Othello (Collins Classroom Classics)

This Collins Classroom Classics edition includes an introduction, textual notes and a theme and character index to support students, written by an experienced teacher.

Othello William Shakespeare

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on.

ISBN 978-0-00-840046-0

ÂŁ3.00

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Othello 9 780008 400460

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Introduction People get worked up about Othello. Scholars like A.C. Bradley and M.R. Ridley have called it Shakespeare’s ‘best play’1 – ‘his most painfully exciting and most terrible’,2 his ‘most nearly intolerable’,3 most Greek tragedy. It spotlights his only Black hero and ‘by far the most romantic (and poetic) figure among Shakespeare’s heroes’.4 Othello is also legendary in the theatre for the number of times audience members have warned the onstage characters or cried out their sympathy, horror or hatred. At a production in Williamsburg, USA, in 1750, the Cherokee Emperor and Empress sent servants onstage to stop the killing. The French novelist Stendhal reported that in 1822, a soldier standing guard in a Baltimore theatre shot the actor playing Othello lest a (Black man) ‘kill a white woman’.5 The play shockingly dramatises the silencing of women within a patriarchal society. Desdemona at first speaks her mind freely, but once married she begins only to react to men’s actions and accusations and becomes their object (a handkerchief, handed about). Emilia’s ordinary ‘housewife’ experiences, which Iago views so contemptuously, portray the silenced woman on another level. It is because Emilia fears Iago and wants his approval that she gives him the trophy of Desdemona’s handkerchief. The ‘courtesan’ Bianca, who sells her company to wealthy patrons, provides an important contrast for the audience: her character’s sexual nature is too readily condemned as shameful and dishonest, yet for Iago every woman (even Emilia his wife) is an untrustworthy ‘strumpet’ and for Othello, in his murderous rages, even Desdemona is.

‘Inappropriate’ marriages (for example, of an older man to a younger woman)6 had, since the 1300s, incited the community protest known as charivari.7 This is the noisy festival riot we see, led by Iago, in Act 1, Scene 1, not just because an older man has married a younger woman but through racial difference: Iago describes Othello as ‘an old black ram’ and his iv

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introduction

bride, Desdemona, as a ‘white ewe’ (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 89–90).

As so often in Shakespeare, a marriage threatens the existing social order. In a comedy, the marriage’s triumph over such opposition would provide a happy ending. In Othello, the marriage marks a new start, and the old order’s protests against it are led by a racist malcontent (Iago) who ends the play universally condemned as a ‘devil’ and a ‘villain’. Audiences must ponder whether the tragic ending of the play endorses the charivari by punishing the interracial marriage or whether a potentially better world has been destroyed by this ‘devil’.

Othello is also Shakespeare’s most shocking version of his signature theme: political naïvety versus worldliness. The worldly-wise, cynical and devious character (here, Iago) outwits naïvely ‘Christian’ ones (here, Desdemona, Othello and Cassio). General Othello’s ‘My life upon her faith! – Honest Iago’ (Act 1, Scene 3, line 294) fuses in the same line both architect and victim of his inability to distinguish appearance from reality, as well as the tragic flaw of his ‘free and open nature / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so’ (lines 395–396). Shakespeare’s ideal ruler (represented in Othello by the Duke) is the moral figure who learns not to judge the world by his own goodness but to see through the disguised wickedness of others.

Yet what seems to have shocked audiences most is Iago’s malignity and why he dedicates himself with such relentless zeal to the destruction of ‘the Moor’. His soliloquies seek endlessly for motives (racial hatred, misogyny, jealousy, selfinterest, being cuckolded, loathing) for his malignity. He resembles the Devil in the medieval morality plays8 in his existential envy of human grace. The Devil terrified audiences in Shakespeare’s time and Iago’s ‘demi-devil’ continues to unsettle audiences today; the urge to cry out ‘Don’t trust him, mate’ (as some 19th-century audiences apparently advised Othello) remains.

Issues in context

Texts tend to engage with and reflect the conventions and assumptions of their time. But this is not the same as saying v

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OTHELLO

they endorse them. One of the reasons Shakespeare’s plays continue to be held in such high esteem and take on new meanings for every generation is that they can be seen to humanise and challenge stereotypes. Shakespeare’s Black hero has a tragic nobility not present in the play’s source (Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, published in 1565). The motif of a daughter (Desdemona) falling in love against her father’s orders is a constant pattern in Shakespeare’s plays (think about Juliet, Cordelia, Jessica, Hermia, Miranda) and seems designed to engage the audience’s approval even if tragic consequences ensue. In this regard, Jacobean stereotypes in Othello are as much questioned as represented.

Race There are no ‘grey areas’ in Othello when it comes to skin colour. ‘Black’ invariably has negative connotations and ‘white’ (or ‘fair’) positive ones. ‘An old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe’ sets this racist tone early on (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 89–90), and even the Duke’s supposedly civilised reassurance to Brabantio that ‘Your son-in-law is far more fair than black’ reinforces it (Act 1, Scene 3, line 290).

Thereafter ‘black’ is used by Iago to denote the ‘fair’ Desdemona’s female sexual organs, alleged impurity and dirtied name, and Othello’s lack of social grace, racially defined social disadvantage and hellish vengeance. ‘Fair’ is used 22 times in the play, mostly to describe Desdemona as a shining positive (‘my fair warrior’ – Act 2, Scene 1, line 179) or (often) to describe the appearance of goodness and innocence behind which she hides her alleged moral ‘blackness’. Iago’s ‘black Othello’ (Act 2, Scene 3, line 27) trades on the connotations of the word as ‘having or demonstrating evil intent; malignant, deadly; sinister’9 and is reinforced by senator Brabantio’s ‘sooty bosom’ during his rants about (black) magic carrying off his daughter (Act 1, Scene 2, line 71). Shakespeare’s text never challenges these black/white distinctions embedded in the English language, but it does show the White Venetian Iago unleashing the moral darkness, not the Black General Othello, entrusted by vi

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LIST OF CHARACTERS Duke Of Venice a Senator, father to Desdemona Brabantio Other Senators Gratiano

brother to Brabantio, two noble Venetians

Lodovico

kinsman to Brabantio

Othello

the Moor, in the service of Venice

Cassio

his honourable Lieutenant

Iago

his Ancient, a villain

Roderigo

a gull’d Venetian gentleman

Montano

Governor of Cyprus, before Othello

Clown servant to Othello Desdemona daughter to Brabantio, and wife to Othello Emilia

wife to Iago

Bianca

a courtezan, in love with Cassio

Gentlemen of Cyprus, Sailors, Officers, a Messenger, Musicians, a Herald, and Attendants etc.

The Scene: Venice; Cyprus.

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OTHELLO

ACT 1 SCENE 1 The play begins with a middle-ranking soldier (Iago) and a showy Venetian gentleman (Roderigo) arguing. Roderigo complains that Iago has loyally served a shared unnamed enemy (‘him’ – line 7) who has overlooked Iago for a military promotion to lieutenant, despite Iago’s seniority. This unnamed man is also Roderigo’s successful rival for a fine lady (Desdemona), whom he has now married. Iago’s male pride is comically offended by Roderigo’s suggestion that he lacks self-interest; he retorts that he’s planning revenge while pretending to be loyal to ‘the Moor’ (line 40). Iago then leads a riotous protest against the marriage, which provokes the bride’s father (Brabantio) to lodge an official complaint to the authorities about his daughter’s disobedient marriage to a Black man.

1. Tush an exclamation of impatient contempt. The two men are having a violent argument.

4. ’Sblood a blasphemous oath (‘God’s blood’). Iago’s social status and failure to be promoted clearly infuriate him; he might almost spit the ‘you’ in line 4 (see note on line 7).

6. Abhor me hate me, i.e. if you can’t trust me. Iago means that Roderigo should listen to learn why he, Roderigo, can trust Iago (the irony being that Iago is completely untrustworthy).

7. Thou you; like ‘tu’ in French, less socially respectful in Shakespeare’s time than ‘you’.

13. bombast circumstance fancy explanations.

16. certes a fancy way of saying ‘certainly’. Iago is mocking Othello’s pretensions by using pompous language here (see also Forsooth, line 19).

19–20. a great arithmetician … Cassio, a Florentine Iago dismisses Cassio as having no experience (of war) despite his learning.

20. damn’d in a fair wife Iago is sneering at Cassio’s associations with women (see also spinster, line 24) as a contrast to the male-only army world. In fact, Shakespeare changed his source, Cinthio, to make Cassio single, which is important to the plot later.

25. toged the robe of a senator, another sneering swipe at those who appointed Cassio, i.e. politicians without Iago’s experience of war.

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ACT 1 SCENE 1

ACT 1 SCENE 1 Venice. A street.

[Enter RODERIGO and IAGO .]

Roderigo Tush, never tell me; I take it much unkindly That you, Iago, who has had my purse As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this.

Iago ’Sblood, but you will not hear me.

If ever I did dream of such a matter, Abhor me.

Roderigo Thou told’st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.

Iago Despise me if I do not. Three great ones of the city, In personal suit to make me his lieutenant, Off-capp’d to him; and, by the faith of man, I know my price, I am worth no worse a place.

But he, as loving his own pride and purposes, Evades them with a bombast circumstance Horribly stuff’d with epithets of war; And, in conclusion, Nonsuits my mediators; ‘For, certes,’ says he ‘I have already chose my officer’.

And what was he?

Forsooth, a great arithmetician, One Michael Cassio, a Florentine, A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife, That never set a squadron in the field, Nor the division of a battle knows More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric, Wherein the toged consuls can propose

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OTHELLO 26. prattle idle talk.

27–9. had the election … on other grounds Cassio was chosen, not the proven warrior Iago, veteran of battlefields in Rhodes, Cyprus, etc.

30. be-lee’d (of a sailing ship) the wind literally taken out of its sails by being obstructed by (‘under the lee’ of) an enemy ship.

31. debitor and creditor … counter-caster devices for counting, or the (nonaction) man who calculates on such a device; variations on the ‘arithmetician’ insult of line 19.

33. his Moorship’s more sneering at Othello’s pretensions, a put-down combining ‘His Lordship’ (or ‘His Worship’) with ‘Moor’. In Shakespeare’s time ‘Moor’ had a number of different meanings: a Muslim person, someone from Africa, and an atheist, among others. Shakespeare’s text repeatedly emphasises this (see, for example, line Act 1, Scene 1, line 89: an old black ram; Act 1, Scene 2, line 71: sooty bosom; Act 3, Scene 3, lines 390–391 black/ As mine own face).

33. ancient standard bearer; today a sort of regimental sergeant, the given rank Iago feels is beneath him, especially combined with the sneering his Moorship’s.

36–7. Preferment goes by letter … old gradation promotion is decided by favouritism and recommendations from powerful men, not by seniority.

45–6. knee-crooking … obsequious bondage grovelling and fawning behaviour intended to gain the approval of someone important.

48. nought but provender just enough to live on.

48. cashier’d forcibly retired.

50–4. trimm’d in forms and visages … Do themselves homage pretend to serve their masters while in fact looking after their own interests. Iago admires such self-servers and scorns those truly loyal; Shakespeare’s play invites us to consider whether Iago is against his society’s declared values in this, or representative of how its individuals truly feel and act.

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ACT 1 SCENE 1

As masterly as he – mere prattle, without practice, Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election; And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds, Christian and heathen, must be be-lee’d and calm’d By debitor and creditor – this counter-caster, He, in good time, must his lieutenant be, And I, God bless the mark! his Moorship’s ancient.

Roderigo By heaven, I rather would have been his hangman!

Iago Why, there’s no remedy; ’tis the curse of service: Preferment goes by letter and affection, Not by the old gradation, where each second Stood heir to the first. Now, sir, be judge yourself Whether I in any just term am affin’d To love the Moor.

Roderigo

I would not follow him, then.

Iago O, sir, content you.

I follow him to serve my turn upon him: We cannot all be masters, nor all masters Cannot be truly follow’d. You shall mark Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave That, doting on his own obsequious bondage, Wears out his time, much like his master’s ass, For nought but provender; and when he’s old, cashier’d.

Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are Who, trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves; And, throwing but shows of service on their lords, Do well thrive by ’em and, when they have lin’d their coats, Do themselves homage – these fellows have some soul;

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61. for my peculiar end for my own private purpose.

64. compliment extern outward (external) show.

66. daws jackdaws. The jackdaw is a bird in the crow family and a symbol of foolishness.

67. thick-lips a viciously hostile and racist ‘naming’ of Othello, whose actual name does not appear until Act 1, Scene 3, line 48 (Valiant Othello).

76. timorous frightening.

[BRABANTIO appears above at a window] This stage direction suggests the use of a small upper stage above and behind the main platform stage, representing the upper storey of an Elizabethan house.

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ACT 1 SCENE 1

And such a one do I profess myself.

For, sir, It is as sure as you are Roderigo, Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.

In following him I follow but myself – Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so for my peculiar end.

For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Roderigo What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe, If he can carry’t thus!

Iago

Call up her father.

Rouse him, make after him, poison his delight, Proclaim him in the streets; incense her kinsmen, And, though he in a fertile climate dwell, Plague him with flies; though that his joy be joy, Yet throw such changes of vexation on’t As it may lose some colour.

Roderigo Here is her father’s house. I’ll call aloud.

Iago Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell As when, by night and negligence, the fire Is spied in populous cities.

Roderigo What, ho, Brabantio! Signior Brabantio, ho!

Iago Awake! What, ho, Brabantio! Thieves, thieves, thieves!

Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags.

Thieves! thieves!

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[ BRABANTIO appears above at a window.]

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