Othello

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Othello
William Shakespeare
The Elizabethan Theatre

Shakespearean Theatre
When drama first rose in England sometimes in the Middle Ages plays were generally
performed in public places like courtyards of inns. The first building specifically designed for
drama performances came up in 1576 and was known as The Theatre.
It was a royal prerogative to grant a charter to perform a plug let usually permission was not
granted for performance of plays within the city limits, and that is why play-houses were erected
out” the city limits, across the Thames. In Shakespeare’s tins lass were probably not more than
five public theatres in the laid, all in London, and they were built according to, the design of the
in yards of the period, which had been found marvelously convenient places for the presentation
of plays. The theatre was circular or octagonal in shape. The main part of the auditorium was the
Large round pit, open to the sky, in which the poorer people steed (the ‘groundlings’). Encircling
ibis, round the walls, were these balconies, covered on top but not in front (like the ‘stands’ on a
football ground), and containing seats. The pace of admission to the pit was one penny, and
balcony seats ranged from two pence to two shillings and sixpence, according to their position.
The Stage
The Elizabethan step was large ; it jutted far into the pit and did not have scenery. Stage
properties were few and, the most elementary. Hence it made no difference that people stood at
tie side of the stage as well at in front. The scenery was created in go imagination of the audience
by the words of the characters ; it was made put of the play, so as not to obtrude and destroy the
Moslem of reality. That is why Shakespeare’s plays make such excellent radio broadcasts. As
one listens in one’s armchair me has an scenery this is in the words of the play and so is created
in one’s mind. The number of scenes in a play did not matter when the stage was without
scenery ; consequently a succession of sleet scenes is quite common in Elizabethan drama,
though today audiences would become impatient at the constant delays, if every scene involved
shifting of scenery and properties.
Effect on the Plays
The Elizabethan stage significantly affected the plays of the
period because many things which can now be indicated by stage
contrivances had then to be managed through the text of the play
itself. Shakespeare’s plays did not originally have any scene
divisions but this is immaterial since what we now regard as scenes
were then acted continuously and there was no ‘scenery’ on the
stage to create a discordant effect. Most Shakespearean plays are
a succession of short scenes, although some, like The Winter’s Tale, are different in this respect.
The large number of scenes would
prove bothersome to modern producers who would have to shift
the scenery, which would cause intolerable delays, but there was no
such problem for the Elizabethans. Since there was no curtain to
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indicate the ending of a scene, this was frequently done by the use
rhyming, lines. This, however, was not invariable, for in some of
peace’s plays, for example, The Winter’s Tale,the speeches
themselves indicate the ending of a scene. Just as the scenery had
1o be put into the play, so had entrances and exits to be arranged as
part of the play. Today an actor-can get into position before the
rigs of the curtain, but on the open stage it would seem artificial if
as actor walked on and then started his part, or finished the scene
and then walked off. Such endings as Act I Scene II, ‘Come, sir,
away’; Act II: Scene I, ‘Come, follow us’; Act III : Scene I, ‘Go;
fresh horses’ ; Scene II, ‘Come, and lead me to these sorrows’,
dime the stage and at the same time fit in perfectly naturally with the
play. It follows that dead bodies always had to be carried off the stage.
It was sot unknown for the stage floor to beequipped with a trapdoor
for the sudden appearance and disappearance of ghosts and spirits.
Recess and Balconies
The Shakespearean stage had a recess at its back which would be teed for parts f scenes which
now carry the stage direction ‘within’. The recess’ would no doubt, contain such objects as the of
Hermione The stage direction at the beginning of the scene is The Winter’s Tale (Act V : Scene
III) says that the statue is ‘curtained’, and later we are told that ‘Paulina draws back a certain
and discovers Hermione standing like a statue’. Hermione was a evidently standing on a
pedestal. Above the recess was a balcony –– which served for castle walls, an upper roots, and
such-like scenes. It appears that this too could be curtained off. Judging from the way
opportunities are made, for balcony scenes in Elizabethan plays people were very fond of them,
particularly when there was an escape from the balcony––an upper room, for example––to the
pain stage––representing the ground below. The young ‘bloods’ of the day who fancied
themselves, actually hired stools round the stage itself. It was a source of continual annoyance to
playwrights that loan ‘gagged’ in order to please these aristocratic playgoers, and we find
Shakespeare expressing his resentment against such intrusions,: through the advice which
Hamlet off to the player-king.
Actors and Acting
In Shakespeare’s time, acting was confined to men, since there was a law which forbade women
to act. Women’s parts had, therefore, to be played by boys or adolescents whose voices bad not
yet ‘broken’. Today, of course, it is funny to imagine Cleopatra, Juliet, Lady Macbeth, or
Hermione being played by a boy It may be noted, however, that, in Shakespeare’s plays
especially, an interesting device is used which minimises the difficulty caused by female parts
being played by males. Repeatedly, in the comedies especially, girls are often required to
disguise themselves as men––e.g. in As You Like It––so that if the actor playing the part, say, of
Celia, looked to be more a young man than a young lady, then, instead of affecting credibility, it
only added to the success of the part, for the ‘male disguise’ was to he regarded as so much the
more successful. This not only made it easier for producers but confronted the audience with
that interesting situation of a character pretending to be what he was in reality.
Costumes and Settings

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For the most part, characters appeared in the fashionable dress of the day, and made little
attempt to male their costume conform to the period being depicted in the play. However, they
were often extremely lavish, and it might cost the actor playing the part of a king or prince quite
a fortune to have his costume––which often belonged to him––prepared. Settings were
sometimes indicated by placards, but generally there was little necessity of doing so, since the
settings were usually vividly brought out in the speeches of the characters.
Mutual Suitability
By modern standards, the Elizabethan stage may be said to have been almost bare. This was by
no means a great handicap, for this bare Elizabethan stage was wonderfully well-suited to the
plays of the period, in which beautiful poetry often made stage properties or scenery quite
superfluous. The stage of the day provided the necessary degree of flexibility which the plays
required. It is interesting to note that even with all the resources at their command, many
modern directors choose to approximate more or less to the bareness of the Elizabethan stage,
with more or less continuous scones because they find it better suited to the genius of
Shakespearean plays. On the other hand, some of the impact of Shakespearean drama is always
lost when the production is over-elaborate.
Shakespeare’s Audience
Shakespeare’s audience was a heterogeneous one, and one of Shakespeare’s eminent successes
was in enthralling such a mixed audience, making it suspend its prejudices, preconceptions and
ingrained attitudes in the presence of great art and beauty. This still remains a hall-mark of
Shakespearean drama, for it can still be successfully performed before audiences comprising the
most learned and the most ignorant, the most critical as well as the most naive, and never fails
to delight any of them. In actual fact, Shakespeare’s audience was not drawn from the lowest
dregs of society, as Robert Bridges maintains, but encompassed a wide spectrum of Elizabethan
life, from the Queen herself at court, and the upper-class gentry at Black friars, to the many
elements of the ordinary London population who came to the public playhouses. It is highly
likely that Elizabethan audiences were much more demonstrative than those of our own day,
weeping unashamedly at scenes of pathos, laughing unrestrainedly at comedy, and showing
their displeasure with hisses and catcalls. In other respects, there is no reason to believe that
they differed greatly from the audiences of present-day theatres and cinema-houses.
The Elizabethan Age

Nomenclature
The term ‘the Elizabethan Age’ is a very vague and flexible one. Strictly speaking, it may be said
to be even misleading. Although titles like ‘Jacobean Age’ are also frequently used in literary
criticism, the general practice is to regard the entire period from 1580 to 1660 as the Elizabethan
age in spite of the fact that Queen Elizabeth reigned only during a small part of it. If we were to
adhere strictly to historical dates, then the only two writers who are really and completely
‘Elizabethan’ are Marlowe and Spenser.
Yet in spirit, the work of writers like Milton and Browne is akin to that of the Elizabethans and
they are, therefore, referred to as Elizabethan writers. As Saintsbury reminds us, all the seed of
the whole period called Elizabethan was sown, and not a little of it had come up, before the

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Queen’s death ; and secondly, the quality of the period 1580-1660 is essentially one and
indivisible. This usage has the advantage of keeping both sets of facts in view, and specially of
directing attention to the characteristics of the first generation of the period, the generation
which, as typified by Spenser, ended a little before the last days ofElizabeth’s own life closed.
The Renaissance
The most important influence on the Elizabethan age was that of the Renaissance. This was felt
in England considerably later than, over the Continent because it, in fact, travelled
through Germany, Italy and France to reach this country. Marlowe and Shakespeare wrote when
the impact of the Renaissance was at its height and the same is tram of Spenser in so far as
poetry is concerned. The most important upset of the Renaissance was the liberation of the
human spirit from the binding restraints of the Middle Ages. Wonder and curiosity, which are
the essentials of romanticism, were reawakened. There was a been interest in classical literature,
to the extent that classical legends became popularly known, and in Shakespeare s plays, even
person from lower life often make allusions to them. The Renaissance was humanistic in its
trend and this humanism is an important characteristics of the literature of the day. The
Renaissance had its own code of values. One of them was the concept of justly earned glorious
fame, and we find that this is the ideal for which the heroes of Elizabethan literature, whether in
prose or drama, strive. The most outstanding example of this is, of course, the lust of the
Marlovian hero to achieve the impossible. Renaissance writers placed before them the ideal of
the complete man. Whereas the renaissance encouraged the love of beauty, a balancing
influence was exercised by the Reformation which encouraged the pursuit of virtue and
righteousness.
Social and Political Background
By and large, the Elizabethan age was one of peace but it was not the type of peace which
produces complacency or causes stagnation. This was caused by the fact that specially during the
reign of Elizabeth I, there were constant threats of invasion from abroad. The reason for this was
commercial rivalry, specially in exploiting newly discovered colonies, and the main
enemy England bad to fear was Spain. English sea-captains were able to blunt the Spanish force
by destroying their formidable Armada. Later, there was another factor which tended to produce
a feeling of insecurity or, at least, aroused a fear that anarchy might follow the death of the
Queen. These fears were, of course to prove completely unjustified. The Elizabethan age was one
in which the nation made great economic strides. Trading settlements were founded abroad,
including the famous East India Company. Curiously enough, even the Reformation led to great
economic competition by encouraging the idea of thrift and by relating worldly prosperity to
divine favour. One of the embittering phenomena of the age was the rise of Puritanism, specially
in its fanatic and often hypocritical form. Satire at the expense of the Puritans is a recurrent
feature of Elizabethan literature.
Elizabethan Prose
The Elizabethan age in literature is famous primarily for its poetry whether dramatic or non-
dramatic but its achievement in prose, although less spectacular, is by no means negligible. The
age produced many great prose writers, including Bacon at one end and Browne at the other. It
is true, however, that no single prose writer of the time holds the same rank in prose that
Spenser holds in poetry ; perhaps, indeed, no single writer, not even Dryden, ever has held that
rank. For prose, the lower and less intense harmony, is the more varied and indefinitely

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adjustable instrument. And while it is conceivable that one man––indeed Shakespeare has very
nearly done so ––should catch up and otter in hint and intimation at least, the whole sum of
poetry, no one could do the like in prose. Here, too, the comparative newness of the form had its
inevitable effect ; even the period of sheer experiment and exploration was not over when the
sixteenth century ended. Very great advances had been made in both, and, above all, the
antinomy of prose, the opposition, of the plain and ornate styles which was to dominate the rest
of its history, was for the first time clearly posed and definitely worked out on either side. This
could not have happened in the earlier period of mere or main translation as regards subject, of
tentative accumulation of vocabulary and experimental adaptation of arrangement.
Elizabethan Poetry
Although the drama of the age is predominantly poetic, there was also a considerable amount of
non-dramatic poetry, even by dramatists line Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The representative
poet of the age, however, is Spenser. His contribution to English poetry cannot be over-
estimated. His greatness as a poet does not depend entirely on the high estimation which the
writers and readers of the day placed on the Faerie Queene. In fact, so far as Spenser’s epic is
concerned, it had some detractors also. All the same, it is indisputable that Spenser practically
created the diction and prosody of English poetry as both have subsisted in the main to the
present day. He did not, of course, finish the creation. Shakespeare had to come, andMilton, at
Last, before that was done ; but he did a great deal more than begin it. His versification had to
receive not a little extension, and became an infinite process. Spenser is often called the ‘poets’
poet’, and the compliment is not an inappropriate one, for his influence on other poets, both of
his own age and of succeeding ages, was considerable. Still, even though Shakespeare’s major
output was dramatic, the impact of his poetry also was tremendous.
Elizabethan Drama
The Elizabethan age was, and continues to be, the most glorious period which English drama
has ever seen. The achievement of the age in this respect was unique, for it was neither in the
realm of reconstruction and recovery, nor of orderly extension, but really of innovation and even
invention. Three entire centuries have failed to produce any new really fertile cross, or to
import, in conditions suitable to the climate, any foreign form capable of standing comparison
with that Elizabethan play, which shook itself into shape, a hundred minor hands, besides those
of Marlowe and Shakespeare aiding, by the date of the production of Every Man in His
Humour; The typical Elizabethan dramatist does not attempt to isolate action or situation
merely ; his play is but a piece of the life of the actors––their life is but a piece of larger and ever
larger lives. Nothing is superfluous, irrelevant, common, unclean ; everything may and shall go
in. The intenser nature of the interests, of tragedy may give to the working of tragic plays a
closer unify than that of comic ; the majesty or the pathos of some particular character may
dwarf in presentation as in attention the episodes and the interludes ; but the principle is always
the same.
Elizabethan Theatre Companies
The first public ‘playing-places’ in London were the Inns, the first recorded performances being
in 1557 at the Boar’s Head, Aldgate, and the Saracen’s Head, Islington, Permanent theatres were
built in areas outside the city jurisdiction, because of the strict City regulations of 1574. The first
two public theatres, James Burbage’s Theatre, and Henry Laneman’s Curtain, were built in the
Liberties on the north bank of the Thames in 1576, as was the first private theatre, Richard
Farrant’s Black friars. Till 1608, no adult company normally played in a private theatre, but the
King’s Men took over the Black friars in that year. Of the many children’s companies in the

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Elizabethan and Jacobean period, the two most dominant were the Children of St. Paul’s, and
the Children of the Chapel Royal. Elizabethan actors sought the patronage of some nobleman as
much for prestige as a protection against the harsh laws relating to the theatrical profession.
Although a company .adopted the livery of its patron, in other ways it was left to seek its own
fortunes. One of the bat-known companies was the Chamberlain-King’s Men, to which
Shakespeare himself belonged. The leading dramatists were attached more or less permanently
to some theatre company and were therefore familiar with the talents of the actors for whom
they created roles. The women’s parts were, of course, played by boys throughout the
Elizabethan Age.
Shakespearean Tragedy
Nature and Definition
Tragedy is a very difficult concept to define. In spite of all that modern critics have said on this
subject, Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in the Poetics still remains the best. According to him,
“Tragedy is are presentation of an action, which is serious, complete in itself, and of a certain
magnitude ; it is expressed in speech made beautiful in different ways in different parts of the
play ; it is acted not narrated ; and by exciting pity and fear gives a healthy relief to such
emotions.”
Although Shakespeare did not have a conscious conception about tragedy, still from his
tragedies and serious plays, we can get together a notion of what constitutes Shakespearean
tragedy. For example, one can easily agree with Dowden that Shakespeare conceives tragedy as
concerned with the ruin or restoration of the life of a man and of his soul. In many cases, it
shows the struggle between good and evil. Similarly, another critic appropriately refers to
Shakespearean tragedy as the .apotheosis (exalting to godhood) of the soul of man. By far the
most perceptive comments about Shakespearean tragedy are those of Bradley, who almost
defines the essence of Shakespearean tragedy as “a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to
death.” Although this remark captures what is common to Shakespearean tragedies, it may be
stressed that every Shakespearean tragedy is unique in its way, and that there are very few
observations which one may make about one of them which are also applicable to the others.
The Tragic Hero
Shakespeare’s tragedies are definitely built around a single personality who towers above the
other characters. In plays like Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth, the central character, for the
most part, may be regarded as a double entity. Shakespeare’s tragic-heroes have many qualities
in common. One of them is their intense concern for some one thing or aspect of life. Although it
is doubtful whether Shakespeare know the Poetics, his heroes (with the possible exception of
Macbeth) are all essentially good. Even Macbeth has an intensely poetic nature and is quite
honest in viewing his own enormities. Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are of an extremely sensitive
and poetic temperament, Hamlet being the most intellectual and Othello, the most poetic of
them. They also belong to the highest rung of society, the lowest in rank being Othello who is at
least a general whose descent may be traced to kings. In every one of the tragedies the hero is
faced either with making a moral choice of grave consequence or initiating some action which
has far-reaching consequences.

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Tragic Flaw
A Shakespearean tragedy is above all a tragedy of Character, though the environment, chance
and coincidence also play their own part. Some tragedies, notably Macbeth, include the
supernatural also. Still above all, it is some trait in the character of the tragic hero which is the
basis of the tragedy. Although we refer to this trait as the tragic flaw, it is not necessarily always
a shortcoming in itself. It is only in the particular situation in which the hero is placed that that
particular quality of character becomes vitally damaging to him. For example, Hamlet's habits of
carefully weighing the pros and cons of everything before taking action would have proved an
asset to Othello, while Othello’s precipitateness of action would have cut short Hamlet’s agonies.
Thus, it is character in a particular situation which is the causative force behind Shakespearean
tragedies, though in a general way it is quite correct to refer to them as tragedies of character. It
may be noted that the suffering of the hero is often quite out of proportion to the fault, or faulty
choice, of which he is guilty, but it is an admitted fact that in tragedy crime and punishment are
never commensurate.
The Role of Chance and Fate
Chance and fate, the latter sometimes in the form of the supernatural, also play their part in
Shakespearean tragedies. However, they are never the starting point of the tragedies and are_
rather admitted into them when the story has already taken a. definite course. The incident of
the handkerchief in Othello is an, example of pure chance which is exploited by the villain, but
this chance tapes place at a time when the seeds of jealousy have already attained a flourishing
growth in Othello’s mind ; it is not the cause of Othello’s jealousy. Similarly, even inMacbeth we
get the impression that the three witches only give an outward shape to a ‘vaulting ambition’
that is already there in Macbeth’s mind.
Theme and Action
Shakespearean tragedies have a well-defined major theme which is often capable of why
expressed in moral terms. For example, it may be said that the major theme of King Lear is
regeneration while that of Othello is one of making a moral choice. The tragic action in
Shakespeare somehow disturbs universal harmony and order and after the death of the hero,
but there are often indications that the disturbed harmony will be restored. Thus the action
involves a two-fold conflict–that between man and the universal forces and that in the mind of
man. Of those two, it is the latter which is Shakespeare’s prime concern. Shakespeare takes his
stories from other sources, most of which have been identified but he makes significant changes
in the story as it comes to him from his source. It is these changes which often tell us how
Shakespeare’s mind works. The, stories often include sensational incidents such as murder,
madness, duels and the like, bit they arise naturally and are not incorporated into the story for
the sake of sensation. Shakespeare does not conform to the classical view of tragedy which
insisted on the purity of genres and in the hands of the neo-classicists also on unities of time and
place. For Shakespeare the prime unity is that of tragic effect and he disregards all other unities.
Shakespearean tragedies are characterised by a strong sense of inevitability.
Characterisation
Although the tragic hero is the centre of the dramatist’s attention, at least one, tether character
near him is also brought into the lime-light. In some tragedies, there are several other,
characters who have an important function-in the story and whose characterisation, therefore,

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receives appropriate, attention. Where we have a double plot, the characters in the second plot
parallel those in the major plot although on a smaller scale. Shakespearean tragedies have
unforgettable feminine characters though the tragic protagonists are all men. Notable among
women characters are Cordelia, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra (who in fact shares the
role of the protagonist with Antony). The tragedies also have minor characters some of whom
are delineated wonderfully well although their appearance in the play may be a very brief one.
Interestingly, Shakespearean tragedies also have unforgettable ‘comic’ characters among whom
one may mention the Porter in Macbeth and the Fool in Ring Lear. They also have well-
delineated villains the most interesting of whom is Iago because of a note of mystery’ about his
motives.
Tragic Effect
Even without knowing the Poetics,Shakespeare manages to excite strong pity and terror in his
tragedies. However, these are not the only emotions which they excite. In the opinion of Bradley,
the characteristic emotion, aroused by Shakespearean tragedies is a profound some of waste.
This is derived from the idea of human worth and dignity which the plays express and the
missed opportunities or wrong choices which lead to man’s defeat, without affecting his
essential dignity. Shakespearean tragedies embody a sense of profound suffering and sadness
and some of them end in a number of deaths, the most conspicuous in this respect
being Hamlet and King Lear where the stage is literally littered with dead bodies in the last
acme, All the same, they do not leave a depressing effect on the mind. There is something
towards the close which restores our faith in man’s greatness and Clod’s wise providence. The
atmosphere, in fact, is one of calm serenity very well expressed by Milton in the closing lines of
Samson Agonistes. We are given the impression that the suffering has not gone waste. It has
either enabled the protagonist, other characters, or the audience to attain new insight, or has
worked towards a better future. Many Shakespearean tragedies characteristically ‘end on a note
of hope.
The Mature Tragedies
According to Traversi, the conceptions elaborated in Shakespeare’s mature tragedies are
complex ; they are inter-relations of themes even further extended, but there is no longer any
sense of a gap between purpose and achievement. The predominating tragic conflicts
correspond to states of feeling more firmly defined, more clearly conceived in terms of a possible
resolution. In Othello the heart of the tragic experience is revealed in its full intensity. The
emotional unity s reflected in clearer conception of character and in a more truly dramatic
presentation of conflict. The subject of all these great plays can be described, in general terms, as
the working out to its inevitable_ conclusion of the disruptive effect of the entry of passion into,
normal human experience. By this entry the balance, essential to right living, between the
passionate and rational elements in the personality is overthrown, and what should have been
orderly, vital, and purposeful is plunged into disorder, death, and anarchy.
Passion Verses Ream
The predominant tragic conflict in the mind of the tragic heroes in the mature tragedies is
generally between passion and reason as in .the plays which preceded, them. Now, however, this
conflict is no longer shown exclusively in the form of an internal cleavage, and becomes
something more truly dramatic, a clash between contrasted and opposed personalities and
order. In other words, the opposition between reason and passion, first isolated––through

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Othello and Iago––in a dramatic conflict of personalities and then projected in Macbeth and
Lear, beyond the individual hero to the state and universe which surround him; is merged
increasingly into another, of greater significance and profundity, between highly personal
conceptions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.
Shakespeare’s Personal Views

Many books have been written on subjects such as ‘Shakespeare’s Religion’, but in the plays
themselves there is very little which can be definitely looked upon as coming from Shakespeare
himself. On the whole, Shakespeare is the most impersonal writer, and this probably was
responsible to some extent for making him the great dramatist that he is. It is only in a rough
and ready way that we can surmise some of Shakespeare’s personal likes and dislikes. For
example, Shakespeare uses the image of the fawning dog so often and charges it with so much
contempt that it may be assumed that this was one of his intense abhorrences. Similarly, we may
say that Shakespeare regarded ingratitude as one of the worst failings is character. There is little
doubt that, whatever his brand of Christianity. Shakespeare was deeply religious and
compassionate. Although there are occasional outbursts of cynicism––which must be viewed in
the contest of the character––the tendency of the plays on the whole is towards gong humanism.
In this context, one pray quote the very W observation of one of Shakespeare’s modem
biographers. Ivor Brown remarks with justice
In the case, of an author who left personal papers and whose writings are mainly in
dramatic form ... it is not easy to be precise about his views and personal traits. Yet
many have believed that Shakespeare’s image is fully mirrored in his work. Shaw has
claimed that we knew more of him than of Dickens or Thackeray. No writer can
wholly disguise himself. Apart from definite expression of opinion, his language and
his metaphors betray big predilections and aversions. It is not impertinent, it is not
vain, to try to b, the figure behind the glorious hand.
Thus impersonality also is relative, for while there are no explicit ‘autobiographical’ touches in
Shakespeare, even he could not have kept his own views, likes and dislikes, entirely out of his
writings.
Critical Introduction to “Othello”

Date of Writing
There has been a considerable difference of opinion about the date of the writing of Othello. An
egret view was that the play was written in 1611 but an entry, in the. “Revels Accounts” later
came to light, which showed that the pray was acted in 1604. Although at one time a question
was raised about the genuineness of this entry, it is now taken to be genuine enough. Tests like
those of versification would also make 1604 far more probable than 1611. The Revels entry
referred to above speaks of a play called “The More of Venice” performed, in the Banqueting
House at White Hall by Shakespeare’s company, which bore the name ‘the King’s Majesty’s
Players’, on November, 1, 1604.

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It is not certain that this was the first Performance of Othello, because several early plays
of Shakespeare were also staged there during the same period. Critics have also found echoes
in Othello of some books published in 1601 and known to have been read by Shakespeare. Thus,
although the autumn of 1604 is the outside limit, it is quite likely that the play was actually
written’ in 1603 or even 1602.
The Sauce
The source of the plot is the seventh novel, of the third decade of stories in Cinthio’s
Hecatommithi. Most probably Shakespeare read the story in the original Italian. The play has
come down to us in three texts, the First Quarto printed in 1622, the First Folio, printed in 1623,
and the Second Quarto, printed in 1630, which seems to have had the benefit of consulting both
the earlier editions. Chambers has the following comment to make on the tests of the play
Q. [First Quarto] and F. [Folio] are both good, and fairly well-printed texts ; and
they clearly rest substantially upon the same original ... The purely verbal variants
are very numerous. Sometimes the divergence is greater than mere misreading will
explain. There are some traces of sophistication by the F. editor. But I think there
must be perversion in Q There are a good many passages in which more than one
word is varied, and here Q. often seems to have attempted an emendation of
language or metre, or of a phrase found Unintelligible, or to have started with a
misreading and altered the context to suit it. These features suggest a transcriber
rather than printer, and the relation becomes intelligible if we regard F. as printed
from the original and Q. from a not very faithful transcript, without a few passages
cut in representation.
The Story
Desdemona, daughter of the Venetian senator, Brabantio, has secretly married the Moor.
Othello, a gallant general in the service of the Venetian state. Called before the Duke, Othello is
accused by Brabantio of carrying; off his daughter. Simultaneously comes news of an impending
attack on Cyprus by the Turks, against whom Othello is needed : to lead the Venetian forces.
Desdemona sides with Othello and Brabantio reluctantly hands, his daughter over to the Moor,
who at once sets out for Cyprus with Desdemona to follow him. Othello had lately, promoted to
the lieutenancy Cassio, a young Florentine whom be trusted. By this promotion he bad deeply
offended Iago, an older soldier who thought he had a better claim, and who now plots his
revenge, By a trick he first discredits Cassio, who is deprived of his lieutenancy. He instigates the
latter to ask Desdemona to plead in his favour with Othello, which Desdemona warmly does. At
the same time he craftily instils in Othello’s mind suspicion of his wife’s fidelity, and jealousy of
Cassio. Finally by another trick he arranges that a handkerchief given by Othello to Desdemona
shall be found on Cassio. He stirs Othello to such jealousy that the Moor smothers Desdemona
in her bed. Shortly afterwards Cassio, whom Iago had set Roderigo, one of his associates and
dupes, to assassinate, is brought in Wounded. Roderigo has failed in his purpose, and has been
killed by Iago to prevent discovery of the plot. On him have been found letters revealing the guilt
of Iago and the innocence of Cassio. Othello, thunderstruck by the discovery that he has
murdered Desdemona without cause, kills himself from remorse.

11
‘Othello’ and Other Shakespearean Tragedies

Othello is in several ways, inferior to other great tragedies of Shakespeare, though it is perhaps
dramatically the greatest of them. It does not have the variety or the depth of Hamlet, none of
the overwhelming power of King Lear, none of that ‘atmosphere’ which in Macbeth keeps us
awfully hovering on the confines of a world outside that of our normal experience, none of the
sweep and exultant power of Antony and Cleopatra; nor has it that range in time which marks
all the other four. But its grip upon the emotions of the audience is more relentless and
sustained than that of the others. The plot is completely simple, with no rub-plot and no
distractions ; the number of characters presented is small ; above all, from the moment of the
lauding n Cyprus the action moves fast, and he, tension steadily mounts, with hardly an instant’s
relaxation, till the moment at which Othello kills himself. This is the only one of Shakespeare’s
plays which resembles domestic tragedy.
Distinctive Features : The Plot
The plot of Othello is simpler than that of any other Shakespearean tragedy. We may say that,
the core of it is that an ensign, expecting promotion to a vacant lieutenancy, is exasperated when
his general appoints another man over his head. He determines to revenge himself on the
general and secure the dismissal of his rival. By a series of adroit moves he convinces the general
of the adultery of the general’s wife with the lieutenant. As a result the general kills first his wife
and then himself, but the: ensign fails in the second part of his design, since the plot it disclosed,
the lieutenant receives yet further promotion, and he himself faces trial and torture. Nothing
could be simpler, and when a story is that of a ‘plot’ in the sense of a scheme, proceeding by a
series of linked moves towards a designed end, it provides ready-made a ‘plot’ is the dramatic
sense. And when the scheme is largely, concerned with one of the strongest and most distressing
of human emotions, the plot is likely to be a powerful one. 1n none of the other tragedies of
Shakespeare do we have ‘implication’ followed by ‘explication’ which Aristotle thought one of
the features of great tragedy, and of which, incidentally. Shakespeare was himself a master in
another kind of play. The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing and Measure for
Measure have all theatrically effective plots. But Shakespeare used this form only once in high
tragedy, and this is where Othello differ in structure and in effect from the others. This is not to
say that Othello is either ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than the others ; but it belongs to a different order
of play, that order of which, ever since it war written,Oedipus Tyrannus has been justly held to
be the greatest example.
Swiftness of Pace
The action of Othello has a rapidity which, in the theatre, tides most of its improbabilities. We
may, look upon Act I, as being in the nature of a Prologue, and the remaining acts have a
remarkable unity of time and place. The action in Cyprus occupies something a little lea than
thirty-six hours, and sins some eight of these hours are compressed into one scene, the
audience’s impression is of even shorter time. There is also the unity of action in the classical
sense, for the presence of the clown is brief and easily dispensable, and therefore there is almost
no ‘comic relief’ in this play. All this makes Othello extremely effective on the stage.
The Characters
In keeping with its tight scheme of action, Othello, also has a smaller number of characters than
other tragedies of Shakespeare. A large number of characters who play a significant part in the

12
play would have tended to distract attention and impair the intensity of the play. Taking into
consideration such characters only, Othello has only 7 (in all 13), whereas Hamlet has 25
characters in all, of whom at least 12 are significant characters.
Domestic Tragedy
There are no kings, queens and princes among the principal characters of this play, the most
eminent of them bearing ft. title of general but being, in effect, no more than a very competent
mercenary employed by the Venetian state. The ‘Duke’ of the f play is no more than a figurehead
and, in any came, he is not one o the important characters. This makes an important difference
in impression. It is no doubt true, as Johnson said, that Shakespeare, though he deals with kings
and queens, thinks only on men ; but, none the less, very high rank does, if only subconsciously,
diminish our feeling of intimacy, lessen our feeling of identification, and thereby make the
impact not less great but less immediate. Further, in the other tragedies we are made aware that
the fates of the characters, though they affect us by sympathy for theme as individual men and
women, affect also the destinies of kingdoms and peoples. It is noteworthy that all these other
tragedies end with the reestablishment of ordered government. This is not true ofOthello. It is
no doubt an inconvenience for the Venetian. state to be deprived of the services of its greatest
general, but there is no more to it than that, and so we are left free to follow simply the
disastrous fortunes of people like ourselves, and one of them caught in the cruel grip, of an
emotion to which we are all liable.
Suspense
The opening of Othello is different from that of all other tragedies of Shakespeare. His aim here
seems to be that of creating suspense right at the start. In the other four tragedies, we are
introduced to the main figure quite early, either by name and comment or by his own entrance,
and, further, what comment is made creates expectations which are in accord with the
impression produced by the character himself. The opening of Othello shows two men on the
stags, who are discussing something which is vaguely alluded to as “this” and “such a matter”
and is never further defined. They pass to the discussion of an equally indeterminate person
alluded to as “he” and “him”. We can infer from “make me his lieutenant”) that “he” is an officer
of high rank, and we are told later that’ be is a “Moor”. The soldier, who by now has a name,
draws a singularly unflattering picture of him. The Moor is said to love his own pride and
purpose, he uses ‘bombast circumstance’, he stuffs his speech with epithets of war, he makes a
thoroughly bad appointment out of favouritism, he is an old black ram and a Barbary horse, he
is lascivious, and an extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and everywhere (these last two
items come from Roderigo). All we have to set against this is an inference of our own that “he” is
a man who knows his own mind, and an admission by Iago that the state cannot with safety cast
him, since they have no one else of “his fathom”. It is true that Iago is clearly suffering from a
rankling sense of injury, which is not calculated to make him fair, but the picture which we get,
is surely that of an efficient, perhaps even great, but blustering and erratic, soldier of fortune, of
no morals and of unsound judgement.
Othello’s Entry
After 184 lines of these preliminaries, Othello at last enters ; and the whole picture at once falls
to pieces. The only bits of it that remain are his pride, though even that is of a different kind
from that suggested by Iago, and his importance to the state. Otherwise he is quiet, courteous,
and controlled Now Shakespeare, being so assured and so skilful a craftsman, did not introduce
his hero in this unusual way by accident ; he was aiming at something, and it is our business to
find out, if we can, what this something was. He makes us distrust Iago even more than we
should do in any case from his account of himself. We are forced, when “be” does enter, to make

13
our own picture of “him” for ourselves by the mere fact that the picture which we may have been
inclined to accept is so manifestly a caricature,
Doable Time
An interesting innovation in Othello is the use of ‘double time’. It is as though Shakespeare had
two clocks working according to different criteria of time, before him when he wrote this play.
However, the double time in the play works imperceptibly and with a wonderful effectiveness.
The main action moves fast, with the exception of one interval which is irrelevant to its
movement. The first act represents a period of time very little longer than that occupied on the
stage. Between Acts I and II there is an interval of any length we choose ; all we know about it
from the text is that it some says, longer than “sennight” though we can, if we care to, work out
from a map how long it would take a sailship to complete a tempestuous voyage
from Venice to Cyprus. But the supposed duration is quite unimportant because of the
distribution of the main characters during the voyage, and as Shakespeare is at pains to stress
this distribution we may reasonably assume that he made it deliberately. Othello sails in one
ship, Cassio in a second, Desdemona, Iago, and Emilia in a third. They meet again for the first
time, and within half an hour of one another, in Cyprus. The represented time from tin to, the
end of the play, is some thirty-three hours. Between Acts III ant IV is the only one place, where
an interval can be credibly inserted. When once Iago has Othello on the rack it would be
undramatic to alto a respite. From the beginning of Act IV there is no possibility of an interval.
The messengers from Venice arrive and are invited to supper “tonight”. This supper ends at the
beginning of IV. iii. Later in the evening Cassio is attacked and Roderigo killed, and very soon
after this Othello kills Desdemona.
Rapid Movement
This rapid continuity of movement is not only, from the point of view of dramatic tension,
desirable, but also, from the point of view of credibility, imperative. If Iago’s plot does not work
fast it will not work at all. If Othello meets Cassio and asks him the question which be asks too
late, in the last scene, the plot will be blown sky high. And Iago is acutely aware of this–– “the
Moor may unfold me to him ; there stand I in peril.” But this rapidity of movement, from one
point of view inevitable, from another point of view makes nonsense of the whole business. After
the arrival in Cyprus there is no point of time at which the supposed adultery could have
occurred ; and even Othello’s credulity cannot be supposed to accept blank impossibilities. Nor
has there been any opportunity before the arrival, since Othello sails on the day after his
marriage, and Shakespeare has been at pains to preclude the possibility of its occurrence during
the voyage. Something therefore had to be done, to make the whole progress of the plot
credible_ And Shakespeare does it by a number of indications of so-called ‘long time’.
Use of ‘Long Time’
Shakespeare used ‘long time’ to persuade the audience that the .adultery, which was rendered
impossible by his cutting out the period of married life in Cinthio’s tale, had nevertheless taken
place. ‘Long time’, therefore, consists in effect of a series of references to the duration of time, d
which the married life could have occurred, and, we are led to suppose, actually did occur.
Where it had been spent Shakespeare is careful not to say : sometimes he seems to sanest that
Desdemona might have begun her intrigue with Cassio in Venice, at others w e are given the
impression that weeks or more may have elapsed since the arrival inCyprus. He is of course
careful too that the hints of long time should never dash in any obvious way with those of short
time.
Brilliance of Effect

14
Shakespeare achieves an impressive brilliance of effect by the employment of ‘double time’.

When we feel like blaming Othello for crediting Iago’s preposterous story, there is ‘long time’ to
tell us that in the theatre, it would not sound so preposterous. On the other hand, when we hear
Desdemona’s protestations of absolute innocence, we believe her, because ‘actual time’ is
entirely in her favour.
The Structure of “Othello”

Triumph of Craftsmanship
The nature of Shakespeare’s peculiar achievement in Othello is reflected in the perceptive
remark that whereas Ring Lear is Shakespeare’s greatest work, Othello is his best
play. Othello is indeed a brilliant triumph of dramatic art and craftsmanship, and it is in this
respect that this play differs from Shakespeare’s other celebrated tragedies. As M. R. Ridley
expressively puts it :
It has neither the variety nor the depth of Hamlet, none of the overwhelming power
of Liar, none of that ‘atmosphere’ which in Macbeth keeps us awfully hovering on the
confines of a world outside that of our normal experience, none of the sweep and
exultant power of Antony and Cleopatra ;nor has it the range in time which marks
all the other four. But its grip upon the emotions of the audience is more relentless
and sustained than that of the others. The plot is completely simple, with no subplot
and no distractions ; the number of characters presented is small ; above all, from the
moment of the landing in Cyprus the action moves fast, and the tension steadily
mounts, with hardly an instant’s relaxation, till the moment at which Othello kills
himself.
Three-Part Structure
Othello is universally recognised as the best constructed of all Shakespearean tragedies. Except
for a brief passage of clowning, there is no digression in the play. The action starts moving no
later than after the first ten lines of the play. We notice that the tragedy has a three-part
structure. The first part consists of the marriage of Othello ; the second part deals with the
poisoning of Othello’s mind by Iago, and the third of Othello’s murder of Desdemona and his
discovery of how he has been duped by Iago. As is evident, each part arises naturally out of what
has preceded it and carries forward the theme to its logical conclusion. Within these three
divisions, Shakespeare takes cart of the four structural phases into which his plays are divisible,
i.e. exposition, complication and development, climax and denouement or catastrophe. These
are, of course, also the recognised structural divisions of a dramatic work according to classical
critical theory.
Exposition
The exposition is the introductory opening of a play which reveals the general situation from
which the complication in the plot arises. In Shakespeare’s work the space devoted to each of
these structural divisions is not uniform but differs vastly from play to play. The most

15
characteristic expositions of Shakespeare open with a conversation which is seen to have been
already in progress. The exposition of Othello is extremely skilful, for Shakespeare seems to take
great care to delay, the appearance of Othello himself, while making us focus our thoughts on
Othello all the time. Instead,’’ it is the villain Iago who is introduced first, in conversation with
Roderigo. We get to know Iago well enough to be prepared for the mischief which he is soon to
set afoot. Brabantio is then introduced and the key incident––the elopement of Desdemona with
Othello––is presented from the hostile point of view of Desdemona’s unsuccessful lover, her
father who hates to think of Othello as his son-in-law, and Iago who in public keeps up a facade
of being Othello’s well-wisher but is in reality insanely malignant and spiteful. It would seem
that in the exposition of Othello, Shakespeare deliberately makes the going tough for Othello
and Desdemona, so that when they are able to silence their enemies effortlessly, their triumph
seems to be all the greater. The expository part closes with Brabantio’s warning to Othello that
Desdemona, who has betrayed her father, would some day deceive him also. Though Othello is
not conscious of it at the time, this seed of doubts sprouts in his wind and in time becomes a
mighty tree of mistrust and suspicion. Thus the exposition itself looks forward, to not only what
is to come next, but to the denouement.
Complication
The development or complication of the plot is, of course, the longest part of a play. The nature
of the conflict which is the basis of the development is peculiar in Othello, in the sense that,
given his nature, the mighty but trustful Othello is helpless before the weak but crafty Iago. On
the external plane the conflict ends in the Duke’s decision in favour of Othello and Desdemona,
with the reunion of the newly-weds marking the climax of the play. This conflict and climax are,
however, superficial, for the real action of the play is not the coming together of Othello and
Desdemona, but the rupture––though one-sided––in their relationship, and the real climax is
the subjugation of Othello’s mind by Iago.
The Real Conflict
The real conflict in Othello lies in Iago’s diabolical attempts to poison Othello’s mind, and
Othello’s: desperate, though futile, attempts to keep his sanity, and his faith in Desdemona,
intact. The lateness of the crisis makes Othello preserve its excitement right till the end, for in
plays; where the conflict reaches its conclusion, early, e.g. Julius Caesar, there is bound to be
some flagging of interest. The Temptation Scene (Act III, Scene III) is the very heart of the
conflict in Othello, though it is far from over at the end of this scene. This long scene is a
masterpiece of construction and on analysis reveals six successive phases, which might even be
viewed as self-contained scenes. In the first phase of it, Cassio meets Desdemona and requests
her to use her influence with Othello in her favour so as to reinstate him in his estimation. She,
as is her wont, pledges her whole hearted support. In the next phase, we see that Desdemona is
as good as her word, and is in fact rather tactless and indiscreet in her insistence, and quite
unmindful of her husband’s state of mind. Although Othello’s suspicion and jealousy have not
yet been aroused, there is apt material for this, for on seeing Cassio depart just as they arrive,
Iago exclaims, “Ha, I like not that”, though when Othello asks him what he said, he is
deliberately evasive, though he does not miss the opportunity of making apparently ‘honest’
insinuation’s against him
Othello. What dost thou say ?
Iago. Nothing, my lord ; or if––I know not what.
Othello. Was not that Cassio parted from my wife ?

16
Iago. Cassio, my lord ! No, sure, I cannot think it,

That he would sneak away so guilty-like, Seeing your coming.
Othello. I do believe ’twas he.
Now comes the most crucial stage of the scene, as Iago sets systematically to poison Othello’s
mind. Interestingly enough, one of the arguments used by Iago for this purpose is the same as
that of Brabantio, viz. that Desdemona’s rejection of her own countrymen in favour of the Moor,
and her betrayal of her father, indicates the fundamental perversity of bar nature :
She did deceive her father, marrying you ;
And when she seem’d to shake, and fear your looks,
She lov’d them most,
Iago’s cunning suggestions achieve their goal so completely that Othello forms the view that the
‘honest creature’––Iago––knows more than he is willing to reveal, out of consideration for
Cassio. It is at this stage that Desdemona happens to drop her handkerchief, which is retrieved
by Emilia who, for once, betrays singular credulity about her husband. Iago, to whom she gives
the handkerchief plants it in Cassio’s chamber, and tins armed, launches another assault on
Othello’s mind. Othello is now as helpless as a fish caught in a net, and his words full reveal the
state of his mind :
By the World,
I think my wife be honest, and think she is not ;
I think that thou art just, and think thou art not.
I’ll have some proof : Her name, that was as fresh
As Dian’s visage, is now begrim’d and black
As mine own face.
For the first time, Iago is open and forthright in his accusations, and agrees, with seeming
reluctance, to furnish Othello with some swift means of bringing about Desdemona’s death,
assuring him : “I am yours for ever.”
Denouement and Resolution
At a certain stop during the rising action of the play, the conflict takes a decisive tam and
reaches a climax. In Othello, this may be said to happen as the end of the Temptation Scene, i.e.
Act III, Scene III. Then the falling action of the play commences, ending in the denouement and
resolution, which in this case consists of Othello’s tragic murder of Desdemona and, after the
discovery that he has been deluded by Iago, the visiting by Othello of retributive justice
upon himself. What is specially noteworthy about the plot construction of Othello is the
relentless swiftness of its pace, and the intense concentration of its interest. In both these
respects, the construction of Othello is unique in Shakespearean tragedy.
The Role of Soliloquies
The soliloquies in Shakespearean draws are mainly an instrument of characterisation, since they
elucidate motivation, for according to dramatic convention a character necessarily speaks the
truth when he .is talking to himself. However, for the same reason, soliloquies have an

17
important bearing on the structure of the play, for clarity and consistency of motivation links the
various events of the play in a coherent chain of cause and effect. If the malignity of Iago bad
been really ‘motiveless’, as Coleridge maintains, the structure of Othello would have been
considerably weakened. As it is, the soliloquies of Iago go a long way in expressing his
motivation, and the soliloquies of Othello himself reveal the varying states of his mind, first
telling us of his intuitive feeling that his reunion with Desdemona constitutes the very acme of
his happiness, and that if be were to die now, it would be to die most happily. Quite early in the
play, Iago gives goat to his resentment against ; Othello, and declares that he will entangles him
is a jealousy which is so strong as to overthrow judgment. Iago calls Cassio “this honest fool”,
and announces his plan of construing Desdemona’s advocacy of his cause as evidence of her
lustful interest in him. Similarly, Iago is quite implicit why he wants Cassio to be murdered, the
strongest reason being that his way of life continually puts the devious villain to shame––
He bath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly.
The most interesting of Othello’s soliloquies, from the point of view of structure, is the one
which begins with the words, “It is the cause……” His mood is not one of furious anger now, but
that of a deadly quiet, since he believes that he is about to perform an act of sacrifice and save
Desdemona from the baser part of herself.
The Use of ‘Double Time’
Shakespeare has used a highly modernistic device to solve an important structural problem
in Othello. The problem was to manage the plot in such a way as to suggest, simultaneously, that
there was no physical possibility, in terms of time and place, for the alleged intrigue between
Desdemona and Cassio to have been carried out, and to allow its possibility. Shakespeare has
done so by resorting to ‘double time’, that is, by constructing the plot as though the links in time
are managed by two different clocks, one indicating ‘long time’, and the other showing the
normal passage of time.
Economy and Harmony
The structure of Othello is characterised by an impressive economy and beautiful harmony. The
economy in the shaping of means to end and end to means, of characters to the action and
action to the characters, is especially noted and commended by Granville-Barker. He observes :
Othello’s precipitate fall from height to depth is tragically appropriate to the

man he is, as to the man he is made because the fall must be precipitate. And that we
may rather feel with Othello in his suffering than despise him for the folly of it, we
are speeded through time as unwittingly as he is, and left little more time for

18
reflection. The occasional relaxation of tension is because the strain, in any play
highly charged with emotion, would become intolerable.
The beauty and harmony in the structure of Othello has been, commented upon by Helen
Gardner. According to her a unique distinction of this tragedy is the indispensability of every
single scene. except for a trivial passage with the clown. Othello thus satisfies the desire of the
imagination for order and harmony between the parts and the whole.
“Othello” And Shakespearean Tragedy

Peculiarity
As a tragedy Othello possesses the questionable distinction of having been ruthlessly criticised
by one earlier critic, namely, Rymer, and two celebrated modern critics, namely T. S. Eliot and F.
R: Leavis.
While there is no dearth of enthusiastic, and even rapturous appreciation of Othello, the fact
remains that there is still a school of thought, a minority school, no doubt, which considers the
objections of Rymer to be valid, and the adverse criticism of Eliot and Leavis to be justified. On
the positive side, we have a host of critics but one name which cannot escape mention is that of
Dr. Johnson, not only because of his stature as a critic, but even more so because he largely
meets Rymer’s strictures on their own, viz. neo-classical ground. Among the modern favourable
critics, the most celebrated is Bradley.
Rymer’s Attack
Rymer’s primary interest was not critical but social and polemical-he wanted to attack and
discredit the English stage, and for this purpose singled out some well-known plays in order to
subject them to a mercilessly destructive criticism. Rymer has thus a vested interest in his
argument : be is not out to explore with an open mind and reach a just and appropriate
conclusion. His polemics may become more understandable if we remember that he was a
lawyer by profession who took to the study of drama as a hobby. In his discussion of Othello, he
gives a scene-by-scene hostile analysis of the play, exultingly bringing out and elaborating every
improbability, and leading to the general conclusion that Othello is a veritable compendium of
shortcomings, Rymer was not lacking in sharpness of wit and intelligence, but it was his chosen
task to rehabilitate the English stage on the lines, of “classical” French drama, and to do so it
was of the utmost necessity that Shakespeare” should first be debunked and made to clear the
way for neoclassical French playwrights. In a way, Rymer’s attack is an oblique compliment to
Othello : he concedes that it was the popular favourite among Shakespeare’s tragedies.
Major Arguments
Rymer’s first objection is that the plot of Othello is incredible. And as a neo-classicist, he finds
the behaviour of both Iago and Othello to be untrue to life because it is not typical of the

19
soldier class to which they belong. Rymer is also critical of the alleged lack of moral in the play–
–unless, he sneers, it be that women should be careful about their: linen. Thus Rymer’s first
objection is that the play violates the classical doctrine of generality, and he cannot brook the
fact that Iago is “a close, dissembing, false, insinuating rascal, instead of an open-hearted,
frank, plain-dealing soldier, a character constantly worn by them for some thousands of years in
the world.” Rymer finds Othello lacking the loftiness which is requisite in a tragedy. He asserts
that there is nothing for the audience to carry home with them from this play for their use and
edification.
Excerpts
Some excerpts from A Short View of Tragedy would help to bring in the actual flavour of
Rymer’s fare. After reproducing a dialogue between Othello and Iago where the perplexed and
near-crazed Moor stalks incoherently of being naked a-bed and not meaning harm, Rymer
comments :
At this gross rate of trifling, our General and his Ancient march on most heroically, till
the jealous booby has his brains turn’d, and falls in a trance. Would any imagine this to be the
language of Venetians, of soldiers and mighty captains ? no Bartholomew droll could subsist
upon such trash.
Rymer finds Shakespeare’s handling of the major incidents in the plot to be contrarious. He
argues
Iago had some pretence to be discontent with Othello and Cassio : And what
passed hitherto was the operation of revenge. Desdemona had never done him harm, always
kind to him and to his wife, was his country-woman, a dame of quality : for him to abet . her
murder shows nothing of a soldier, nothing of a man, nothing of Nature in it……Iago could
desire no better than to set Cassio and Othello, his two enemies, by the ears together, so he
might have been revenged on them both at once : And chusing for his own share the murder of
Desdemona, he had the opportunity to play booty, and save the poor harmless- wretch. But the
poet must do everything by contraries, to surprise the audience still with something horrible
and prodigious beyond any human imagination.
The Incident of the Handkerchief

Rymer not only ridicules Shakespeare’s management of the incident of the handkerchief but
has his own view about how the handkerchief should have been employed :
Desdemona dropped her handkerchief, and missed it that very day after her marriage ;
it might have been rumpled up with her wedding sheets : and this night that she lay in her
wedding sheets, the Fairey Napkin (whilst Othello was stifling her) might have started up to
disarm his fury and stop his ungracious mouth. Then might she (in a trance for fear) have lain as
dead ; then might he touched with remorse, have honestly cut his own throat, by the good

20
leave and, with the applause of the spectators : who might thereupon have gone home with a
quiet mind, admiring the beauty of Providence, fairly and truly represented on the theatre.
Verdict
Rymer’s verdict on this great tragedy is a very harsh one. He first castigates the author for not
providing some obvious moral lesson for the spectators : “What can remain with the audience
to carry home with them for this sort of poetry for their use and edification? How can it work,
unless (instead of settling the mind and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder
our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our
appetite, and fill our head with vanity, confusion, tintamarre, and jingle-jangle, beyond what all
the parish-clerks of London with their Old Testament farces and interludes, in Richard the
Second’s time, could ever pretend to ? Our only opts for the good of -their souls can be that
these people go to the playhouse as they go to Church, to sit ‘still, look on one another, make_
no reflection, nor mind the play more than they would a sermon.” Upon this follows Rymer’s
astounding verdict ‘There is in this play some burlesque, some humour and ramble of comical
wit, some show and some mimicry to divert the spectators ; but the tragical part is none other
than a bloody farce, without salt or saviour.”
Johnson’s Rejoinder
Samuel Johnson, himself a neo-classicist, effectively counters Rymer’s criticism in the Preface to
this edition of Shakespeare’s plays. This is how Johnson disposes of the criticism that
Shakespeare’s characterisation violates the canons of generality :
Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident and, if he preserves the
essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story
requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men ... These are the petty cavils of petty
minds ; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied
with the figure, neglects the drapery.
On the alleged lack of a moral in the play (a charge conceded by many other critics) Johnson
once again comes to the defence of Shakespeare. His argument is recorded in Boswell’s Life of
Johnson, and occurs in reply to a question of his biographer. Johnson replies :
‘In the first place, Sir, we learn from Othello this very useful moral, not to make an
unequal match ; in the second place, we learn not to yield too readily to suspicion. The
handkerchief is merely a trick, though a very pretty trick ; but there are no other circumstances
of reasonable suspicion, except what is related by Iago of Cassio’s warm expressions concerning
Desdemona in his sleep ; and that depended entirely upon the assertion of one man. No, Sir, I
think Othello has more: moral than almost any play.’

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T. S. Mot’s View
T. S. Eliot was perhaps the first great modern critic to pass a hostile judgment on Othello. His
criticism relates mainly to the, character of Othello himself. Where Swinburne looked upon
Othello as the noblest man of man’s making, Eliot viewed him as ‘cheering himself up’ in his last
speech, and applied to his attitude the expressive word ‘Bovarysme’. This view is best
countered by Nevill Coghill who establishes that Eliot’s view of Othello is such as no actor could
have effectively portrayed on the stage, and therefore could hardly have been the one intended
by Shakespeare. On Eliot’s side we have Heilman who regards Othello as the least heroic of
Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. The adverse criticism of the play is further elaborated by F. R.
Leavis, while the best appreciation perhaps still continues to be that of Bradley. The two critical
stances are opposed in every detail. Bradley locates they complexity of play within the
personality of Iago, since he is inclined to look upon Othello as entirely blameless, and he
therefore devotes considerable space to exploration of Iago’s mind. Leavis is critical of this
approach, regarding it as no better than a waste time to study the inner reaches of Iago’s mind.
In his view Iago is sufficiently convincing as a person, but he is subordinate and merely
ancillary––-not much more than a necessary piece of dramatic mechanism. He believes that
Othello’s tragedy is precipitated principally by Othello’s own shortcomings––his egoism, his
merely sensual love of Desdemona and his lack of any real knowledge of the woman he loves.
According to Leavis Othello’s habits of thought and speech, while they served him well enough
in a life of martial adventure, would never have fitted him for the reciprocity of marriage, so
that the very relationship of Othello and Desdemona has tragedy inherent in it and the moment
of crisis shows gaping weaknesses in Othello : “The self-idealisation is shown as blindness and
the nobility as here no longer something real, but the disguise of an obtuse and a brutal
egoism.”
Defence
The strongest refutation of the view of Leavis, as of Eliot, is our experience in the theatre. There
we are certain that we are seeing the overthrow of a strong and great man ; no mare egotist
could have wrung our beasts by his fall as Othello does. Bradley recognises that Iago is less than
perfect as a human being, and he has a better and more correct appreciation of the nature of
Othello’s tragedy than most other critics. Iago’s character had no place for love in it, and this
brought about the destruction of those around him as of Iago, himself. As Bradley puts it, Iago
was
destroyed by the power that he attacked, the power of love, and he was destroyed by
it because be could sot understand it ; and he could not understand it beams it was not in him.
Defence of Iago
One of the most curious pieces of criticism on Othello is the defence of logo attempted by ‘a
Gentlemen of Exeter’ in 1790, entitled ‘An Apology for the Character and Conduct of logo’. He
bases himself on what is to him an incontrovertible fact––the good reputation which Iago

22
enjoys. He maintains that if throe bad been any real wickedness in him it would have come to
somebody’s notice during the twenty-eight years of his life. Some other critic also have justified
Iago by maintaining that Othello had reply cuckolded him––which would give him a good
motive for revenge and save him from being branded a monster. Even some twentieth century
critics have found substance in such an approach, and taken the words ‘honest Iago’ at their
face value. Not only is there a controversy about this particular motive of Iago’s actions, but a
strong difference of opinion exists about what his real motive is, or even whether he has any
motive at all, or suffers, in the words of Coleridge from ‘motiveless Malignity’.
A synopsis of “Othello”
ACT I
Iago’s Resentment
Othello is a Moorish nobleman and adventurer in the service of the Venetian state as a General
against the Turks. Iago is a young Venetian occupying the position of Othello’s ensign or
.ancient.
Othello has the misfortune of arousing Iago’s animosity by choosing another man, Cassio, as his
lieutenant, since this makes Iago feel that his better claims have been ignored. Othello’s wife
Desdemona is the daughter of a Venetian nobleman who has married him against the wishes of
her family. In order to avenge himself on Othello, and even more, just driven by the evil within
him, Iago decides-lo cause the downfall of Othello and Cassio. ‘However, he gives no impression
to the General that he harbours; .any resentment or hostility against him. Othello himself is too
noble to suspect that Iago is playing upon his simple nobility.
Othello and Desdemona

Othello was for a long time the guest of a Venetian senator roamed Brabantio. While be stayed
there, the host’s youthful daughter Desdemona would eagerly listen to the guest’s stories of
great adventure, until she came to fall in love with him. Othello and Desdemona married in
secret. The first step in Iago’s plot was to awaken the senator during the night and report his
daughter’s elopement. Iago safeguarded himself from suspicion by shifting the blame to a
rejected suitor of Desdemona named Roderigo. The angered Brabantio appealed to the Duke of
Venice against Othello whom he accused of winning his daughter by black magic. However, he
came to know that just then the Venetian senate was about to send Othello to’ Cyprus to
protect that island against the threatened invasion of a Turkish fleet. Desdemona steadfastly
refused to give up her husband and return to her father. Not only that, she asked the Duke’s
permission to accompany her husband to Cyprus. The unsuspecting Othello appointed the

23
‘honest’ Iago to bring Desdemona after him. Iago persuaded the foolish Roderigo to accompany
him, giving him hope that he could still win Desdemona. All the time Iago raked his brains to
find a way of displacing Cassio and harming Othello. It was Desdemona’s father who was
responsible for planting in Othello’s mind the seed of jealousy which is later turned into a
poison tree by Iago, with his remark that Desdemona who has deceived her father may deceive
him also.
ACT II
Iago’s Plot
A terrible storm comes up near the coast of Cyprus. It has the effect of delaying the arrival of
the forces from Venice, but it is also responsible for crippling the Turkish fleet and thus enabling
the new Governor of the island, Othello, to have no difficulty in, driving them off. After this,
Othello orders general rejoicing on the island. He appoints his lieutenant Cassio as officer of the
guard to see that the merry-making remains within bounds. By pure chance, the innocent
Cassio happens to meet Desdemona and greets her, and Iago, who witnesses this meeting, hits
upon the idea of making Othello believe that Desdemona has adulterous relations with Cassio.
Iago causes Cassio to get drunk and instigates Roderigo to pick a quarrel with him. Then he
rouses Othello who observing the disgraceful situation of Cassio at once decides to demote
him. Cassio is greatly ashamed by the demotion and Iago is easily able to persuade him that he
can help his cause by asking for Desdemona’s intercession on his behalf. No one else except
Iago knows that this is a deliberate trap for Cassio, Desdemona and Othello.
ACT III
Suspicion Against Desdemona
It is quite natural that Cassio should desire his meeting with Desdemona to remain a secret
from Othello. Iago decides to put this to use and reports to Othello that Cassio is going away
guiltily on seeing Othello, when he had been talking to Desdemona. He also poisons Othello
with the notion that Desdemona is going to plead Cassio’s case with him because of her guilty
love for the youngman. The latent jealousy in Othello awakens with full fury and he asks Iago to
supply proofs of what he has insinuated, especially because Desdemona does plead Cassio’s
case. Iago is able to obtain one such proof by chance. It is a handkerchief which Othello has
presented to his wife during the time he was courting her. Desdemona has chanced to lose this
handkerchief and it has been-found by Desdemona’s waiting woman, Emilia. Iago conveys this
secretly to Cassio’s room where the former officer finds it and gives it to his mistress Bianca to
make a copy of it. In the meanwhile, Iago tells Othello that he has seen Desdemona’s
handkerchief in Cassio’s hand. Othello demands from Desdemona to produce the handkerchief,
which she is unable to do. This is enough to convince Othello of his wife’s guilt and he makes a
pledge to visit dire vengeance on both Desdemona and Cassio.
ACT IV

24
Further ‘Evidence’
Iago thinks that he should make Othello’s suspicion of his, wife’s illicit relations with Cassio
more firm by supplying further evidence. With this purpose, he conceals Othello at a place from
where he can overhear Cassio. Cassio is in reality deriding Bianca, but his wards seem to allude
to Desdemona and Othello can see Cassio’s mistress scornfully returning Desdemona’s
handkerchief to him. Othello is now absolutely convinced of Desdemona’s guilt. Iago is able to
make him decide to kill Desdemona and give Iago the task of killing Cassio. There is a
development which makes Iago more eager to bring his plot to a quick conclusion. It is that
Lodovico, a kinsman of Desdemona, arrives with letters from the Duke of Venice recalling
Othello to Venice and appointing_ Cassio as his successor in Cyprus. Othello is further angered
by the conversation between his wife and her kinsman which he is able to hear. Desdemona
says in all innocence that she would do all she can to reconcile her husband and the newly
appointed governor, Cassio, for the sake of the ‘love’ (regard, goodwill) she bears Cassio.
Othello misunderstands her words and strikes her. He also orders her out of his sight. Emilia
comes forward to testify that Desdemona is chaste, but Othello not only refuses to believe her
but calls her a whore. Iago now decides to cap his villainy by persuading the foolish Roderigo to
ambush and kill Cassio. In the meanwhile, Desdemona sings a pathetic lyric which is to prove
her last and which is about a willow. Even though she is wronged, Desdemona still does not
blame her husband, and confides this to Emilia. She wonders whether there really are women
who wrong their husbands by cuckolding them, and Emilia assures her there are. However,
Emilia asserts that if women fall, it is the fault of their husbands who slack their duties.
ACT V
Desdemona’s Murder
Roderigo ambushes Cassio as instructed but the confrontation does not go according to plan.
Roderigo only succeeds in wounding Cassio, who is able to defend himself and stab the
assailant. Iago takes a hand in the fight and wounds Cassio in the leg. Cassio’s cries for help
bring Lodovico and others to the scene. It now becomes necessary for Iago to silence Roderigo
so that be might not blurt out Iago’s role in the affair. Iago, therefore, at once stabs Roderigo as
though in anger on behalf of the injured Cassio. Moreover, he is able to cast suspicion upon
Bianca, with whom Cassio supped that night, for the attack. In the meanwhile, Othello refuses
to believe Desdemona’s protestations that she is completely innocent and smothers bar to
death in her bed. Just then Emilia enters to report that Roderigo is dead and Cassio only
wounded in a fight between the two of them. Othello confesses to her that he has killed
Desdemona but Desdemona revives for a moment, just long enough to say that her husband is
not responsible for her death. Emilia raises a cry which brings Lodovico, Iago and. others to the
scene. Othello justifies the wicked deed he has done by referring to the fact that he has seen
Desdemona’s handkerchief in Cassio’s possession.
Othello’s Remorse

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Emilia, who still does not know her husband’s part in the plot, reveals the truth about the
handkerchief and Iago kills her in order to prevent her from making any further disclosures.
Letters are found to the pockets of the slain Roderigo which further confirm Iago’s guilt. Othello
strikes at Iago but the blow only wounds the villain. Othello then begs the onlookers to report
him to the Venetian Senate as a man who loved unwisely but too well. Othello then stabs
himself and dies after kissing the lips of his innocent dead wife. It is Cassio’s duty now as the
Governor of the island to torture Iago to extract a confession from him. Iago, however, refuses
to say anything and is led to his execution.
Scene-Wise Summary of “Othello”

ACT I : SCENE I
Iago’s Hatred
Late at night, in a street in Venice, a conversation is taking place between Iago and a foolish
gentleman named Roderigo. Iago, a soldier, is making clear his reasons for hating his general so,
much. The general is a Moor named Othello, and Iago has hoped he would be chosen as his
lieutenant. Instead Othello has given the honour to a comparatively inexperienced soldier
named Michael Cassio, and Iago remains merely the general’s standard-bearer. Iago admits
frankly that he is staying in the Moor’s service only because he is planning revenge : “I follow
him to serve my turn upon him.”
The path that leads to revenge has already opened up in his imagination, for Othello has been
secretly married that night’ to a young and lovely lady of Venice named Desdemona, and Iago is
sure that he can somehow “poison his delight”. Roderigo is in love with Desdemona and only
too glad to do what he can to spoil the marriage, and Iago finds him a willing assistant in his
plans.
Iago’s Plot
According to Iago’s plan, the two of them first awaken Desdemona’s father by shouting under
his window that a black man has stolen his daughter. Since the father is a senator of Venice,
Roderigo is hoping that somehow he will be able to undo the marriage. Iago knows better ;
Othello is so brilliant a general that the senate needs his help in the Turkish wars and will not
dare to punish him. It is necessary to Iago’s plan that he himself should remain in Othello’s
mind as a loyal and devoted friend, “though. I do hate him as I do bell pains.” So he slips away
into the night, leaving Roderigo to deal with Desdemona’s father, who comes out of his house
lamenting. His only daughter has run away with a black man, much older than herself, and she
must have had some sort of spell laid upon her to make her do anything so unnatural.

26
ACT I : SCENE II
Brabantio’s Accusation
Brabantio and his party go in search of Iago, whom they discover in a street, and Brabantio
shouts his accusation to him, alleging that he has enchanted his daughter by black magic.
Othello replies dignifiedly and courteously that he cannot accept Brabantio’s demand, which is
that he should go to prison, till the State finds time to decide the case––he cannot permit
himself to be taken to prison, he declares, since he is on his way to the council hall commanded
there by the Duke. The old senator hears for the first time that the Duke has called a meeting,
and he goes at once to present his case against his daughter’s husband.
ACT I : SCENE III

Rumours of War
The meeting has been called because the Duke and his council are disturbed by rumours that
the Turkish fleet is planning an attack on the island of Cyprus, and they are discussing a plan to
send Othello there to defend it, when Desdemona’s father accuses him of witchcraft. Othello
asks that his wife be sent for, and while the senators are waiting he describes the way he
wooed her. He told her stories of his adventures, of being sold into slavery, of travelling over
strange deserts and high mountains, and of all the other terrors he had endured. Othello states
that she loved him for admiring his adventures, and he loved her because she was full of
squarely by saying that they may call the girl and interrogate her.
The Evidence
In the meanwhile, Desdemona enters and finds herself in a position where she must choose
between her father and her husband. She has been carefully brought up to make a suitable wife
for some Venetian gentleman, but all her gentleness and love have reached out to an equal
love and gentleness in Othello, and for her it does not matter that he is an older man of an alien
race. When she is asked to name the man who is her sovereign lord, she does not choose the
father to whom she has always given her obedience but the man she married that night. Her
father admits defeat, since there is nothing else he can do, and the talk turns to affairs of state.
Othello’s Commission
It is decided to put Othello in command of the defence of Cyprus and the Duke is willing to give
Desdemona permission to accompany him there ; but Othello must set sail immediately, and he
entrusts his wife to the care of Iago, who will follow after. Othello has the greatest faith in his
standard-bearer : “A man he is of honesty and trust.” Brabantio shouts a warning to Othello to

27
beware of Desdemona, for if she can betray her father, she can also betray her husband.
Othello’s answer is to say–– ‘My life upon her faith.’
Iago and Roderigo

After the Senate has adjourned, everyone leaves the room except Iago and the dejected
Roderigo. Since Desdemona is lost to him, Roderigo is prepared to go out and drown himself,
but Iago laughs at him–– “Drown thyself ? drown cats and blind puppies.” He assures Roderigo
that so unnatural a marriage, between a “barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian,” will never
last, and as soon as he is alone he lays his plans to destroy it. Iago wants to destroy Michael
Cassio too, the man who supplanted him as lieutenant, and a brilliant plot comes to him. It is
based on Othello’s trustfulness–– “the Moor is of a free and open nature”––and on his
affection Iago decides to base his scheme.
ACT II; SCENES I & II
Othello in Cyprus
Othello is now to move to Cyprus, over which he has been appointed governor. As there has
been a violent storm, the previous governor of the island has been waiting anxiously for news
from the sea. There is a rumour, which turns out to be true, that the Turkish fleet has been
destroyed in a great tempest, but there is fear that Othello’s ship may have been destroyed
also. A salute of guns heralds the arrival of a vessel from Venice, and Desdemona comes ashore,
with Iago and his wife Emilia who is acting as her maid. All Desdemona’s thoughts are fixed on
the rough sea that threatens her husband’s safety, but she has been trained, as the daughter of
a senator, not to show her feelings, and she spends the time exchanging banter with Iago. She
draws Cassio into the conversation, since he is one of her husband’s closest friends, and Iago
watches with glee as Cassio takes her hand, for Iago’s plan is to make Othello think that she and
Cassio are lovers, and the small common courtesies that pass between them are all threads that
will help him in the weaving of his design. A flourish of trumpets announces the safe arrival of
Othello and he comes ashore to take his wife in his arms. A general feast is proclaimed that
night in celebration of the Turkish defeat, as well as Othello’s wedding night.
ACT II : SCENE III

Cassio in Disgrace
Othello announces festivities that night in honour of his wedding, and he leaves his lieutenant
Cassio in command of the guard to keep order during the festivities. Iago comes up to Cassio
early in the night and suggests in a friendly way that they drink together to Othello’s health, for
he wants to make Cassio sufficiently drunk so that Roderigo will be able to pick a quarrel with
him. Cassio politely turns him down, saying “Not tonight, good Iago, I have very poor and
unhappy brains for drinking.” Iago urges him very gently. “What, man, ’tis a night of revels.” He

28
implies that any man who refuses a glass or two of wine is clearly no man at all, and finally
Cassio gives in. Cassio is quite correct about his inability to drink. He grows first sentimental,
and then religious, and then full of outraged and rather talkative virtue : “Do not think,
gentlemen, I am drunk...This is my right hand, and this is my left hand. I am not drunk now ; I
can stand well enough, and speak well enough.” They all assure him that he is certainly not
drunk and he wanders off, befuddled and pugnacious, to be baited by Roderigo into a blind
rage. The former governor of the island tries to stop them from fighting, and Cassio has the ill
luck to hurt him with his sword. Iago manages to create an added effect of clamour and
confusion while pretending to try and stop it, and when Othello arrives he is faced with a
“barbarous brawl” which, as far as he can discover, is wholly Cassio’s fault. Othello, therefore,
declares that he can no longer have Cassio as his lieutenant.
ACT III : SCENES I & II

Cassio and Desdemona
Cassio is extremely dejected, and Iago points out that he can get back into Othello’s favour if
Desdemona will intercede for him. The general loves his wife so much that he can refuse her
nothing, and Desdemona herself is always ready to do any one a kindness. “She is of so free, so
kind, so apt, so blessed a disposition, she holds it a vice in her goodness not to do more than
she is requested,” says Iago. Cassio resolves to ask Desdemona for help the next morning, and
Iago plans to make it appear to Othello that she is pleading for her lover. Early in the morning,
Cassio presents, himself at the castle and asks to see Desdemona. She agrees immediately to
try and persuade her husband to take him back into favour, and as they talk Othello and Iago
enter at a distance.
ACT III : SCENE III
Desdemona’s Pleading
Iago, acting the part of a loyal and worried friend, makes a slight gesture of discomfort when he
sees the two of them together and Othello turns to him. “What dost thou say ?” “Nothing, m;
lord, or if––I know not what.” Othello asks whether it was not Cassio who parted from his wife,
and Iago pretends that it could not have been Cassio who slunk away so guiltily from Othello’s
wife at his arrival. As a natural sequel, Desdemona pleads Cassio’s case, asserting that he is a
good man, and worthy to be reinstated in her husband’s favour. She is so fervent in Cassio’s
defense that Othello finally gives in to her. “I will deny thee nothing.” Iago now has the
situation exactly where he wants it, and s soon as Desdemona leaves he inquires in affectionate
and troubled-tones if Cassio knew her before the marriage. Othello says that he did and in fact
acted as a go-between. Iago becomes even more troubled, giving a perfect picture of a
reluctant friend hesitating on the brink of a disclosure that the husband has a right to know.
Under Othello’s prodding, and apparently with the most bitter regret, Iago is brought to the
admission that he suspects Cassio and Desdemona of making love to each other. It is only his
great love for Othello that makes him reveal such a thing, he declares.

29
The Handkerchief
A chance happening takes place to facilitate Iago’s task. He is an old and valued friend of the
Moor and Othello has always trusted him. Moreover, everyone, including Othello, knows that
his marriage is a risky one from the worldly point of view. Nothing holds it together but
Desdemona’s love for him, and there seems to be no reason why she should love a black man,
older than herself, when a handsome young gallant like’ Cassio is available. Before they left
Venice, Desdemona’s father give his new son-in-law a warning :
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:

She has deceived her father, and may thee.
And now Iago mattes ‘the same point ; “She did deceive her father marrying you. Othello really
knows very little about his young wife ; he only knows that he loves her with a helpless,
hopeless, devouring passion and that Iago’s words have filled him with terror. Desdemona
comes in to remind her husband it is time for dinner, and Othello, trying to wrench away from
the desperation of his thoughts, tells himself, “I’ll not believe it.” But he is incapable of
behaving in his usual manner and Desdemona is instantly troubled “Are you not well?” Othello
says that be has a pain in his forehead, and she hopefully tries to bind his brow with a small
handkerchief she has. He pushes it away, and the handkerchief falls to the floor between them.
It is a silk handkerchief embroidered with strawberries, the first gift he had ever given her, and
she used to kiss it and talk to it when he was away. For some time Iago has been trying to
persuade his wife Emilia to steal it from her mistress ; and when Emilia finds it lying on the
floor, forgotten in Desdemona’s worry over her husband, she picks it up and gives it to Iago.
Iago has a use for it. He plans to drop it somewhere in Cassio’s lodging where that innocent
young man will he sure to find it.
Iago’s Lies
Iago knows that as a result of the poison he has injected into him, Othello will never be able to
enjoy sound sleep again. Doubt and uncertainty are the greatest torture to Othello. If only he
had clear proof that Desdemona is faithless, then at least his agony would be a settled thing ;
but he cannot be sure, and Iago, seeing him waver, begins to fashion a string of outright lies. He
describes how he heard Cassio talking in his sleep, re-living a love scene with Desdemona ; and
little by little Iago builds a monstrous fabrication that thickens and takes shapes before
Othello’s eyes until it is more real than reality itself. “Damn her ...O, damn her I” Iago swears to
give the wronged husband complete and unswerving service, even if it means Cassio’s death,
and Othello, in turn gives him the place he has been angling for–– “Now art thou my
lieutenant.”
ACT III : SCENE IV
Desdemona’s Confusion

30
Desdemona’s mind dwells firmly on the assurance she gave to Cassio and now she sends him a
message of good cheer : “Tell him I have moved my lord in his behalf and hope all will be well”
What chiefly troubles ht r at the moment is the loss of her handkerchief, and she is ever more
worried when Othello asks her to lend it to him. She says she does not have it about her at the
moment, and her husband becomes so violent that she is afraid to say she has lost it. She tries
to talk of Cassio, but all Othello can do is to shout, “The handkerchief !” knowing it is in Cassio’s
hands and convinced that she gave it to him. He had said thee was witchcraft in his gift, and
that the woman who lost it would also lose her husband’s love; and Desdemona is almost ready
to believe it.
ACT IV : SCENE I
Othello’s Jealousy
Cassio pays a visit to inquire about the progress of his suit and Desdemona is forced to admit
that she has been an unsuccessful advocate. She is out of favour with Othello herself and
cannot fathom the cause. Since she is a senator’s daughter and accustomed to affairs of state,
she is inclined to think it is some political problem that is troubling her husband. Emilia, her
maid, is a practical realist and thinks that Othello’s trouble is jealousy, but Desdemona is sure
that is impossible. As she said, earlier-––
My noble Moor
Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness
As jealous creatures are...

Moreover she has never given him any reason to be jealous. Emilia remarks that jealousy is
without reason, a monster that breeds out of itself and Desdemona, increasingly disturbed,
utters a prayer. “Heaven keep that monster from Othello’s mind !” The prayer comes too late.
The monster is already there, feeding upon itself and flooding with its poison the mind of its
tortured host. And at every point Iago is there also, alert sympathetic and affectionate, to make
the pain worse. By a trick he makes Othello think that Cassio is speaking of Desdemona When
be is really referring to a woman of the streets, and finally Othello’s agony is such that even pity
cannot enter in–– “My heart is turned to stone ; I strike it, and it hurts my hand.” He has at last
made up his mind : Desdemona must die. He lets his mind run on her grace and her sweetness
and torments himself with the thought of it, but it does not change his purpose. He will strangle
her that night in her bed. “But yet the pity of it, Iago ! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago I” he exclaims.
Othello’s Fury
Othello now misinterprets every action of Desdemona and, at one stage, he is unable to contain
his fury. Lodovico arrives as a messenger from Venice and is shocked to discover that a breach
has developed between Othello and Cassio. Desdemona hopes that the Venetian gentleman

31
will be able to heal it, since she herself can do nothing. He also brings news that Othello is to be
recalled to Venice, with Cassio taking over the government of the island, and Desdemona
remarks innocently that she is glad to hear it. Othello can bear no more, and he strikes her. The
Venetian messenger is appalled. The thing is unbelievable. As for Desdemona, she can make
only one reply to her husband’s brutality ; “I have not deserved this.” When the Venetian is
alone with Iago, he searches for some sort of explanation. And Iago, smiling inwardly at the ruin
he has made, agrees gravely that something indeed seems to be amiss –– “He is much
changed,” he observes of Othello.
ACT IV : SCENE II
Desdemona’s Shock
It takes Desdemona quite some time to realize that the noble, Moor is accusing her of adultery.
Othello tries to force an admission from his wife’s maid that Desdemona and Cassio are lovers,
but- Emilia is steadfast in her denials. Then he sends for Desdemona -herself and tries to force
the same admission from her. He does not use Cassio’s name, and Desdemona still clings to the
idea that Othello is enmeshed in some political difficulty. Perhaps the recall to Venice has
angered him, and he feels that her father had something to do with it. She is so sure of her own
innocence that it is a little while before the savage explicitness of Othello’s language penetrates
her mind and she realizes of what she is being accused. Even then, there is nothing she can do
but deny the charge, with all the lack of skill that innocence has, and to deaf ears. Emilia comes
back to find her mistress in a blurred state, half between sleeping and waking. She is like a child
who has been beaten into stupefaction, and for a time she cannot collect herself. Then she
decides to send logo to ask her husband to forgive bar for whatever it is that has used a him
angry Iago assures bar that it is some political matter that is troubling Othello and that it will
pass : “Go in, and weep not ; all things shall be well.” Then, when she has left the room, he
sends Roderigo off to murder Cassio. Roderigo will do anything to get Desdemona for himself,
and goes obediently.
ACT IV : SCENE III
Desdemona’s Song
Othello sends Desdemona to bed as night has fallen and gives instructions that her maid is to
leave her. Emilia is reluctant to let her mistress be alone, but Desdemona insists : “We must not
now displease him.” Before Emilia goes, she lays out on the bed the sheets that were used on
the wedding night and then helps her mistress to undress. Desdemona, bewildered and not
really awake, cannot think clearly. An old song is running through her head, sung by a maid of
her mother’s who lost her lover and died. She sings the song to herself while her maid
undresses her, but what she is waiting for is a sound at the door. “Hark, who is ‘t that knocks ?”
It is only the wind, and Desdemona goes on with the song. She cannot keep herself from

32
thinking about her husband’s accusation, although it seems to her impossible that any woman
would do such an evil thing. Emilia says wryly that it is quite possible, and sometimes justifiable,
considering the way most men treat their wives, but Desdemona will not believe it, and she
goes to as a child might, with a light left burning beside her.
ACT V : SCENE I
Iago’s Plans Misfire
Iago’s well-thought plans about setting Roderigo and Cassio on each other, so that one, if not
both of them, are out of the way, misfire. Roderigo stands in hiding with his rapier bared,
waiting for Cassio to pass. His quick thrust in the dark does not penetrate Cassio’s heavy coat,
and Iago is obliged to strike. He wounds him in the leg, Cassio falls, and Othello believes him to
be dead. Nothing now remains for him but to perform his own part in the act of vengeance, and
he goes back to the castle and to his bedchamber.
ACT V : SCENE II
The Murder
Othello enters his wife’s bedchamber and at first stands for a long time by the bed in which his
wife lies sleeping; staring down at her and shaken by his love and his anguish. Finally he cannot
prevent himself from kissing her, and Desdemona wakens : “Will you come to bed, my lord ?”
she asks. Othello has stretched his tortured spirit to the high pitch of an act that will not scar
her body, and he is determined also that he will not hurt her soul. She and have time to say her
prayers before he kills her, and he tells her so. The terrified Desdemona tries to protect herself
with what little skill she has and struggles to make him realize that she is innocent ; but she
speaks to a madman who cannot listen. Then she learns that Cassio is dead and no one is left
who can testify in her defense, and she abandons her useless weapons and pleads only for
time–– “Kill me tomorrow ; let me live tonight I” she pleads. Othello does not dare wait. He
might weaken. He does not even dare give her the time he promised in which to say her
prayers. He speaks the final, terrible line, “It is too late,” and then he smothers her.
Othello’s Death
Othello hears some noise outside––Emilia calling from the other side of the door––and Othello
presses harder. He draws the bed curtains to hide what he has done, and Emilia comes is to say
that Cassio is not killed but only wounded. There is a faint sound from the bed, and Emilia finds
her mistress dying and barely conscious. The frantic maid tries to find out who committed the
murder, and Desdemona has just enough strength left to protect her husband, “Nobody, I
myself, farewell.” In a fury of grief and rage, Emilia turns on Othello and he admits that he has
killed his wife. He tries to explain his reasons and she sweeps them away. Then he tries to
threaten her, but no one can frighten Emilia now. Her cries bring the whole company into the
room, and then it is her husband Iago who tries to silence her, “Come, hold your peace.” She
manages to let Othello know who made her steal the handkerchief, and then Iago stops her

33
with a knife-thrust. She dies, remembering the last song she heard her mistress sing, and
saying, “She loved thee, cruel Moor.” Othello’s sword has been seized, but there is another
hidden in the room. Always before this Othello has felt safe and, confident with a weapon in his
hand, but now he has lost all sense of direction. “Where should Othello go ?” He has no need to
wait to go to hell for he is in it now, and even his attempt to kill Iago is a halfhearted one.
Othello asks forgiveness of the wronged Cassio, who gives it freely. And then, with a final return
to his natural dignity and control, he sends a message to the Venetian, state. The senators of
Venice should be told that once, when a Turk insulted their city, Othello took him by, the throat
“and smote, him, thus With that he drives a dagger into his own body and falls dying on the bed
beside his wife, saying, “I kissed thee ere I killed thee.” And so kissing her for the last time, he
dies. Cassio pronounces the epitaph of the general he loved. “He was great of heart.” Since
Cassio is the new governor of Cyprus, it is his task to arrange for the punishment if Iago, who
declares that from now on he would not speak a word.
Critical Commentary on “Othello”

ACT I : SCENE I
Exposition
Not only the first scene, but the whole of Act I is devoted to exposition. This is necessary for the
foundation of character and situation on which the action is to be built. Its three scenes take
place in Venice, and introduce all the main characters, except Cassio and Emilia. Though the Act
is expository, it is full of excitement, with its torch-lit street scenes, the brutal awakening of
Brabantio with ‘dire ‘Yell’, and the charge before the senate. The first scene begins with the
villain, and with the heavy threat to the hero’s happiness that his character and philosophy
imply. It is alive with malice and grudge ; and Iago’s language alone is enough to persuade us
that we must not expect objective accounts of men and matters from him, and to prejudice us
in favour of the absent Othello.
Roderigo is the only person in whose presence he does not wear a moral disguise ; and Iago’.,
remarks to him present as much of his public face as he is ever prepared to show, and, from
this point of view, are almost as important as his soliloquies. The fooling of Roderigo is
extremely easy work for Iago ; he is too pliable. Besides, Iago gulls him for money, and this is
probably the least egocentric of his motives.
ACT I : SCENE II
Othello’s Appearance
The reader first meets Othello in this scene. Othello creates an impression of being dignified
and sure of himself. We learn that he is of royal descent, and, according to himself, held in high

34
esteem by the government of Venice. His speech is full and rounded, yet of a moving simplicity.
His command of himself and of the situation is beautifully seen in ‘Keep up your bright swords,
for the dew will rust them’––a line which Bradley called ‘one of Shakespeare’s miracles’.
Anyone less like a probable victim for Iago could scarcely be imagined. This is Othello as he was
before Iago played upon him.
Iago’s Disguise
By now Iago has put on his moral disguise of bluff, honest, uncomplicated loyalty. After his self-
revelations in the first scene, this is nauseating, though his chameleon coloration gives great
scope to any actor, who must show in the first two scenes of the play Iago as he is to Roderigo,
and Iago as he is to Othello and the world. As Iago to Roderigo is almost the real Iago, but not
quite, a nice shade of discrimination has to be made, and something held in reserve. The full
depths of Iago are not plumbed in the first scene.
ACT I : SCENE III
This scene provides the background which is necessary to complete the exposition of the play.
It gives the romantic, and, at the same time, charmingly domestic background of Othello’s
marriage, and brings out his and Desdemona’s characters, as they are before they are played
upon by Iago. It also provides the ominous shadows cast by Brabantio, which Iago is to make
use of later, though, without him, they would disappear. It reveals the Signiory’s complete
confidence in Othello ; and it concludes with the first sinister sketch of Iago’s plot, more deadly
in its private nature than any of his public professions of hatred to Roderigo.
Difference of Tome
There is a sudden difference of tone and atmosphere in some parts of this scene. The
Preoccupation of the Signiory with State affairs is such that Brabantio’s complaint is pushed
aside, at least given second place. We may note the flatness of the verse dealing with state
affairs. Its business-like quality is in sharp contrast with that of the Brabantio-Desdemona-
Othello matters. Similarly, the Duke’s consolatory lines to Brabantio have an air of superficiality,
which Brabantio bitterly resents.
Iago and Roderigo
At the end of this scene, Iago and Roderigo are left alone. There is some amusement created by
Roderigo’s question to Iago, as to what he thinks he is going to do now. Iago’s answer is matter-
of-fact : “Why, go to bed and sleep,” but Roderigo declares that he will straightaway go and
drown himself. Iago thinks that drowning is a fate meant only for cats and blind puppies. His
advice to him is to bestir himself, even though he may die in his attempt to win Desdemona’s
love. Iago looks down upon Roderigo’s infatuation and discounts his view of its not being in his
‘virtue’ to amend himself. Iago retorts

35
Virtue ! a fig ! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are gardens, to
which our wills are gardeners ... we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings,
our unbitted lusts ; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a set or scion.
ACT II : SCENE I
Now Setting
The scene now shifts to Cyprus, which is to be the setting of the actual tragedy. It is appropriate
that the scene is heralded by a storm, which Shakespeare did not find in his source. Whether
Ibis is symbolic of the later course of, events on the island, as those critics think who regard all
storms In Shakespeare as symbolic, or whether it has a narrower dramatic purpose, is a matter
of individual choice. It certainly provides a succession of arrivals, mounting in suspense : first,
Cassio, who has lost his General ‘on a dangerous sea’ ; then Desdemona and Iago ; then, finally,
the hero himself, and the splendid reunion of the lovers. It is the last moment where they know
‘content so absolute’, and is vital for, an understanding of what might have been their lot
without Iago. The rim of waiting for Othello is beguiled by Iago’s display of one of his public
faces. The ‘touch of roughness’ in his public appearances is of course designed by him to show
that be is too blunt to be subtle ; but below this a real ‘innate brutality’ ; and perhaps the ‘sea
jokes are a symptom of pathological obsession’. Anyway, the interchange between him and
Desdemona and other characters is intended to be a display of ‘honesty’: to present the cynical
but limited and honest Iago. It is very important that the social side of Iago should be seen : the
audience might otherwise wonder why this coarse fellow is so universally liked.
Other Significance
The significance of the scene goes beyond this. So far, except briefly in the conversation with
Roderigo, we have only seen the public face of Iago, but before the scene ends, we see his
private dace also. In the soliloquy which concludes the scene, we see something in sharp
contrast with Iago’s assumed character. Here Iago invents or discovers a motive or two more
for his villainy. The scene gives a chance for a Cassio-Desdemona relationship to be shown,
which, while it does not actually support, could support Iago’s plot. Cassio is inordinately
courtly, but this very openess shows his feeling as innocent and idealistic.
ACT II : SCENES II & III
Iago’s Plot
The short scene merely serves as an indication that time will pass before the next scene. The
proclamation is made at five in the afternoon. The next scene opens just before 10 p.m. It is
one of the most careful indications of ‘short’ time in the play. In the third scene Iago’s plot is
first put into action. It is consummately managed and brilliantly acted. It is impossible to find

36
fault with Iago in any of his roles, from that of the boon companion singing tavern songs to the
grieved friend, reluctantly reporting the events of the night to Othello, or acting as the
counsellor to the disgraced Cassio, and the consoler of Roderigo. A peculiar beauty of the plot is
Iago’s apparent honesty of speech and action, and the extreme economy he employs in several
purposes. The scene ends with a soliloquy expounding the ‘divinity of hell’, and showing that
the plot and some of its means are now clear to Iago.
ACT III : SCENES I & II

Brief Scenes
The first scene is a brief one, and half of it is taken up by the poor obscenity and other puns of
the clown ; but it is important as beginning Cassio’s importuning of Desdemona for his pardon
and the second stage of Iago’s plot. We gather from it that not only Desdemona and Emilia, but
Othello himself, are desirous of rehabilitating Cassio at the first opportunity. Inept as the Clown
is, he helps to make up a feeling of ordinariness, or the usual, in the life of Othello and
Desdemona, lacking until now. The morning greetings with music, particularly on the morning
of a marriage, were customary. They give poor Cassio some cover for his pathetic attempt to
regain favour ; but it is promptly stopped by Othello, either because of the quality of the music,
or because he suspects its purpose. The second scene is probably the shortest in Shakespeare.
It serves the purpose of indicating the passage of time, and of showing Othello in his job. It also
draws Othello away, so that Cassio has a chance to intercede with Desdemona, and be found
sneaking away in so guilty a fashion in the next scene. It seems from the previous scene that
Iago might have arranged this ; but it is more probably one of those likely chances on which he
relies, since there is no indication in the scene itself that he has done anything.
ACT III : SCENE III
Shocking Transformation
The four consecutive short scenes now give place to a scene of considerable length, which is,
moreover, the most important in the play from the point of view of plot. It is mainly a long
study in temptation and damnation ; but it covers perhaps the widest range of feeling ‘in
Shakespeare, from happiness, innocence, and trust to torment and revenge. It begins with
Desdemona’s well-meaning assurances to Cassio, and ends with Othello’s determination––
To furnish me with some swift means of death
For the fair devil.
This shocking transformation could not be tolerated by either audience or reader without the
most careful plan of progression, that is, mainly, the subtle movements of Iago from suggestion
to statement.

37
Six-fold Division
The scene is capable of being looked upon as a succession of six sub-scenes. The first of these
can be identified as that between Desdemona and Cassio, the openness and innocence of
whom are ironically enough, the wished-for opportunity for Iago. Desdemona’s frankness and.
Cassio’s natural diffidence are, psychologically sound to the audience who are in the know ; but
they can be interpreted otherwise by a malicious mind. Iago strikes the first blow––or, rather,
begins on the merest tap––with his ‘Ha ! I like not that’, though Othello scarcely notices it at
the time. The second sub-division of the scene brings out Desdemona’s innocence. We also see
that although she is frank and warm-hearted, she is tactless in pleading with Othello for Cassio.
Othello dismisses her courteously but with some impatience. His mind is apparently full of
military matters, as the previous scene indicates, but he forgot both these and Iago, in rapt
meditation on his love (‘Excellent wretch !’).
Third Section
In the third section of the scene, we see that Iago, having miscalculated, has to start again,
when he breaks in on Othello’s reverie with ‘My noble lord’. This sub-scene stretches to
Desdemona’s re entry. It begins with an insinuation so smooth that it is scarcely perceptible,
and words so harmless and hesitant that Iago could withdraw at any sign of danger. By line 167,
he has managed to introduce the infuriating word ‘cuckold’ but still only as a part of a
generalisation, so that its application at this point is to be made by Othello, not himself. During
this episode, every circumstance capable of a malicious interpretation is used to shake Othello :
the fading away of Cassio at their approach ; his part in Othello’s wooing ; and, after some
generalizing remarks (in which Iago specializes, and to which Othello, by virtue of character, is
particularly susceptible) on ‘good name’, and the sophistication of Venetian women, he makes
specific links with Othello’s own situation, by reference to Desdemona’s deception of her own
father, and the sinister nature of her choice of black man. The real devilry of the episode is
Iago’s simulation of the honest friend and the reluctant witness.
Remaining Sections
In the fourth section we see how the sight of Desdemona revives, but in a modified form
Othello’s faith in her. All intuition speaks for her. It is at this point, through a kindly wifely act of
Desdemona, that the handkerchief is lost. In the fifth episode, Iago takes the handkerchief from
Emilia, who, at this point, seems to be completely dominated by him. It seems that Iago had
foreseen the possible use it could be put to, for he had wooed his wife ‘a hundred times’ to
steal it. It is to be noted that Emilia neither knows nor cares why. In the last and sixth episode
Othello returns out of control. This means that Iago can be bold. His language is now brutal, and
he brings in two pictures, one of Cassio’s dream, the other of Cassio’s ‘wiping his beard’ with
the handkerchief. These seem conclusive with Othello and he ends with the command to kill
Cassio and the intention to kill Desdemona.
Iago’s Insinuations

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Othello is here seen to be progressively ‘infected’ with Iago’s malignant attitudes. Iago knows at
the outset that his victim, once confused, is lost, and so his primary aim is to involve him in
uncertainty. For Othello, once placed in doubt, is quite incapable of suspending judgement ;
suspense affects his self-confidence, and this contrasts with the capacity for quick and firm
decision upon which he prides himself. He demands an immediate resolution, which can, in
practice, be nothing but an acceptance of Iago’s insinuations. He protests against the presence
of the very weaknesses that are undoing him. To convert his confidence into suspicion, Iago
recalls the persistent misgivings that have from the first surrounded this marriage, ‘She did
deceive her father, marrying you’, and stresses the inequality of ‘clime, complexion, and
degree’ in a way at once calculated to hurt Othello’s pride and to emphasize his ignorance, as a
foreigner and a man of alien race, of Desdemona’s true motives. Above all, he insinuates that
her apparent purity of purpose may conceal a sensual corruption of the will. Iago’s conception
of love as so much corrupt ‘appetite’ is to take possession of him, exploiting unsuspected facets
of his nature, demoralizing him and destroying his integrity. Iago has begun to act upon Othello
by throwing doubt upon the purity of his own thoughts. The Moor believes that men ‘should be
what they seem’; his whole life has been founded on the assumption that our motives are few
and our spiritual needs simple, our actions completely and unequivocally under our control.
Iago implies that the assumption is dubious, that not only the motives of others, but even our
town are open to obscure and scarcely apprehended reservations. This is a typically
sophisticated ‘Venetian’ conclusion, and one which perfectly fits Iago’s purpose. It is because
his ‘philosophy’ enables him, to establish contact with the lower, unconsidered elements of
hips victim’s emotional’ being that he is able to destroy Othello’s simplicity and to reduce him
to a mass of contradictions and uncontrolled impulses. The grossness of physical contacts
makes him visualize the sin by which Desdemona is offending his self-esteem-
Othello’s Reaction
Othello’s being is anchored upon his faith in his love. From, the point ‘Villain, be sure thou
prove my love a whore,’ Iago leads him on with a sneer that works like poison on his fantasy.
Here, besides rousing still further the sensual elements in his imagination, Iago touches Othello
at the most vulnerable point ; he offends him intimately in his personal respect. The reaction is
a characteristic mixture of pathetic bewilderment and defiant self-esteem. Conscious of racial
difference and aware of a mortifying social inferiority, he thrusts aside the doubt only to fall at
once into further uncertainty of a more concrete and mortifying kind and comes to conclusion ‘I
am abused ; and my relief/Must be to loathe her’ in which misery and offended self-respect
compete for precedence. Iago’s very boldness has won his point. He must have been very sure
of the Moor’s blindness to work upon him with so gross a caricature. He has roused not
Othello’s indignation, but his outraged self-esteem and has brought to the surface the
destructive forces of his neglected animal instincts.
ACT III : SCENE IV

Desdemona’s Innocence

39
The scene further emphasizes Desdemona’s innocence as well as a certain degree of lack of
practical wisdom. She is as yet unaware of the change in her husband, and is still busy in her
innocent plans for rehabilitating Cassio. The handkerchief now becomes magical, sewn in
‘prophetic fury’ from silk of hallowed worms, and linked with lost or preserved love. It is thus a
powerful symbol for Othello and a frightening loss for Desdemona. Her brave white lie, joined
with her persistence for Cassio, makes the scene so dangerous, for her and maddening for
Othello––the one ignorant, the other corrupted––that the passage between them reaches
great heights of dramatic intensity, where only the audience knows all and aches at the
incomprehensions and risks. Emilia must not be blamed too much for denying knowledge of the
handkerchief. She is not yet aware of the issues involved, and, in a sense, expects Othello’s
behaviour from her worldly knowledge of men––
They cat us hungerly, and when they are full,

They belch us.
Justification
The scene shows that, from Othello’s point of view. His suspicion would seem to be justified.
His account of the handkerchief fits his and Desdemona’s circumstances, as he supposes them
to be so exactly that it sounds like an invention on the spur of the moment, ––possibly to
frighten her into confessing, He has not previously talked of its magical quality, or of his
attachment to it but merely mentioned that it was his first gift to Desdemona. In Act I he rejects
notions of magic ; and one can only suppose that his present account is a romantic version of
what his first gift to his love means. If this is not so, then Othello has retained more superstition
from his past than he is commonly supposed to have done. It has been suggested that Othello
produces this account here ‘to cover up the real reason for his disproportionate passion over
such a trifle.’
ACT IV : SCENE I
Iago and Othello
Othello now seems to have become a mere tool in Iago’s hands and he shows more and more
boldness in handling him. His sufferings can be measured in intensity by his failing in a fit, and
his fury by his striking Desdemona in public. It is now safe for Iago to produce a fake confession
of Cassio’s. As usual his luck holds with the arrival of Bianca and the handkerchief, which
provides the ‘ocular proof’ Othello had demanded. The opening of the scene shows Iago in a
role most likely to bemuse and infuriate Othello, namely that of the man who knows the
Venetian sophisticated world, to which Othello believes Desdemona belongs, .and accepts its
sexual pranks with cynical matter-of-factness. Othello’s ‘unbookish jealousy’––the thought of
this repulsive unknown world he has married into––infuriates him.
Desdemona’s Plight

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We only see and, not hear, Iago’s impudent ‘interview’ with Cassio. The most painful moment
(perhaps in the whole of Shakespeare) is the striking of Desdemona. Lodovico, a kinsman of
Brabantio and therefore’ of Desdemona, brings back for a moment the pre-Cyprus world, the
Venetian world of Othello’s honour and Desdemona’s girlhood. ‘This Lodovico is a proper man’,
says Desdemona later ; not because she regrets her choice but because of the happy past and a
revival of courteous conduct. He gives occasion for the blow because of the mandate be brings,
which, while it elevates Cassio, also allows Desdemona’s innocent pleasure, which Othello
misconstrues. Lodovico has a small part to play, but shows humanity and feeling in the
unknown situation where he finds himself. He speaks like a gentleman, and is shocked by what
he sees and bears. Iago pours poison into his ears also. Lodovico is prepared to think that
Othello is disturbed by his recall, but Iago insinuates, in his creeping way, otherwise.
ACT IV : SCENE II
The ‘Brothel Scene’
The usual title given to this scene as ‘the brothel scene’ underlines its significance. The scene is
brutal, like Othello’s striking at Desdemona in the previous scene, but is more extended in
brutality. The brutality is less direct in not being physical but psychological ; but its pain lies in
the incomprehension of Desdemona as to what it is about, her near-ignorance of the very
terms in which Othello accuses her. Othello is never less sympathetic to the reader ; yet he
weeps––and the world of disorder in which he now lives is movingly portrayed. Bewilderment is
the key of this scene two sensitive people in love, but at odds, neither giving the other the
information on which understanding could be made. Othello is so poisoned that he can scarcely
attend to what she says ; she is so bewildered that she can only say something as weak, as ‘I
hope my noble lord esteems me honest’ ; but she is still spirited, and rejects as much as she
understands of his charge
Height of Iago’s Action

We now see Emilia begin to emerge as a sympathetic character. She lays many shrewd blows
upon the unknown villain, enough to provoke Iago. Some stage representations give him a
moment of remorse in his gestures, but this is unwarranted by the text. The moment therefore
is ironic ; Desdemona’s appeal is made to one who is egoistic and hard like flint. The final
passage of this scene belongs only outwardly to it. Roderigo is now dangerous, and Iago lays
plans to dispose of him and/or Cassio at once. The height of action for Iago is now reached, and
all depends on how it goes.
ACT IV: SCENE III
Desdemona’s Sorrow
There is very little action in this scene, in fact, it comes like a pause in the action, whose main
business is to show Desdemona’s innocence and sorrow. A critic observes about it–– “A scene
of ordered calm ; of action of every sort, and of violence and distress of speech, we have had

41
plenty. This prepares us, in its stillness, and in the gentle melancholy of the song, for the worse
violence and the horror to come, and is ... a setting against which no shade of Desdemona’s
quiet beauty can be lost.’
Moving Pathos
The scene is full of intense pathos. The song that Desdemona’s unhappiness recalls to her
comes from her childhood ; it is an old pathetic ballad of a deserted girl. It ends with a cynical
jeer from the betrayer that women are as loose as men. This is outside Desdemona’s
experience ; hence her ensuing dialogue with Emilia, who confirms in wordly experience the
last stanza of the ballad. Emilia sees the marriage bond as a contract, whose breaking by the
husband (which she seems to take for granted) justifies similar action by the wife. We see
Emilia as a worldly person here for the last time : her purpose as foil to Desdemona is finished,
and she joins her in kindred spirit in the last act. Bradley has pointed out Shakespeare’s
fondness for introducting a now emotion, usually of pathos, at this stage of a tragedy : it is a
constant constructional device with him. King Lear Act IV : Scene VII, and Hamlet Act IV Scene V,
are famous examples, and Macbeth Act IV : Scene II a miniature instance of this. Bradley
maintains that pathos of a beautiful and, moving kind reaches its height in this scene, and is
only surpassed by the greatness of the moment when Lear wakes up to find Cordelia bending
over him.
ACT V : SCENE I
Rapid Action
This scene is quick-moving and we have action right at the start, for the very second line of the
scene reads : “Wear thy good rapier bare, and put it home’ is the second line. Iago’s plot now
reaches its climax. His ‘puppets are turning dangerous’. He hops that one victim, Roderigo, will
kill the other, Cassio, or, at the best, that they will kill each other ; but he resolves to finish off
either survivor. It does not seem to have occurred to him that both might live, but it is a very
dark night and his plan goes wrong Cassio is not even injured, and Roderigo only wounded. At
this point Iago is swift in action ; he improvises brilliantly, gains further credit’ for honesty and
valour, wounds Cassio, ‘kills’ Roderigo, and smears Bianca, both because he is vicious, and
because she may later serve his purpose.
Initial Failures
At first there are some unexpected snags in the execution of Iago’s plan. Whether because of
haste or became his nerve is shaken by the plot going awry, he makes a bad job of both his
attempted assassinations. Roderigo revives for a moment to ‘throw light on the conspiracy
(though the papers in his pocket do this almost sufficiently), and Cassio is borne in to testify
both his love for Othello and his innocence (‘Dear General, I never gave you cause’). But all this
fails to bait the smooth progress of his main plot. Othello, deceived as ever, hurries away to
execute his own justice ; and all ,that this scene may be said to do, sprit from its intrinsic

42
excitement, is to provide sad material in the last scene for the revelation of Iago’s villainy and
Othello’s blindness.
ACT V : SCENE II
Moving Climax
This scene provides an intensely moving climax to the great tragedy. It also possesses gripping’
theatrical qualities Only a few minutes earlier. Othello bad hurried away with savage words to
murder Desdemona. He speaks very differently, though not lest inexorably, when he next
enters. The scene, as a critic points out, falls into three parts : the first, that of Desdemona’s
murder, pathetic and terrible ; the second, the gallant disclaim of Iago’s villainy by Emilia, and
her death ; the third, Othello’s despairing: agony and his determination on suicide. The
handkerchief comes in again twice, once as clinching evidence for Othello of Desdemona’s guilt
and of her lies, which turn his heart to stone ; and then immediately afterwards the simple
truth about the magic handkerchief is revealed by Emilia. Desdemona, frightened but
courageous, must both feel momentary relief and think she is dealing with a madman when she
finds that the handkerchief is the ‘matter’ she asks him about. The reader or spectator most ask
himself at this poignant moment why her simple solution–– ‘Send for the man and ask him’-is
not followed ; but we are in the tragic world where the obvious is not perceived, and a fatal
course must be followed.
Spiritual Devastation
It is the deathbed episode which dominates this scene, although it takes place in the
background of the stage, until Lodovico commands it to be hidden : ‘the object poisons sight’. A
critic comments on the more or less passive role taken by Othello after the murder : ‘It eddies
about him ; but he has lost all purpose, and even the attack on Iago is half-hearted ... So the
bulk of the scene is given to a survey of the spiritual devastation that has been wrought in him.’
But not a pang of this is withheld ; sand a vindictive but truly tragic .satisfaction is given by
Emilia’s exposure of his horrible mistake and Iago’s guilt. She speaks too late ; but she speaks
splendidly. Structurally, the scene ends, in a sense, where it began. Othello’s first ‘justice’ is on
Desdemona ; his last, on himself, so that false and true justice respectively begin and end the
scene. Each justice is accompanied by a hiss of love, the first reluctant, the second penitent, as
if the scene were an expanded ballad, or, at least, of poetic construction.

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Critical Appreciation of “Othello”

Distinctive Features
As a tragedy, Othello has several distinctive features. For one thing, it is the briefest and most
tightly constructed of Shakespearean tragedies. It is the only tragedy in which the hero is not a
king or a prince. Moreover, he is not even an Englishman, or a European but a Negro. Although
there is a clown in the play, his role is brief and of no importance. Othello is, in fact a
concentrated tragedy it is the one tragedy of Shakespeare which is as remarkable for its villain
as for its hero. Although all the tragedies of Shakespeare are imbued with intense poetry,
Othello is by far the most poetic of them and its hero is the most poetic being created by
Shakespeare. Othello alone has some element of the domestic tragedy.
It is the only one of the tragedies of Shakespeare which is placed in more, or less contemporary
times.
The Conflict
Othello is not only the most masterly of Shakespeare’s ‘tragedies in point of construction, but
its method of construction, is also unusual. This method, by which the conflict begins late, and
advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the catastrophe, ‘is the
main cause of the painful tension and oppressive atmosphere. After the conflict has begun,
there is very little relief by way of the ridiculous. Henceforward at any rate, Iago’s humour
never raises a smile. The clown is a poor one ; we hardly attend to him and quickly forget him.
There is no subject more exciting than sexual jealousy, rising to the pitch of passion, and there
can hardly be any spectacle at once so engrossing and so painful as that of a great nature
suffering the torment of this passion, and driven by it to a crime which is also a hideous
blunder. Sexual jealousy brings with it a sense of shame and. humiliation. For this reason it is
generally hidden and when it is not hidden it commonly stirs contempt as well as pity. Such
jealousy as Othello’s converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man. It doe;
this in relation to one of the most intense and also the most idea of human feelings. The
spectacle of Othello’s feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing and loathing leading to a
bestial thirst for blood is most painful. And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona
and the scene where she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far more painful than the
murder scene, is another cause of the special effect of this tragedy.
Desdemona’s Suffering
The suffering of Desdemona is the most nearly intolerable spectacle that Shakespeare offers us
For one thing, it is mete suffering, that is much worse to witness than suffering that issues in
action. Desdemona is helplessly passive. She can do nothing whatever. She can retaliate neither
in speech nor in articulate feeling. This helplessness issues not because she cannot do so but
because her nature is exquisitely sweet and her love for Othello is absolute. This makes the

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sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. We watch Desdemona with more unmitigated
distress ; her suffering is like that of the most loving of dumb creatures hurt without cause by
the being it adores.
Element of Intrigue
The action and catastrophe of Othello depend largely on, intrigue. However, we must not call
the play a tragedy of intrigue as distinguished from a tragedy of character. Iago’s plot is Iago’s
character in action ; otherwise it would not have succeeded Still, it remains true that an
elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe ; therefore, Iago’s intrigue occupies a
position in the play for which no parallel can be found in other tragedies. Whereas in Othello,
the persons inspire the keenest sympathy and antipathy, and life and death depend on the
intrigue ; it becomes the source of tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhere
else in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for so long a time, as in the later
acts of Othello. One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is that Othello is less
unlike a story of private life than any other of the great tragedies. And this impression is
strengthened in further ways. In the other great tragedies the action is placed in-a distant
period so that its general significance is perceived through a thin veil which separates the
persons from ourselves and out own world : but Othello is a drama of modern life ; when it first
appeared it was a drama almost of contemporary life. The characters come close to us, and the
application of the drama to ourselves is more immediate than it can be in Hamlet or Lear ; his
deed and his death have not that influence on the interests of a nation or an empire which
serves to idealise, and to remove fear from our own sphere, the stories of Hamlet and
Macbeth, of Coriolanus and Antony. Indeed he is already superseded at Cyprus when his fate is
consummated, and as we leave him, no vision rises on us, as in other tragedies, of peace
descending on a distracted land.
Sense of Oppression
These various elements produce a feeling of oppression, of confinement to a comparatively
narrow world, and of dark fatality. The darkness and fatefulness of Othello can be compared to
the pervading atmosphere of King Lear. In King Lear the conflict assumes immense proportions
so that the imagination seems, as in Paradise Lost, to traverse spaces wider than the earth. In
reading Othello the mind is not thus distended. It is more bound down to the spectacle of noble
beings caught in toils from which there is no escape ; while the prominence of the intrigue
diminishes the sense of the dependence of the catastrophe on character, and the part played
by accident in this catastrophe accentuates the feeling of fate. After the temptation has begun,
this influence of accident is incessant and terrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary but so was
his good fortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of
Othello and Cassio, a question which starts to our lips and which anyone but Othello would
have asked, would have destroyed Iago’s plot and ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona
drops her handkerchief at the moment most favourable to him, Cassio blunders into the
presence of Othello only to find him in a swoon, Bianca arrives precisely when she is wanted to

45
complete Othello’s deception and incense his anger into fury. All this and much more seems to
us quite natural, so potent is the art of the dramatist ; but it confounds us with a feeling that
there is no escape from fate for these star-crossed mortals and even with a feeling that fate has
taken sides with villainy.
Old Debate
Othello, on the surface, appears to be a straightforward play but there is a great deal of
disagreement among the critics and much of it is relevant, perceptive debate and not mere
argumentation. In fact, Othello has been the subject of lively dispute ever since its own century.
Thomas Rymer’s amusing and pugnacious A Short View of Tragedy (1693) gave the play a
hostile scene-by-scene analysis, rejoicing in every improbability, and generally seeing it as a
compendium of faults. English drama, in the last years of the seventeenth century, stood at an
important cross-roads ; the period of silence during the Commonwealth, when the theatres
were dosed by law, bad bees long enough to obscure the tradition that flourished from ,the
days of Elizabeth to those of Charles I. There was no, particular reason why the English drama
should revert to its old ways, and Rymer was for starting again with a truly ‘classical’ theatre
that should rival the French. To do this it was necessary to get rid of Shakespeare, whose plays,
old-fashioned as they were, continued to fill the theatre and thus keep Elizabethan conventions
alive in the minds of audiences. Othello, on Remer’s own admission, was a great favourite, so
he turned all his guns on it, as Tolstoy was later to do, from not dissimilar motives, on King Lear.
Of the two pieces of monumental wrong-headedness, one prefers Rymer’s, which is at least
amusing and, in its own way, very acute.
Rymer’s Objections
To Rymer, the plot-construction of Othello seemed incredible. Some of his objections were to
turn up again in an essay by Robert Bridges in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Over
and above this, Rymer has also two objections which would not occur to anyone nowadays.
These objections stem from his neo-classical position. The first is that the behaviour of Iago and
Othello is untrue to life because it is not ‘soldierly’. The second is that the play has no moral.
The Renaissance derived most of its critical theories of literature from Aristotle’s Poetics, and
there it found the doctrine of generality. ‘The difference between the poet and the historian’,
Aristotle tells us, ‘does not lie in the fact that they express themselves in verse or prose... but in
the fact that the historian speaks of what has happened, the poet of the thing that can happen’.
Some Renaissance critics took over this idea in the clumsy and restrictive form that all soldiers
in literature must be soldierly, all kings must be kingly, all women womanly, all senators wise.
Hence, to Rymer, Iago is ‘a close, dissembling, false, insinuating rascal, instead of an open-
hearted, frank, plain-dealing soldier, a character constantly worn by them for some thousands
of years in the world.’ Next, the moral. Rymer wants the four Aristotelian ingredients of ‘Plot,
Character, Thought and Expression’ ; he thinks that a lofty play should give the audience some

46
nugget of general wisdom to take home and examine, and the story of Othello seems too
idiosyncratic for this. ‘What,’ he demands, ‘can remain with the Audience to carry home with
them from this sort of Poetry, for their use and edification ?’ and concludes satirically that it
boils down to ‘a warning to good housewives to look well to their linen’.
Dr. Johnson’s Reply
Both these objections were answered with characteristic firmness, by Dr. Johnson. In the great
essay which forms the Preface to his. edition of Shakespeare, Johnson vindicated Shakespeare’s
truth to ‘nature’ against the narrow conception of ‘nature’ urged by such English writers as
Rymer, Jobs Dennis in his An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Shakespeare, as also by
Voltaire :
Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident ; and, if he preserves
the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His
story requires Romans or king, but be thinks only on men. He knew that Rome, like every other
city, bad men of all dispositions ; and wanting a buffoon, be went into the senate house for that
which the senate house would certainly have afforded him. He was inclined to show an usurper
and a murderer not only odious, but despicable ; he therefore added drunkenness to his other
qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power
upon kings. There are the patty cavils of petty minds ; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of
country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.
As to the other objection of Rymer that Othello has no ‘moral’ and teaches no wisdom, there
will probably always be critics who will agree with him. Wilson Knight’s preliminary admission
that Othello is a story of intrigue rather than a visionary statement’ is, in its restated way,
Rymerian. But here again, Johnson was in no doubt, as we see from Boswell’s account of their
conversation about the moral of Othello:
Johnson. In the first place, Sir, we learn from Othello this very useful moral, not to
make an unequal match ; in the second place, we learn not to yield too readily to suspicion. The
handkerchief is merely a trick, though a very pretty trick but there are no other circumstances
of reasonable suspicion, except what is related by Iago of Cassio’s warm expressions concerning
Desdemona in his sleep, and that depended entirely upon the assertion of one man.’
Iago’s Motivation
On the question of Iago’s motivation, there is once again sharp difference of opinion. On the
one band, there are those take it that Iago does not really understand his own motivation, and
when he claims to do so, in his soliloquies, be is merely rationalizing. Coleridge’s phrase, ‘the
motive bunting of a motiveless malignity’, is much quoted in this camp. Hazlitt, a little later, saw
Iago in a similar light, as an aesthete of evil. He, however, denies that Iago is without
motivation, for ‘Shakespeare ...knew that the love of power, which is another name for the love
of mischief, is natural to man. He would have known this....merely from seeing children paddle

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in the dirt or kill flies for sport.’ To Hazlitt, Iago is ‘an amateur of tragedy in real life ; and
instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters or long-forgotten incidents, he
takes the bolder and moral desperate course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal
parts among his nearest friends and connections, and rehearses it in downright earnest with
steady nerves and unabated resolution.’ On the other band, there are the critics who see logo’s
motives rather as be professes to see them himself. To Kenneth Muir, ‘The secret of Iago is not
a motiveless malignity, nor evil for evil’s sake, nor a professional envy, but a pathological
jealousy of his wife, a suspicion of every man with whom she is acquainted, a jealous love of
Desdemona which makes him take a vicarious pleasure in other men’s actual or prospective
enjoyment of her at the same time as it arouses his hatred of the successful Moor and, it may
even be suggested, a dog-in-the-manger attitude that cannot bear to think of Desdemona
happy with any man, and especially with a coloured man, a man he hates.’
Empson’s View
One of the most convincing interpretations of Iago is that by William Empson, who is able to
attain special insight by going into the history of the word ‘honest’. Armed with this insight,
Empson proceeds to interpret the character of Iago, and his function in the play, by means of
the reverberations of the word ‘honest’ as he applies it to himself and has it applied to him by
others. His essay is in fact a close and sensitive piece of character-analysis, almost Bradleian,
though in a very different idiom from Bradley’s ; it shows us an Iago who is certainly wicked and
not to be defended, but also human , and credible. Iago’s class-jealousy is alerted by the
patronizing overtones in the word ‘honest’ ; he feels, probably quite rightly, that Cassio was
important to Othello in a way that he could never be––notably as an intermediary in Othello’s
wooing––and this led directly to Cassio’s being promoted over his, Iago’s, bead ; so that Cassio,
in addition to being ‘a mathematician’ (i.e. better educated), is also a charmer who is unfairly
rewarded for his gentlemanly manners. This same plausibility is the reason why Iago fears
Cassio with his nightcap, as well as Othello, and gives him a powerful set of motives for trying to
bring the two of them into collision. Empson’s account also offers us an Iago who is ‘honest’ in
the sense that, for a surprising amount of the time, he really to uttering his true opinions, and
one of the things that irritate him is the, way people always assume, when be comes out with
some misanthropic remark, that it is only his sense of fun, whereas really does have roots deep
in his destructive emotions.
Attitudes to Desdemona
There seems to be less divergence of opinion about Desdemona. Bradley is unashamedly a
worshipper : ‘Desdemona, the “eternal woman” in its most lovely and adorable form, simple
and innocent as a mod, ardent with the courage and idealism of a saint, radiant with that
heavenly purity of heart’ which men worship the moss because nature so rarely permits it to
themselves....’ It is true, he admits, that she is not clever ; where an earlier critic, Mrs. Jameson,
had credited her with ‘less quickness of intellect less tendency to reflection than most of
Shakespeare’s heroines, but believed she made up for it by having ‘the unconscious address

48
common in women’. Bradley says firmly that Desdemona ‘seems deficient in this address,
having in its place a childlike boldness and persistency, which are full of charm but are
unhappily united with a certain want of perception’ No doubt he considers it part of
Desdemona’s innocent childishness that she is inclined to be economical with the truth. Heraud
in 1855 had already noted that ‘Her passion was romantic, and there exists fiction in whatever
is romantic. She suffers from illusion and loves to be deluded. If she is self-deceived, she
‘likewise deceives others... From timidity of disposition she frequently evades the truth, when
attention to its strict letter would raise difficulties.’
Interpreting Iago
The two opposed factions, however, have some points of contact regarding the interpretation
of Iago. They agree at least in finding him repulsive. Whether on a large scale or a small scale,
he is the villain, the ‘demi-devil’. And yet, it seems, even Iago has had his apologists. As early as
1790, a ‘Gentleman of Exeter’ published an assay called ‘An Apology for the Character and
Conduct of Iago’, based on the incontrovertible fact that Iago has a good reputation, as man
and soldier, before the story opens, and arguing that if he were really wicked it would surely
have been .noticed in his twenty-eight years. In the nineteenth century two critics, the
Englishman Heraud and the American Snider, found themselves believing that logo has actually
been cuckolded by Othello-which would give him a powerful motive for revenging himself , and
thus make his conduct, though still wicked, that of a man and not a mysterious fiend. Several
twentieth-century critics have followed these two in finding Iago’s suspicion a reasonable one.
John W. Draper, after assembling satisfactory evidence that Elizabethan notions of honour
made the cuckold a universally -despised figure and that any man threatened with this fate
would understandably seek his revenge, asks : ‘Is logo then so black a villain 7 Is he not a
commonplace Renaissance soldier, “honest as
this world goes”, caught in the fell grip of circumstance and attempting along conventional lines
to vindicate his honour ? Indeed, if honesty and honour be something of the same, is he not
from first to last “honest Iago” ?’
Iago’s Accusation
Although it seams incredible that Othello could have, at some earlier stage, made love to
Emilia, there remains the fact that Iago think he may well have done so, and think, moreover,
that a lot of other people believe he has (‘it is thought abroad that ’twist my sheets/He has
done my office’). Whether Iago has any grounds for his suspicion or whether he is just being
neurotic, the belief is strong enough to ‘gnaw his inwards’ like ‘a poisonous mineral’, so that in
one of his later soliloquies, when he is rejoicing in the torment he is causing Othello, he can
revert to the same imagery and say ––
Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste

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But, with a little act upon the blood

Burn like the mines of sulphur.
On this view, his motive would be to make Othello go through’ the same agony as himself. Thus
Mario Praz, who sees Iago as ‘incensed by the public report that Othello has cockolded him’,
points out that the story of his revenge has ‘parallels in many cases of retaliation instanced by
the Italian novelle.’
Main Characters in “Othello”

The Character of Othello
One of the most obvious focal points of disagreement is interpreting Othello is the character of
Othello himself. To Swinburne, Othello was ‘the noblest man of man’s waiting’. T. S. Eliot, on
the other hand, spoke unfavourably of his ‘cheering himself up’, and came out with that
celebrated critical term ‘Bovarysme And the dispute goes on. Neville Coghill shows convincingly
that Eliot’s view could never be convincingly manifested by an actor and is therefore unlikely to
have been intended by a consummate dramatic, Artist like Shakespeare. On the other side,
Robert B. Heilman comes very close to restating the Eliot position when he says :
Othello is the least heroic of Shakespeare’s tragic, heroes. The need for justification,
for a constant reconstruction of himself in acceptable terms, falls short of the achieved
selfhood which can plunge with pride into great errors and face up with humility to what has
been done. All passion spent, Othello obscures his vision by trying to keep his virtues, in focus.
Bradley Versus Leavis
The two contrasted viewpoints are further elaborated by Bradley and Leavis. In their respective
essays, the two possible attitudes towards ‘the noble Moor’ stand revealed without
qualification or misgiving. To read the two essays together, and try to achieve some mediation
or synthesis between them, is a, fascinating critical exercise For the disagreement affects,, as it
is bound to, every facet of the play and every character. Since Bradley takes Othello to be
entirely blameless, he has to explain why anyone should hate him so much as to destroy him.
He accordingly places the main complexity of the play within Iago’s character, and devotes
about half of his total space to an analysis of it, conducted with the characteristic Bradleian
scrupulousness and intensity. To Leavis, this preoccupation with the inner reaches of Iago’s
mind is hardly more than a simple waste of time; as be sees it, Iago, though ‘sufficiently
convincing as a person’, is ‘subordinate and merely ancillary ... not much more than a necessary
piece of dramatic mechanism’. Othello’s tragedy, to Leavis, is essentially precipitated by
Othello’s own shortcomings––by his egotism, and by his love of Desdemona which is merely

50
sensual and possessive and does not extend to any real knowledge of who and what it is that he
is loving. To him, Othello’s habit of self-idealization, his simple heroic way of seeing himself in
wide-screen images, served him well enough in a life of martial adventure, but would never
have fitted him for the reciprocity of marriage, so that ‘the tragedy is inherent in the Othello-
Desdemona relationship’. When things go wrong, when pressure builds up, Othello’s
inadequacies are revealed like the cracks in a dam. ‘The self-idealization is shown as blindness
and the nobility as here no longer something real, but the disguise of an obtuse and brutal
egotism.’
Othello’s ‘Egotism’
The Leavis faction takes an unfavourable view of Othello’s character. There is no doubt that
Othello’s blindness, his vulnerability to Iago’s suggestions, arises from that statuesque largeness
of outline which makes him unwieldy in manoeuvre.’ He is an egotist ; according to this view,
we see it in his coolly callous treatment of Brabantio, or in the account of his wooing which he
gives to the Senators––an account which makes it sound as if she wooed him, and does not at
all square with Desdemona’s later protestation that Cassio––
Came a-wooing with you, and so many a time,
When I have spoke of you dispraisingly,

Hath ta’en your part.
Othello’s life has not been such as to allow him the luxury of fine discrimination and subtle
considerations. Since his arms had seven years’ pith, he has lived in an atmosphere where to
hesitate, to have second thoughts or inner reservations, was to be killed by enemies who were
prepared to be simple and decisive. Such a life breeds .egotists. And Othello’s egotism is
intense enough to make Iago’s work fairly easy. But to say this and to wash our hands of him,’
to echo Leavis’ words–– ‘the essential traitor is within the gates’, is to lose sight of the
emotional impact of the play, to deny somehow that the tragedy is tragic. And this, surely,
falsifies the experience we can testify to having undergone. We know that we have witnessed
the overthrow of a strong and generous man ; our hearts have been wrung as they would not
have been wrung by the sight of a preposterous egotist (whatever his countervailing good
qualities) getting his deserts. Bradley is closer to the heart of the play, for all his over-
elaboration and his side-issues. He recognizes that the tragedy lies in the assassination of love
by non-love; he may go on too much about Iago, but he understands the essential truth about
him, that he was less than a complete human being because love had been left of his
composition, left out so completely that he did not recognize it or suspect its existence. Even
Roderigo, who perceives very little, understands things that Iago does not understand ; he
knows that Desdemona is ‘full of most blessed condition’ ; he loves her, and his love instructs
him in her true nature. Bradley puts it very well “(Iago) was destroyed by the power that he
attacked, the power of love, and he was destroyed y it because he could not understand it ; and
he could not understand it because it was not in him.” Othello, egotist as he is, unpractised at

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understanding other people as he is, retains the possibility of development because be knows
what it is to love. And it is only the loveless heart that cannot learn.
Romantic Character
This oppressive and fatal atmosphere of the play becomes more potent with a central character
like Othello who is simple and trustful and whose character is essentially romantic. The
credibility of the play and the success of Iago’s plot is closely connected with this character.
Othello describes himself as :
...one not easily jealous, but being wrought,

Perplexed in the extreme.
This description is perfectly just. His tragedy lies in this––that his whole nature was indisposed
to jealousy, and yet was such that he was unusually open to deception. If he was once wrought
to passion, he was unlikely to act with reflection ; he could not tolerate any delay and acted in
the most decisive manner conceivable. Othello’s racial temperament has its importance in the
play. It make a difference to our idea of him ; it makes a difference to the action and
catastrophe, but in regard to the essentials of his character, it is not important. What is
important is the strange life of war and adventure––his wanderings in vast deserts, his stories
of magic and prophetic Sibyls, his experiences of slavery, his sojourn in Aleppo and his
participation in battles and sieges. This makes Othello by far the most romantic figure among
Shakespeare’s heroes. Yet he is not merely a romantic figure; his own nature is romantic. He
has not, indeed, the meditative or speculative imagination of Hamlet, but in the strictest sense
of the word, he is more poetic than Hamlet and when we recall his most famous ‘speeches and
compare them with an equal number of speeches by any other hero, Othello seems to be the
greatest poet of them all. Even his brief phrases express his intense feeling. This imaginative
temperament accompanies his whole life and makes him susceptible to the tragic catastrophe.
Othello’s Shortcomings
This romantic element is not the only source of danger in Othello’s character. Other sources are
revealed only too clearly by the story. In the first place, his mind, for all its poetry, is very
simple. He is not observant. His nature tends outward. He is quite incapable of introspection
and is not given to reflection. Emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses and bulls his
intellect. He shares a great openness and trustfulness of nature. ‘In addition, be has little
experience of the corrupt products of civilised life, and is ignorant of European women.
Moreover, for all his dignity and massive calm, he is by nature, full of the most vehement
passion.
Othello’s Self-Control
Although Othello is subject to vehement passions when his jealousy is aroused, yet
Shakespeare emphasises his self-control in practical matters. This aspect of his character is

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exhibited by the wonderful pictures of the first Act and specially by a single line, the words by
which he silences in a moment the night-brawl between his attendants and those of Brabantio :
“Keep up your bright swords, -for the dew will rust them.” The same self-control is strikingly
shown where Othello endeavors to elicit some explanation of the fight between Cassio and
Montano. Even other characters of the play seem aware of Othello’s control over himself. It is
for this reason that when he loses this and becomes violent, Lodovico is amazed and exclaims
Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate
Call all is all sufficient ? Is this the nature

Whom passion could not shake ? whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither graze nor pierce ?
Even Iago, who has here no motive for lying asks :

Can he be angry ? I have seen the cannon
When it hath blown his ranks into he air
And, like the devil, from his very arm
Puffed his own brother ; and is he angry ?
Something of moment then : I will go meet him ;

There’s matter in’t indeed if he be angry.
Whole-Heartedness
Othello’s nature is all of one piece. His trust, where he trusts, is absolute. Hesitation is almost
impossible to him. He is extremely self-reliant, and decides and acts instantaneously. If stirred
to indignation, as ‘in Aleppo once’, he answers with one lightning stroke. Love, if he loves, most
be to him the heaven where either he must love or bear no life. If such a passion as jealousy
seizes him, it will swell into a well-nigh uncontrollable flood. He will press for immediate
conviction or immediate relief. Convinced, he will act with the authority of a judge and the
swiftness of a man in mortal pain. He is so noble that his sufferings are heart-rending. He stirs in
the readers a passion of mingled love and pity which no other Shakespearean hero claims.
Treat in Iago
Othello’s suspicion of Desdemona and the consequent suffering seems more pitiful when we
find that Shakespeare depicts him as trustful and thorough in his trust. Although when Iago
starts working on him, Othello suspects him and asks for evidence, yet from the beginning of
the play, he seems to have put entire confidence in the honesty of Iago, who had not only been

53
his companion in arms, but as he believed, has just proved his faithfulness in the matter of the
marriage. The confidence is misplaced but it is no sign of stupidity in Othello. For his opinion of
Iago is the opinion also of practically everyone who know him that Iago is before all things
‘honest’, his very faults being those of excess in honesty. It is natural that Othello is moved by
the warning of so honest a friend, specially when warnings are offered with extreme reluctance
and manifestly from a sense of a friend’s duty. Since Othello was newly married, he cannot
have known much of Desdemona before his marriage. Moreover be is under the spell of a
feeling which can give glory to the truth but can also give it to a dream. This consciousness in
any imaginative man is enough, in such circumstances, to destroy his confidence in his power of
perception. Moreover he is not an Italian, nor even a European ; he is totally Ignorant of the
thoughts and the customary morality of Venetian women, and he bad himself seen in
Desdemona’s deception of her father how perfect an actress she could be. As Othello listens in
horror, for a moment at least, the past is revealed to him in a new and dreadful light, and the
ground seems to sink under his feet. These suggestions are followed by a tentative but hideous
and humiliating insinuation of what his honest and much-experienced friend fears may be the
true explanation of Desdemona’s rejection of acceptable suitors. Yet the mere sight of
Desdemona is enough to make him strongly resist Iago’s insinuations as long as he can.
Othello’s Self-Destruction
Iago’s part in Othello’s tragedy most not be over-emphasized. He does not destroy Othello but
merely awakens some latent traits and suspicions in him through which he must effect his own
destruction. Before Iago provokes his passions, he means to corrupt his mind ; there must be
ultimately self-destruction. Othello has unquestioning self-confidence. Yet he is not an egoist ;
he translates this spontaneously into confidence in others ; but the more unquestioningly it has
been given the harder will any breach made in it be to restore ; and to loss of confidence in the
culprit will be added some latent loss of self-confidence too. Othello loved Cassia and his
confidence in him was betrayed ; he can never feel sure of him again and less sure of himself.
The envenoming jealousy is first merely insinuated by Iago, incidentally, as self-reproach–– “It is
my nature’s plague/To spy into abuses……” Confessing to our faults wins confidence. How, after
that, should simplicity of heart suspect in a fervent warping “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy”––
the poisonous suggestion from which jealousy may breed ?––to this final “jealousy” Othello
responds……“She did deceive her father……” It is a two-fold accusation ; both aspects of it
actually true ; her very love for Othello turned its seamy side outside. It is a most apt thrust,
and back to his wing he must come “...and may thee,” warns Iago.
(2) IAGO
Unique Villain
Iago is the most unique villain of Shakespeare. There has been a lot of controversy about his
motives but there has been little, real progress since the day when Coleridge referred to Iago’s
‘constant motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity’. Iago is an incarnation of the devil and at

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the end of the play Othello says in great frustration that he cannot kill him because he is a devil.
Iago is one of the most brilliant characters of Shakespeare although, he uses his cunning only
for diabolical purposes. He has rightly been called an atheist of human nature and a stealthy
corrupt or of human piety, a fearless disturber of domestic peace and an unbeliever in and
denier of all things spiritual. It is interesting that all the characters in the play, except for.
Roderigo (to whom he sometimes shows his real face), have a high opinion of Iago and refer to
him as ‘honest Iago’. Iago is an embittered cynic and a man with a diseased imagination. He
lives the part of a blunt outspoken plain fellow who is always prepared to say what he really
thinks without caring for the effect it may hays on others. Although we are never really’ certain
that we understand why Iago commits his evil deeds, there is no doubt that he is throughout an
artist in villainy.
Iago’s Motives
According to Coleridge’s well-known views, the malignity of Iago is motiveless. A. C. Bradley
does not agree, with Coleridge and maintains that not only has Shakespeare assigned several
motives to Iago, but that difficulty is caused by the fact that the motives assigned are too many.
A man moved by simple passions due to simple causes does not stand fingering his feelings,
industriously enumerating their sources, and groping about for new, ones. But this is what Iago
does. And this is not all. These motives appear and disappear in the most extraordinary
manner. Resentment at Cassio’s appointment is expressed in the first conversation with
Roderigo, and from that moment is never once mentioned again in the whole play. Hatred of
Othello is expressed, in the first act alone. Desire to get Cassio’s place- scarcely appears after
the first soliloquy, and when it is gratified Iago does not refer to it by a single word. The
suspicion of Cassio’s intrigue with Emilia emerges suddenly, as an afterthought, not in the first
soliloquy but the second, and then disappears for ever. Iago’s ‘love’ of Desdemona is alluded to
in the second soliloquy ; there is not the faintest trace of it in word or deed either before or
after. The mention of jealousy of Othello is followed by declarations that Othello is infatuated
about Desdemona and is of a constant nature, and during Othello’s sufferings Iago never shows
a sign of the idea that he is now paying his rival in his own coin. In the second soliloquy he
declares that he quite believes Cassio to be in love with Desdemona ; it, is obvious that he
believes no such thing, for he never alludes to the idea again, and within a few hours describes
Cassio in soliloquy as an honest fool. This final reason for ill-will to Cassio never appears till the
fifth act.
Shakespeare’s Intention
It could not have been a mere coincidence that so many motives have been attributed to Iago.
A. C. Bradley believes that there must be a meaning in what Shakespeare does here. One view
is ‘that Iago has no real motive of which he is convinced, but be only indulges in motive-
hunting. Bradley agrees with this assertion of Coleridge and adds that Iago’s soliloquies do
produce an impression that he is indulging in motive-hunting. He is pondering his design, and
unconsciously trying to justify it to himself. He speaks of one or two real feelings, such as

55
resentment ‘against Othello, and he mentions one or two real causes of these feelings. But
these are not enough for him. Along with them, or alone, here come’ into his head, only to
leave it again, ideas and suspicions, the creation of his own baseness, or uneasiness, some old,
some new, caressed for a moment to feed his purpose and give it a reasonable look, but never
really believed in, and never the main forces which are determining his action. Iago in these
soliloquies is a man setting out on a project which strongly attracts his desire, but at the same
time conscious of a resistance to the desire, and unconsciously trying to argue the resistance
away by assigning reasons for the project. He is the counterpart of Hamlet, who tried to find
reasons for his delay in Pursuing a design which excites his aversion. And most of Iago’s reasons
for actions are no more the real ones than Hamlet’s reasons for delay were the real ones. Each
is moved by forces which he does not understand ; and it is probably no accident that these two
studies of states psychologically so similar were produced at about the same period.
Iago’s Character
The key to Iago’s motives may lie in the composition of his character. One of the noticeable
traits in his character is a keen sense of superiority and contempt of others, the sensitiveness to
everything which wounds these feelings, the spite against goodness in men as a thing not only,
stupid but, both in its nature and by its success, contrary to Iago’s, nature and irritating to his
pride. There is also the annoyance of having always to play a part, the consciousness of
exceptional but unused ingenuity and address, the enjoyment of action, and the absence of
fear. The most delightful thing to such a man would be something that gave an extreme
satisfaction to his sense of power and superiority ; and if it involved, secondly, the triumphant
exertion of his abilities, and, thirdly, the excitement of danger, his delight would be
consummated. And the moment most dangerous to such a man would be one when his sense
of superiority bad met with an affront, so that its habitual crazing was reinforced by
resentment, while at the same time he saw an opportunity of satisfying it by subjecting to his
will the, very persons who bad affronted it. This is the temptation that comes to Iago. Othello’s
eminence, Othello’s goodness, and his own dependence on Othello, must have been a,
perpetual annoyance to him. At any time he would have enjoyed befooling and tormenting
Othello. Under, ordinary circumstances he was restrained, chiefly by self-interest, in some slight
degree perhaps by the faintest pulsations of conscience or humanity. But disappointment at the
loss of the lieutenancy supplied the touch of lively resentment that was required to overcome
these obstacles ; and the prospect of, satisfying the sense of power by mastering Othello
through an intricate and hazardous intrigue no became irresistible. Iago did not clearly
understand what was moving his desire ; though he tried to give ‘himself reasons for his action,
even those that had some reality made but a small part of the motive force ; one may almost
say they were no more than the turning of the handle which admits the driving power into the
machine. Only once does he appear to see something of the truth. It is when he uses the phrase
‘to plume up my will in double’ knavery’.

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Sense of Superiority
There is little doubt that one of Iago’s strongest needs is to highten his sense of power and
superiority and that this is the unconscious motive of many acts of cruelty not only in this play
but in life. Iago’s sense of superiority has been thwarted and it demands satisfaction. The fullest
satisfaction it could find would, no doubt, be in the consciousness that he is the master of the
General who has undervalued him and of the rival who has been preferred to him that these
worthy people, who are so successful and popular and stupid, are mere puppets in his hands,
but living puppets, who at the motion of his finger must contort themselves in agony while all
the time they believe that he is their one friend and comforter. It must have been an ecstasy of
bliss to ‘him. And this, granted a most abnormal deadness of human feeling, is, however
horrible, perfectly intelligible. There is no mystery in the psychology of Iago.
Other Motives
In addition to Iago’s strong desire to satisfy his sense of power, there are also other forces
which drive him on. One of these is the pleasure in an action very difficult and perilous and,
therefore intensely exciting. This action sets all his powers on the strain. He feels the delight of
one who executes successfully a feat thoroughly congenial to his special aptitude, and only just
within his compass ; and, as he is fearless by nature, the fact that a single -slip will cost him his
life only increases his pleasure. His exhilaration breaks out in the ghastly words with which he
greets the sunrise after the night of the drunken tumult which has led to Cassio’s disgrace : ‘By
the mass, ‘tis morning. Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.’ Here, however, the joy
in exciting action is quickened by other feelings. It appears more simply elsewhere in such a
way as to suggest that nothing but such actions gave him happiness, and that his happiness was
greater if the action was destructive as well as exciting. We find it, for instance, in his gleeful cry
to Roderigo, who proposes to shout to Brabantio in order to wake him and tell him of his
daughter’s flight :
Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell
As when, by night and negligence, the fire
Is spied in populous cities.
All through that scene, again, in the scene where Cassio is attacked and Roderigo murdered––
everywhere where Iago is in physical action, we catch this sound of almost feverish enjoyment.
His blood, usually so cold and slow, is racing through Las veins.
Iago’s Artistry
In addition to being a man of action, Iago also seems to be something of an artist who takes
delight in undertakings complicated task in a meticulous manner. The action he initiates and
sees through is intricate and in the conception and execution of it be experiences the tension
and the joy of artistic creation. ‘He is,’ says Hazlitt, ‘an amateur of tragedy in real life ; and,

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instead of employing his invention on imaginary characters or long-forgotten incidents, he

takes the bolder and more dangerous course of getting up his plot at home, casts the principal
parts among his nearest friends and connexions, and rehearses it in ‘downright earnest, with
steady nerves and unabated resolution.’ Swinburne lays even greater stress on this aspect of
Iago’s character, and even declares that ‘the very subtlest and strongest component of his
complex nature’ is ‘the instinct of what Carlyle would call an inarticulate poet.’ And those to
whom this idea is unfamiliar, and who may suspect it at first sight of being fanciful, will find, if
they examine the play in the light of Swinburne’s exposition, that it rests on a true and deep
perception, will stand scrutiny, and might easily be illustrated. They may observe, to take only
one point, the curious analogy between the early stages of dramatic composition and those
soliloquies in which Iago broods over his plot, drawing at first only an outline, puzzled how to fix
more than the main idea, and gradually seeing it develop and clarify as he works upon it or lets
it work. Here at any rate Shakespeare put a good deal of himself into Iago ; but the tragedian in
real life was not the equal of the tragic poet. His psychology, as we see, was at fault, at a critical
point, as Shakespeare’s never was. And so his catastrophe came out wrong, and his piece was.
ruined.
Iago’s Fate
We get an impression that at some stage, the action Iago initiates remains no longer within his
power but rather becomes, his master. It is as though he were fated to do what he does. It is
like the passion with which a tragic hero wholly identifies himself and which bears him on to his
doom. It is true that, once embarked on this course, Iago could not turn back, even if this
passion did abate ; and it is also true that he is compelled, by his success in convincing Othello,
to advance to conclusions of which: at the outset he did not dream. He is thus caught in his own
web, and could not liberate himself if he would. But, in fact, he never shows a trace of wishing
to do so, not a trace of hesitation, of looking back, or of fear, any more than of remorse ; there
is no ebb in the tide. As the crisis approaches there passes through his mind a fleeting doubt
whether the deaths of Cassio and Roderigo are indispensable; but that uncertainty, which does
not concern the again issue, is dismissed, and he goes forward with undiminished west. Not
even in his sleep––as in Richard’s before his final battle––does any rebellion of outraged
conscience or pity, or any foreboding of despair, force itself into clear consciousness. His fate
has completely mastered him : so that, in the later scenes, where the improbability of the
entire success of a design bunt on so many different falsehoods forces itself on the reader, Iago
appears for moments not as a consummate schemer, but as a man absolutely infatuated and
delivered over to certain destruction.
Empson’s View
William Empson takes up Bradley’s analysis of Iago’s motivations and offers his own views.
After summarising Bradley’s position, Empson remarks that some critics have objected to the
sort of analysis Bradley undertakes and adds that Bradley is justified ,because coherence of
character is as much ; necessary in poetic drama as coherence of metaphor etc. An objection

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that may be fairly raised against Bradley’s approach is that the character of Iago must have
been intended to seem coherent to the first-night audience ; therefore the solution cannot be
reached by learned deductions from hints in the text about his previous biography, for instance
; if the character is puzzling nowadays, the answer must be a matter of recalling the
assumptions of the audience and the way the character was put across.
False Conception of Independence
An analysis of the play would tell us that whatever opinions Iago has are shared by those
around him and that he makes so secret of them. It is true that his opinions are confused but
the characters that surround him seem to be no less confused. When Iago expounds his
egotism to Roderigo, in the first scene of the play, be is not so much admitting a weak criminal
to his secrets as making his usual claim to ‘Sturdy Independence’ in a rather coarser form. He is
not subservient to the interests of the men in power who employ him be says ; he can stand up
for himself, as they do. This may be a shocking sentiment ; but it does not involve ‘Pure.
Egotism’ and it does not involve Machiavelli. It has the air of a spontaneous line of sentiment
among the lower classes, whereas Machiavelli was interested in the deceptions necessary for a
ruler. Certainly it does not imply-that the Independent Man will betray his friends (as apart
from his employer), because if it did be would not boast about it to them. This of course is the
answer to the critics who have said that Roderigo could not have gone on handing all his money
to a self-confessed knave. And, in the same way, when it turns out that Iago does mean to
betray Roderigo, he has only to tell the audience that this fool is not one of his real friends ;
indeed he goes on to claim that it would be, wrong to treat him as one. But the paradox was
already floating in, the minds of the audience. No doubt Shakespeare thought that the
conception was a false one, and gave a resounding demonstration. of it, but one need not
suppose that he did this by inventing a unique -psychology for Iago, or even by making Iago
unusually conscious of the problem at issue.
(3) DESDEMONA
Innocence and Sweetness
Desdemona is the embodiment of sweetness and innocence. She is whole-hearted in her love
and even Iago says that when she once promises to do something, she thinks it dishonourable
not to do more than what is expected of bet. Desdemona’s character is hinted at by her father
when he describes her before the, Duke as
A maiden never bold
Of spirit so still and quiet, that bet motion
Blushed at itself.

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Her Pleading For Cash

Desdemona betrays considerable tactlessness and something of childish obstinacy and
persistence in her pleading for Cassio. The clever Iago seems to have foreseen this and
cautioned Othello that over-insistent pleading for Cassio, on his wife’s behalf, would mean that
sheds really pleading the case of her lover. She does not realise the change in bar husband
when he demands the handkerchief and she again and again tries to remind him that he must
giant as interview to Cassio. She is even more tactless when she expresses hat happiness over
Cassio’s appointment s governor with the result that Othello strikes her in the Presence’ of
Lodovico. If the play requires a hero as unreflecting as Othello, it also requires a victim as
unrealistic as Desdemona.
Mrs. Jameson’s Tribute
In bar adulatory book on the heroines of Shakespeare, Mrs. Jameson devotes considerable
space to Desdemona and showers lavish tributes on bar. She compares her with Miranda in
respect of the perfect simplicity and unity of the delineation. She finds the sum modesty,
tenderness, grace, artless devotion, predisposition to wonder, pity and admire sad the sane
ethereal refinement in delicacy in both these character.
Pathetic Figure
Desdemona is the most pathetic of the heroines of Shakespeare. She shows the greatest
boldness and initiative in secretly marrying the black warrior whose visage she has seen in his
mind. She displays still, greater courage when she insists on accompanying her husband to the
ways However, her courage and devotion are not valued by, Othello when he is roused to the
pitch of jealousy and suspicion by the crafty villain Iago. It is hard for Desdemona to believe that
her husband should think her unchaste and, therefore, it is only after sometime that his
insinuations are understood by Desdemona. Her behaviour is full of a pathetic childlikeness
when Othello, tells her that he must kill her. She begs him to give her the reprieve of a day, a
few hours, a few minutes, if only to say her prayers. When she regains consciousness for a
moment, her last breath is spent on trying to protect her murder and her very last words are
that Emilia may commend her to her lord. It seems that a premonition of impending death
comes to Desdemona much before Othello tells her that he is going to hill her. It is this
foreboding which makes her recall the willow song sung by the dejected maid on the eve of her
death. After Desdemona’s death, the pathos in her situation, and the tragic waste of her
undeserved early death, is underlined in Othello’s laments as well as in his tribute to her as a
pearl richer than all his tribe, which he foolishly threw away in his ignorance. Emilia’s staunch
loyalty and Cassio’s warm admiration are also tributes to the worth and attractiveness of
Desdemona’s personality.

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(4) CASSIO
Likeable Character
Cassio is one of the most likeable characters in this play. Shakespeare has considerably,
improved upon the portrait of the Captain in Cinthio who is a profligate man in love with
Desdemona. Shakespeare’s Cassio is a sincere friend and admirer of Othello and has honestly
helped hint in wooing Desdemona. His attitude towards Desdemona is one that falls little short
of adoration, as we see in the dialogue where Iago tries his best to make Cassio say something
indiscreet by suggesting that Desdemona’s eyes arouse desire and give the beholder an
invitation to love-making. Cassio is also an honest min, somewhat resembling Othello in his
inability to control himself when he is moved––in his case by the effect of wine. It is
unfortunate that Cassio lets Iago know this weak point of his.
Pivotal Figure
Cassio belongs to the category of characters who may be termed pivotal figures, in the sense
that they are of great importance for the plot but not so much in themselves. That is why be
remains a somewhat indeterminate figure, though there is no doubt that Shakespeare makes
him pleasing and easily likeable. We have an interesting view of Cassio when he is under the
influence of drink. We find that he is lavish in his praise of Iago’s drinking songs, but when Iago
asks him whether he would like to hear it again, Cassio’s religious conscience is aroused and he
firmly declines the invitation ; “No, for I hold him unworthy of his place, that does those things
well, God’s above all, and there be souls that must be saved, and there be souls must not be
saved.” Cassio adds that he means no offence to the General or to other men of quality, but so
far as he is concerned, he hopes to be saved. When Iago remarks that be also hopes to be
saved, Cassio, amusingly enough, reminds him of the order of precedence––the lieutenant is to
be saved before the ancient. Just then it seems to strike Cassio that his behaviour is odd and
that he might be taken for a drunken man It is highly amusing to see him at great pains to prove
that be is not drunk, although his efforts only establish that be is drunk and self-conscious, and
that he is a simple man at bottom. He observes :
Gentlemen, let’s look’ to our business. Do not think, gentlemen, I am drunk, this is my
ancient, this my right band, and this is my left hand : I am not drunk now, I can stand well
enough, and speak well enough.
It is strange that we see more of, Cassio with Iago and Desdemona rather than Othello whose
close friend he is supposed to be.
Professional Competence
Although Iago dismisses Cassio as a mere theorist and no, a practical warrior, this seems to be a
prejudiced opinion. It is highly unlikely that Othello would appoint as, his second in command
any one who has not proved his mettle on the battlefield. It is clear that when Othello is obliged
to dismiss Cassio, he does so with a heavy heart, for Emilia tells us that Othello and Desdemona

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have been talking about Cassio and that he is likely to be reinstated at the first opportunity.
Moreover, the Venetian senate seems to have an extremely ‘high estimation of Cassio because
it appoints him as governor of Cyprus after Othello, ignoring the claims of Montano, the
previous governor. We must believe that Cassio really has ‘shar’d dangers’ with Othello and
that he is deeply attached to him in a personal way. Iago pays the greatest tribute to Cassio
when he tells himself that he must do away with him because ‘the daily beauty’ of Cassio’s life
makes Iago look all the more ugly.
Functions
One function of Cassio is that of providing a parallel with Othello. Like the general, Cassio is also
deceived by the seeming virtue of Iago and actually believes that the ensign is a kind-hearted
man the like of whom he has, not seen even in Florence, at the very time when he is making
wicked plots against the lieutenant. Cassio may also be regarded as a symbol of true friendship
which is rejected by Othello. There is a parallel as well as a contrast between Cassio and Iago.
As Ribner observes, Cassio’s genuine honesty is contrasted to the seeming honesty of Iago ; his
conviviality and good fellowship stem, as opposed to Iago’s, from a real trust and love of his
fellow-men. In spite of his deception by Iago, Cassio does not allow himself to be deeply tainted
by evil as Othello does. He maintains to the end his faith in Desdemona, symbolically a hope
that true love and virtue will restore him to the felicity which his weakness has lost him.
(5) RODERIGO
Stupid But Manly
Roderigo, the unsuccessful lover of Desdemona, is presented as foolish, tenacious and

somewhat laughable, but also as a man whose gullibility and patience have definite limits it is
interesting that after the Senate has dismissed Brabantio’s complaint against; Othello, be thinks
that it would have been better if Roderigo bad married his daughter. Roderigo is for the most
part Iago’s accomplice in evil but’ we may say in his defence that the impulse to wicked deeds is
not native in him. He skillfully manipulated by Iago and his being an unsuccessful excuses to a
certain extent his conspiracies against the successful competitor Othello and, the strong rival,
as Iago tells him, namely, Cassio.
Redeeming Features
It is true that Iago cheats “Roderigo out of most of his fortunes but a frustrated lover may be
excused for making a fool of himself when better men like Cassio and Othello are also unable to
withstand Iago’s clever villainy. We see a spark of courage in Roderigo when he tells Iago plainly
that he must either return to him the gold and precious stones which he has taken as present
for Desdemona or produce tangible evidence of the lady’s being favourably inclined towards
him. Unfortunately, this display of courage only ensures his death because Iago regards him as
a troublesome man who is so longer of any use to him.

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Gentlemanliness
Roderigo may be stupid and gullible but he is still depicted as a gentleman in contrast with the
brutality and vulgarity of Iago. The best proof of this is the fad that he refuses to believe logo
when he tells him that Desdemona has illicit relations with Cassio. Roderigo’s reply is worthy of
a romantic knight : “I cannot believe that in her ; she is full of the most blessed condition.” He
also has qualms of conscience after he his attempted to murder Cassio and his dying words are
an expression of self-blame : “O villain that I am !” One of his functions in the play is that of
providing comic relief and also to be a medium between Iago and the audience so that the
former does not have to be given too many soliloquies.
(6) EMILIA
Realism and Commonsense
Emilia is in the tradition of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet––a character who is coarse-minded,
earthy but devotedly attached to her mistress. Her being a companion to Desdemona enables
her to reveal not only her own wide experience of the world but also to highlight Desdemona’s
innocence and idealism. For example, even when Desdemona knows that she is going to be
murdered on the false charge of adultery, she still believes that no woman can ever be
unfaithful to her husband. The commonsensical realism of Emilia provides a refreshing contrast
to this unpractical idealism. Desdemona remarks with charming innocence that she believes
that Emilia would not do such a thing for the whole world. Emilia replies that the world is a
huge thing and a big reward for such a small vice. When Desdemona insists that she believes
Emilia would not do any such thing, she becomes more explicit :
By my troth, I think I should, and undo’t when I had done it ; marry, I would not do
such a thing for a joint ring ; or for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, or petticoats, nor caps, nor
any such exhibition ; but, for the whole world ? ‘ud’s pity, who would not make her husband a
cuckold, to make him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for it.
Function
Emilia’s stout defence of Desdemona proves futile because Othello decides to regard her as
Desdemona’s bawd. However, Emilia has other functions in the play. In the first place, it is she
who provides Iago with the handkerchief which he puts to such a terrible use. Emilia makes
matters more complicated when she professes ignorance as Desdemona asks her whether she
knows where she could have dropped her handkerchief. In both these instances, Emilia is
culpable, but it may be said in her defence that she is quite unaware of committing anything
more than a minor violation of truth. When she once realises that her husband used the
handkerchief to implicate her mistress, she condemns and exposes him without fear although
she loses her life in doing so. She is equally forthright in condemning Othello for suspecting and
murdering Desdemona. She seems to express the feelings of the audience at that point when
she abuses the Moor and says that he was unworthy of Desdemona. In her dying moments she

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tells Othello that his wife really and deeply loved him and although she herself thinks that her
mistress made a poor bargain in marrying him, she has scrupulously kept that bargain. She
identifies herself with her mistress by singing the same song which she sang on the eve of her
death. Emilia may be said to represent the ordinary people who commonly figure in
Shakespeare, people who are not extraordinarily virtuous in daily life, but who are gifted with a
reasonable perceptiveness and commonsense and are capable of heroism in times of crisis.
Write a note on Othello as a tragedy of evil.

Evil Personified
Unlike Hamlet where the evil is pervasive and hangs over the whole country, in Othello, it is
personified in one character, who, however, wears the outward signs of virtue, life and
conviviality. In Iago we see evil as deception and as a direct challenge to the order and harmony
of the universe.’ Iago’s superficial brilliance and self-control is the ‘reason’ of Renaissance
scepticism which in Shakespeare’s day was challenging the great vision of harmony, order and
degree which Christian humanism carried over from the Middle Ages and which was most
notably embodied in the writings of Richard Hooker.
Iago as the Evil Force

In spite of his hypocrisy, Iago reveals himself to the reader as an active force of evil right in the
first scene of the play. It is strange that it is Roderigo alone who is granted insight from the
beginning into the true Iago, but Roderigo is a fool who cannot perceive the implications of
what he sees until it is too late. Iago’s single word of admiration in the play is for evil servants
who secretly betray their masters. He believes that “these fellows have some soul ;/And such a
one do I profess myself.” Iago stands for social disintegration. In the harmonious world order of
which Shakespeare’s contemporaries liked to conceive servants had their just place, their
.rights and their obligations. They were loyal to their masters out of love, and their masters
repaid them with care and protection, all as a part of a social order whose perfection reflected
the love of God for man. The true servant of such a system, Iago sees as “a duteous and knee-
crooking knave”, who serves his master like an ass who is discarded when he is old. Iago
appears to be such a servant, but his semblance of loyalty is but a mask. He is always a self-
seeker. He shares none of the ‘love and duty’ which hold together the social order and link it to
God Himself. Iago is all seeming, false appearance :
In following him I follow but myself––

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so for my peculiar end.

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Iago’s Egotism
The supreme egotism of Iago is a manifestation of the code of ‘reason’ by which he lives. True
human reason in terms of Renaissance Christian humanism was a reflection of the supreme
wisdom of God, and it consisted in attuning one’s own will to the purposes of God, a
recognition that human events are reflections of divine purposes. Iago’s ‘reason’ is the sin of
pride, for it denies the supremacy of God and sees man as the sole author of his destiny, able to
control himself and others by the power of his mind. This is expressed in his speech to
Roderigo, which begins with the words “Virtue ! a fig t ‘tis in ourselves that we are thus or
thus”, and where he compares our bodies to gardens, our wills to gardeners and our reason to
something which can cool our raging lusts and passions. Iago would control human passion by
an act of will unrelated to the will of God ; his action reveals an unbridled passion which gives
the lie to his own protestation. In denying the purposes and the power of God, Iago strikes at
the root of Christian humanism, for the ‘natural law’ which it saw as the guiding principle in
human affairs was a reflection of the divine law of God, an emanation of e; s love for his
creation and of the harmonious order by which ed the universe. Iago, like the later Edmund
stands outside morality. He can, see man only as a creature of animal passion, cut off from the
grace of God. Love, the guiding principle in God’s plan, is only ‘a lust of the blood and a
permission of the will’.
Iago’s Self-Betrayal
Iago’s betrayal of himself is quite expected in spite of Bradley’s wonder how his supreme
intellect should finally betray him into such colossal errors as his misjudging both the
relationship between Othello and Desdemona and the character of his own wife, Emilia. But it
is in the very nature of Iago’s intellect that this should be so; for such ‘reason’, standing outside
of moral law, can never recognize the truth of moral law ; it can perceive the signs of God’s
benevolence only as their very opposites. The love of Othello and Desdemona, a love of mind
divorced from physical passion, can appear to Iago only as ‘a frail vow betwixt an erring
barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian’. Viewing love as animal lust he can only conclude that
Desdemona will be governed by lust. He can perceive only the outward appearance of Othello ;
he cannot see the qualities for which Desdemona married him, and thus their relationship
seems only a product of lust which lust must destroy. Out of Iago’s failure of perception will
come his own destruction, but this failure is inherent in the very ‘reason’ by which he lives.
Views About Iago
What the audience thinks of Iago is not the same as the view which other characters have
about him. Since he reveals himself in his soliloquies, the audience knows him to be a demi-
devil, the incarnation of evil itself, the negation of moral law. This is not, however, how he
appears to the other characters in the play ‘Divinity of hell I /When devils will their blackest sins
put on,/They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,/As I do now.’ To the rest of the world,
and particularly to Othello, he is always ‘honest’ Iago, and we must remember that ‘honest’ has

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also the implications of chaste. Like the Claudius of Hamlet, Iago is evil in its traditional role,
disguised as good He stands for false appearance, and it is fitting that Shakespeare should give
to him the celebrated lines on reputation :
Who steals my purse steals trash ;……

But he that filches from me my good
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed,
It is only the outward appearance and name which Iago regards as the jewel of his soul. The
confusion between a just self-esteem which a man in his honour must defend and a worship of
false appearance without regard to the inner reality is a pervasive theme in this play. “Such a
concern for reputation is a manifestation of pride, for it is the sin of cherishing only appearance
as that part of man which distinguishes him from the beast, and thus it is a denial of God. This
false concern for reputation Iago arouses in Othello, leading him to the murder of Desdemona
in the delusion that only thus can he preserve his good name. It may be noted that this theme is
emphasised through Cassio also who bewails his loss of worldly appearance when Othello
dismisses him. Cassio makes the lamentation before Iago who in his reply may be still seen to
be wearing the mask of outward virtue. Iago asserts that the loss of reputation is far less
important than receiving a bodily wound, and since Cassio has escaped the latter, there is no
great harm done. The seeming virtue of Iago is able to delude Cassio also, who observes of Iago
‘I never knew/A Florentine more kind and honest’.
Iago Versus Othello

Iago personifies evil in the guise of good whereas in Othello himself, we have a depiction of
true virtue which seems to be wearing many of the signs of evil. In order to do so, Shakespeare
develops a suggestion that he got in his source, the story in Cinthio, that the marriage of
Othello and Desdemona was unnatural. Cinthio does not stress the blackness of the Moor,
mentioning it only once in his story ; but Shakespeare seized upon it as a poetic symbol by
which he could emphasize the theme of the unnatural. That Shakespeare intended his audience
to think of Othello as a Negro of very dark complexion is clear. We must recognize that a
Jacobean audience could not have failed to view the marriage of a white Italian girl to a black
African with some horror. Cinthio himself had told the story as an example of a marriage
contrary to nature. This is not to attribute racial prejudice to Shakespeare. It is, on the contrary
the most astounding evidence of his freedom from such feeling, for the marriage to which he
gives the outward appearance of an evil act contrary to nature, he shows in reality to be the
noblest type of spiritual union. In the Renaissance the colour black was a symbol of lechery––it
is commonly so used in the emblem books of the period––and it was also the colour of the
devil, whose redness is a fairly recent innovation. To Shakespeare’s audience Othello would
have all the outward appearance of the ‘blacker devil’ which Emilia calls him. His marriage to

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Desdemona would appear as an aberration in nature Iago awakens Brabantio with a description
of the marriage in these terms, punctuated by images of brute sexuality––comparing Othello to
a ‘black ram’ who is going to take advantage ,of Brabantio’s ‘white ewe’. Moreover, Brabantio’s
description of Iago when he discovers that he has enchanted his daughter, seems to represent
the normal attitude of Shakespeare’s audience to such a situation. Brabantio says that although
Othello is damned, he has succeeded in working magic on Desdemona for otherwise such a
delicate creature could never reject suitable matches and opt for marrying ‘such a thing as
thou’. He is sure that :
...thou hast practis’d on her with foul charms,
Abus’d her delicate youth with drugs or minerals
That weaken motion.
The Theme of Unnaturalness

The first two acts of the play have these two themes, the evil of the allegedly unnatural union
and that of Iago’s seeming honesty, dominating them. Othello has the blackness of Satan, Iago
the whiteness of truth and virtue. True virtue bears the mark of evil, and evil is marked with the
semblance of honesty. Shakespeare assures the audience of the falsity of these outward signs,
that Iago is only seemingly honest, and that Othello, in spite of his appearance, is a man of true
nobility whom Desdemona can love for ‘his honours and his valiant parts’. We see his calm
bearing and his dignity before the council, and he himself is made to deny the very lechery of
which his colour is the outward sign. Shakespeare’s deliberate reversal of normal appearances
is so shocking that the audience must be left still incredulous, with an uncertain fear that
appearance may still be truth. This fear is supported by Brabantio’s warning : ‘Look to her,
Moor, if thou hast eyes to see :/She has deceived her father, and may thee.’ Upon this seeming
violation of nature, Iago will work in his temptation of Othello Under Iago’s influence, Othello
will see Desdemona exactly as Brabantio has seen her, falsely conclude that their union is
unnatural as it appears to others and thus cast off Desdemona as foul and evil.

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Bring out the various stages In Iago’s attempt to

seduce Othello. How does he succeed ?
Temptation Scene
Conventional Morality drama has a temptation scene in which man is subjected to the Devil’s
allurements. The third act of Othello has a scene which corresponds to this. Othello undergoes
a struggle during which he must choose between the two forces which vie for his soul, Iago on
the one hand and Desdemona on the other.
At the end of the scene Othello rejects Desdemona and embraces Iago in a symbolic ritual
union, and from thenceforth be sees the world with the eyes of Iago. The tools with which Iago
will work already have been prepared for in the first two acts. He will rely upon his own
appearance as honest, which Othello has not yet learned to question, and he will work upon
the seeming perversion of nature in Othello’s own marriage, appealing to Othello’s ignorance of
life and to the fears and uncertainties which accompany his human inability to distinguish
between appearance and reality. Iago will arouse in Othello a false sense of the demands of
honour and’ reputation, which will reflect the love of mere appearance for which Iago from the
first has stood, in the delusion of his wrong moral choice, Othello will live by the code of Iago.
Credibility
Although the temptation scene has been criticized as incredible, it is quite convincing in its
dramatic context. Considered coldly and objectively, Othello’s fall does seem difficult to accept,
but the audience does not coldly evaluate ; it is caught up in the emotional intensity of the
scene whose total poetic impact conveys’ an imaginative impression of man’s fall.
Shakespeare’s artistry infuses the scene with an illusion of reality which is remarkably effective
in the theatre. The very speed of the action carries the audience along in Iago’s spell and gives
it no opportunity to consider questions of logical probability. Shakespeare has carefully
provided in the first two acts certain elements which will make the seduction of Othello
plausible. He has stressed his simple trust in Iago, his unfamiliarity with civilized life and
particularly with Venetian women, his role as an alien in an ever potentially hostile society.
Perhaps most significantly, by a series of events Shakespeare has caused Othello to doubt his
own powers of judgment and perception. His marriage to Desdemona has resulted in an
accusation of witchcraft from one who has always been his friend. Cassio, the officer he has so
carefully chosen, in his drunkenness has caused Othello to question the wisdom of that choice.
Othello is now ready to question the goodness of Desdemona in which he had believed as
firmly as in the friendship of Brabantio and the soldiership of Cassio.
‘Iago’s Offensive
Iago begins his offensive with a remark about Cassio, just after his departure, in the third scene
of the third act, but his initial suggestion has no effect upon Othello. He is, as Shakespeare later

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tells us ‘not easily jealous’ and he does not begin to succumb until much later in the scene. The
presence of Desdemona counteracts the force of Iago’s insinuations, just as the good angel of
the Morality drama checks the power of the evil one. It is only after Desdemona has left the
scene some eighty-five lines after Iago’s initial onslaught that Othello begins to rise to Iago’s
bait. As Desdemona leaves, Othello affirms for the audience the strength of his union with her :
Excellent wretch ! Perdition catch my soul
But I do love thee ; and when I love thee not
Chaos is come again.

Iago excites Othello’s natural curiosity by his veiled remarks touching the honesty of Cassio, and
by the implication that he has secret knowledge which he will not reveal. There is no evidence
of jealousy on Othello’s part, however, until Iago himself raises the issue :
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy.

This suggestion Othello at first resists with the memory of Desdemona’s virtue and with a true
awareness of his own excellence for which Desdemona married him. Othello’s awareness of
how jealousy operates, is in effect a rejection of jealousy, just as the speech is a reaffirmation of
those convictions which Iago seeks to undermine. To this point of the scene. Iago has still been
unsuccessful. He cannot shake Othello’s faith in himself and in Desdemona. Now he turns to
Othello’s ignorance of Venice
In Venice they do let God see the pranks
They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience
Is not to leav’t undone, but keep’s unknown.

Here Othello is vulnerable, and for the first time there is thee beginning of belief in Othello’s
half-credulous reply : ‘Dost thou say so?’ Once Othello has been prepared to believe that the
virtue of Venetian women may be a seeming virtue, Iago can remind him of the seeming
treachery of Desdemona to her father
She did deceive her father, marrying you ;
And when she seem’d to shake and fear your looks,
She lov’d them most.
With the motifs of evil wearing the guise of good and of Desdemona’s apparent defiance of
nature, Iago gains his first victory, for Othello is forced to reply ‘And so she did’.

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Iago’s Success
It is Othello who first raises the theme of unnaturalness, which had earlier been pleaded by
Brabantio before the Venetian council. Othello is now prepared to look upon Desdemona’s
choice of him as unnatural. He is now drawn to the side of Iago. He is ready to entertain the
idea that Desdemona may not be what she has appeared to be. He can now accept the vision of
Iago as the measure of human affairs :
This fellow’s of exceeding honesty,
And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit,

Of human dealing.
He dwells himself on his blackness and his years which, if love were the mere animal lust which
it is to Iago, might furnish reasons for the supposed infidelity of his wife. The symbol of spiritual
union has become to him a creature of sensual, appetite.
Othello’s Struggle
There are moments at which we see Othello’s soul struggling for renewed mastery over itself.
When Desdemona appears again, he rejects the doubts he has entertained :
If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself !

I’ll not believe it.
But as she tries to bind his temples, he feels the horns of the cuckold. The poison of Iago has
done its work, and when we see Othello again, he is possessed with Iago’s own perversion of
reputation. His honour is at stake, and he bids farewell to the soldier’s life which he cannot
enjoy while his name is soiled :
I had been happy, if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known. O, now for ever

Farewell the tranquil mind ! farewell content !
Farewell the plum’d troops, and the big wars
That makes ambition virtue !
It is no longer the reality of Desdemona’s virtue that he wishes ; he would be happy embracing
an evil hidden from him. Othello has set his value upon the false appearance which is the mark
of Iago. This concern for reputation is in marked contrast to Othello’s modesty inn the first act.

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His awareness of his own worth is a source of self-confidence and assurance. He keeps his
noble lineage hidden from the world, and he will not promulgate it until boasting becomes the
honour which he knows that it never can be.
Othello’s Surrender
Although Othello still demands proof, jealousy has so, maddened him and benumbed his
reason that he is willing to accept unquestioningly whatever proof Iago has to offer as truth. He
accepts without suspicion the shallow and ridiculous lie about Cassio’s dream. Upon this
falsehood he renounces love and in its place accepts hatred and revenge. We are Beady for the
ritual union of Othello with Iago. The language of Othello assumes a highly formal tone as he
calls upon ‘Yond marble heaven’ and he kneels : ‘In the due reverence of a sacred vow/I here
engage my words ‘ Iago kneels beside him, revealing again his Satanic origins as he swears not
by God, but by the stars and elements. The natural order is reversed as Othello completes his
link with evil. To Othello in his tragic delusion Desdemona is the devil and Iago his lieutenant.
He is united to a destructive force who now confirms the league between them ‘I am your own
forever.’
Othello’s Delusion
In spite of the fact that Othello has allowed himself to be ensnared body and soul by the flimsy
arguments of Iago, there is awe and solemnity in the culmination of the surrender scene.
Othello in his delusion would convert his sinful vengeance into the guise of a lawful justice, his
hatred into duty, and he does so by cloaking his action in the appearance of formal ritual. His
delusion parallels that of the earlier Brutus in his desire to carve Caesar as a dish fit for the
gods, to make a solemn sacrifice out of a brutal murder. From this point onward Othello will see
with the vision of Iago, to whom be is united. Truth will appear as falsehood, love and loyalty as
lost and betrayal. Always in his delusion Othello will age himself as the instrument of justice
executing his duty in a solemn ritual, although his court-room will be a brothel and his act of
justice the destruction, of love and truth.
,Discuss Othello in terms of the eternal struggle

between the Devil and Mankind
Iago’s Devilishness
Maud Bodkin discusses the Devil in terms of one of the archetypal patterns in poetry.
Attempting to define the Devil in psychological terms, she states that he is the equivalent of a
persistent or recurrent mode of apprehension. We may say that the Devil is our tendency to
represent in personal form the forces within and without us that threaten our supreme values.

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When Othello finds those values, of confident love, of honour, and pride in soldiership, that
made up his purposeful life, falling into ruin, his sense of the Devil in all around him becomes
acute. Desdemona has become ‘a fair devil’ ; he feels ‘a young and sweating devil’ in her hand.
The cry ‘O devil’ breaks out among his incoherent words of raving. When Iago’s falsehoods are
disclosed, and Othello at last, too late, wrenches himself free from the spell of Iago’s power
over him, his sense of the Devil incarnate in Iago’s shape before him becomes overwhelming. If
those who tell of the Devil have failed to describe Iago, they have lied ;
I look down towards his feet––but that’s a fable.

If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee.
We also, watching or reading the play, experience the archetype. Intellectually aware, as we
reflect, of natural forces, within a man himself as well as in society around, that betray or
shatter his ideals, we yet feel these forces aptly symbolized for the imagination by such a figure
as Iago––a being though personal yet hardly human, concentrated wholly on the hunting to
destruction of its destined prey, the proud figure of the hero.
Mephistophelean Traits
Like Mephistopheles in Faust, Iago is a man-like figure who is not really human––he is the Devil
in the form of, a man. The comparison comes out best in a situation in the second act of Othello
where Othello and Desdemona meet in Iago’s presence. It appears to be one of those moments
where the poet’s choice of words and shaping of the action leads us to look back and forward,
concentrating in its timeless significance the procession of the play’s temporal unfolding. Each
of the chief figures at this moment appears charged with full symbolic value for feeling. The
character of the situation––the fury of the storm braved, Othello’s military task accomplished
by the elements’ aid––prepares for that idealization of the hero and his bride communicated
through the words of Cassio. The words of Othello greeting Desdemona communicate the
experience of that high rapture which in a tragic world brings fear. We feel a poise of the spirit
like that of the sun at its zenith, or of the wheel of fate, before the downward plunge. Consider
these words in their place
Othello : O my fair warrior !
Desdemona : My dear Othello !

Othello : It gives me wonder great as my content
To see you here before me. O my soul’s joy !
If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken’d
death,

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And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas

Olympus-high, and duck again as low
As hell’s from heaven. If it were now to die,
’Twere now to be most happy ; for I fear

My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.
The name Othello gives his lady, ‘my fair warrior’, recalls the events that have led up to this
meeting. It reminds us of Othello’s story of his wooing––how, moved by his life’s tale of warlike
adventure, she swore that what he had related was extraordinarily strange but also wonderfully
pitiful. Othello believes that Desdemona loved him for the dangers he had passed through and
states that he loved her because she viewed his adventures sympathetically. Desdemona is
maidenly, so maidenly that she ‘blushed at herself’. In Othello she has found a warrior whom
every woman loves to adore. She thinks that she has discovered in him an ‘essential man in all
his powers. and protective strength’, while he finds in her ‘essential woman’, and lives in her
adoring trust and love as in the secret place his own later words describe :
...where I have garner’d up my heart,

Where either I must live or bear no life,
The fountain from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up.
In the light that these passages throw upon the relation of the lovers, their high moment
appears as, in a manner, a fulfilment of fantasy––the almost inevitable, archetypal fantasy of
man and woman in their turning to one another––and this sense of it contributes to the
presage of disaster. We may recall Shakespeare’s rendering in big sonnets of the tragic aspect
that belongs to love in its very nature. ‘Love’s not Time’s fool,’ he cries, but to prove that Love is
not so, against ‘reckoning Time, whose million’d accidents/Creep in twist vows’, is a desperate
venture of faith and will.
The Role of Style
In a well-known essay, Wilson Knight discusses ‘The Othello Music’ taking the speech of Iago in
which he threatens to ‘set down the pegs that make this music’ as his basis and relating it to his
view of the major contrast within the play and the way in which this contrast is depicted. He
gives detailed illustration of the way in which Shakespeare has utilized the resources of style in
speech to convey the relation between the different worlds, or forces, which the characters

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represent. The unrealistic beauty of Othello’s speech, when be is master of himself, suggests
the romantic world of varied colour, form, and sound, to which Othello belongs :
The spirit-stirring drum, th’ ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp, and circumstance, of glorious war !
Othello’s speech reflects not a soldier’s language but the quality of soldiership in all his glamour
of romantic adventure. Othello is a symbol of faith in the human values of love and war,
romantically conceived. Desdemona, as she appears in relation to Othello, is not so much
individual woman as the Divinity of love. Iago is cynicism incarnate. He stands for a ‘devil-
world’, unlimited, formless, negative. He is the spirit of denial of all romantic values. His hatred
of Othello is something intrinsic to his nature, needing no external motive. Othello’s world of
colour, shape, and music is undermined by him, poisoned, disintegrated. We are made to feel
the disintegration through the direct impact of speech, as Othello’s verbal music is transformed
by the working of Iago’s ‘poison’ into incoherence––something chaotic, absurd, hideous :
Pish !––noses, ears, and lips. Is’t possible ? Confess ! Handkerchief ! O devil !
Psychological Consideration
Wilson Knight notes that Othello and Desdemona have symbolic significance but they are also
warmly and concretely human. Iago, on the other hand, is mysterious, inhuman, ‘a kind of
Mephistopheles’. Iago illustrates, we may say, that different plane of representation noted in
relation to Greek and medieval art ; and we may raise the question how far it is possible to
identify Iago as a projected image of forces present in Othello. We may note first that even
when a critic sets out, as A. C. Bradley does, to study Iago’s character as if he were an actual
living man, what seems to emerge most clearly is the dominance of the man by a certain force,
or spirit. We can feel, says Bradley, the part of himself that Shakespeare put into Iago––the
artist’s delight in the development of a plot, a design, which, as it works itself out, masters and
possesses him. In regard to this plot it concerns us, as psychological cirtics, to note that it is
built not merely, as Bradley remarks, on falsehoods, but also on partial truths of human nature
that the romantic vision ignores. It is such a truth that a woman, ‘a super-subtle Venetian’,
suddenly wedding one in whom she sees the image of her ideal warrior, is liable to experience
moments of revulsion from the strange passionate creature she as yet knows so little,
movements of nature to yard those more nearly akin to her in ‘years, manners and beauties’.
There is an element of apt truth in Iago’s thought that a woman’s love may be won, but not
held, by ‘bragging and telling bet fantastical lies’. There is terrible truth in the reflection that if a
man is wedded to his fantasy of woman as the steadfast hiding-place of his heart, the fountain
whence his current flows, so that he grows frantic and blind with passion at the thought of the
actual woman he has married as a creature of natural varying impulse––then he lies at the
mercy of life’s chances, and of his own secret fears and suspicions.

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Iago’s Mind
However, although Iago is a consummate devil, Othello does have a sort of instinctive fear of
him. We find this even before Iago has set a trap for him. Othello fears the monster ‘too
hideous to be shown’ that he discerns lurking in Iago’s thought. He begins to harp upon his
honesty :
...for I know thou art full of love and honesty,
And weighs’t thy words before thou giv’st them breath, Therefore these stops of thine affright
me the more ;
As soon as Iago has left him
Why did I marry ? This honest creature doubtless
Sees and knows more––much more than he unfolds.
And again:
This fellow’s of exceeding honesty,
And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit
Of human dealing.
The whole of this dialogue between Othello and Iago, at the very beginning of Iago’s plot,
shows the uncanny insight of genius, illustrating in anticipation the discoveries of science. Our
halting psychological theory has begun to describe for us the manner in which those aspects of
social experience that a man’s thought ignores leave their secret impress on his mind ; how
from this impress spring feelings and impulses that work their way toward consciousness, and if
refused entrance there project themselves into the words, looks, and gestures of those around,
arming these with a terrible power against the willed personality and its ideals. Iago seems to
Othello so honest, so wise beyond himself in human dealings, possessed of a terrible power of
seeing and speaking truth, because into what he speaks are projected the half-truths that
Othello’s romantic vision ignored, but of which his mind held secret knowledge.
Point out some of the conflicting interpretations of

Othello which critics have offered.
Apparent Simplicity
Othello offers more textual and editorial problems than most other Shakespearean plays,
although it presents a semblance of simplicity to the interpretative critic. Compared with the
dazzling complexities of Hamlet, the cloudy sublimities of King Lear or the delicate poetic

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symbolism of A Winter’s Tale, there seems to be, in Othello, nothing much to dispute about.
The play makes its terrific impact on us, we respond deeply or shallowly according to whether
we have deep or shallow natures and there, it may seem, is an end of it.
Variety of Opinions
In reality Othello is a difficult play to interpret, and this fact is endorsed by the great variety of
conflicting interpretations which have been proposed: If one goes through the representative
criticism of this play, one feels like walking placidly down a quiet corridor, opening a door and
suddenly coming upon a crowd of people arguing at the tops of their voices. One faction praises
Othello, attributing to him a generous share of every virtue under the sun ; another is busily
destroying his character, offering a view of him as a coarse, vain, lustful and brutal ruffian who
would be very apt, Iago or no Iago, to murder his wife on some delusory grounds. Hands are
held up in horror at the wickedness of Iago, some of those most shocked professing at the same
time an involuntary tremor of admiration at his unsurpassed brilliance and the coolness of his
villainy in another corner, he is dismissed as a mere creature of the plot, a shallow liar and
braggart who could never have taken in anyone less stupid and self-centred than his master.
Others, again, dwell on his wrongs and murmur that revenge is, after all, a kind of wild justice
At the mention of Desdemona’s name, some eyes fill with tears of pure adoration ; others
become narrow and suspicious. Not only the characters, but the play as a whole, comes in for
totally different interpretations, e.g. that the idea of magic is central to it or that it is not central
to it. Many other interpretations are offered, e.g. that it is a Christian tragedy––Othello’s fall is
a version of Adam’s, while the fate of Desdemona is an inversion of Eve’s ; or that its plot is
incredible––or that the plot has ‘surrealistic rightness’. It is said to be part of the response to
James I’s heroic poem, ‘Lepanto’. It is claimed to be a diagram of Spanish political history, with
Othello as Philip If and Iago as his enemy, Antonio Perez. ‘Perhaps the greatest work in the
world’, trumpets one voice, but another growls, ‘A bloody farce without salt or savour.’
Tragedy of Misunderstanding
On a somewhat superficial level, Othello may be taken as a tragedy of misunderstanding. No
one among the characters understands anyone else ; nor are they, for the most part, strong in
self-understanding either. If Othello understood Desdemona, he would know that he is simply
not the kind of girl who would, during their very honeymoon, start a love affair with his first
officer. If Desdemona understood Othello, she would know that he does not yet see her, as a
real girl, but as something magical that has happened to him, and that he will run mad if
anything should happen to make him believe that her white magic has turned to black. If Emilia
understood Iago she would know that he is not merely a coarsely domineering husband who
has forced her into endless petty compromises for the sake of peace, but also,, on 8, side
hidden from her, a fiend who delights in torture. But then Iago does not, until it happens, know
this about himself Unaware of the power of love, he cannot imagine the suffering into which he

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will plunge Othello by plausibly slandering Desdemona, and therefore cannot imagine the
holocaust at the end. Nor can he foresee the transformation that will occur in himself. The
great temptation scene is so convincing because it shows Iago’s fall as well as Othello’s. At the
beginning of that scene they are both sane men ; at the end, they are both mad, and both in
the grip of the same madness. Hence the dreadful tragic irony of-––
Othello : Now art thou my lieutenant.
Iago : I am your own for ever.
Iago’s Wild Excitement

Iago, the matador, succumbs to the excitement of his combat with the bull. From that point on,
he abandons all thought of motives and works from contingency to contingency. Of course
Desdemona must die, for if she lives it will come out, one day, that Iago was lying, and Othello
will hunt him down if it takes the rest of his life. Cassio must die for the same reason. Likewise
Roderigo, who also knows too much (and, like everyone else in the play, understands too little)
must also die. Iago’s original intention, however much he may dress it up in a patchwork of
motives, is to do as much harm to Othello and Cassio as his stunted little imagination can
suggest. That harm turns out to be as far beyond his original conception as Othello’s love for
Desdemona is beyond his vulgarian’s notion of love as ‘a lust of the blood and a permission of
the will’. Once he realizes the gigantic suffering he has unleashed, and the destructiveness that
goes with it, he cannot halt or even slow down : it is too late. But Iago continues on course for
reasons other than self-preservation. He is the perfect type of all those insignificant little men,
who all at once feel the urge to destroy another human being, and get drunk on the realization
that ibis large, important action is suddenly, incredibly, in their power.
Causation
A question naturally arises : how do these misunderstandings arise? In each case, Shakespeare
has provided, it seems, a sufficient answer. Desdemona, already young and inexperienced, has
been over-protected by her father, so that she has even less knowledge of life and people than
she might have. Iago misunderstands because, when it comes to anything that concerns the
more generous emotions, he is a brute and a fool. Roderigo misunderstands because, in any
case rather stupid, he is persuasively misled by Iago. Othello is taken in by Iago not only
because Iago is a good actor but because Iago has previously shown himself trustworthy and is
so regarded by everyone ; and also because, for all his power and :importance in Venice,
Othello is an outsider. Venice needs him, uses him, rewards him, but does not entirely take him
in. His acceptance is partial ; there are certain limits to it, which, though they are not spoken of,
are quite clear in everyone’s mind. Brabantio, to take the most notable example, has been glad
to have Othello as a guest in his house, has in fact ‘loved’ him, but feels betrayed when Othello
marries his daughter. The justification for Othello’s and Desdemona’s secrecy, for the
clandestine wooing and midnight elopement, is obviously that if Othello had asked in a normal
way for Desdemona’s hand in marriage, Brabantio would have refused, forbidden him the

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house as he had already forbidden Roderigo, and thereafter would have had the girl watched
day and night.
Difference of Race and Complexion
Othello’s being vastly different from Desdemona and others in race and complexion also seems
to have something to do with the tragic outcome. Brabantio thinks his daughter must have
been bewitched to make her want to do anything as ‘unnatural’ as marrying a black man, and
throughout the play the characters who dislike Othello tend to make it an additional point
against him that he is a Negro. Those who like him tend to make no fuss about his colour one
way or the other ; while there is nobody, however pro-Othello, who says that be is all the more
admirable because of his race.
Othello’s Insecurity
This difference seems to be responsible for causing an underlying sense of insecurity in Othello,
which influences his conduct at crucial moments. It is an outward symbol of his isolation.
Throughout the play, whether in the close-knit social fabric of Venice, or in the garrison-town
atmosphere of Cyprus, he is surrounded by people who are different from himself in every way,
just as he was on that far-off day that comes back to his mind in the last few seconds of his life,
when in the Turkish city of Aleppo he intervened to protect a visiting Venetian businessman
who was being beaten up in the street ; a street full of people whom he chose to defy and
dominate, whereas the Venetians were people he had chosen to serve. In each case it was a
choice, a conscious decision of the will, not the blind natural instinct that makes a man fight for
his own hearth and his own gods. Othello willed himself into a relationship with Venice, and the
will is terribly limited in what it can achieve. Hence his insecurity ; hence his touching pride in
the way he has carried out his side of the bargain (‘I have done the state some service’) ; hence
the fact that Desdemona’s love, which gives him an intimate, living link with Venice and
promises to break down his outsiderness, is central to his whole being, so that when he thinks it
withdrawn he despairs of going on with anything, even his trade of fighting.
What is the significance of Iago being repeatedly

called ‘honest’ in Othello ? In what sense is be really
‘honest’ ?
‘Honest’ and ‘Honesty’ In “Othello”
William Empson points attention to the fact that the two words ‘honest’ and ‘honesty’ are
reiterated in Othello in a way which is quite unique. There are divergent uses of this key word
and even lower characters use it, to the extent that the unchaste Bianca claims that she is more
honest than Emilia who has stolen the handkerchief.

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Everyone calls Iago ‘honest’ once or twice but with Othello this epithet becomes an obsession.
At one particular moment, just before Emilia exposes Iago, this word is loudly uttered again and
again. Empson points out that the word has an interesting history. At the time when Othello
was written, the word was still undergoing a complicated process of change and what emerged
from it was a sort of jovial cult of independence. At some stage of the development (whether
by the date of Othello or not) the word came to have in it a covert assertion that the man who
accepts the natural desires, who does not live by principle, will be fit for such warm uses of
‘honest’ as imply ‘generous’ and ‘faithful to friends’, and to believe this to disbelieve the Fall of
Man. Thus the word, apart from being complicated, also came to raise large issues, and it is not,
one thinks, a wild fancy to suppose that Shakespeare could feel the way it was going.
Difficulties
It is usual to agree with Bradley who feels that the use of the word ‘honest’ for Iago by
everybody creates an impression that Shakespeare intends criticism of the word itself, and that
for Shakespeare in this play, an ‘honest’ man may have a bluff forthright manner, and amusing
talk, which get a man called honest, and which may go with extreme dishonesty. Or indeed that
this is treated as normal, and the satire is on our nature not on language ; but such readers
would probably maintain that Iago is not honest and does not think himself so and only calls
himself so as a lie or an irony. If the matter is left there, there is much to be said for what the
despised Rymer derided, when the implications of the hearty use of ‘honest’ had become
simpler and more clear-cut. He said that the play is ridiculous, because that sort of villain (silly-
clever, full of secret schemes, miscalculating about people) does not get mistaken for that sort
of honest man. This if true is of course a plain fault, whatever you think about ‘character-
analysis’. It is no use taking short cuts in these things, and one feels that what Rymer said had a
large truth when he said it, and also that Iago was a plausible enough figure in his own time.
The only main road into this baffling subject is to find how the characters actually use the term
and thereby think about themselves.
Instances
Among the instances of the use of the word ‘honest’, there is one where Iago decides that he
will deceive Othello into believing .that he is honest when in reality he would only be telling lies
:
The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so.
This is at the end of the first act. And indeed, the first use of the word in the play seems also to
mean that Iago does not thins himself honest. Both Iago and Othello oppose honesty to mere
truth-telling :
Othello : I know, Iago,

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Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter,

Making it light to Cassio……
Iago : It were not for your quiet nor your good,
Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom,

To let you know my thoughts.
No doubt the noun tends to be more old-fashioned than the adjective, but anyway the old
‘honourable’ sense is as broad and vague as the new slang one ; it was easy enough to be
puzzled by the word. Iago means partly ‘faithful to friends’, which would go with the
Restoration use, but partly the version normally used of women ; what he has to say is
improper. Certainly one cannot simply treat his version of ‘honest’ as the Restoration one––
indeed, the part of the snarling critic involves a rather puritanical view, at any rate towards
other people. It is the two notions of being ready to ‘blow the gaff’ on other people and be
frank to yourself about your own desires that seem to be crucial about Iago ; they grow on their
own, independently of the hearty feeling that would normally humanize them ; though he can
be a good companion as well.
Cassio’s Honesty
One need not look for a clear sense when he toys with the word about Cassio ; the question is
how it came to be so mystifying. But a queer kind of honesty is maintained in Iago through all
the puzzles he contrives ; hi emotions are always expressed directly, and it is only because they
are clearly genuine (‘These stops of thine’, Othello tells him, ‘are close dilations, working from
the heart’) that he can mislead Othello as to their cause. From his conversation with Othello,
Iago has come to know that Cassio lied to him at least once when in font of Brabantio’s house,
he pretended ignorance of the Othello-Desdemona affair, for Othello has admitted that Cassio
was his intermediary with Desdemona. This would mean that Cassio snubbed him as though he
believed him to be too coarse to be trusted in the matter, and, now Iago seems to take
advantage of the opportunity before him. The point in Iago’s round-about speeches is to
restrict the word ‘honest’ to the limited meaning such as ‘sot hypocritical’––‘frank about his
own nature’––accepted as the relevant sense ; Iago will readily call Cassio honest on that basis,
and Othello cannot be reassured. ‘Chaste’ (the sense normally used of women) Cassio is not,
but he is ‘not a hypocrite’ about Bianca. Iago indeed, despises him for letting her make a fool of
him in public ; for that and for other reasons (Cassio is young and without experience) Iago can
put a contemptuous tone into the word ; the feeling is genuine, but not the sense it may imply.
This gives room for a hint that Cassio has been ‘frank’ to Iago in private about more things than
may honestly be told. The idea of ‘not being manly’ gives an extra twist. Iago does not think
Cassio manly not that it is specially manly to be chaste ; this allows him to agree that Cassio
may be honest in the female sense about Desdemona and still keep a tone which seems to
deny it––if he is, after so much encouragement, he must be ‘effeminate’ (there is a strong idea

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of ‘manly’ in ‘honest’, and an irony that gives its opposite). Anyway, Iago can hide what
reservations he makes but show that he makes reservations ; this suggests an embarrassed
defence–– ‘Taking a broad view, with the world as it is, and Cassio my friend, I can decently call
him honest.’ This forces home the Restoration idea––‘an honest dog of a fellow,
straightforward about women’, and completes the suspicion.
Shades of Meaning
From some of the speeches of Iago, we gather the impression that his use of the word ‘honest’
for himself is pot very different from what was to become its meaning during the Restoration.
During a great deal of Iago’s conversation with Roderigo, we find Iago behaving as a wise uncle,
‘honest’ in the cheerful sense and this impression of him persists in us for some time. It is still
strong during the business of making Cassio drunk ; there is no reason why he should praise the
English for their powers of drinking except to make sure that the groundlings are still on his
side. One sense in which both Othello and Cassio are honest is in their unindulgent attitude
towards romantic love. When Iago announces that he will set down the pegs that make the
music of Othello’s and Desdemona’s happiness, ‘as honest as I am’, he may mean either
‘because I am so honest’ or, ‘though I am so honest’. In any case, Iago is ironical about the
suggestions in the patronizing use, which he thinks are applied to him––‘low-class, and stupid,
but good-natured’. But he feels himself really ‘honest’ as the kind of man who can see through
nonsense ; Othello’s affair is a passing lust which has become a nuisance, and Iago can get it out
of the way. It may well be objected that this is far too mild a picture of Iago’s plot, and indeed
he himself is clearly impressed by its wickedness ; at the end of the first act he calls it a
‘monstrous birth’ and invokes Hell to assist it. But after this handsome theatrical effect the
second act begins placidly, in a long scene which includes the ‘As honest as I am’ passage, and
at the end of this scene we find that Iago still imagines he will only
Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me,
For making him egregiously an ass.
To be sure, the next lines say he will practise on Othello ‘even to madness’, but even this can be
fitted into the picture of the clown who makes ‘fools’ of other people ; it certainly does not
envisage the holocaust of the end of the play. Thinking in terms of character, it is clear that Iago
has not yet decided how far he will go. The two suggestions in the word ‘honest’––that of
stupidity in a patronising sense, and that of folly sometimes overlap. Moreover, Iago is in some
sense also the Restoration honest fellow who is good company because he talks with blunt
truthfulness. The play gives us the impression that it is unsafe to be ‘honest’ either in Iago’s
sense or in Othello’s implicit sense.

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Comment on the view that the chances and

accidents in Othello adversely affect our view of it
as a tragedy of character.
The Role of Accident
Of all the tragedies of Shakespeare, Othello stands out prominently as the one in which the role
of chance and accident is the largest. However, the larger occurrence of chance and accident in
this play does not mean that the significance of these in Othello is also greater than in other
tragedies of Shakespeare. The chances in this tragedy are pointed out by Bradley, though he
seems to over-emphasize their importance:
In reading Othello the mind ... if more bound down to the spectacle of noble beings
caught in the toils from which there is escape ; while the prominence of the intrigue diminishes
the sense of the dependence of the catastrophe on character, and the part played by accident
in this catastrophe accentuates the feeling of fate... The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so
was his good fortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of
Othello and Cassio, a question which starts to our lips and which anyone but Othello would
have asked, would have destroyed Iago’s plot and ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona
drops her handkerchief at the moment most favourable to him, Cassio blunders into the
presence of Othello only to find him in a swoon, Bianca arrives precisely when she is wanted to
complete Othello’s deception and incense his anger to fury. All this and much spore seems to us
quite natural, so potent is the art of the dramatist ; but it confounds us with a feeling ...[that]
there is no escape from fate, and even with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken
sides with villainy.
Distinction
Not all that Bradley mentions can be legitimately regarded as chance or accident. Moreover,
the three events which are accidents, viz. the dropping of Desdemona’s handkerchief at the
moment which suits Iago, Cassio’s coming upon the suspicious Othello when he is in a swoon,
and Bianca’s arrival at just the right moment for Iago, do not constitute a pattern running
through the play––such as there is in Romeo and Juliet––but happen so close together as
almost to constitute a single event, a single stroke of “the devil’s luck” for Iago, and we may
prefer to call them coincidences, signifying a deliberate contrivance of the plot at this point. It
cannot be granted that the absence of “a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of
Othello and Cassio, a question which starts to our lips” constitute “accidents” in the , above
sense. This is to confuse the events of the play which are critically relevant, with possible events
in real life, which are not. The unintentional ambiguity in Bradley’s statement is concealed in
the inclusion of both sorts of happening under the designation of “accident”.

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Contrivance
There is a large element of contrivance on Iago’s part in the vents which are, or seem to be,
accidents. For example, Brabantio is summoned, in the beginning, to learn of Desdemona’s
deception, of him, and thus to embarrass Othello with his outcry and provide a principal ground
of Othello’s later distrust of her with his
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see :
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
Othello is summoned to learn of Cassio’s lapse from his office of trust on the watch, and hence
develops, by Iago’s skilful prompting, the whole situation of Desdemona’s pleas for Cassio’s
reinstatement and Iago’s counter-insinuations that Cassio is Desdemona’s lover. As for most of
the business of the handkerchief, Desdemona drops it by accident and Emilia picks it up and
offers it to Iago ; but from then on, Iago guides the ensuing events. He leaves the handkerchief
in Cassio’s chamber, uses it as evidence with which to convince Othello, and supplies the
construction Othello places upon the subsequent history of the handkerchief, which is what
really signifies. Thus, Iago is quite capable of beguiling Othello to construe any circumstance
which may occur as confirmation of his suspicions. What matters tragically is not the
circumstance but the fact that Iago can make Othello see the circumstance through his eyes,
through his suggestion. Othello, in his passion, has no power of independent judgment
regarding the “evidence” Iago offers him.
Impact
It is difficult to agree with Bradley that these accidents lessen our sense of the importance of
‘character’ in the tragedy. The accidents do not absolve Othello of responsibility. No such
sentimentality could have occurred to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, who never tire of
affirming that the human reason can and should control the passions and the will. Rather, what
we see is the horrible infectious power of evil, how the deliberate malice of, Iago infects
Othello, corrupts his reason, renders him “passion’s slave”, so that without understanding what
he is doing, he commits a tragic wrong. He is fully responsible for the wrong he does, as he
himself most justly recognizes in the end, but the remorse he feels for the wrong he committed
destroys him ; that is why he is fully tragic.
Human Element
The main reason why it must be maintained that the role of accidents in Othello is far less
important than it seems, is that they are not blows of fate but situations painstakingly
manipulated and exploited by a human agent––Iago. The plots of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet,
and Othello are all of the dramatist’s contriving, and all of them contain “accidents”, or
“coincidences” in the sense of arbitrary or unexpected turns in the development of the action.
There is, however, an essential difference within this group of three ; in Romeo and Juliet and
Hamlet no one is able to comprehend or turn to his advantage the developing pattern of

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events, not Friar Laurence or the young lovers or the parents in their blindness ; not Claudius or
Polonius, or, least of all, Hamlet ; but in Othello, Iago––up to the catastrophic turning-point––
plans most of the events, calculates the motives and responses of his victims, and profits with
diabolical cleverness from the chances which do occur and which he makes serve his purposes.
Thus the tragic effect of Othello turns upon the inevitability inherent in the malice of Iago and
the character of Othello which Iago knows so well how to, influence.
Tragic Circumstance
What gives the play a tragic outcome is primarily the working of character, and not chances,
accidents or coincidence. Desdemona is a Venetian and Venice was notorious for its women of
loose character. Othello is a man of sudden resolves and vehement feelings. He is,
unfortunately, deeply and unreflectingly impressed with Iago’s ‘honesty’. Othello has not
known Desdemona long ; he has little knowledge of women in any case ; his military life had left
him little time for cultivating their society or, studying them, before he met Desdemona ; and
there was a bitter modesty in the man, who thought it quite possible that, for all his greatness
and his romantic past, a young girl like Desdemona might hold him but a passing fancy.
Obviously, he was no student of human, character, as we see from his faith in Iago. Run
principally, he was a man in the grip of jealousy, subject to uncontainable passion, passion that
blinded him, made him fall down in a trance, be utterly unlike his normal self. That such a man
should become the victim of the malice and demonic artistry of Iago––this is, the era is
circumstance of the play. And it is not presented to us as an accident. Iago spends much of his
time, in his soliloquies, trying to explain to us how and why it all happened ; and if he protests
somewhat too much, we have no difficulty in believing in the possibility of his villainy, because
it is so completely persuasive throughout. It is this element of credibility which minimises the
role of chance.
Chance and Intrigue

To a certain extent, the predominence of chance in Othello is a corollary of the fact that it is in
many respects a tragedy of intrigue. The critic Ulrici rightly points out that chance is only
objective caprice, the caprice of fate ; both of them correspond with one another because their
internal nature is the same. He is right also in his view that although chance cannot be excluded
from tragedy as it is an essential element of human life, it has a right to be a principal force in
the dramatic development only in comedy. However he is wrong in his implication that chance
plays more than its legitimate part in Othello :
In Othello the catastrophe is first introduced and occasioned by chance. Othello, ‘the
noble nature whom passion could not shake,’ who in fact is vulnerable only in the one point, in
his love for Desdemona, is first plunged into the heat of passion .by Iago’s villainy and by the
play of chance which favours it, and is thus thrown out of the centre of his existence and
brought to ruin. The first accident is the circumstance of Desdemona’s losing her handkerchief,
which is as much accident as carelessness, the second is that Emilia finds the handkerchief ; the

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third, that Cassio gives it to Bianca to have the embroidery copied ; the fourth, that Othello sees
it in Cassio’s hand ; the fifth, that Bianca happens to be at hand to help in deceiving Othello by
Cassio’s conduct in conversation with Iago ; it is all these accidents which help to convince
Othello of Desdemona’s infidelity, and which thus effect the complete ruin of his character.
They are, therefore, preeminently the levers of the action.
This conclusion is obviously erratic The basis of the tragedy is not these accidents but Othello’s
peculiar situation and character and his subconscious awareness of having contracted a
marriage which might at least appear to be against reason and nature. In Shakespeare’s play,
the seed of suspicion is sown by the caution that Brabantio gives to Othello, namely to beware
of Desdemona because she who has deceived her father, may deceive her husband also. Iago’s
schemes and chances like the dropping of the handkerchief, would have been powerless to
have any effect if this underlying misgiving had not been there in Othello’s mind. Similarly,
Ulrici’s contention that Othello shows that human virtue is not able to hold its own against
blind chance and common intrigue, and that this tends to take the pathos of the play into the
hideous and the horrible, is also a result of misreading. The end of this tragedy only vindicates
human worth and dignity in the justice that Othello bravely administers to himself.
Comment on Bradley’s view that Othello murders

Desdemona in honour and love, and not in hatred.
Shakespeare’s Technique
Shakespeare was a master of dramatic technique one aspect of which prominently stands out
in plays like Hamlet and Othello. It is that he loves to surprise the readers and that he
sometimes chooses to do so by withdrawing a principle character from the stage and bringing
him back after some time in a mood which is quite unexpected by the audience.
Once such change of mood takes place in Othello himself between his exit in the third scene of
the Third Act (Line 323) and his return forty-five lines later when he comes maddened with
jealousy. A transformation which is still more unexpected is the one which confronts the
readers at the beginning of the second scene of the Fifth Act of this play. Earlier, in the previous
scene, Othello was persuaded that Iago had killed Cassio, he now rushes out to complete his
‘great revenge’ by himself killing Desdemona, and killing her at once, for he cries ‘Strumpet, I
come 1’ ‘No critic denies, or can deny, that when we next see him uttering the solemn opening
words of Act V, Scene II, a profound change has come over him, though if we ask them to
explain the change or to tell us what kind of man he has now become, we hear in reply a chorus
of discordant voices. And we are in much the same plight as regards the meaning of Othello’s

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last speech, which is in a way a more serious matter, since from what he then is and says, our
minds receive the final impression both of his character and of the play as a whole.
Bradley’s View
According to Bradley, this change of mood takes place because ‘the supposed death of Cassio’
has satisfied Othello’s ‘thirst for vengeance’ during the time that he has been absent from the
stage. Of course, there can be no direct evidence of such a thing in the text, but it harmonizes
quite well with the general view that Bradley takes of Othello’s character. He observes :
The Othello who enters the bed-chamber with the words, ‘It is the cause, it is the
cause, my soul,’ is not the man of the Fourth Act. The deed he is bound to do is no murder, but
a sacrifice. He is to save Desdemona from herself, not in hate but in honour, and also in love.
His anger has passed, ; a boundless sorrow has taken its place ; and ‘this sorrow’s heavenly ;/It
strikes where it doth love.’ Even when, at the sight of her apparent obduracy, and at the
hearing of words which by a crowning fatality can only reconvince him of her guilt, these
feelings give way to others, it is to righteous indignation they give way, not to rage ; and terribly
painful as this scene is, there is almost nothing here to diminish the admiration and love which
heighten pity. And pity itself vanishes, and love and, admiration alone remain, in the majestic
dignity and sovereign ascendancy of the close.
Other Viewpoints
It may be noted that every single assertion that Bradley makes about Othello’s present mood is
supported by appropriate’ textual authority which he carefully cites. Bradley is elaborating the
emotions which the last scene evokes in himself and he believes Shakespeare intended to
evoke in every spectator ; they are emotions which, following Aristotle, he considers the normal
and approved response of the sensitive human spirit, to the catastrophe of any great tragedy.
As Bradley, states elsewhere, according to him, a Shakespearean tragedy is never depressing. It
may bee noted that although Bradley’s view seems to be persuasive, some readers reach a
conclusion which is diametrically opposed to his. For example, Granville-Barker differs with
Bradley vigorously in his view of Othello when he enters Desdemona’s bedroom. According to
him, Othello “is calm as water is when near to boiling, or the sea with a surge of storm
underneath. Exalted in his persuasion that it is justice he deals and not vengeance, he regains a
Satanic semblance of the nobility that was his.” This critic considers Othello’s assertion that
“this sorrow’s heavenly :/It strikes where it doth love” as showing ‘ghoulish perversion’.
According to him, Othello is a madman during most of this scene, and Shakespeare gives him a
noble epitaph which Othello speaks himself, because the hero has to be restored to himself and
to such a consciousness of himself as will give significance to his end. His conclusion is that this
entire scene is
a terrible, shameful spectacle, of which Shakespeare spares us nothing, which, indeed,
he elaborates and prolongs until the man’s death comes as a veritable relief, a happy restoring
of him to dignity.

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Dissenting View
Although most critics are agreed that in his last speech, Shakespeare restores Othello to true
nobility, T. S. Eliot strongly doubts even this. On the other hand, he is depressed by what he
regards as ‘terrible exposure of human weakness’ in this scene which he regards as the worst in
literature in this respect. He sees it as an extreme instance of that ‘attitude of self-
dramatisation’, ultimately derived from Seneca, which some of Shakespeare’s other characters,
as well as those of other Elizabethan dramatists, are apt to assume ‘at moments of tragic
intensity’. According to him, Othello is here only cheering himself up and trying to escape
reality. Eliot denier Othello humility and observes:
Othello succeeds in turning himself into a pathetic Gluts by adopting an aesthetic
rather than a moral attitude, dramatizing himself against his environment. Tie takes in the
spectator, but the human motive is primarily to take in himself.
Eliot’s criticism is strangely inapplicable to a dram and would be in place only in a novel.
Moreover, Eliot betrays the falsity of his position by his observation that the scene ‘takes in’,
the spectators for that is all which the dramatist is concerned to do Literary criticism, when a
Shakespearean character is the subject; must base itself on the general impression which the
character makes in the theatre, and it is only after satisfying this condition chat it may
legitimately extend into subtlety or refinement. Eliot’s error is followed by F. R. Leavis, and,
strangely enough even by such a man of theatre as Granville-Barker, whose experience of
dramatic production ought to have acted as a safeguard.
Impression of Nobility
A true reading of this scene must accept the_ fact that it produces on us an impression of great
tragic intensity in which the restored dignity and nobility of Othello is a central fact.
Shakespeare wrote most of his tragedies, with the double purpose of first harrowing his
audience with the terror and pity of the catastrophe and then sending them home with the
feeling of redemption, reconciliation and even exultation which the great tragedians of all ages
have aroused. The hero’s last speech reminds us that be is a hero, the most heroic of all
Shakespeare’s characters. And that Shakespeare intended us to think of him as heroic
throughout the scene is confirmed by the very strong evidence of style. As Wilson Knight truly
says of the opening speech :
This is the noble Othello music : highly coloured, rich in sound and phrase, stately ...
the most Miltonic thing in Shakespeare.
Wilson Knight’s parallel is appropriate, for the stoical tone and calm dignity of Othello’s
concluding speech, further emphasised by the tumultuous violence of the last line in which he
strikes at himself, do recall the conclusion of Samson Agonistes. The style itself assures us that
Othello’s speech is not a self-dramatisation or a satanic semblance of nobility. There is no

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question of Othello cheering himself up or of his being forgetful of Desdemona. For one thing,
Desdemona is the reason why he kills himself. Othello realises that he indicted an
unpardonable cruelty on Desdemona under the delusion that be was perpetrating justice, and
he now inflicts true Justice on himself for this crime.
Othello’s Last Thoughts
One of Othello’s concerns in the moment of impending death is for his reputation, which now
means true honour rather than mere outward same. In this, Othello shows his kinship with
other Shakespearean tragic heroes For example, Hamlet’s last thought also is for his ‘wounded
name’. Like Hamlet, Othello also may be regarded as a prince and, more essentially, a soldier.
Another critic aptly points attention to the fact that it is Shakespeare’s usual practice to give to
his tragic heroes an apologia before their death and to follow this up with a tribute by one or
more characters. In this lint, Othello’s last speech is remarkably modest, for be dismisses his
life-long heroic service to Venice in a single line. All that he demands from his listeners is that
after his death, they would narrate these sad events with a strict attention to truth. Instead of
exalting himself, Othello compares himself to the ‘base Indian’––which may be-best interpreted
as an allusion to the ingnorant and degraded ‘Indians’ of the New World, represented by
Caliban in The Tempest. In any event, however ‘Indian’ be explained, ‘base’, which means
‘black’ as well as ‘debased’ or ‘vile’, is sufficient evidence of a profound self-abasement. It may
also be interpreted that Othello’s last tears are tears of joy at the realisation that Iago’s devilish
accusations have proved false and that Desdemona was both chaste and loving.
Write a note on the chief source of the story of

Othello, and the use Shakespeare has made of it.
Shakespeare’s Sources
In common with other playwrights of the Elizabethan age, Shakespeare habitually took the
stories of his plays from other sources, although he transformed them by the touch of his great
dramatic skill and poetic imagination More than one source has been discovered for most of
Shakespeare’s plays.
The major source of Othello is one of the stories in a collection called Hecatommithi (A Hundred
Tales) published in Venice in 1662, There is good reason to believe that Shakespeare had read
this story and derived material from it. The original story is in Italian. The major characters in it
are anonymous except only for the heroine who is named Desdemona which signifies
misfortune. Cinthio’s counterpart of Othello is simply named the Moor while the equivalents of

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Cassio and Iago are also given the descriptive titles of the Captain and the Ensign. This
anonymity is only a reflection of the generally, unimaginative nature of Cinthio’s story.
Characters
Roderigo and Bianca are complete inventions by Shakespeare. Desdemona, who is rather
insipid in the original, and Othello, who lacks dignity, are transformed. Cassio remains much as
he was, though his actions are different, and he becomes human, not merely a Captain. The
story makes no bones about Iago : he is introduced straightaway as a scoundrel of very
handsome appearance. His motives are not ambiguous ; he is not concerned with promotion,
but, having fallen deeply in love with Desdemona, and having had no success, conceives that
Cassio is his rival, and henceforward hates both bitterly. Emilia, in the story, is described as a
beautiful and honourable young woman, who is greatly loved by Desdemona, so that they
spend most of the day together. She is, however, aware of the plot to kill the lady, for Iago had
wished to use her to further it. She is too afraid of him to warn Desdemona ; and so, when
Desdemona, troubled by her husband’s changed demeanour, asks her to find out from Iago
what the matter may be, she can only give her general good advice about her conduct.
The Action
In transforming the crude story of his source into a play. Shakespeare gives an unmistakable
proof of his matchless dramatic skill and intense poetic imagination. The whole of Act I is
Shakespeare’s own invention. In the source, Othello and Desdemona marry against her parents’
wishes, but live in happiness for some time. Shakespeare is responsible for making Desdemona
motherless, for making her father love Othello and invite him to the house, for making Cassio a
party to his wooing, and for the whole brutal arousing of Brabantio. The elopement, coinciding
with the Turkish crisis, is not in Cinthio. There are no Turks and no military urgency, and
therefore no Council scene by night, in the story. Nor is there a storm on the way to Cyprus : all
the characters travel in the same ship, and arrive without trouble.
Events in Cyprus
From this point onwards, right to the plot to murder Desdemona, Shakespeare follows his
source more closely, but there are still many differences. Cassio’s degradation is not arranged
by Iago he is cashiered for striking a soldier in anger. Shakespeare’ riskiest scene (Act IV, Scene
I), where Othello most obviously’ appears a gull, has only a slight basis in Cinthio. Since
Cinthio’s story has no Bianca, her appearance in the play, flaunting the handkerchief, serves as
apparently a crushing proof of Desdemona’s lightness. As in the play, so in the story, the
handkerchief is planted in Cassio’s bedroom, but Cassio, having recognized it, as Desdemona’s,
tries to return it to her by the back-door of Othello’s house when he knows him to be absent.
Here the story makes reference to Iago’s luck, which’ is so conspicuous in the play : at the very
moment of Cassio’s knock, Othello returns and hears it, looks out of the window, asks who is
there, and runs downstairs. Cassio runs away, but Othello suspects that it is he, and that his
wife knows about it. This episode, no doubt, is the source of Cassio’s apparently furtive

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disappearance at the approach of Othello in the play of Shakespeare which gives Iago his first
opportunity with Othello. Later on, in the story, Cassio gives the handkerchief to a sempstress,
lodging in his house, to reproduce the design, and Iago leads Othello past the window where
she is accustomed to do her embroidery, when Othello sees it in her hand. Of the
transformation that has been made here, these are several things to say : one is, that story-
time has been made into drama-time ; another, that the back-door, the running downstairs,
and the motiveless suburban suspicion are alien to the tone of the play ; and that
Shakespeare’s invention, Bianca, brings to dramatic life what is flat in the story.
Added Interest
The additions and alterations made by Shakespeare greatly enhance the interest. In the source
there is no Roderigo, and therefore, the attack on Cassio is much less exciting. Iago makes the
attack alone, after being heavily bribed. This attempt on Cassio is not connected in time with
Desdemona’s murder. Shakespeare makes her mourning for Cassio’s supposed fate occur on
her own deathbed, when it is misunderstood by Othello as evidence of her guilty love. In
Cinthio, her grief is one of the matters which anger Othello, and leads him to plot her death
with Iago. It is here that Shakespeare rejects his source most decisively. Iago devises a plot
which involves neither knife nor poison, and which will leave both unsuspected. The tone of
Shakespeare’s source here is plebeian. Othello and Desdemona are in bed together. Iago, in his
hiding-place near by, makes some pre-arranged noise. Othello tells her to get out of bed and
see what it is. She does so, and is sandbagged by Iago. She does not die immediately, but calls
to Othello, who gets out of bed to stand over her and tell her that this is what wives who
cuckold their husbands deserve. While she prays, Iago finishes her off, with Othello watching.
They put her body on the bed, break her skull, and bring down a beam down the rotten timbers
of the house upon her head. After this careful arrangement of innocence, Othello runs into the
street, proclaiming the dreadful accident which has lost him his beloved wife.
Improvement
The plot of Othello is in every way a vast improvement on the story in Cinthio. In Cinthio’s tale
also, the Moor for all his later barbarity and vulgarity, had loved Desdemona, and he now
begins to hate Iago. He cannot have him done away with for fear of the inexorable justice of
Venice, but he deprives him of his rank in the Army. Thereupon, Iago tells Cassio of such parts
of the plot as exonerate himself, including the lie that it was Othello who wounded him
(Cassio). Cassio, now equipped with a wooden leg, as the result of Iago’s bungled attack, brings
a charge before the Signiory ; Othello is arrested, and brought to Venice and tortured. He will
not speak, is condemned to banishment, and is finally killed by Desdemona’s relatives. Iago
continues his contrivances in other directions, is eventually convicted of perjury, and dies after
torture. Nothing is more striking, among the differences between story and Play, than the
prudential and unheroic behaviour of the personages of the former. In Cinthio, Iago needs a
good sum of money to be persuaded to kill Cassio ; his pretence of virtuous indignation, and his
assumption of indifference to all but justice for Othello, are Shakespeare’s invention. He is

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vulgarized by the source, made more psychologically unusual and also intellectual in the play.
The Emilia of the source, though she is loved by Desdemona, and apparently loves her, is aware
of her husband’s designs, but is afraid to betray him. It is all the more puzzling, therefore, that
she is said to be honourable. In the play, Emilia’s honour is of a different sort, though she
pretends to nothing socially, and not much morally. Othello in the source, is the most vulgar of
the lot : he takes good care to safeguard himself over Desdemona’s murder, and is afraid, later
on, when he has repented of his crime, to kill Iago.
Race and Complexion

Cinthio only makes a bare mention of Othello’s race and colour. Cinthio’s Ensign tells Iago that
perhaps Desdemona wishes Cassio to be reinstated because she is now bored with his own
blackness. Shakespeare makes more of the matter, but never through the mouths of
unprejudiced speakers, unless we may count Roderigo’s apparently casual exclamation, “What
a full fortune does the thick-lips owe I” as in this case only, a neutral comment. Of more far-
reaching consequences are Brabantio’s shock and anger at the marriage, which eventually
broke his heart. The question does not arise for Othello until Iago has made it one. The only
reference to race in Cinthio is made by Desdemona herself, when she tells Othello, ‘You Moors
are so hot, that the merest trifle excites you to anger and revenge.’ Shakespeare’s Desdemona
says almost the opposite _of this
I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humours from him.
Absence of Moral
As usual with Shakespeare, the moral of the story in his source is left out by him, or at the most,
made only implicit and general. Cinthio puts his moral into Desdemona’s hand when she thinks
she has lost Othello’s love, and tells Emilia that the ladies of Italy will take her as an example
not to marry a man whom Nature, Heaven, and manner of life separate us from. These
sentiments are not a part of Shakespeare’s Desdemona, but are divided, in effect, between
Brabantio, where they are sincere, Iago, and Othello, after Iago has contaminated him.
Shakespeare and Cinthio come closest together when Cinthio tells us that she fell in love
‘attracted not by feminine appetite, but by the qualities of the Moor’ about which, however,
Cinthio is silent. In Shakespeare’s play, we have an admirable portrait of Othello as a man,
before Iago poisons his mind.

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What part does Othello’s being an alien play in his

tragedy ?
Iago’s Hatred
Although criticism will perhaps never be able to suggest an adequate motivation for Iago’s
hatred of and malice towards Othello, one striking element of it, which is often overlooked,
may be pointed out. Iago seems to hate Othello because he is a Moor––an alien in Venice, and
a man of outlandish race and complexion who has sought to be on par with Venetians by
embracing Christianity, and by making himself militarily indispensable.
Cinthio’s equivalent of Iago did not hate the Moor at all, but deceived him in order to revenge
himself on his wife for her refusal to commit adultery. It was only after having her murdered
that the Moor, regretting the deed, turned on its instigator and demoted him, and they then
began, to hate each other. In Shakespeare, Iago’s hatred, which fills the entire play from line
seven to the end, is one-sided, obsessive, and single-minded. Yet Othello, like all the other
characters, has no reason to suspect its existence. Cassio and Roderigo are of marginal
importance to Iago. Desdemona is simply the best means of getting at Othello ; and Roderigo,
like Cassio, a means of getting at Desdemona. To Cassio, Othello’s only friend, Iago extends the
same fantastic suspicion of adultery with Emilia : ‘For I fear Cassio with my night-cap, too.’ That
too is revealing. If Iago has an obsession about sex it is clear that Othello is somewhere at the
centre of it.
Obsessive Attitude
There is something strongly obsessive, irrational, but powerful, underlying Iago’s intense
antipathy towards Othello and the improvised reasoning with which he justifies it, continually
presses up towards the surface of his language. It breaks through into action at the opening of
the play in order to give the audience the key to his character. After this its energies go into the
intrigue that will bring the hated object and all its associates to destruction ; but it often nearly
betrays itself. Iago’s ‘motive-hunting’ has been much discussed, but the fact is that he never
gives a direct reason of any kind for his hatred. He tells Roderigo the story of Cassio’s
appointment and then asks whether this gives him any reason to love the Moor ? Later he
reflects : ‘I hate the Moor ; And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/He’s done my office’–
–the hatred and its possible cause are unconnected. Again he tells himself : ‘The Moor, howbeit
that I endure him not,/Is of a constant, loving, noble nature’, where this phrase ‘I endure him
not (‘I just can’t stand him’)’ is even more revealing than ‘I hate’, especially when accompanied
by an acknowledgement of his true qualities. ‘I have told thee often, and I re-tell thee again and
again, I hate the Moor.’ Iago’s mind broods constantly over Othello’s colour. After the
disembarkation at Cyprus, when Cassio drinks ‘To the health of our general’ Iago drinks ‘to the
health of black Othello’. But it is in conversation with Othello himself that the hidden disgust

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most nearly betrays itself. One exchange is of particular importance. Othello’s trust in
Desdemona is just beginning to waver :
Othello. And yet, how nature erring from itself-––
Logo. Ay, there’s the point : as––to be bold with you––

Not to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tends––
Foh ! one may smell in such a will most rank,

Foul disproportion, thoughts unnatural.
But pardon me-––
Iago is, in effect, only repeating what Brabantio had said in council.
Iago’s ‘Magic’
Iago uses on Othello ally the witchcraft which the latter is accused of having employed against
Desdemona. His weapon is systematic unreason, magic. Brabantio’s first assumption on
learning that his daughter had fallen in love with a Moor was that she must have been
corrupted by sorcery. The Duke’s council soon realizes that mutual love was the only
‘witchcraft’ in the case. Shakespeare is careful to show that the advances came equally from
both sides, though at first he plays down the sensual element in Othello’s love because men
from hot climates were traditionally hot-blooded and this must be supposed of Othello. It is not
their union but their disunion that is effected by ‘drop or minerals’, as the imagery now begins
to demonstrate. Iago curbs Roderigo’s impatience by reminding him that ‘we work by wit and
not by witchcraft’, meaning ‘the job cannot be done without planning’ ; but in this most ironical
of Shakespeare’s tragedies the statement carries an opposite implication : ‘I work by witchcraft,
not by reason.’ The degrading of Cassio in Act II is a kind of symbolic rehearsal of the method
Iago will use with his principal victim. Betrayed into drunkenness and senseless violence, Cassio
cries in self-disgust : ‘To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast !’ The
‘medicine’ that to ‘unwitted’ Cassio was alcohol ; the drug used on Othello will be more subtle
and instead of wine into his mouth Iago will poor pestilence into his ear, but the sequence of
results is to be identical. ‘The Moor already changes with my poison’, Iago says after his first
insinuations, and he knows that the victim has no antidote against this poison.
Othello’s Dignity
For all the cunning devilry of Iago’s plots, Othello is able to recover, in large measure, his
human dignity before he dies. Iago’s aim has been not Othello’s overthrow but his total
degradation as a human being : that he should kill what he loved most, in jealous madness, with

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his own hands. This aim is almost realized. At least once Othello has broken down into actual
madness under Iago’s mental drugs ; he has solemnly dedicated his heart to hatred and
vengeance ; and in his insults to Desdemona he has become indistinguishable from the bond-
slave Brabantio once compared him to :’A beggar in his drink could not have laid such terms
upon his callat.’ Yet he does not actually commit the murder is jealous revenge but as an act of
objective justice, even of civic and religious duty. In a way this makes it worse ; but it means
that Iago has already partly failed. Othello kills in persisting love, not hate. The action has
restored his self-command and reasserted his public responsibility at the expense of his private
inclination. In Desdemona’s actual presence, instead of behaving like a mad beast he has to
force himself to go through with it. When he says, weeping over the girl he intends not to
murder but to sacrifice,
This sorrow’s heavenly ;

It strikes where it doth love.
he is recognizably trying to administer the same impersonal justice as when he dismissed Cassio
:
Cassio, I love thee ;
But never more be officer of mine.

There too, ironically enough, he had been tricked into his act of justice, and here it is a horrible
delusion, as Desdemona tries to tell him with her unanswerable ‘That death’s unnatural that
kills for loving’ ; but from now on Othello is deluded but responsible, capable of summing
himself up with complete self-awareness after his enlightenment as ‘an honourable murderer’.
Othello’s Suicide
Othello’s suicide is also an act of justice, and could, have been dictated by the realization that
the state might well pardon him because of the extenuating circumstances. At least that is how
Othello seems to understand the position, for as soon as Lodovico’s decision is announced he
says :
I have done the state some service, and they know’t––
an ironic repetition of his confidence in Act I that his usefulness to the state would outweigh
Brabantio’s objections to his marriage: ‘My services which I have done the signiory/Shall out-
tongue his complaints.’ He can hardly be ‘cheering himself up’, as T. S. Eliot oddly interprets. He
is recognizing, and rejecting, the possibility of avoiding the death-penalty. He refuses to throw
himself on the mercy of the Venetian senators, even though the most powerful of those that
might seek vengeance on him, Brabantio, is known to have died. Instead, he repudiates the
deed––for which his sterile tears flow like the secretions from trees in his native Africa that can
restore life to the phoenix––and also, dissociates himself from those who would judge him for
the deed. They are offered, almost contemptuously, ‘a word or two before you go’. Othello is

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now seeing himself and his social environment with complete objectivity ‘Speak of me as I am ;
nothing extenuate,/Nor set down aught in malice,’ and his own comments are not expressed
subjectively but in detached clear-cut images. Whether it is to the ‘base Judean’ of the Folio or
to the ‘base Indian’ of the Quarto that he compares himself, Othello’s final image of his
relationship with Desdemona is of a white pearl in a black hand.
Substantiate the view that Iago’s real motive is love

of power, although he himself is sure of it.
Iago’s Villainy
Iago is a unique villain, for no other villain of any tragedy, Shakespearean or non-
Shakespearean, has generated a volume of controversy which is at all comparable to that of
which Iago has been the cause. It would not be strictly correct to say that the starting-point of
this controversy was Coleridge’s characterizing of Iago’s reasonings and self-justifications as
“the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity”, for the puzzlement, and even fascination,
exercised by the character of Iago existed much earlier.
For example, a ‘Gentleman of Exeter’ was at considerable pains to justify t character and
conduct of Iago in an essay published in 1790, entitled, “An Apology for the Character and
Conduct of logo”. In this he emphasises the fact that Iago enjoys a good reputation, as man and
soldier, and that if be were really wicked the fact would have been discovered by some one or
the other in the play during the twenty-eight years of his life that have already elapsed. Two
minor critics of the nineteenth century and several modern critics maintain that Iago’s
suspicions of having been cuckolded by the Moor are reasonable ; hence they credit him with
an adequate motive for ruining Othello. Asks J. W. Draper :
Is Iago then so black a villain ? Is he not a commonplace Renaissance soldier, ‘honest

as this world goes’, caught in the fell grip of circumstance and attempting along conventional
lines to vindicate his honour ?
Iago’s ‘Motivelessness’
For a deeply malicious person, such as we must believe Iago to be, there need be no other
motive than his own malice. This point is convincingly argued by Helen Gardner. She observes
that the attempt to attribute to Iago a consistent point of view is bound to fail ; “He is no
realist. In any sense which matters he is incapable of speaking truth, because he is incapable of
disinterestedness. He can express a high view or a low view to taste. The world and other
people exist for him only to be used. His definition of growing up is an interesting one. Maturity
to him is knowing how to ‘distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury’. His famous ‘gain’d
knowledge’ is all generalizations, information docketed and filed. He is monstrous because,

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faced with the manifold richness of experience, his only reaction is calculation and the desire to
manipulate. If we try to find in him a view of life, we find in the end only an intolerable levity, a
power of being ‘all things to all men’ in a very unapostolic sense, and an incessant activity. Iago
is the man of action in this play, incapable of contemplation and wholly insusceptible to the
holiness of fact. He has, in one sense, plenty of motives. His immediate motives for embarking
on the whole scheme are financial, the need to keep Roderigo sweet, and his desire for the
lieutenancy. His general motive is detestation of superiority in itself and as recognized by others
; he is past master of the sneer. Coleridge has been much criticized for speaking of his
‘motiveless malignity’ and yet the note of glee in Iago confirms Coleridge’s moral insight.
Ultimately, whatever its proximate motives, malice is motiveless ; that is the secret of its power
and its horror, why it can go unsuspected and why its revelation always shocks. It is, I fear, its
own reward.” It seems that Iago feels the need of attributing his actions to some plausible
motive.
The Mystery of Evil
Real, inveterate evil always has a certain mystery about it. Iago’s personality is invested with
this mystery in abundance. As Bernard Spivack observes, in spite of the exhaustive
rationalisation of Iago by modern critics, the enigma of this character still remains intractable :
There is still no successful mediation, between his terrible vividness, as we feel it on
the one hand, and the blank he presents to our scrutiny on the other. To his bad eminence
above all figures of evil in the Elizabethan drama he is elevated not only by the shock of his
turpitude, the pathos of his victims, and the poetry of his role but also, and in no small
measure, by his mystery. The question came after half a century of criticism had already tried to
answer it, and the attempts have been legion ever since. But the question abides, and in 1945
Granville-Barker hopelessly threw up his hands at it : “Behind all the mutability there is,
perhaps, no Iago, only a poisoned and poisonous ganglion of cravings after evil.”
Iago’s Motives
It is not that Iago claims, or seems to, lack motives. On the other hand, as Coleridge himself
stressed, Iago is at considerable pains to enumerate to himself the reasons he has for working
the ruin of Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and even Roderigo. As M. R. Ridley observes, Iago is no
doubt a villain, but he is a very human villain and very far from motiveless. He is a
comparatively young and vastly ambitious professional soldier. War, as he says, is his “trade”,
his only trade, the only occupation in which he can loot for advancement. He has been
disappointed (in fact, he thinks, defrauded) of military promotion which he had every reason to
expect, and, what is worse, the man who has been appointed is one of whose capacities as a
soldier he is contemptuous––his view of Cassio is the view traditionally held in all ages and
armies by the “Practical’ soldier, the company officer and N.C.O., of the gilded and theoretic
staff officer. Any man in Iago’s position would be angered though, mercifully, few men would
be tempted to plan such retaliation, and even fewer would have the skill to secure it. He has

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also another, though from the point of view of his career irrelevant, motive ; his suspicion that
Othello has cuckolded him is not a bit of momentary motive-hunting ; however ill-founded, it is,
as a later remark of Emilia shows, a genuine suspicion.
Love of Power
There is further, in Iago’s temperament, a ‘general’ motive quite apart from the immediate and
specific occasion. He may not really have an innate love of cruelty for its own sake, and the
mere spectacle of suffering, caused by any agency other than himself, would have, perhaps,
little relish for him. But he has a profound love of power, and there is no more certain proof of
one’s power than the ability to hurt :
He is like the child, pulling a fly to pieces or tormenting his younger brother. It is
not the pain inflicted which delights him, but the fact that here is something or someone on
which he, otherwise harried and controlled by unreasonable adults, can exercise unfettered
power. Further, Iago’s love of power is partly ‘compensatory’. He despises most of the rest of
mankind ; any man who does not keep his heart strictly attending on himself, who allows
anything but reason and self-interest to guide his actions is to Iago just a fool. Yet in this
preposterous world the men and women who have some instincts of generosity, some regard
for honesty and honour, somehow manage to be more highly thought of than the self seekingly
reasonable Iago ; they are apt to have a daily beauty in their lives which (for Iago is honest with
himself), makes him ugly ; they may even –– most absurd of all-––be more successful. Can he
be wrong ? The idea is intolerable.
Element of Terror
W. H. Auden points attention to a unique aspect of the character of Iago––the terror he holds
more for the modern reader or spectator, although to his Elizabethan counterpart he would
have appeared to be just another Machiavellian villain, with whom he would never think of
identifying himself. Auden adds :
To us, I think, he is a much more alarming figure ; we cannot hiss at him when he
appears as we can hiss at the villain in a Western movie because none of us can honestly say
that he does not understand how such a. wicked person can exist. For is not Iago, the practical’
joker, a parabolic figure for the autonomous pursuit of scientific knowledge through
experiment which we all, whether we are scientists or not, take for granted as natural and right
?
To Auden, Iago is an impersonal investigator who wants to discover all that he can about
Othello. The knowledge that he seeks is, in our terms, the equivalent of power. Iago’s
procedure seems to Auden of conform to Bacon’s definition of scientific enquiry as ‘putting
Nature to the question’. We must concede that upto a point Iago is highly successful, for not
only does he discover unsuspected truths about the formidable general, but reduces him to a

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mere ‘thing’. It is a manifestation of Othello’s own greatness that, just before his death, he
recovers his human identity once again.
Write a soft on the soliloquies of Othello. What is

their’ necessity, and what degree of success does
the dramatist achieve la them ?
Significant Departure
In Othello Shakespeare makes an important departure in his use of the soliloquy. Whereas in
tragedies like Hamlet and Macbeth the soliloquy is monopolised by the hero, in Othello it is the
villain who has the lion’s share of soliloquies––eight soliloquies are assigned to Iago, whereas
Othello has only three of them. An important reason for this departure is that the character of
the hero in Othello is too straightforward and transparent to need much elucidation through
soliloquies.
On the other hand, Iago is not at all what he seems, and without his soliloquies the reader or
spectator would have been as much in the dark about him as the characters in the play. An
important feature of Iago’s soliloquies is that most of them occur at the end of scenes. These
soliloquies foreshadow coming events and thus help in plot-development, in addition to their
obvious function of revealing the mind and motivation of Iago.
Classification
Of the eight soliloquies of logo, the first three have been characterised as epiphanies, and the
remaining five as signposts. That is to say, in the former group he intimately reveals his nature,
whereas in the remaining five soliloquies we see him first groping after a plan and then
gradually seeing his way clearly towards successive steps of it. Thus these soliloquies reveal
what Iago is going to do with respect to other characters.
Self-Revelation
The first three soliloquies serve the important function of giving to the audience significant
information which they have no other means of obtaining. However, we have to make an
important reservation about Iago’s soliloquies––they are not to be taken as expressing
objective truth, although they truly reflect his own mind. Thus when he says about Othello
that-––
it is thought abroad, that ’twixt my sheets
Ha’s done my office ; I know not, if ’t be true.

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This is not to be taken as evidence that there was a rumour of this kind going about. If
Shakespeare had meant us to believe this, nothing would have been easier for him than to
make Roderigo or Montano, or even the Clown, blurt it out ; but we never hear the slighest hint
of it ; it is one of logo’s inventions, and gives us clear information about his state of mind ; he is
not under hallucination, he is in the subtler, but very common condition, which almost
everyone experiences in some degree, of one who is entertaining a fantasy in order to feed a
passion. Psychologically, logo is a slighted man, powerfully possessed by hatred against a
master who (as he thinks) has kept him down, and by envy for a man he despises, who has
been promoted over him. All this comes out in the first lines of the play. Such a man will
naturally have a fantasy life in which be can hate these enemies the more, that he may revenge
himself upon them the more. The fantasy that comes most easily to him is that of crude
copulation ; it is his-theme-song.
Grading in Horror
These three soliloquies are graded in their horror and heinousness, with the most horrible of
them coming last of all. Their function is not to bring logo closer to the audience, or create
sympathy for him but to distance him from them, to create hatred for him. This is what is
unique in them. Iago’s soliloquies are designed to make him progressively more repellent. They
are the hairpin bends by which we descend into the abysses of his nature. There is also another
purpose to be discerned in these speeches. They are there to offer the living image of a man
who is the opposite of what he appears to be. He is a walking illustration of the theme with
which he opens the play
I am not what I am.
Analysis : First Soliloquy
The first of these soliloquies occurs at the end of the First Act. The care of Desdemona has just
been entrusted to Iago and he is left with Roderigo, whom he immediately instructs in the
means of seducing her. Roderigo, gulled by his hopes and lust, goes out obediently to sell all his
land. It is time for Iago to explain himself a little to the audience. Once again he asserts the
basic fact :
I hate the Moor

and gives us a first pointer to the plot that is forming in his mind :
Let me see now.
To get his place, and to plume up my will
In double knavery. How ? How ? Let’s see.
After some time, to abuse Othello’s ears,

99
That he is too familiar with his wife……

and he finishes this aspect of the soliloquy with-––
I have’t : it is engendred : Hell, and Night,
Must bring this monstrous birth, to the world’s light.

Second and Third Soliloquy
In the second soliloquy, Iago brings his plot into slightly sharper focus ; he will abuse Cassio to
the Moor and make the Moor thank him and reward him for ‘making him egregiously an ass’ :
but still the line of action is a little blurred :
’Tis her : but yet confus’d,
Knavery’s plaine face, is never seen, till us’d.
The complete, explicit plot is reserved for the third’ soliloquy :
For whiles this honest Fool

Plies Desdemona to repair his Fortune,
And she for him, pleads strongly to the Moor,
I’ll poor this pestilence into his ear :
That she repeals him, for her body’s lust,
Second Group
The remaining five soliloquies are signposts in the sense of giving valuable indications about
Iago’s plots. Their primary importance is not psychological : in them we find Iago giving practical
shape to his thoughts. In one of them he reveals his plan of dropping Desdemona’s
handkerchief in Cassio’s house, in the fullest confidence that the discovery of the handkerchief
will be regarded by Othello as a strong confirmation of his suspicions. In another he announcer
that he is going to cause a rift between Othello and Cassio and bring about the latters’ downfall.
In still another soliloquy we find him justifying the doom which he has in store for his victims,
especially Cassio and Roderigo.
Othello’s Soliloquies
One of the soliloquies of Othello is tendered absolutely essential by the fact that he has just
forfeited the reader’s sympathy by striking at Desdemona in public and needs to rehabilitate
himself. Dramatically, this soliloquy, with which the last scene starts, is not so essential, for
Desdemona could have been, if Shakespeare so chose, shown as awake. On the other hand, the
need for Othello to restore himself in the reader’s estimation, to some extent at least, and the
need to show that he thought of Desdemona’s billing not as murder but as a piece of justice,

100
was paramount, and only a soliloquy could achieve this. Othello has already decided what to do
before be begins the soliloquy :
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul-–
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars––

It is the cause.
What underlies this soliloquy is the Othello’s conviction that adultery deserves death, and he
takes Desdemona’s culpability for granted. His fault is that of foolish gullibility; which fully
deserves the curse––“O fool ! fool ! fool !”
Last Soliloquy
Othello’s last soliloquy is intensely poetic and is great in its impact. The soliloquy imparts a
beautiful pattern to the scene, with even some of the words repeated at the end. The soliloquy
heralds an act of justice, committed on the wedding-bed of Desdemona, which becomes her
death-bed in the beginning of the scene, and Othello’s death-bed at the end of it. Both the
killings are essential acts of justice, and each is preceded by a kiss. However, where the first
deed is enacted in ignorance, the second is done in full tragic enlightenment. In Othello’s first
speech, which is a soliloquy, Othello says, kissing Desdemona-––
One more, one more.

Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,
And love thee after. One more, and that’s the last.
He recalls this just before he is going to kill himself, and exclaims :
I kiss’d thee are I kill’d thee. No way but this––

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.
Integral Part
Thus Othello’s soliloquy also is an integral part of the scene in which it occurs. It comments on
the action which is about to take place, expressing the agent’s conscious motive and giving his
view of its nature. It reveals a vast change in Othello’s mood––the earlier fury has given place
to a deadly quiet which is frightening. As Bradley observes, the man who utters this soliloquy
doer not seem to be the same man whom we have seen in Act IV. Othello’s words tell us that
he is going to rave Desdemona from herself, not in hate, but in honour and love. His anger has
passed, and in its place there is now a, boundless sorrow. Indeed, without this soliloquy,
Othello would look less of a tragic hero and more of a bloody murderer.

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Othello - A Racist Play?
There are lots of things to suggest this is a racist Play. Racism don't actually
dominates the play, even though it has a racist theme. There is a romantic
union between black and white which gets destroyed because most people
think the relationship is wrong. At the time the play was written, 1604,
even the Queen of England was racist so there must have been a
strong hatred of blacks around that time.
Most racist comments in the play are said by people that are angry or upset.
For example, when Emilia found out that Othello had killed Desdemona she
was extremely mad and she called Othello a “Blacker devil”, this was the
only time in the play that she had said anything racist about Othello. The
main characters that have racist attitudes are Iago, Brabantio, Roderigo and
Emilia, with the hatred of Othello as the basis for their racist actions and
comments towards him. Iago is the most racist character in the book as he
has it in for Othello right from the start. What sparks off Iago's hate towards
him is the fact that when Othello chose his lieutenant , it was Cassio
who was chosen instead of Iago. What made Iago angry was the fact that
Cassio had no experience in war when he did and Cassio was chosen instead
of him. Iago does not say anything racist to Othello's face but he has a lot to
say against him behind his back. He schemes to destroy Othello and
anything in his way including Cassio and Desdemona. The first time we hear
one of his racist comments is when he's talking to Brabantio about Othello
and Desdemona,
“Even now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe”.
Iago says this to try and turn Brabantio against Othello. Iago uses racist
comments all the way through the play, as he tries to turn people against
Othello, for example calling him a “Barbary Horse”. He never says
anything racist to Othello's face because in his plot he had to be his best
friend, so as not to make him suspicious that Iago was causing all the
trouble for him. Iago is jealous of Othello for many reasons, one being that
Othello has higher ranking in the army than him, and also he has a good
marriage with Desdemona which Iago does not have himself with Emilia.
These are the main causes of his hatred for Othello and the reason he
adopts such a racist attitude.

102
Roderigo is another one of the racist characters in the play, being so right
from the start. He is Iago's accomplice and will do anything that Iago wants
him to. I think he does this because of the way Iago can twist a situation to
make it sound as if Roderigo would get something good from it but in the
end he doesn't.
One of the racist names he calls Othello behind his back is “Thick-lips”. He
hates Othello because he's jealous of him as healso loves Desdemona but
cannot have her. I don't think he views Othello in a very bad, racist way but
uses the racism against Othello because he's jealous of him. Neither
Roderigo or Iago would say anything racist to Othello's face as he is the
general of the army.
Brabantio is also a racist character, and is enraged when he finds out that
his daughter, Desdemona, has been seeing “the moor “behind his back.
Brabantio is so mad he sends out his guards to catch Othello and put him in
prison. Brabantio views Othello as a foul and dirty no good black, I think this
racist view of his is because he's angry when he finds out that his daughter
has been seeing this “moor”. Unlike Iago and Roderigo, Brabantio will
openly make racist comments about Othello to his face such as,
“lascivious moor”,
“Wheeling stranger”.
Brabantio can do this because he is the Senator of Venice and is higher in

rank than Othello.
The other character who is racist towards Othello is Emilia, the lady in
waiting to Desdemona. Emilia is disgusted with Othello when she finds out
that Othello had killed Desdemona this is the time she gets a chance to
express her feelings about Othello,
“O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!”
Although this is the only time she says what she thinks of him, I think that
she was racist towards Othello all through the play and did not approve of
his relationship with Desdemona but just could not show it because she
would get in trouble with her “lord”.
Because Shakespeare wrote a play about a black and white union, which was

103
later destroyed, I think it shows that he's not racist. I think he feels that the
union between the two is right, but the relationship would never survive in a
racist community at that time. He portrayed the union between Othello and
Desdemona as a good thing, and the people who destroyed it, mainly Iago
and Roderigo as evil. This shows once again that he approves of a black and
white relationship and therefore was not racist himself.
Once before Shakespeare wrote a sonnet about his mistress which says, for
example,
“If snow be white, why then her breast be dun”
He writes about his mistress being black when other poets of that time wrote
about how their mistresses were white. The other poets were the racist
ones, they girlfriends were always white and perfect, Shakespeare wrote
about how his mistresses is black and not very beautiful. Although the play
has a strong racist theme against blacks but on the whole the play is not
racist.
Theme of Jealousy in "Othello"
1. Introduction
Jealousy is a mental cancer. It is an emotion, and the word typically refers to the thoughts and
feelings of insecurity, fear, concern and anxiety over an anticipated loss or status of great personal
value, particularly in reference to a human connection. Five characters in "Othello" by
Shakespeare are victims of jealousy. Iago and Bianca are jealous about Cassio, Brabantio,
Roderigo and Iago are jealous about Othello, and Othello becomes jealous of Desdemona. Emilia
is not jealous about anyone but has a theory that jealousy is a constituent part of masculinity.
Except Brabantio's jealousy of Othello and Iago's jealousy of Cassio, all characters are suffering
from sexual jealousy - a jealousy which is triggered in a person when a sexual partner displays
sexual interest in another person.
2. Iago's Jealousy of Cassio

Iago is a soldier who fights alongside Othello in his army. Proving loyal with every fight, Iago
assumes that the upcoming promotion for lieutenant is imminent. Unfortunately, the promotion is
given to Micheal Cassio instead. Iago cannot understand this appointment because Cassio is an
inexperienced soldier who has no practical knowledge of battle. He is a man of theoretical
learning. On the other hand, Iago is given the job of Ensign, or flag-bearer that is humiliating for
a man who considers himself intellectually superior to everyone around him. Iago thus becomes
jealous of Cassio who is now of higher rank and is young and handsome to boot.

104
3. Iago's Jealousy of Othello

Othello is a general in the Venetian defense forces. He is newly and happily married to an
aristocratic Venetian woman, Desdemona. Iago is jealous of Othello's position and his ability to
woo the young and alluring Desdemona. It is possible that Iago has his own secret passion for
the Moor's new bride, and he is enraged at the idea of the "old black ram" attaining what he
himself desires. Moreover, Iago is stuck in a loveless marriage to a woman who frequently nags
him. Thus he is jealous of Othello and Desdemona's happiness in love. The jealously gets
intensified when he hears a rumor that Othello has been sleeping with his wife, Emilia.
4. Brabantio's Jealousy of Othello
Brabantio is Desdemona's father. He is jealous of the Moor for stealing his daughter's love. He
accuses his new son-in-law of being a "foul-thief". He becomes jealous because he knows that
he will no longer be the most important person in Desdemona's life. After Desdemona makes it
clear that she loves and honours her husband, Brabantio remains vindictive, and bitterly warns
Othello that Desdemona may turn out to be a slut:
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee
No father has ever expressed a more hateful jealousy of his son-in-law as Brabantio.
5. Roderigo's Jealousy of Othello
Roderigo is a wooer of Desdemona. The lovesick Roderigo has trouble with his feelings for
Desdemona and is jealous watching Othello and Desdemona in love. He follows Iago's directions
easily because of his jealousy of Othello's relationship with Desdemona. Along with Iago and
Brabantio, he berates and criticizes Othello about everything, including race. He expresses his
jealousy of Othello's marriage to Desdemona by exclaiming,
What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe
If he can carry't thus!
6. Bianca's Jealousy of Cassio

Bianca is Cassio's prostitute girlfriend. She becomes sick with jealousy when Cassio gives her
a handkerchief in order to copy Desdemona's handkerchief for him. Bianca is already unhappy
with Cassio because he has not been to see her in a week, and the sight of a woman's
handkerchief gives her an attack of jealousy. She throws handkerchief back at Cassio, tells him
that he should give it to the whore he got it from, and declares that no matter where he got it, she
is not about to copy it. Though Bianca's jealousy exists on a much smaller scale, it illustrates that
the sentiment is universal.
7. Othello's Jealousy of Desdemona
Iago plants the seed of jealousy in Othello in Act 3, Scene 3. Iago convinces Othello that
Desdemona has been an unfaithful wife; she has an affair with Cassio. Othello believes Iago's
lies, despite that there is not much evidence. His jealousy leads him to be too trusting of Iago. As
he begins to believe the accusations, his love, affection and kindness for Desdemona fade away.
Othello's jealousy reaches its peak when his token of love for Desdemona, the handkerchief, is
shown up in Cassio's possession. Othello is completely convinced that Desdemona is unfaithful
and he kills her because he has not way to resolve his jealousy.

105
8. Iago's Remarks About Jealousy

Iago describes jealousy as a "green-eyed monster". The meat that this monster feeds on is a
person's heart, which it eats away. At the same time, the monster mocks that person's heart, so
that he or she feels shame. And the monster is insatiable, always gnawing away, so that the
jealous person is never at peace.
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on;
Iago also describes jealousy as a "poison" that consumes the jealous person, eating away at him
and filling him with a passionate desire for revenge.
9. Emilia's Remarks About Jealousy
Emilia believes that jealousy does not need a cause. It is a beast that is born of itself and feeds
on itself. The root of jealousy is not some action of infidelity but insecurity on the part of the one
jealous. Throughout the play, Iago accuses Emilia of being unfaithful to him, just as Othello
accuses Desdemona. She has never been untrue to Iago as Desdemona has never been untrue
to Othello. Thus jealousy does not need an unfaithful act to inspire it. It is a part of a man or
woman's nature.
But jealous souls will not be answer'd so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: 'tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.
10.Conclusion
In short, jealousy, rooted in fear and anger, is a bad emotion to feel and bad quality to possess.
Jealous people do very foolish things, particularly in the case of romantic and sexual jealousy.
Abnormal jealousy is a very complex, passionate and fatal emotion that devours those who allow
it to dominate their lives. This "green-eyed monster" kills Roderigo, Desdemona, Emilia and
Othello. Brabantio has also died and Iago will die in the near future after a drawn out punishment.
It is ironic that almost all of the characters in the play feel jealous about things that never actually
happened -- baseless jealousy for the most part provokes their outbursts.
Themes
Appearance vs. reality
Especially relevant to the issue of Iago's character; for although he is called "honest" by
almost everyone in the play, he is treacherous, deceitful, and manipulative. This also
applies to Desdemona, as Othello believes that she is deceitful and impure, although she is
really blameless and innocent. This theme contributes greatly to the tragedy, as Iago is able
to engineer his schemes due to the perception of others of his honesty. Othello's decision to

106
murder his wife is hastened by a conversation in which Cassio speaks of Bianca; Othello
assumes the man is talking about an affair with Desdemona.
Misrepresentation allows Iago to gain trust and manipulate other people; he is able to
appear to be "honest," in order to deceive and misdirect people. Although the word
"honest" is usually used in an ironic way throughout the text, most characters in the play go
through a crisis of learning who and who not to trust. Most of them, unfortunately, trust in
Iago's honesty; this leads to the downfall of many characters, as this trust in Iago's
"honesty" became a crucial contributor to their undoing. Discovering or uncovering reality
would have changed the course of the play.
Race
Race is an extremely important theme, as it leads to Othello's insecurity, which Iago is able
to manipulate. Despite his standing and military prowess, Othello never feels comfortable
in Venice because of his otherness. As a Moor, he is constantly stereotyped as "savage" or
"animal", even though he speaks eloquently and displays more gentlemanly qualities than
those who judge him. Thus, Othello perceives himself to be a rough outsider, though he is
nothing of the sort. Othello's race sets him apart, and makes him very self-conscious; it
makes him work hard and look carefully after his reputation, so he is regarded as equal to
the white people that surround him. This has perhaps led to his success, but the prejudice
that surrounds him - especially with respect to his marriage to Desdemona - has tragic
consequences.
Pride
Othello is defensively proud of himself and his achievements, and especially proud of the
honorable appearance he presents. The allegations of Desdemona's affair hurt his pride
even more than they inflame his vanity and jealousy; he wants to appear powerful,
accomplished, and moral at every possible instance, and when this is almost denied to him,
his wounded pride becomes especially powerful.
Magic
Othello is charged with using magic to woo Desdemona, merely because he is black, and
therefore, "pagan." Yet, Othello does have real magic, in the words he uses and the stories
he tells. Magic also reappears when Desdemona's handkerchief cannot be found; Othello
has too much trust in the symbolism and charm of the handkerchief, which is why the
object is so significant to him.
Order vs. chaos

As Othello begins to abandon reason and language, chaos takes over. His world begins to be
ruled by chaotic emotions and very shady allegations, with order pushed to the side. This
chaos rushes him into tragedy, and once Othello has sunk into it, he is unable to stop his
fate from taking him over.

107
Self-knowledge
Othello's lack of self-knowledge makes him easy prey for Iago. Once Iago inflames Othello's
jealousy and sets the darker aspects of Othello's nature in motion, there is nothing Othello
can do to stop it, since he cannot even admit that he has these darker traits. Even after he
has murdered his wife, and has learned that Iago set a trap for him, Othello is unable to
acknowledge the character flaws that were manipulated. He asserts he is "honorable" even
in murder. This theme is related to pride, as Othello's pride blinds him to his weaknesses,
precipitating his downfall.
Good vs. Evil

Iago's battle against Othello and Cassio certainly counts as an embodiment of this theme.
Iago and his evil battle to corrupt and turn the flawed natures of other characters, and he
does succeed to some extent. By the end of the play, neither has won, as Desdemona
and Emilia are both dead, and Iago revealed and punished. Othello is a tragic character, but
one that is neither good nor evil. His flaws are easily manipulated, and he is unable to see
the truth while blinded by pride. He is a good soldier and a good man, but this good is
twisted and he commits an evil act.
Desdemona is the embodiment of goodness in the play, as she has done no wrong and seeks
only to love and to help her friends. However, she resigns herself to her death out of this
goodness. The ruin of innocence is a key ingredient to tragedy, but one could interpret that
Desdemona did not have to suffer her fate. Othello represents a grey area between good
and evil, where self-interest clouds even the best intentions, and people on both sides end
up dead.

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1

The Elizabethan Theatre

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The Elizabethan Age

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Shakespeare’s Personal Views

Critical Introduction to “Othello”

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‘Othello’ and Other Shakespearean Tragedies

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Shakespeare achieves an impressive brilliance of effect by the employment of ‘double time’.

The Structure of “Othello”

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Iago. Cassio, my lord ! No, sure, I cannot think it,

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Othello’s precipitate fall from height to depth is tragically appropriate to the

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“Othello” And Shakespearean Tragedy

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The Incident of the Handkerchief

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Othello and Desdemona

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Scene-Wise Summary of “Othello”

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ACT I : SCENE III

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Iago and Roderigo

ACT II : SCENE III

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ACT III : SCENES I & II

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Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:

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As jealous creatures are...

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Critical Commentary on “Othello”

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ACT III : SCENES I & II

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