantor: Iago is a ‘demonic parody of Christianity’ → that he
sets in motion the christian criticque of the great soul man
■ Iago is James in Spanish
■ Santiago Matamoros → St. James the Moorslayer,
the patron saint of Spain → Santiago de
Compostela, one of the great pilgrimage sites in
Europe, one of the top three, is devoted to this man
→ he is also the patron saint of the reconquesta, of
the Reconquest of Spain and is said to have
appeared in all these christian battles against the
moors in spain to help the spanish christians win
■ There is a huge amount of material about him
■ Iago is the Moorslayer → as the perversely
christian saint who shows that this epic hero out of
the ancient world is really a sham and is filled with
bombast and stuffed with epithets of war and is not
the real hero that venice thinks he is and is not the
real hero that desdemona thinks he is - it si a power
play.
■ The Nietzschean terms seem to be profoundly
applicable to Iago that htis is the slave revolt, the
 slave using his cleverness to bring down the
masters
● As iago says, we cannot all be masters not
all masters can be truly followed
● The secret is that iago wil turn othello into
hamlet - he will take this self sufficient man
and turn him into a creature of doubts
● And indeed as iago says in A1S3: ‘THe
moor is of a free and open nature that thinks
men honest that but seemed to be so’ - iago
is going to introduce hamlet’s obsession
with seeming into othello
● Its the nature of the great souled man that
he takes the world at face value, he is so
heroic he doesn’t have to worry about it, he
is self sufficient, he doesn’t have to worry
about villains, he can handle them → othello
is of a free and open nature when the play
begins AND WHAT IAGO DOES IS ME
HAMES HIM THINK LIKE HAMLET
● THE OUTCOME WILL BE THAT OTHELLO
WILL THINK THA THUMANS ACTUALLY
MAKS THEIR DESIRES AND THAT THEIR
DESIRES ARE CORRUPT SPECIFICALLY
THAT WOMEN ARE CORRUPT AND THAT
THEY ARE MORE SEXUAL THAN THEY
APPEAR TO BE - THESE ARE ALL THE
THINGS THAT OBSESSED HAMLET,
OTHELLO WILL COME TO UNDERSTAND
THAT REPUTATION IS OFTEN PHONEY
AND THAT YOU CAN’T BELIEVE IT AND
THAT YOU CAN’T TRUST WHAT PEOPLE
SAY - ALL THESE THINGS IAGO WILL
INSINUATE INTO TOEHLLO’S MIND AND
IT IS A BRILIANT PROCESS
● IT IS TAKING THIS MAN WHO LIVED ON
SURFACES, THE WAY HEROES LIKE
CORIOLANUUS AND ACHILLES DID, HE
COMPLICATED OTHELLO’S WORLD BY
INTRODUCING A WORLD IN WHICH
APPEARANCES MASK DEEPER
REALITIES THAT ARE CORRUPT
● Iago’s ‘temptation’ of othello really is a kind of corruption - we see it first at work with
Brabantio, and this starts in A1S1: notice almost the first thing Iago says, is ‘Your
 daughter and your bags’ → PARALLELS YOUR DAUGHTER AND YOUR DUCATS →
the concern is their family and their money
● What we see here is that Iago works with what Cantor calls ‘a pre-emptive and
pornographic imagination’ - it’s really quite brilliant: he works by planting pornographic
images in the minds of people where they did not exist before: ‘an old black ram is
tupping your white ewe’ - emphasising the difference in colour, the difference in age, and
presenting it as an animal act - the sexual act in its most animal - the devil will make a
grandsire of you and he goes on → A1S1: ‘You’ll have your daughter covered with a
barbary horse… your daughter and the Moor are making the beast with two backs’ (the
alst bit is the most pornographic) → colours the moment from the beginning AND FOR
US TOO → even so, it is really extraordinary the negative images that shakespeare
allows the play to begin with: shows how much Iago’s imagination dominates this play
the same way Hamlet’s imagination dominates Hmlet
● Hamlet is the longest part in all of Shakespeaer, Richard the III is the second largest,
and Iago is the third longest - Iago speaks the most out of any other character and he is
allowed to characterise the play
○ There is almost no corruption in this world: desdeona has not had an affair with
Cassio, and Emilia has not had an affair with Othello or Cassio yet its so hard t
believe that the play is not about a corrupt world because of how Iago has
corurpted us - we are given so many images of sexual corruption much like the
images that hamlet gives us that the image of the world that emerges is a very
negative one although in reality nothing bad actually happens unless as a
product of these images of corruptipn
○ Thiese ideas are introduced into othello’s mind by Iago → A1S1: ‘This accident is
not unlike my dream’ - WHAT A STRANGE HINT THAT IS - that these
pornographic images are there
○ Leslie Fielder has a wonderful essay on this play with his book and he’s a kind of
Freudian critic: WHAT KIND OF A DREAM WAS BRABANTIO HAVING? With
beast with two backs → again, an interesting touch - it is important because Iago
needs something to work with - he manufactures these pornographic images but
in some ways they work because they touch upon something that is already there
● And so, his plan, as he formulates it on the run, is that he will convince othello that from
cassio is having an affair with desdemona and that will bring down everybody, everything
at once - and indeed, what iago produces is more problematic than it even first appears:
he EXPOSES SOMETHING IN VENICE AS WELL AND IAGO IS THE KIND OF MAN
DREADED IN JUSTICE HOLMES FAMOOUS FREE SPEECH - IAGO WOULD CRY
FIRE IN A CROWDED THEATRE: A1S1: ‘Do with like tomorous accent yell.. Fire and
spied in populous cities’ - HE IS GOING TO INTRODUCE AN ELEMTN OF ANARCHY -
VENICE IS THIS CIVILISED CITY AND IAGO IS GOING TO BRING IT DOWN
○ Brabantio says in A1S1: What tell'st thou me of robbing? this is Venice; my
house is not a grange
○ We see here Venice’s self-conception, that it is a civilised city and everything is in
control and we don’t have to worry about that - but in fat, iago is going to expose
the kind of anarchy that lurks beneath the surface in venue
● Even in military terms, Othello presents his mission to Cyprus: you see here the claismt
aht Othello and Desdemona make towards their love that it is extraordinary, that it
transcends all the normal patterns in Venice, A1S3: ‘I saw Othello’s visage in his mind’ -
that is an answer for the people asking how can you like this old grizzled black man →
when you have all these handsome cassio types hanging around
● This love transcends th emere body, this is not a physical attraction, it is all the more
better for that, it is all the more impressive because of that
○ Desdemona appears to be asking to go with othello in the middle of what
appears to be a WAR → she wants to accompany this general and Ohtello says
‘let her have her voice… beg it not to please the palate of my appetite’ - you guys
think there is a sexual apetite that needs to be satisfied, but it is not → ‘the young
effects me defunct’ - THAT IS AN INTERESTING ADMISSION THAT COMES
BACK TO HAUNT HIM → he claims here that he is not all that sexually active →
that is going to go an poison his mind as it confirms his suspicions that
desdemona may be sexually unsatisfied … ‘but to be free and bounteous to her
mind’ → HTERE IT IS AGAIN, THIS IS ABOVE PHYSICAL… ‘i will do great
business scant when she is with me.. No when light-winged cupid… let
housewives make a skillet of my helm’ → othello’s rejection of the domestic, the
horrors of the heroic being corrupted by the domestic
■ ‘How can a woman possibly corrupt military issues - whoever heard of
that happening, that women getting involved with high level military
operations’ and here othello is claiming that dont worry
● OTHELLO IS INCREDIBLY LUCKY THAT THIS STORM CAME
ALONG AND DEFEATED THE TURKS: BECAUSE OTHERWISE,
IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE HE WAS GOING TO DO VERY MUCH
BECAUSE HE WAS SO CONCERNED WITH DESDEMONA
BECAUSE HIS MIND WAS SO COMPLETELY ABSORBED IN
DESDEMONA: WHEN HE GETS TO CYPRUS __. Again, it is
lucky that he didn’t have to start fighting the turks but clearly she is
on his mind
● A2S2: ‘upon certain tidings… every man put himself in a triumph’
→ MAYBE HE SHOULD BE CHEKCING OUT THE
FORTIFICATIONS, MAYBE THE TURKISH FLEET HAD NOT
BEEN COMPLETELY DESTROYED, MAYBE THERE IS
ANOTHER TURKISH FLEET - BUT NO, SOE TO DANCE, SOME
TO MAKE BONFIRES, FOR BESIDES THESE BENEGICIAL
NEWS, IT IS THE CELEBRATION OF HIS NUPTIAL → NOW
WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH MILITARY
PROTOCOL? THAT HE JUST GOT MARRIED - THIS IS A VERY
STRANGE DETAIL THAT SHAKESPEARE SPPLIES THAT
OTHELLO IS TOO PROMPT TO PROCLAIM THE VICTORY AND
TO RELAX DISCIPLINE
○ All offices are open and there is full liberty of feasting…
bless the island of cyprus and our noble general othello
 ○ Now, it so happens, that Iago exploits this moment, to
create this brawl that is very dangerous, that indeed, leads
Othello tsay A2S3: ‘Are we turned turks? And to ourselves
do that which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites for
Christian shame put by this barbarous brawl.’ → and
again, Curan -> HERE IS THE ERUPTION OF THE FIRE
OF THE CITY, THE CITY RUNING INTO THE GRANGE,
THE KIND OF WASTELAND, THE KIND OF BORDER
LAND, HERE IS THIS ERUPTION OF TURKISHNESS OF
BARBARIANNESS AND NOW ITS IAGO WHOSE
PLANNED THIS BUT IT IS OTHELLO WHO HAS MADE
IT POSSIBLE → othello who has set loose these forces
here.
○ A2S3: Cassio says let’s go to the watch, AIgo says that it is
not yet time, our general cast us early ‘for the love of his
desdemona’ who let us not therefore blame, he hath not
yet made wanton the night with her and she is sport for
Jove - it is a big question of whether or not Desdemona
and Othello consummate their marriage → at this point,
they have not and so Othello is PROCLAIMING THE
HOLIDAY SO THAT HE CAN ENJOY THE FRUITS OF
HIS MARRIAGE
● A3S2: very brief scene, these letters five iago to the pilot and by his duties do duty the
Senate at sawn I will be walking on the works → ‘THIS FORTIFICATION GENTLEMEN
SHALL WE SEE IT ‘ → OTHELLO WAITS TILL A3S2 TO DO HIS JOB 9evidence as to
maybe Othello may not be such a worthy general), to checkout the foritifcations
○ Shakespeare sets this up - he has Othell claiming that he is not going to let his
personal feelings intrude at all, he is going off to cyprus to do exactly as you want
me to do, the fact that my bride is with me and we haven’t consummate our
marriage, don’t worry about it because the young affects in me are defunct –
AND INDEED, IT IS DISASTROUS → had the turks been sneaky and snuck
back then it would hav ebeen disastrous for cyprus
○ The idea that personal motives won’t intrude upon his work in cyprus are simply
belied by the facts of the text here because again he is making so much of the
love - the love is SUPPOSED TO BE ABOVE SEXUALITY, BUT IT TURNS OUT
THEY HAVE A SEXUAL INTEREST IN IT and all of this is the situation that Iago
is going to exploit
● A2S1: ‘Nay it is true or else I am a Turk’ (Iago - when they are quarreling over whether or
not women take their jobs seriously) → OTHELLO IS THE TURK TURNED CHRISTIAN
AND IAGO IS THE CHRISTIAN TURNED TURK - here is that element of the barbarian
lurking within the city ready to set things loose but more so by releasing the barbarism
that is buried beneath the surface in Othello
● A2S3: ‘Good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.’ 9IAGO SAYS THIS TO CASSIO
WHEN HE IS SUPER DRUNK)→ that is the kind of mysterious world that iago takes into
 → this opens up an abyss here of ‘I thinks and you thinks’ - the depths of the interior -
that is going to be the core of iago’s attack on othello - this is a man who lived ont hes
urface of things → A3S3: ‘Did Michael Cassio when you wooed my lady know of your
love?... Why of that thought, Iago?..... Indeed….. Is he not honest?.... What dost thou
think? THink my lord’ - the way the word’ think’ plays in this sequence is amazing and
what iago subtly and slowly introduces into Othello’s mind is the gap between what men
think and what they profess, or what they thinka nd what they do or the gap between
what is going on in their minds and what is going on beneath the surface and that othello
has never contended with → keep substituting coriolanus with Othello it is the best way
of grasping how inadequate othello is when iago introduces him to this new christian
idea of the depths of human interiority - the thing that hamlet was so acquainted with -
what is going on in people’s minds… ohtello has never lived with those kinds of
thoughts, and iago introduces them to othello suddenly and it unhinges him and drives
him to the brink of madness

● Essentially, we have been looking at the weird forms of hybridity that develop in teh
classical and christian culture that develops in the rennaissance as shakespeare sees it -
again, these two very antithetical views of the world come together in the rennaissance,
the hop was to achieve some greater synthesis and im going to go back to Henry V just
to remind you: the point of henry v was that you could bring together classical and
christian values that you could bring together christian kings and christian mercuries so
that we hear of how king henry v is as full of valour as of kindness, princely in both →
that is really full of claccisism and christianity, he himself presents it as a challenge: in
peace there is nothing so becomes a man as modest, stillness and humility but when the
blast of war blows in our ears, then imitates the action of the tiger stiffen the sinews,
conjure up the blood’ → EVEN HENRY RECONGIZES HOW DANGEROUS THIS IS - IT
IS LIKE CORIOLANUS BECOMING A SWEET GUY FOR A CHANGE AND IT IS A
CHALLENGE THAT HENRY DOES RISE TO AND IT IS PRESENTED AS SOMETHING
THAT IS EXTRAORDINARILY DIFFICULT IN THE PLAY
● HENRY’S POSITIVE SYNTHESIS OF THE WARRIOR AND THE GENTLEMAN IS
PARODIED IN THE PLAY AS WE SAW BY MCMORRIS ‘so christ save me I will cut off
your head’
○ Othello si the tragic counterpart to the comic mcmorris - that what w e are seeing
in othello is the tragic side of this hope for the great rennaissance synthesis here,
that othello really, his mode is ‘so christ save me i will cut off your hea’ that this
man who is a christian and in some degree prides himself on it its his way of
becoming part of venice, nevertheless keeps that barbarian in him and ultimately
it is that barbarian that breaks loose and indeed in some ways, his christianity is
so distorted that it makes him more barbaric → ‘thertheir currents turn ary’ → this
is what im offering you with shakespeare’s view of the renaissance: these two
great currents of classicism and christianity come togehter and in weird ways,
their currents turn ary, the notion of heroism is distorted
○ What we are looking at in othello is a variety of attempts to bring together this
antithetical world - i’ve stressed that aspect of desdemona A3S4: ‘Beshrew me
 much Emilia I was unhandsome warrior as i am, arraigning his unkindness with
my soul’ → WARRIOR?! Shows you something about desdemona, that she really
is extraordinary, she is trying to be heroic, she is trying to move from the
domestic to the epic world of othello, whereas othello is trying to move from the
epic world to the domestic world of Desdemona → that clash is at the heart of the
tragedy of the play
■ This play might hae been a tragedy even without iago - even iago says
give them time, they will grow apart and shakespeare hints in the paly that
this is true - ‘This Lodovico is a proper man’
● Iago is the immediate cause of this tragedy
○ Iago acts out what nietzsche calls the ‘slave revolt’ in morality - it is a remarkable
anticipation of nietzsche - we actually see someone take down the great souled
man of antiquity - the language of slave is commonly associated with Iago
○ A4S2, when emilia not knowing she is talking about her husband Iago, ‘I wil be
hanged if some eternal villain, some busy an dinsinuating rogue, soem cogging
cozening slave to get some office hath not devised this slander’ → again, the
word slave word is applied to iago and Emilia actually gets his psychology right
here: ‘to get some office’ → now iago’s evil goes beyond normal human range
but if there is any truth to his psychology, it is laid out in the opening scene: he
has eben denied his office and he is frustrated
○ CANTOR DESCRIBES HIM WITH NIETZSCHE’S ‘RESSENTIMENT’ → A
FRENCH WORD FOR RESENTMENT BECAUSE IT INCLUDES THE
MEAN-SPIRITED AND PETTY
■ Iago is the classic case study in what Nietszche calls the ressentiment, in
works like Geneaology of Morals, it characterises someone who thinks
the world is unfair to him, who thinks that his merit is not sufficiently
rewarded and what is worse, is that the lack of merit in other people is
rewarded - the creature of ressentiment as nietszche analyses him is a
deeply frustrated man who feels for example that other men are
goodlooking and women are attracted to them and not to him even though
he is so much better than those merely good looking men
■ The man of ressentiment feels that the world rewards false values and
does not reward the true ones - and in particular, looks around at the
people of the world and questions: why not me? In the sense that they are
better than they are, eg. i am smarter than they are
● Iago is obviously a very smart and very talented man and you would assume that he
might make a good lieutenant but the sense is that Cassio has gotten rewarded because
he is handsome and he was great at venetian parties and the women helped him
advance his position - Iago is just full of ressentiment → BRING DOWN CASSIO,
BRING DOWN OTHELLO
● An din particular, he wants t obring down the great-souled man → othello who is great of
heart, who is worshipped by all of venice, given these great positions of authority…
whereas Iago says that he is full of bombast, full of epithets of war → that is a nasty,
narrow-eyed view of greatness
● It is this idea, what Nietsche calls this ‘slave revolt’ morality, this christian term that what
is regarded as good in the ancient world is really evil and indeed, in effect, iago’s critique
of othello si that he is just proud, and proud for no good reason and this is the interesting
aspect of the play - THAT ALAN BLOOM POINTS TO - THAT WE HAVE NO
OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE OF OTHELLO’S GREATNESS - now Cantor does believe that
he is a good general, and a lot of people int he play assume that, based off his
reputation - unlike Coriolanus and Henry V there are no battles we can point to that
othello ever won
● A1S2: ‘Tis yet to know which when I know that boasting is an honour I shall promulgate,
I fetch my life and being from men of royal siege and my merits may speak unbonneted’
- at some point, you feel like saying okay already, produce the documents let’s see that
you fetch your life and being from men of royal siege
○ ‘When i know that boasitng is an honour’ - that is the whole paradox, that we
have been seeing when the classical and christian worlds meet: remember,
Henry V’s line in the St christmas day speech: ‘but if it be a sin to covet honour, I
am the most offending soul alive’ → and indeed he is a sinner because coveting
honour is a sin → and now here we see Othello saying something rather similar
→ we see the paradox there: THE CHRISTIAN PART OF HIM DOES NOT
WANT TO BOAST, AND LAY CLAIM TO HIS HONOUR BUT HIS BARBARIC
PART DOES
○ That is iago’s goal now - he will bring down the othello myth, he will bring down
the great soul man and it is an incredible struggle
● Now, if Iago came up to ohtello and told him that his wife desdemona was cheating on
him with Cassio, othelo would have killed him on the spot → how dare you say that
about my wife
○ Iago’s evidence is so preposterous ( the fact that he was in bed with Cassio and
he let out in his sleep-talking evidence that he was having an affair with
Desdemona) → the evidence is so preposterous that it would be ruled out in
court as hearsay
○ It ultiamtely works and iago ahs to prepare for that
● How to break a marriage: Iago-homewrecker edition:
○ Begins A3S3: with iago getting certain words in play ‘think’ and honest’ → is he
not honest my lord, ‘think my lord’, ‘think my lord - by heaven thou echoes me as
if there were some monster in my thought too hideous to be shown’ → and this is
the key move it shows that iago is well on his way because what he understands
about the great-souled man is what iago says in A1S3: ‘The moor is of free and
open nature, that thinks men honest that but seem to be so’ → iago will have to
transform coriolanus into hamlet here → turn a man who is not afraid of anybody
and so does not worry about their secret thoughts into hamlet who does not
believe a word he sees and in a way, iago has accomplished half his purpose, as
he gets Othello to say ‘as if there were some monster in my thought too hideous
to be seen’
■ SUDDENLY, OTHELLO IS THINKING OD DEPTHS - THE DEPTHS OF
HUMAN INTERIORITY, THIS IS THE WORLD OF CHRISTIANITY
 OPENED UP - THOUGHTS AOUBT HUMAN SINFULNESS, OF HUMAN
HYPOCRISY - ALL THOSE THINGS YOU DON’T SEE IN THE WORLD
OF CORIOLANUS, OF JULIUS CAESER
■ AND SO, IAGO’S WONDERFUL PHRASING: ‘my lord you know i love
you’ → AND NOW OTHELLO, IN RESPONSE TO THIS, SAYS, ‘I think
thou dost’ and through the use of the phrase ‘i think’ you begin to see a
gap, you begin to see othello turninginto hamlet, othello becomes
suspicious
■ ‘I dare be sworn, I think that he is honest’ → nothing is as it appears to
be, and othello says ‘I think so too’
■ IAGO THEN SAYS ‘MEN SHOUDL BE WHAT THEY SEEM OR THOSE
THAT BE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM NOT’ → ‘CERTAIN, MEN SHOULD
BE WHAT THEY SEEM’ → that is what othello’s life was based on - he is
a warrior and his life was based on that objective outcome - in a man to
man cobat, there is a certain objective character to the victory
■ Othello is used to being in a world where men proved themselves in battle
and therefore what you see is what you get → ‘give thy worst of thoughts
the worst of words’ → you see here, Othello’s plea to have the words
match the rhetoric of his thoughts
■ Now, iago pulls out his trump card: ‘I am not bound to that which all slaves
are free to’ -> he identifies with slaves here, here is the slave revolt in
action - ‘utter my thoughts… breast so pure clearly apprehensions…
lawful’ → AGAIN AND AGAIN, HE IS GETTING OTHELLO TO LOOK AT
THE DEPTHS OF THE HUMAN SOUL, SOMETHING THAT
CORIOLANUS NEVER EVEN IMAGINED → ‘Who has that breast so
pure?’ → THE SEXUAL IMAGE IN BREASTS FORCES OTHELLO TO
THINK TO DESDEMONA - they are talking about men here, but that is a
subtle move here, the notion ‘that palace’ → the key to what iago
succeeds in doing is to get othello to think there is something foul lurking
within desdemona, not the easiest thing to do because she is in fact pure,
and iago subtly introduces the notion of jealous → ‘and of my jealousy’
■ Again, iago works by planting thoughts into people’s minds, ‘the beast
with two backs’ - he makes brabantio think of the most obscene image of
his own daughter and here , it really is quite remarkable, he acts as a
subconscious level, he plants these words but what he is getting at you
see → ‘By heave, I’ll know thy thoughts’ → OTHELLO SAYS
● Suddenly, this great souled man needs something he has never
needed before: he needs to see in the souls of men and woman,
remember hamlet, his need to see into the soul of claudius, when
he had the chance to kill him and because he couldnt see what
thoughts wherein claudius’s mind, he pulle dback at that moment,
and this is going to be th problem for othello → othello says ‘I’ll
know thy thoguhts’ and iago says ‘You cannot if my heart were
inyour hand’ → iago works here to create a deep need in othello
 for something he cannot have, namely an immediate insight into
the soul of another human being - and that ultimately is how IAGO
WILL TRAP OTHELLO INTO ACCEPTING THE FLIMSIEST
EVIDENCE, in lieu of what he truly wants, a god-like view of what
is in the soul
■ Othello has said nothing of jealousy at this point, but iago says: ‘Beware
my lord of jealousy’ he gets the word on the table, and starts to tell othello
→ he does not come out and say that othello is a cuckold, Iago cleverly
talks in generalities about the cuckold, and let othello apply the word to
himself → and what we see in othello, his reaction ‘Why? Why is it thinks
thou I’d make a life of jealousy… to be once in doubt is to be resolved’ →
THAT IS NOT HAMLET, THIS IS CORIOLANUS → we see the tragedy
that Hamlet delays too long in killing Claudius but Othello is too
precipitate in killing Desdemona, Hamlet’s impulse to delay, to doubt, to
reconsider things in Othello’s position, he would have delayed killing
desdemona long enough to wait until the handkerchief thoughts come out
■ But the thoughts that iago have implied about the handkerchief go deeper
● ‘Tis not to make me jealous to say my wife is fair, feeds well…
where virtue is these are more virtuous nor for my weak merits’ →
and this is the achilles heel, of this achilles figure, his sense that
he has weak merits
○ Now again, this is the all-in-all sufficient moor, tis is the
legend of venice, now admitting that he has weak merits,
now again it is the fact that he has doubts about his own
inferiority that are going to posion him in the scene
● ‘For she had eyes and chose me’ → SO KEY HERE - HE HAS
NOW STAKED HIS SELF-RESPECT ON DESDEMONA’S LOVE
FOR HIM, A SITUATION UNPRECEDENTED IN HIS LIFE - THIS
IS A MAN WHOSE SELF RESPECT PRESUMABLY HAS BEEN
DERIVED FROM THE BATTLEFIELD, FROM ALL HIS GREAT
VICTORIES - IF THERE ARE NONE THEN THERE MIGHT BE
MORE REASON S AS TO WHY HE IS NERVOUS HERE
● Othello is now resting the sense of his own worth on the fact that
this woman who could have had any of the ‘curled darlings of our
nation’ chose ehim the ‘extravagant and wheeling stranger of heer
and everywhere’ → ‘NO IAGO, I’LL SEE BEFORE I DOUBT’
● Iago, then very cleverly counters this with ‘I speak not yet of proof’
cuz he has no proof - his trategy overall in this sequence is to
create such a need for proof in othello that he will accept the
flimsiest evidence
● But now, iago really goes on the offensive
■ ‘Look to it, I know our country disposition well, they do let heaven see the
pranks they dare not show their husbands, their best conscious is not to
leave it undone but kept unknown.’ Iago says, alienating Othello, by
 turning him into an outsider → ‘Dost thou say so?’ Othello counters → so
not only does iago exploit his insecurities by creating a gap in his
perception of reality, taking him away from the absolutist viewpoint he
would have had on the battlefield, but he also exploits his race, he
exploits the fact that he is not a venetian so as to suggest he does not
understand his own wife
■ It’s a shylock moment in that he is suddenly being told, youre not a
venetian → iago is talking to him like some countrybumpkin whoo has
come to the big apple and needs to be told how people operate in a city
→ Iago really had to soften up othello a lot until othello began speaking of
his weak merits so that he could now talk to him as an outsider, and then
→ ‘She did deceive her father marrying you, and when she seemed to
shake in fear of looks she loved the most’ → this takes us back to A1S3,
brabantio’s farewell words to Othello: ‘Look to her Moor if thou hast eyes
to see, she hast deceived her father and may thee’ → REMEMBER THAT
IS WHEN HE SID ‘MY LIFE UPON HER FAITH’
○ And now, iago takes two steps forward and 1 step back: Othello says ‘I do not
think that desdemona’s honest’ to which Iago replies ‘Long live she so, and long
live you to think so’
■ It keeps coming back to that word ‘think’ → and opening up to the
distinction between what merely ‘seems’ and what ‘is’ → something that is
all over the place in hamlet’s imagination but was not there in Othello
■ And then in some ways, the most awful moment of this sequence when
Othello says ‘And yet how nature erring from itself’ → HE FOR A
MOMENT NOW CONTEMPLATES THAT HIS LOVE FOR DESDEMONA
IS UNNATURAL - THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT BRABANTIO CLAIMED, IT
IS EXACTLY WHAT A WHOLE BUNCH OF PEOPLE FROM VENICE
ARE CLAIMING
■ IT IS NOT unnatural, we have seen the greatness of this love, it is
precisely the result of opposites attract - but for a moment here, it is again
iago’s genius how he gets othello to adopt the viewpoint of Venice, how
nature erring from itself - this is custom not nature, this is all customary
ideas that make people think that this marriage is inappropriate
■ But othello now buys into it
■ AND NOW IAGO GOES INTO THE JUGULAR: ‘to be bold with you: not
to affect many proposed matches of her own clime, complexion and
degree where do we see in all things nature tends… foul disproportions,
thoughts unnatural.’ → Iago sees that he is one minute away from death
here because he then quickly adds ‘but pardon me’ → he sees in othello’s
eyes: one more word about this and ur a dead man but he has never
seen it on stage this way → CANTOR SHOWS IT AS A REALLY
DRAMATIC MOMENT
● Iago is a lion-tamer who is in the cage with the lion here
 ● You can’t understand how dramatic this scene is until you
conceive of it → aigo is risking his life is, thi s is a man who has at
least 3 swords on him, he is not unused to using his sword → he
would not be averse to killing a man who is questinong the virtue
of his wife
● And at this moment, when he pulls back, he fears death
● In both the Willard White Version and the version in Wahington DC
with Brooks → they had a chair between Iago and othello - they
are manoeuvring around the stage and they did picture that this
was like lion-taming → Iago needs to keep a chair between him
and Othello because he understands that the lion could come out
at and he would be dead
■ Iago gets very far here, but notice he withdraws at this point but he has
raised the fundamental doubts here → Othello now says ‘Why did I
marry?’ and go back to A1S1, ‘Who would be a father?’ - THESE ARE
THE TWO MOST PAINFUL QUESTIONS IN THE PLAY, BOTH
PROVOKED BY THE INNOCENT DESDEMONA - this is a tragedy of
domestic life
■ Iago times things perfectly: 2 steps forward, 1 step back - he really has
gotten where he wants othello to be
■ Then we see what iago has accomplished: ‘Haply for I am black and have
not those soft parts of conversation that chambers have or for i am
declined into the veil of years, that’s not much she’s gone.’ → there you
see all of these doubts in the great souled man who is supposed to be all
in all sufficient → IAGO WORKS BY CORRUPTING THE VERY
CHARACTER OF OTHELLO, the great souled man → coriolanus does
not stand around doubting
■ And so here are the soliloquys - in coriolanus, the soliquys are inert
because there is nothing to examine inside himself but here, you see a
man digging deep ‘Haply for I am black’ - he is worried about the racial
difference, and ‘have not those soft parts of conversation that chambers
have’ - that is iago’s problem with cassio as well, these smooth-talking
venetians - these bassanios, these gratianos that always get the women
■ ‘Or for i am declined into the vale of years - that’s not much’ - he is
worried about his age, remember, he said to the venetian senate the
‘young effects in me are defunct’ → OTHELLO HAS SOME
PERFORMANCE WORRIE S - but then the phrase ‘yet that’s not much’ -
OTHELLO TRIES TO PUFF HIMSELF UP THERE, YOU GET THIS
SENSE OF INNER CONFLICT → but noentheless, you see all his
self-doubt coming to the surface and then you’ve got ‘If she be false,
heaven mocked itself I’ll not believe it’
● And you see that othello’s demise is not accomplished in one
stroke, Iago has to chip away at the great souled man to cut out
the feed of clay → now Desdemona’s timing is always so bad
 ● She comes in and reminds him about his dinner obligations, the
last thing he needs to hear at this moment - this is also the
moment where Desdemona loses the handkerchief, which is in a
sense the turning point of the play → right here in the middle,
A3S3
● A3S3: Iago - ‘Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations
strong as proofs of holy writ’ - and that truly is an estraoridnary line
that iago is associating this talisman of marital fidelity WITH THE
BIBLE ITSELF - and it does show you why faith is so important in
this play as it is for example not in coriolanus, because this is a
christian world where faith in god and faith in jesus has become
the core of the religion → which are based on faith, these
monetheistic religions are unlike the ancient pagan religions that
were simply based on practises, rights, customs where people
were never catechised, never asked what they believed in,
manifested their religion not in acts of faith but piety → ONE
REASON WHY FAITH IS SO IMPORTANT IN THIS PLAY IS
BECAUSE THIS IS A CHRISTIAN WORLD IN WHICH BELIEF
HAS BECOME SO IMPORTANT
● We now see the result on othello’s being in his farewell the tranquil mind speech → ‘Oh
now forever farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content, farewell the plumed troops and
the big wars that makes ambition virtue’ → REMEMBER CORIOLANUS: ‘tis hell that
valour is the chiefst virtue’ and here it is - this is the world othello comes from, it is where
coriolanus comes from - it is a world of big wars in which ambition is a virtue where your
thumos manifests itself as your virtue and this si what he is saying farewell to
● It is one the most operatic moments of the play - it is the high point of the opera
● Why in the world is he talking about war here? Why is he bidding goodby eot war? The
reason is that he has invested the whole of himself in this women desdemona and her
love form him, he can’t say what could have been his reaction here ‘okay i was mistaken,
why did i marry, im going to divorce, im going back to war’ - BUT HE HAS STAKED
EVERYTHING ON DESDEMONA’S LOVE FOR HIM AND HE WILL LOSE
EVERYTHING - and remember, the tragedy of hte love is the blending otgether of WAR
AND LOVE → he was taking his bride to the battle and she wanted to go, she wanted to
become a warrior
○ They wanted to fuse something that is so normall ydifferent: war and love → take
you back to Henry V, in his wooing scene with catherine in Act 5, where he says I
speak to thee plain soldier, if thou canst love me for this, take me if not to say… i
shall die as true, but for thy love by the lord no, yet i love thee too’ → HOW
CONTRARY THIS IS TO ALL THE MYTHS OF ROMANTIC LOVE, THE
FAMOUS ‘OILL DIE FOR YOU’ AND HENRY IS TOO CLEVER FOR THAT → I
LOVE YOU, NOT ENOUGH TO DIE FOR YOU, BUT I STILL LOVE YOU - JUST
TAKE ME AS A SOLDIER IM NOT GOING TO BE LIKE SOME FRENCH
COURTIER LIKE YOU’RE USED TO BUT THIS IS A GOOD DEAL FOR
EVERYONE INCLDUING ENGLAND AND FRANCE - A VERY PRACTICAL
 MARRIAG EHE PROMOTES, WHICH IS VERY DIFFERENT TO THE LOVE IN
OTHELLO WHICH IS THIS ABSOLUTE LOVE THAT MAKE SUSHC DEMANDS
UPON OTHELLO THAT IT EVENTUALLY BECOMES TRAGIC AND
DESTRUCTIVE - OTHELLO IS SHAKEN TO THE DEPTHS OF HIS SOUL
WHEN HIS IDENTITY AS A WARRIOR IS MIXED UP IN HIS LOVE, HE HAS
LOST - HE HAS NOT RETREAT, HE HAS NO FALL-BACK POSITION HERE, IT
IS ALL OR NOTHING NOW
■ This is the moment where he says: ‘Villain, be sure thou prove my love a
whore’ → Does not ask Iago to determine the truth about desdemona, it is
specifically prove my love a whore → what you see her is that he would
rather know for sure that she is a whore than remain in doubt whether she
is or not → he is in a way now, so desperate for certainty that he will take
the worst news, indeed, he cries out for it ‘Give me the ocular proof or by
the worth of mine eternal soul thou hadst better been born a dog than
answer my naked wrath’ → and you see here the strange combination of
this classical heroism and this christianity - it is not very christian to talk
about his waked wrath but it is christian to talk about his eternal soul → so
you see othello’s christianity peeling away from him, he is losing his
connections to Venice and he is becoming the barbarian that his
stereotypes deem him to be → he has become that ‘barbary horse’, Iago
has restored the status quo - restored how it should be with a man like
Othello
■ And we see the same tragic turning ary of currents that we saw in Hamlet,
there where in a very christian moment, thinking about the afterlife,
Hamlet wants to damn claudius’s soul to eternal hell → in a way it turns
him into a traditional shakespearean tragic hero which gives him the
respect and the honour of being among them, but at the same time, it
strips him away of his identity as a venetian → it is both alienating and
unifying at the same time → and it furthers the fact that Othello will
ultimately never fit in: he will always be unacceptable to some section of
society, whether it be beyond the fourth wall or within it → and so, you get
this sense of Othello’s ultimate fatal flaw being the colour of his skin
because that is what gives him this duplicity and indeed the
unacceptability
○ And here is the problem: he now wants ocular proof: ‘Make me to see it… or at
least so prove it that the probation bear no hinge nor loop to hang a doubt on or
woe upon my life’ → and here, Iago justifiably says, whatre you doing here, i was
just trying to help you and be honest → and you see othello’s dilemma
■ ‘I think my wife be honest, I think she is not. I think that thou are just and
think thou art not’ → there is a split in othello’s personality, he becomes of
two minds: the great souled man is not of two-minds, coriolanus is not of
two minds → but iago has opened up this split in othello, between the way
in which people seem to be and the way people are
■ Again and again, Othello begins to think like Hamlet in this scene - and
especially the view of women - that women’s attractive exterior conceals a
singful sexual nature that men are not aware of - and shakespeare is
unrelenting here → ‘My name that was as fresh as Dian’s visage is now
begrimed and black as mine own face’ → this othello here has accepted
the conventional view that black is evil and white is good → it is accepted,
the customary view in venice is that these black foreigners are defunct,
and to now use his own face as an image of what is wrong, you see how
iago has undermined othello’s sense of self-worth - it is remarkable
because this is a man who exudes self confidence: ‘Put up your swords
for the dew will rust them’ → this is a man who can walk into a situation
and take it over → now again, we don’t know any real objective basis for
that and maybe that is a really interesting aspect that shakespeare
stresses here - the degree to which othello’s self control and self
possession is a myth but the way iago works on it, he assumes there are
chinks in othello’s armour (the slave revolt in action) - it is taking down the
ancient hero , this magnanimous man
● this is OTHELLO FINALLY TURNING TURK - the implication is that his
name was white before here, but now it is black - shows how he no
longer fits in, but that these tensions within his marriage with
desdemona were inherent
■ And now, iago really shows him: Othello asks for ocular proof and Iago
says you can’t handle the truth:
● ‘How satisfied my lord? WOuld you the supervisor grossly gape on
behold her topped?’ - that is incredible - othello is asking for ocular
proof of his wife’s infidelity, what does that mean? He has to see
them in bed together - ‘DEATHA ND DAMNATION’
○ Iago is merciless - it were a tedious difficulty i think to bring
them to that prospect damn them if ever mortalised to see
them bolster… where is satisfaction’
○ ‘It is impossible that you should see this were they as
prime as goats as hot as monkeys’
■ A4S1: Othello has called Desdemona a whore, he
has struck her and he exits the scene saying ‘You
are welcome sir to Cyprus - Goats and monkeys’ -
he has become entirely under the control of Iago →
THOSE WORDS ARE JUST SEARED INTO
OTHELLO’S MIND SO THAT IT THEN EXPLODES
OUT LATER
■ This is a play that can mean psycohologically
implausible if you just narrate the plot
■ And then, Iago offers the proof: Othello says, give
me a living reason she is disloyal → again, not tell
me if she is loyal or disloyal, prove to me what is
 going on here -> it is ‘Give me a living reason she
is disloyal’ - he wants the bad news now, because
the one thing he cannot live with is uncertainty - he
is a soldier and he is used to clear cut situations
making fast decisions on the battlefield, here are
the troops there are the troops, we attack them
there - he is not a man like hamlet, for example,
who is comfortable with living with doubt
■ AND THEN IAGO COMES OUT WITH THIS
SPECTACULARLY PRESPOSTEROUS PROOF
WHICH WOULD NOT BE ADMITTED IN ANY
COURTOOM IN THE LAND → ‘i lay with cassio
lately an dbeing troubled with a raging tooth, i could
not sleep there are kind of men so loose of soul
that in their sleeps will utter their affairs… kiss me
hard as if he had plucked up kisses by the roots
that grew upon my lips… cursed fate that gave
thee to the moor’ → ‘monstrous, monstrous’, ‘nay
this was but his dream’ but this denoted a foregone
conclusion → and there you see it that othello can
accept this as evidence, a second hand account of
a dream - it is the flimsiest evidence imaginable but
nevertheless, Iago has made it work by CREATING
THIS NEED FOR IT -THERE IS THIS
DESPERATE NEED FOR CERTAINTY, THE ONE
THING OTHELLO CANNOT LIVE WITH IS
UNCERTAINTY THAT HE WILL ACCEPT THIS
EVIDENCE and that is when we get this great
speech about the pontic sea, the epic simile
● We then end with a marriag ebetween Othello and Iago: this is a great moment in the
opera → ‘Now by yond marble heaven and the two reverends of the sacred…’ and Iago
says ‘Do not rise yet’ → ‘his wit hands heart to othello’s service’ –’I greet thy love’ NAD
IT ENDS WITH IAGO SAYING: ‘I am your own forever’ - and it is a demonic parody of a
marriage that the two warriors have lined up against desdemona to destroy her → now
this does not end here but the ‘psychological distance travelled in this scene is
extraordinary’ → and again, ti happens so quickly, iago knows exactly when to attack,
where to attack and where to withdraw
● Act 4: and here are the words again, Scene 1: ‘Will you think so?’ Iago says, ‘think so,
Iago!’ othello echoes back - and a great soueld hero like coriolanus does not think very
much, he does not have to, he gets things done and so does not have to think about
them - hamlet thinks a lot about things and now othello thinks a lot about things
● Iago now is just in his high pornographic mode → ‘Or to be naked with a friend in bed an
hour or more not meaning any harm’ → this is almost comic hero and it is one of the
extraordinary things about the play how it almost teeters on the brink of comedy, this is
 so ridiculous that if othello weren’t such a great man and if so much weren’t at stake
here, this would seem like comedy → ‘it is hypocrisy against the devil’ is the next line
● ‘She is the protectress of her honour too May she give that?’ othello says, to which Iago
replies: ‘Her honour is an essence not seen’ → and that is the core of iago’s strategy, the
idea that what’s really at stake in human life is something invisible - it was the same
issue in Hamlet, it was after all the issue at the focal point of halet when hamlet does not
kill claudius → claudius’s soul is something unseen, but then again claudius was not
going to be saved at that moment but hamlet could not see that
○ Hamlet’s need in act 3 is to see into the depths of claudius’s soul but that is an
essence that is not seen - this is what happens when we move from the ancient
world where what you see is what you get (hector and achilles - achilles does not
care what is going on in hector’s soul when they meet on the battlefield, it is just
the last man standing wins) but hamlet is such a different situation where what is
going on in someone else’s soul is what is at stake and that you cannot see and
iago’s trick is to maneouvre othello itno hamlet’s world where the essence of
human virtue is something that is unseen, and therefore, to again create this
need and indeed, this is the mooment when othello ohas his fit
● A4S1: HE ALSO BREAKS DOWN INTO PROSE - WE SEE THE METNAL
UNHINGEMENT OF THE CHARACTER SO OFTEN REFLECTED BY THE BLANK
VERSE BREAKING DOWN INTO PROSE AND SUDDENLY, OTHELLO SOUNDS A
LOT LIKE HAMLET HERE IN HIS ABILITY TO PLAY WITH WORDS: ‘Lie with her, lie on
her they say lie on her when they belie her’ → these could be hamlet’s lines, othello
doesn’t play with words but he does now
○ ‘Handkerchief, confessions, handkerchief and confess and be hanged for his
labour, first be hanged and then to confess… nature would not invest herself in
such shadowing passion without some instruction it is not words that shake me
thus’ → othello is no longer fit to be a general → and indeed the breaking down
of his role as a general that had been initiated by the fact that he delays doing his
duties so that he could spend more time with desdemona, is catalysed by iago as
he causes him to descend into madness → iago, then becomes master of the
situation, manipulating the situation that exists
■ The great irony of the situation is that it is only words that shake him →
there is no reality to what iago is talking about, it is only words
■ And this is iago’s great triumph that only these words can shake him and
you can imagine what iago is feeling here - ‘Noses, ears, and lips’ Othello
says - what iago has gotten othello to do IS FOCUS ON THE BODY,
REMEMBER THAT IAGO’S INITIAL CLAIM ABOUT HIS LOVE FOR
OTHELLO HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BODY, DESDEMONA
LOVED OTHELLO FOR HIS MIND, AND HE LOVES HER FOR HER
MIND, THIS IS NOT A PHYSICAL ATTRACTION, THE ‘YOUNG
AFFECTS IN ME DEFUNCT’, AND WHAT IAGO HAS GOTTEN TO DO
HERE IS TO GET OTHELLO TO START THINKING IN SEXUAL TERMS
ABOUT HER AND INDEED, IT IS SOMETHING WE SEE AGAIN AND
AGAIN IN OTHELLO AND NOW HE COMPLETELY BREAKS DOWN
■ IN THE OPERA, IAGO SAYS ‘Behold the lion’ - and this is psychologically
true - this is a few lines where anyone has ever outdone shakespeare
because hre is the ressentiment triumphing - ‘Behold the lion’ - this was
the great moor of venice, look at him now, he is foaming at the mouth,
groveling at my feet, i did it, i reduced this man to that → the triumph of
the slave over the master, the full flowering of ressentiment
■ This is what iago has accomplished - he has gotten othello to think of
desdemona as a flesh-and-blood woman
■ Now iago himself speaks that way: when he is talking to roderigo in A2S1:
‘the wine she drinks is made of grapes’ → this really captures Iago’s
philosophy, this is a flesh and blood woman, she is not some spiritual
creature, this wine is just a physical property here → and thats what he’s
gotten othello to think of
● A3S4: ‘Give me your hand, this hand is moist’ → what a discovery
that you have married a real woman
● Her hand is not made of alabaster as he hoped later in the play →
othello put desdemona on a pedestal, imagining her as this perfect
statue and now he touches her hand and realises that this is a
flesh and blood women and therefore sinful
○ And what does he say? He says get thee to a nunnery →
‘this argues fruitfulness and liberal heart.. This hand of
yours requires a sequester from liberty, fasting and
prayer… exercised devout.. Young and sweating devil
here… a good hand a frank one’ → iago has turned othello
into hamlet here, this is just like the ‘get thee to a nunnery
scene’ → youre a woman, you’re flesh and blood that
means you’re sinful, that means you need to sequester
from liberty - you need to be in a nunnery, fasting and
prayer
○ We see here the same problem we saw in hamlet that eh
cannot accept a fellow human being especially a woman in
human terms - he wants an angel, and if he does not have
an agnel, he think she has a whore
○ And he cannot find a middle ground here which is where
human life occurs and marriage occurs → he wanted an
agel but the irony is that he pretty much got an angel but
even desdemona’s hand is moist → this leads to the really
tragic resolution here where everything that’s worked for
othello now works against him: A4S1: ‘give me some
poison Iago, I’ll not expostulate with her lest her body and
beauty unprovide my mind again’ → ILL REMIND YOU
ABOUT WHAT HE SAID TO THE SENATE → WHEN HE
TOLD THEM ‘i beg it not to please the palate of my
appetite nor to comply with heat the young effects in me
 defunct… but to be free and bounteous to her mind’ →
there is no body involved here according to Othello - but
now, we may presume that he was sexually attracted to
desdemoona who was presented as the most sexually
attractive object in venice here → and now, here, we have
this expression of his physical love
○ Or later on when he is ocnfronted with A4S2: ‘O thou weed
who art so lovely fair and smells so sweet that the sense
aches at thee’ - he denied her sensuality before the senate
but now he admits to it and i hear an echo in this of
Shakespeare SONNET 94 ‘lillies that fester smell far worse
than weeds’ - this notion of desdemona as a weed here -
so it is a very difficult moment for him here, and he now
can only think of killing her and it is acted out in a very
frightening way
● Starts at A5S2: we see how his CHRISTIANITY GETS INVOLVED
IN MAKING IT WORSE: THAT IS WHAT IS SO TRAGIC ABOUT
THIS SCENE THAT HE IS DOING SOMETHING VERY
UNCHRISTIAN, HE IS MURDERING, EVEN MORE SO, HE IS
MURDERING OUT OF A SENSE OF REVENGE AND YET HE
WANTS TO PRESENT IT NOW AS THOUGH IT WERE A
CHRISTIAN ACT
● LOOK AT THE OPENING OF A5S2: ‘It is the cause my soul’ -
here he is addressing his own soul and indeed he does need a
cause to do this; ‘Let me not name it to you you chaste stars, it is
the cause yet I’ll not shed her blood or scar that whiter skin of hers
than snow and smooth as monumental alabaster yet she must
die.’ people have pointed out that othello is a maginificent speaker
- and we get that homeric simile → he speaks in such glorious
blank verse, we see the destruction of his mind when he descends
into prose and just spouts out words, ‘noses, lips, and ears’ → he
ahs recovered WHAT G. WILSON KNIGHT CALLED ‘the Othello
music’ here - again, this is that glorious blank verse that he
speaks, and notice he is trying to present it as a spiritual act - ‘i’ll
not shed her blood’ - it wont be mrurder if he doesn’t shed blood,
he is going to stifle her with a pillow instead - but notice that
‘whiter skin of hers than snow and smooth as monumental
alabaster’ - that’s the way he wants to conceive of her, this is his
sense of her purity, that SHE IS NOT A WOMAN OF FLESH AND
BLOOD THAT SHE IS LIKE A STATUE - AND YET HE CANT
STOP KISSING HER IN THIS SCENE AND YOU SEE THE
MIXTURE OF SENSUALITY IS THERE
● ‘This sorrows heavenly it strikes where it doth love’ → THERE IS
SOMETHING OF A CRUSADE IN THIS, THAT HE WILL KILL
 HER FOR HER OWN GOOD, THIS SORROWS HEAVENLY → IT
IS REMINISCENT OF THIS LINE FROM ANTONY AND
CLEOPATRA: ‘Let him that loves me strike me dead’ - towards the
end of the play, is one of the paradoxes that starts to emerge as
we move towards a christian world
○ And here it is that sorrows heavenly
■ And so we get a very complex interplay between othello and desdemona
in this scene and it is so painful because we realise that her life is at stake
and so is his he is about to do the most awful thing ever
● And yet he keeps trying to do it in this perversely Christian way
○ ‘Have you prayed tonight Desdemon?’ Ay my Lord ‘If you
bethink yourself of any crime, unreconciled as yet to
heaven and grace’ → this is the opposite of hamlet now,
hamlet who wanted to kill claudius when he wasnt
absolved, when he was fresh in his sins; othello has
become a kind of priest here who will confess her and
make sure her soul is pure → ‘I would not kill thy
unprepared spirit, no heaven’s for fend I would not kill thy
soul’ - hamlet would kill claudius’s soul
○ There is this infinite complication of bringing together any
kind of revenge ethic with the christian principle that
revenge is evil
● Once again, poor desdemona, in her honest reactions, keeps
saying the worst things - thinking if she had just confessed
something now, it would have taken the wind out of othello’s sails
but her sins, she says are ‘the loves i bear you’, to which othello
replies’ and for thou diest’
○ By her protestations of innocence, he believes that she is
guilty
● The absolute proof for othello is that moment when iago makes othello thinks he is
overhearing cassio confess his sins with desdemona, and especially gets Cassio to
laugh, cassio in fact is talking about bianca, but othello overhears it → he has reason to
think that he is hearing what in fact he is not hearing and here you see iago’s genius
where othello sees the world through iago’s eyes and that is as close to ocular proof as
he ever gets - he thinks he is hearing cassio confess, he is absolutely certain of it in the
scene but it is just a completely contrived scene but here, he stresses everything on the
issue of confession
● ‘And makes me call what i intend to do a mruder which I though a sacrifice’ → again, the
real perversity of this scene is the current turning ary, is the idea that what is in fact a
brutal murder, he tries to present as almost a religious rite here and then everything you
might notice, turns on confession here, desdemona asks, lets him confess the truth
● The force of this scene is best encapsulated with this line: ‘I that am cruel and yet
merciful’ → that sums up everything that is wrong with othello in this scene but it is a
kind of pious cruelty - iago has maneouvred othello to this point where he thinks he is
 going to redeem desdemona’s soul by killing her → THIS COMPLEX MIX OF
PAGANISTIC SACRIFICE AND VENETIAN CHRISTIANITY - it shows the monstrosity
that has been created
● In one of the many ironies of the play, shakespeare has desdemona come back to life to
LIE - ‘we have thought she’s dead’.. ‘A guiltless death I die oh who hath done this deed,
nobody I but myself’ → THIS SHOWS HOW PERSISTENT THE OTHELLO MYTH IS IN
THER MIND - HE HAS KILLED HER BUT SHE STILL BELIEVES IN HIM -
SHAKESPEARE REALLY TAKES THIS TO THE EDGE HERE BUT IT IS DEEPLY
INGRAINED IN THE PLAY HOW POWERFUL THE OTHELLO MYTH IS → THIS IS IN
LEGAL TERMS WHAT IS KNNOWN AS A ‘DYING DECLARATION’ - A VERY STRONG
HEARSAY RULE IN LAW BUT ONE OF THE EXCEPTIONS TO THE HERESAY RULE
IS THAT YOU CAN’T TESTIFY IN COURRT TO WHAT SOMEONE TOLD YOU - THAT
IS HEARSAY, THE PROSECUTION HAS TO PUT ON THE STAND THE PERSON
WHO TELLS IT DIRECTLY SO THAT THEY CAN BE CROSS-EXAMINED → but one
way in which hearsay is admissible in court is in whats called a dying declaration where
at least if its reliably reported, it is assumed that people don’t lie at the moment of their
death → it is a longstanding principle of english common law - AND DESDEMONA
DOES LIE
○ And othello does not let it go, this is the best news he has heard all day, his
victim is now saying he is innocent: ‘you heard her say yourself it was not I’ - hes
going to cop a plea here, get hismelf a cheap lawyer in Venice and get off → but
she says so, ‘I must needs report the truth’ and Emilia is ready to report the dying
declaration
○ Othello says, she’s like a liar that had gone to burning hell, twas I that killed her
→ what a strange moment that is - and you see in a weird way that this is the
great souled man alone, like coriolanus, I did it
■ Othello’s understanding of christianity is blurred because although he
thinks that Desdemona will go to hell for lying, he is unable to understand
the selflessness of her act and the purity and goodness involved in it →
shows how Iago has been able to strip him away from his identity as a
general, as a christian, and rendered him to his stereotypes so that he no
longer fits into venetian society
○ These are extraordinary touches → EMILIA’S ROLE IN THE FINAL SCENE →
after accepting her husband and going along with his plans, she finally realises
that there is nothing more important than the truth and she speaks up at the risk
of her own life to tell the turh about iago here and the ending with Iago is kind of
typical that A5S2: ‘Demand me nothing what you know you know from this time
forth I never will speak word’ → AND LODOVICO SAYS, ‘WHAT NOT TO
PRAY?’ - WHAT AN IRONIC MOMENT THAT IS AS THOUGH IT WAS SOME
DEEP NEED FOR IAGO TO PRAY HERE - AND OFC, OTHELLO’S DEATH IS
ONE OF THE MOST MOVING SCENES IN ALL OF DRAMA
○ This last speech in A5S2: ‘Soft you, a word or two before you go, I have done the
state some service and may know it, no more of that.’ - he realises that all this
work he has done for venice amounts to nothing (or you see othello having learnt
 his lessson in a sense - he no longer boasts, and he does not care whether ornot
it is an honour), as he is being recalled from cyprus and they are all two minutes
from him getting his wealth seized → ‘i pray you in your letters… speak of me as
i am … then must you speak one that loved not wisely but too well of one not
easily jealous’ in some sense, you want to say that this is the most jealous man
we have seen, look at him accept desdemona’s final lines - but iago has to work
very hard, very skilfully to get othello to accept his wife’s infidelity
○ ‘Of one whose hands like the base Judean threw a pearl away (this is, your notes
point out, is a great textual crux → this is one of the famous points because in
one text it is ‘Judean’ and in another text it is ‘Indian’ - you can see how in
someone’s handwriting a textual compositor might confuse the words → what’s
interesting is that either way it works, because Othello is identifying himself with a
foreigner here, a ‘Judean’ is a Jew and an indian, would be an american indian or
an indian → someone different from the main group) ‘Arabian trees with their
medicinal guns… set you down this.. Aleppo once… I took by the throat the the
circumcised dog and sewed him thus’ → THE COMPLEXITY OF OTHELLO IS
MADE CLEAR IN THIS LINE → OTHELLO IS BOTH THE VENETIAN AND THE
TURK IN THIS MOMENT, HE IS THINKING BACK TO A MOMENT WHEN HE
SERVED VENICE
■ Aleppo = very important commercial city, it was the western terminus of
the SILK ROAD, it is in syria today
■ And much like VENICE, IT WAS IF YOU WILL THE OTTOMAN
COUNTERPART OF VENICE - PEOPLE WROTE ABOUT IT, TALKED
ABOUT IT, TALKED ABOUT THE MIXTURE OF DIFFERENT RACES
AND DIFFERENT NATIONS AND LANGUAGES IN THE CITY - the
English Levant Company that Queen Elizabeth chartered in 1581 traded
with the Ottoman Turks and it was HEAD QUARTERED IN ALEPPO - IT
WOULD HAVE HAD MORE OF A RING IN SHAKESPEARE’S TIME -
THEY WOULD HAVE KNOWN PEOPLE WHO WERE SENDING SHIPS
TO OTHELLO
■ OTHELLO ONCE IN THE SERVICE OF VENICE, KILLED A TURK,
KILLED A FOREIGNER → KILLED A BARBARIAN, A NON-CHRISTIAN
AND HE WILL DO IT AGAIN NOW
● We saw that Hamlet had so many scruples as a christian in killing himself, and Othello
does not because as a Christian, HE KILLS THE TURK IN THIS SCENE - THIS IS NOT
A CHRISTIAN KILLING A CHRISTIAN BUT A CHRISTIAN KILLING A TURK AND THAT
IS HOW OTHELLO GETS OUT OF THE CHRISTIAN DILEMMA WHEN IT COMES TO
SUICIDE
● It is a very powerful concluding image for the tragedy of othello - as a man who TRIED
TO BECOME AN INSIDER BUT ALWAYS REMAINED AN OUTSIDER AND BRINGS
HIS LIFE TO A TRAGEDY IN A WAY THAT HE HAS TO BECAUSE TO SURVIVE AT
THIS POINT WOULD TURN THE STORY INTO A COMEDY - ONCE HE KILLS
DESDEMONA, HE SEALS THE TRAGEDY
 ○ HE IS IN A VERY DIFFICULT SITUATION HERE BECAUSE HE HAS BECOME
GENUINELY RIDICULOUS - HE IS BELIEVED A PACK OF LIES AND AN
INCREDIBLY THIN PACK OF LINES → IF THE STORY CAME OUT SHORT OF
DESDEMONA’S DEATH, HE WOULD BE THE LAUGHING STOCK OF VENICE
- THERE IS NOTHING TO LAUGH AT HERE WHEN HE BRINGS ABOUT HIS
TRAGEDY
○ AND AGAIN, SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGIC HEROES HAVE TO REASSERT
THEIR HEROIC STATUS AT THE END PRECISELY BY ACTING TRAGICALLY
AND BRINGING THE STORY TO A CLOSE
● SO AGAIN, WHAT WE SAW WORK OUT COMICALLY IN THE MERCHANT OF
VENICE, WORKS OUT TRAGICALLY HERE WHEN WE GET A HERO AND A
HEROINE WHO REFUSE TO COMPROMISE AND GO ALL THE WAY