Chapter VI

OTHELLO

Along with Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, Othello is one of

Shakespeare's four great tragedies and thus a pillar of what most critics take to
be the apex of Shakespeare's dramatic art. In Othello Shakespeare presents the
universal phenomenon of man’s encounter with evil through the role of its villain
lago. Just as in his other tragedies evil is present in the form of the usurper King
Claudius in Hamlet, the faithless daughters in King Lear, and the supernatural
elements of the witches in Macbeth. Shakespeare depicts through his tragedies
the destructive power of evil on the one hand and in spite of that, and in the midst
of all adversities, man’s ability to rise to the fullness of his spirit on the other. At
the end, there is hope for the redemption of man and the same paradigm is
enacted in Othello too.

W e always view 'tragic flaw’ from the perspective of the ‘error’ committed
by the tragic protagonist never keeping in mind what these protagonists ‘suffer’.
Merely hunting for any flaw in Shakespeare’s protagonists which leads to their
inevitable doom would be too unfair to them. The reason for this approach is to
make clear that what is true of all Shakespeare’s tragic heroes is that they are
men of virtue, epitomes of simplicity, and have lead life without any calculative
motives. W e have to accept the fact that they are ignorant of what future holds for
them and what their actions would lead to even though taken with the best of the
intentions and full precautions. Shakespeare’s heroes are not intentional wrong

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doers but are driven into doing something wrong, which is humanly
uncontrollable. They are in fact manouvered by the evil present in the world. Still
they do take the full responsibility of the tragic catastrophe. Thus, even if we find
an element of the wilfulness in their actions they are more vehicles than agents,
more sufferers than active culprits.

The critics of the play who find the root of the tragedy in the so called
“jealousy” of Othello, who consider him as only a victim of ‘male egoism’, who
think that Othello with just a greater awareness could have avoided the tragedy,
are shirking the fact that it is Othello’s propensity to love intensely that makes him
jealous and it is lago who through evil machinations tempts Othello to enter into
extreme rage over Desdemona. Moreover, jealousy is a sublime term which
means single-minded attachment to some loved one. It is a great degree of
intolerance to share the love of one’s own beloved with anyone else, that is, to
love someone entirely with absolute devotion and dedication. W hen such a
feeling possesses then jealousy is sure to arise as one in absolute act of faith and
trust cannot share his beloved with anyone else. Scholars who have gone over
the play with the minutest details to look for moral fault in Othello as to why did he
believe lago need to know that it is as mysterious as why did Eve believe in
Satan, Macbeth in witches, Hamlet in the possibility of the ghost. That is, at the
worst, an ‘error’ of judgment. Othello is not morally culpable, though at times he
commits an intellectual error as the temptation of Othello would have been
resisted only by a divinity. Any other person would have surely succumbed to
such subtle mesmeric manipulations. Othello’s errors are such as no one with
more of human insight could have avoided, as no man has the power to visualize
the impending, disproportionate calamity. Moreover, when momentous critical
events happen the human personality is bound to waver and it is at this time that
incalculable consequences follow. Though the play projects hope for man through
his redemption by suffering, it still remains a mystery as to why does a man like
Othello has to fall.

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 It is Othello who faces lago for fairly long, otherwise if there would have
been any other w eaker character, he would have been trapped more easily by the
evil machinations of lago. The tragic fact is that there is an lago to destroy the
happiness of Othello and engulf him in total wretchedness. W e cannot analyse
the two characters separately, but only in close association with each other, lago
as a power of vice exists to destroy virtue. Jane Adamson rightly argues that:

. . .the way Shakespeare presents him (lago) robs us, totally and
forever, of any chance to remain innocent of the snares we see others in
the play innocently falling into. Hence, even in the early scenes we can
never share the relatively simple clarity of Desdemona’s view of the
world, say, or Emilia’s, or Othello's own, not only because our view of a
drama is always larger than that of any of the characters in it, but
because in this case lago makes us sharply aware, right from the start,
that there is a particular kind of moral fact in the dramatic world, which
the other main characters are somehow too innocent, too unsuspicious, or
too unperceptive - ’too honest’ - to reckon on . .This is surely one reason
why Othello is so continuously painful.1

Othello is the victim of a cunning manipulator like lago who manipulates each and
every situation and “who can bring noblest minds to basest ends”
(Timon of Athens. IV. iii. 466).

The black Moor Othello, who is the greatest army general in Venice, is
intelligent, courageous, honorable, loyal, and usually calm even when under

1 Jane Adamson, Othello as Tragedy: Some Problems of Judgment and Feeling, (Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 1980), p. 66.

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mental and emotional strain. Samuel Johnson summed up the qualities that we

can note in the Moor thus:

. . .magnanimous, artless and credulous, boundless in his confidence,

ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his
revenge.2

His marriage with beautiful Desdemona, the daughter of a prominent Venetian,

provokes racial slurs against him. But he carries on with nobility and dignity as he
leads an army against Turks on Cyprus*. His dedication to duty is eclipsed only by
his all encompassing dedication to Desdemona. In fact, it is this intensity of his
love for Desdemona that prepares him to fall into misery and hatred. Moreover a
man of such great virtue has not yet encountered the subtle evil of the world. In
the course of the play Othello encounters evil just as Eve and just as the beautiful
world of Adam and Eve is ruined by the evil workings of Satan, in the same way
the happy married life of Othello and Desdemona is brought to ruin by the devilish
acts of lago, and in his destruction Othello learns to separate the tangled threads
of appearance and reality, from seeming virtue to true virtue. In this realization
lies his progress as a man. From his tragedy Othello emerges stronger by
accepting the wrong he has done to Desdemona and as a man capable of utmost
suffering, attains full dignity. Shakespeare emphasizes through the destruction of
Othello, as he has done in the case of King Lear or Hamlet, that true wisdom
comes to man only through suffering and the inevitable doom to which the tragic
protagonists are subjected, is not just an outcome of their actions but a result of
the combination of the workings of evil in this world, compounded by the presence
of chance and accidents that constantly militate against happy consequences.

In fact, far from presenting Othello as a savage barbarian, Shakespeare treats

him with profound dignity. When Brabantio and his men arrive with swords

2 Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. by. H R Woudhuysen, (Penguin Books,

London, 1989), p. 247.

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and torches, tipped off about Othello’s whereabouts by Othello's dishonest friend,
vividly echoes John 18:1-11. In that Gospel, Christ and his followers are met by
officers carrying swords and torches. The officers were informed of Christ’s
whereabouts by Judas, who pretends to side with Christ in the ensuing
confrontation. W hen Othello averts the violence that seems imminent with a single
sentence, “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust ’em ” (I. ii. 59), he
echoes Christ’s command to Peter, “Put up thy sword into the sheath”
(John 18:11). O f course, while Christ’s calm restraint is due to his resigned
acceptance of his fate, Othello’s is due to his innate sense of dignity.

Bradley rightly portrays Othello’s personality:

. . .self-controlled, steeled by the experience of countless perils,

hardships and vicissitudes, at once simple and stately in bearing and in
speech, a great man naturally modest but fully conscious of his worth,
proud of his services to the state, unawed by the dignitaries and unelated
by honours, secure, it would seem, against all dangers from without and
all rebellion from within. And he comes to have his life crowned with the
final glory of love, a love as strange, adventurous and romantic as any
passage of his eventful history, filling his heart with tenderness and his
imagination with ecstasy.3

Othello himself admits before the Venetian Senate:

. . as faithful as to heaven
I do confess the vices of my blood,
So justly to your grave ears I'll present
How I did thrive in this fair lady’s love,
And she in mine. (I. iii. 122-26)

3A C Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth,

(Macmillan Education Ltd, London, 1904), p. 161.

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Shakespeare flashed out the fantastic details of Othello’s past life by drawing on a
number of ancient and Renaissance travel tales. Shakespeare clearly attaches
great importance to the image of Othello as a unique and heroic figure, of noble
birth, and it is also important to him that he has a remarkable life story worthy of
telling repeatedly. Not only does he claim that Desdemona fell in love with him
because of his story, he says that he fell in love with her because of her reaction
to his story: “my story being done, / She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;”
(I. iii. 158-59). Othello delivers a long oration to clarify that their relationship is
respectful and mutual:

She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass’d,

And I lov’d her that she did pity them, (l.iii.167-68)

The love of Othello and Desdemona is of a rare kind of mental concordance

between the two. No word is spoken by Othello about Desdemona’s physical
charm. His heart is all filled by thoughts of Desdemona’s love but he doesn’t
intend to use her as an ornament to be displayed. Their love is a union of two
minds and hearts, Platonic in its purity.

Though Desdemona was very beautiful she went for the ‘sooty bosom’ of
Othello. Many of her compatriots wanted to marry her, still she chose for her love
the Moor as she thought that a man’s character and mind was more important
than his age or appearance or race. She admits:

That I did love the Moor, to live with him,

My downright violence and storm of fortunes,
May trumpet to the world. My heart's subdued
Even to the utmost pleasure of my lord:
I saw Othello's visage in his mind,
And to his honours and his valiant parts
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate. (I. iii. 248-54)

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She had submitted herself to the noble qualities of Othello. The love of Othello
and Desdemona is unquestioning faith in each other. Their love is of the most
intense and ideal kind, which makes for happiness in the highest form. The quality
of love that is seen is one of rare sublimity and even sacredness. Love of this type
is differentiated from lust, having its origins in the mind, and is of the very essence
of human felicity. Othello speaks before the Senate that he has married
Desdemona “not / To please the palate of my appetite, / Nor to comply with heat”
(I. iii. 261-63). The foundation of their love is based on the harmony of their souls
rather than bodies. It is love in the highest scale of Christian neo-Platonism, love
of the mind and trust and not any kind of mere physical love.

In Cyprus, Othello and Desdemona have their minds fully occupied with
love after Othello has returned from war and escaped the storms at the sea.
Shakespeare often introduces a storm in his tragedies to convey a disturbance at
the level of the moral world too, and the sign of some evil things to follow. The
roaring wind and pouring rains in King Lear echo the tormented soul of Lear.
Nature seems to be convulsed with the tragic and pathetic state of Lear whom we
prepare to watch being stripped first of royal worldly power, then of ordinary
human dignity, then of the very necessities of life. Even the Heavens above seem
to reject his plea for any grace from them. Likewise in Othello the storms at
Cyprus prepare us to witness the dissonance that is to befall, as Wilson Knight
calls. Though apparently the storm has subsided, as Knight puts it, “there is
another storm brewing in the venomed mind of lago”4. This storm is ready to
engulf all the love, and nobility in Othello. Othello’s encounter with the evil present
in the world embodies one of the central questions posed by Othello: whether the
universe is fundamentally friendly or hostile to man? At this we are made to think
as to why do gods save Othello from the storm and bring him to the land
triumphantly? Is it in order to torture him and bring his mind to the level of the
beast or to make him grow spiritually by self-awareness gained through suffering?

4 G Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, (Routledge, London & New York, 1930), p.126.

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 The meeting of the two lovers in Cyprus is ecstatic, almost beyond words.

This is the musically pleasing moment for the two lovers who are devoted to each

other and who possess high moral qualities. As rightly mentioned by Wilson

Knight,

. . .this is the harmonious marriage of true and noble minds. Othello,

Desdemona, and their love are here apparent, in this scene of storm and
reverberating discharge of canon, as things of noble and conquering
strength: they radiate romantic valour. Othello is essential man in all his
prowess and protective strength; Desdemona essential woman, gentle,
loving, brave in trust of her warrior husband...Colours which are
elsewhere softly toned are here splashed vividly on the play’s canvas.
Here especially Othello appears a prince of heroes. Desdemona is lit by
a divine feminine radiance: both are transfigured.5

There is perfect happiness and Othello is moved to explain his state of well-being
characterised by emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy to see
Desdemona. His joy is so great that he feels their reunion is a kind of miracle. He says:

It gives me wonder great as my content

To see you here before me: O my soul's joy! (II. i. 183-84)

In their love there is a perfect balance of the spiritual and the physical aspect.

Othello’s physical delight is perceived in the enjoyment of his wife’s conversation.

It is blended with his distinct acknowledgement that the real value of his life and

even the beauty of the entire cosmos finds its true incarnation in her.

Othello declares that if such happiness can come after every storm he
would be willing to see the winds blow until they had awakened death and the

5 op. cit., p.126.

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waves rise to heaven and fall to hell. If he were to die now, he says, he would be

happy because he doubts whether he could ever feel more happiness from

anything to come,

If it were now to die,

T were 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. (II. i. 189-93)

Again, a few lines later, Othello says,

I cannot speak enough of this content;

It stops me here, it is too much of joy:
And this, and this, the greatest discords be
That e'er our hearts shall make! (II. i. 196-99)

Contentment, joy, comfort are the words that come from his lips because Othello
feels that Desdemona is his ‘soul mate’. The tone and manner in which Othello
speaks exhibit in him confidence that at once confirms his dedication towards his
wife. The love of Othello and Desdemona seems to be safe and Desdemona
prays for the long life of her husband so that their “loves and comforts should
increase” (II. i. 194) as time passes. There is now a complete harmony in their
married life.

Othello in his over brimming happiness confesses that he happens to talk

aimlessly as he tells Desdemona:

0 my sweet,
1 prattle out of fashion, and I dote
In mine own comforts. (II. i. 205-7)

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It is his happiness to see Desdemona that makes him talk so much that seems to

convey no meaning, but this ‘prattling’ expresses his deep and strong positive

emotion of regard and affection for Desdemona, his wife. Othello is really so full of

Desdemona that he does not want to be disturbed by anything, as he says:

. . . come, my dear love,

The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue,
That profit's yet to come 'twixt me and you. (II. iii. 8-10)

These words express his pleasure and delight which tightens the bond between
him and his beloved, which is capable of a fruitful consummation. His tone is
everywhere that of a man who is simply in love with his wife and at the same time
sure of his wife’s love. It is in terms of domestic concord that love here becomes
fully spiritualized. Othello appears in the action of the play dressed in the
ceremonial garments of romance absorbed in the service of love. Othello
considers Desdemona as his divine deity. Their love is at once divine and worldly,
and promises to become a foundation for procreation. O ne may note that even
lago is sure of the love of the Moor as he utters:

The Moor...

Is of a constant, loving, noble nature;

And I dare think, he’ll prove to Desdemona
A most dear husband: (II. i. 283-86)

This love is the instrument which lago is planning to loosen the pegs until

the harmony is turned into discord. Against the noble and perfect love of Othello

and Desdemona there is the malevolence of the evil lago who wishes to imperil

this love, change it into hatred by all the foul means as he says in an aside:

0 , you are well tun’d now,

But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am (II. i. 199-201)

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To this Shakespearean villain love is, “merely a lust of the blood, and a
permission of the will” (I. iii. 335-36). lago only respects self-love which in
Shakespearean days was the mother of all the vices. The very speed with which
Othello’s love and nobility are turned to hatred and baseness is the evident proof
of how swiftly evil works upon the happy married life of Othello and Desdemona.
A real villain that lago is, he cannot tolerate the love thriving between the two
lovers and believes that Desdemona will turn away from the Moor as soon as her
desire will be satiated and as for Othello he thinks that Moors are changeable and
he will cause the change in Othello soon. Bradley is right in clarifying that the
play should not be reduced to a tragedy of intrigue:

. . .the action and catastrophe of Othello depend largely on intrigue . . .

W e must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue as distinguished from the
tragedy of character, lago’s plot is lago's character in action; and it is
built on his knowledge of Othello’s character, and could not otherwise
have succeeded. Still it remains true that an elaborate plot was
necessary to elicit the catastrophe, for Othello was no Leontes, and he
was the last nature to engender such jealousy from itself. 6

He uses the fool Roderigo initially for the purpose, in order to take advantage of

the “free and open nature” (I. iii. 398) of Othello who either does not trust easily or

trusts completely, and who thinks men to be honest if they but seem to be so.

• ■•

III

lago reveals his villainy when he plots to poison Othello’s happiness and
tries to float Cassio as Desdemona’s lover. W hen Desdemona exchanges

6 op. cit., p.152

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pleasantries with Cassio and when in Venetian politeness of finger-kissing he

addresses her, lago uses this free and liberal manner of Venice to build a whole story

around in order to trap his victims:

He takes her by the palm; ay, well said, whisper; as little a web as this
will ensnare as great a fly as Cassio, Ay, smile upon her, do; I will catch
you in your own courtesies; you say true, 'tis so indeed. (II. i. 167-71)

And as he introduces in a subtle manner the virus of wickedness into the friendly
behaviour of Desdemona and Cassio he urges Roderigo to anger Cassio either
by speaking too rudely or by making some disrespectful gesture so that he may
spoil his reputation and antagonise Othello, lago is planning to do all this in order
to “put the Moor, / At least, into jealousy so strong, / That judgment cannot cure"
(II. i. 295-97). Throughout the play lago is busy in suspecting, breaking and
disrupting human bonds in his own way. It is not because Othello is specially
weak that he is entrapped. It is not merely Othello who says “lago is most honest"
(II. iii. 6), Cassio wishes him as “honest lago" (II. iii. 326), Desdemona calls lago
as “an honest fellow” (111. iii. 5). lago has everyone under his spell. This
unanimity of description should be enough to prove that Othello alone is not the
most gullible of all.

The other fact that lago immediately paints himself as an active villain also
prepares us to be sympathetic to Othello. In the whole design of the play lago
needs no specific motivation to entice someone away from reasons and principles
as this is the very nature of evil, lago is the perfection of wickedness. Goneril,
Regan, Edmund or Claudius seem to have some personal interests of either
money, power or rivalry but lago cannot reduce himself to entertaining any
motive. His statements about what motivates him are hazy and confusing. Is he
motivated by lust for Desdemona, envy of Cassio whom Othello has made the
lieutenant instead of him who he believes deserved the post, or jealousy over his
wife Emilia’s supposed affair with Othello? He even throws in a bizarre

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parenthesis his suspicion that Cassio might also have slept with his wife
(II. i. 302). Coleridge has interpreted this account of lago as one whose
soliloquies express, “the motive hunting of motiveless Malignity”7 For each of
lago’s actions, he creates a momentary and unimportant justification. Although he
is called "honest" by almost everyone in the play, he is treacherous, deceitful, and
manipulative, lago is evil disguised as good, who wears the outward sign of virtue,
lago presents himself as loyal and trustworthy. As he waits for an opportunity to
further his own self-interest, lago only pretends to serve Othello. The evil lago
pretends to be a friend of Othello in order to manipulate him to serve his own evil
end in the play as he utters:

In following him, I follow but myself,

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end. (I. i. 58-60)

lago explains to Roderigo that he has no respect for Othello beyond what he has
to show to further his own revenge: “I follow him to serve my turn upon him”
(i.i.42). lago is a classic two-faced villain, a type of character known in
Shakespeare’s time as a “Machiavel"— a villain who, adhering all too literally to
the teachings of the political philosopher Machiavelli, lets nothing stand in his way
in his quest for power. He is also reminiscent of the stock character of Vice from
medieval morality plays, who unabashedly announces to the audience his
diabolical schemes.

lago explicitly delights in his villainy, always tipping the audience off about
his plotting. In many ways, lago not Othello is the driving force behind the plot, a
playwright of sorts whose machinations drive the action of the play, lago makes
Cassio drink heavily and at this moment Roderigo deliberately picks up fight with
him. This makes Cassio run after him with a sword and in the process wound

7 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge’s Shakespearean Criticism, ed. by, T M Raysor, 2nd Vol.
(E P Dutton & Co, New York, 1930), p.49.

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Montano who tries to intervene. AH this is planned by lago to tarnish the image of
Cassio in the eyes of Othello who strips Cassio of his rank of lieutenant. Cassio
when sobered is overcome with grief and asks for ‘honest’ lago’s help who
advises him to take Desdemona’s help to win back his reputation. But how can
lago be so helpful? There is another vicious plan in his mind which he speaks out
in one of his soliloquies:

for while this honest fool [Cassio]

Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes,
And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,
I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear,
That she repeals him for her body's lust;
And by how much she strives to do him good,
She shall undo her credit with the Moor;
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh 'em all. (II. ni 344-53)

Thus, lago prepares to rouse a feeling of suspicion in the mind of Othello and for

the execution of his plan a few more things are to be done as he marks:

Some things are to be done,

My wife must move for Cassio to her mistress;
I’ll set her on.
Myself a while to draw the Moor apart,

And bring him jump when he may Cassio find,

Soliciting his wife. Oy, that’s the way;
Dull not device by coldness and delay. (II. iii. 373-78)

Desdemona entreats Othello to forgive Cassio and reinstate him as

lieutenant. Othello assures her that he will speak to Cassio, but he answers
evasively when she tries to set a meeting time. She criticizes Othello for
responding to her request so grudgingly and hesitantly, and Othello tells her that

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he will deny her nothing but his thoughts are at the moment focused on some
other matter. He does not wish to call Cassio back urgently but Desdemona is
insistent. He assures her that he will do what Desdemona asks him but
Desdemona does not seem to be satisfied as perhaps she is utterly eager to have
her requests granted and too eager to prove that her husband loves and listens
to her. She had promised Cassio that she will speak to Othello about him without
any delay so she harries Othello about when he will reinstate Cassio as his
lieutenant:

tonight at supper?
To-morrow dinner, then?
Why then, to-morrow night, or Tuesday morn;
On Tuesday noon, or night; on Wednesday morn:
I prithee name the time, but let it not
Exceed three days: i' faith h e's penitent,
And yet his trespass, in our common reason,
(Save that they say, the wars must make examples
Out of their best) is not almost a fault
To incur a private check: When shall he come?
Tell me Othello (III. iii. 59-79).

Such nagging insistence seems unnecessary and it leads to Othello becoming

mildly vexed with his wife’s childish pestering and lago anticipates and
manipulates the other characters so skilfully that they seem to be acting
simultaneously of their own free will, but are really acting as lago’s puppets.

Some of the most frequently quoted lines of Othello that display his
characteristic qualities are when he says affectionately:

Excellent wretch, Perdition catch my soul,

But I do love thee, and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again (lll.iii.91-93).

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Samuel Johnson observes:

the meaning of the word ‘wretch’ is . . . a term of the softest and fondest
tenderness, it expresses the utmost degree of amiableness, joined with
an idea, which perhaps all tenderness includes, of feebleness, softness
and want of protection. Othello, considering Desdemona as excelling In
beauty and virtue, soft and timorous by her sex and by her situation
absolutely in his power, calls her ‘excellent wretch’. It may be expressed:
Dear, harmless, helpless excellence.8

The lines just quoted come after lago’s venomous insinuation, “Ha, I like not that”
(111. iii. 35) referring to Cassio’s sudden departure from Desdemona, even before
the temptation of Othello that begins at III. iii. 93. The churning has already
begun in Othello’s soul. Dover Wilson and Alice W alker rightly observe that these
lines are “Othello’s last utterance of untroubled love as Desdemona goes out” and
comments:

The lines are pregnant with irony. Perdition in the person of lago is at his
elbow, luring to catch his soul; chaos and black night are about to
descend upon him9.

Norman Sanders has significantly noted in his edition (ad. loc.):

The allusion is to the classical legend that Love was the first of the gods
to spring out of the original chaos.10

Sanders supports his observation with a collateral quotation from Ben Jonson’s

The Masque of Beauty (282-5, 326-8). For Othello, on the brink of the precipice,

the lines are prophetic. Love for Desdemona is cosmos for him, without it there is

8 op. cit., p.245.

9 Dover Wilson and Alice Walker, Othello: The New Shakespeare, (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1971), p.xxxviii.

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definitely chaos. The classical ‘chaos’ is deepened by the Christian connotation of

‘perdition’. Chaos may mean blind disorder, but perdition is intolerable and eternal

torture too. For Othello has only two possible immensities: heavenly love or

infernal torture.

This world of pure and divine love is poisoned and undermined by lago.
Alone with Othello, lago begins his insinuations of an affair between Cassio and
Desdemona. Desdemona’s sympathy for Cassio is an honest attempt to restore
Othello’s faith in Cassio while lago’s so called loyalty towards Othello is
committed to the destruction of everything that is good. That is the reason why out
of seeming curiosity lago asks if Desdemona was correct when she referred to
the days when Othello was courting her and did Cassio know of their love. Here
he charges Othello’s memory to recall that Desdemona and Cassio have known
each other since long. Then again playing the reluctant confidant he begs, as it
were, not to be pressed about certain of his dark thoughts, lago here skillfully
makes use of his public reputation for ‘honesty’ and it is for this reason that
Othello is alarmed by lago’s theatrical hesitations, for all believe that lago is not a
“false disloyal knave” (III. iii. 121) and that he is full of “love and honesty” (111. iii.
118). Again lago is playing with words so that a spark of suspicion which has
arisen in Othello’s mind may become a huge fire. W hat (ago is doing, of course, is
making Othello believe that lago’s honour is at stake if he confesses to his fear.
Thus he lies to Othello again saying that he is unwilling to speak further because
he may be vicious in his guess. So Othello is convinced that:

I heard thee say but now, thou lik’st not that,

When Cassio left my wife: what didst not like?
And when I told thee he was of my counsel,
In my whole course of wooing, thou criedst. “Indeed?”
And didst contract and purse thy brow together,
As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain

10 Norman Sanders, Othello: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1984), p. 117.

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 Some horrible conceit: (III. iii. 113-119)

In such a situation one would never doubt that lago would speak the “worst of
thought / The worst of word” (III. iii. 136-37). lago further speaks only the word
“jealousy” aloud; fixing it in Othello’s imagination and then sanctimoniously, he
warns his general against the evil “green-ey’d monster, which doth mock/ The
meat it feeds on” (III. iii.170-71). Filled with what appears to be moral fervor lago
proceeds to a glorification of reputation: “Good name in man and woman’s, dear,
my lord: / Is the immediate jewel of our souls” (III. iii. 159-60). W e can over here
recall lago’s perverted views on the same subject when he talked with Cassio
earlier:

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit, and
lost without deserving (II. iii. 260-62)

Contrary to that lago here pretends to hold reputation in the highest esteem!

Othello is not to be easily convinced of his wife’s betrayal. His assertively

masterful dignity is exhibited in his words as he says:

Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw

The smallest fear, or doubt of her revolt:
For she had eyes, and chose me. No, lago,
I’ll see before I doubt, when I doubt, prove, (III. Iii. 191-94)

W e see Othello speaking out of confident faith that he possesses in his

relationship with Desdemona. For him still the bond of marriage is as a result of
true love. True love is of course eternal which is not to be altered by time and it is
for this reason that true love issues in the marriage of Othello and Desdemona.
Othello is not ready to believe the words of lago however hard he may try. But
one of the paradoxes of such ideal love is that its tragic possibilities are also
irretrievably intensified.

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 lago disapproves of such a stance of ever blooming love as he feels he is
in a position to bend human nature in his way and prove what he wishes. He
plays a plausible trick and asks the Moor to use his “free and noble nature” (III.
iii.203), to determine for himself the truth of the behaviour between Desdemona
and Cassio and at the same time he reminds Othello that Desdemona is a
Venetian lady and “In Venice they do let God see the pranks / They dare not
show their husbands; their best conscience / Is not to leave undone, but keep
unknown" (III. iii. 206-8). In other words, what lago means is that a faithless wife
is a regular member of the Venetian society almost crystallising beforehand the
Restoration society ethics in England, lago also urges Othello to remember how
Desdemona deceived her father by marrying Othello against his wishes. The
implication is clear: what .lago wants to state is, if Desdemona can deceive her
own flesh and blood, she might just as naturally deceive her husband. Thus, the
logic of these lines is forceful as lago is astute enough to pause now and then,
begging his superior’s forgiveness and at the same time begging Othello’s excuse
for his own frankness, but cunningly absolving himself by his devotion to and
regard for Othello. Othello is just worried about the chastity of Desdemona even
as he utters:

No, not much mov’d:

I do not think but Desdemona’s honest ( III. iii. 228-29)

There are no signs of jealousy yet to be seen in the Moor: instead, these words of
his emphasise the blossoming of emotional and physical love for Desdemona. He
only seems to be worried as man being human is prone to errors and subject to
fears and irrational aberrations, lago’s very existence is evidence enough to
prove that life is full of dangers, even more terrible than those one can ever
imagine, as they can lie in wait hiding to attack from that corner from where it was
least expected, from the person one trusted most, his ‘honest’ friend. W e feel that
Othello had been irrevocably trapped by the instigating words of lago and before

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they part lago goes further to make Othello believe in his own honesty ensuring
well that Othello’s feelings against Desdemona are sufficiently inflamed. The
wicked lago, even while pretending to reassure Othello, is rubbing salt into his
wounds, which makes him ponder over the real possibility of “nature erring from
itself (III. iii. 231) and is no longer sure of Desdemona’s fidelity.

As Norman Sander’s rightly puts it:

The hero's mental path contributes to his sense of contraction. The

breadth of his character, the scope of his imagination shrinks to a single
obsession which usurps the government of his whole being. Moreover,
this state is arrived at not by voluntary action but by a robot-like response
to another’s suggestions. Alone among the tragic heroes, Othello is
patient rather than an agent, worked by forces outside himself, as total a
victim of deception as any character in the Shakespearean c a n o n .11

The play highlights the fact that Othello’s hamartia is not his being ‘jealous’ but
possessing of profound love for Desdemona; being of a ‘free and open’ nature at
the same time he can believe even lago. Othello is always certain of the
“exceeding honesty" (III. iii. 262) of lago and at the same time he is obsessed with
the idea even like Oedipus not to believe in her fidelity till proved. Othello's ‘tragic
flaw’ really seems to be in his faith in lago's friendship and his honesty. This
cannot be termed as a negative attribute of his character as it does not mean that
Othello is foolish by nature because as a soldier, in wars he encountered he could
never be cheated by shoals of things. But the terrible force of lago proves
stronger, even as Satan’s, and whenever such a force of destruction works there
is bound to be an irreversible calamity.

11 Norman Sanders, Othello: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, U K, 1984), p. 20.

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 If Othello indeed finds Desdemona false, he will “whistle her off and let her
down the wind, / To prey at fortune" (III. iii. 266-67). Convulsed with introspection
he falls from his former Platonic unearthiness, curses his black skin and his lack
of social graces and also the fact that he is “declined / into the vale of years”
(III. iii. 269-70). All these things, he fears, could turn a woman away from her
husband’s bed. Earlier this same man was filled with the spirit of a young
bridegroom and now, because of the instigations of lago, he is reduced to
ignominy. Now his pride in himself and in Desdemona’s love for him is being
undermined. Othello is ravaged by self-loathing, reduced to prefer being himself
to a toad in a dungeon. He seems to be cursed by a “destiny, unshunnable”
(III. iii. 279). He would not keep a corner in his heart for the love of other men.
Still this great and noble man moves from this state of abject hopelessness to
appeal to the heavens knowing very well that if it is destined to be so he cannot
avoid it by any means and if Desdemona is really false “then heaven mocks itself’
(III. iii. 282). But he will not believe that his wife is false to him unless there is
some solid proof. In all his speeches, in fact, Othello reflects his sense of love, in
particular, his dedication, his establishment of Desdemona’s loyalty that makes
him nearly triumph over all the evil suspicions of lago, and also his ability to
confirm a secure world in relation to love and loyalty of his wife. Thus the play
projects Othello’s courage rather than his weakness, his magnificence and his
strength rather than his frailty. There is an incredible dramatic balancing of
Othello’s unshaken faith in Desdemona and the mesmerizing power of lago’s
innate wickedness, constantly trying to push him off the precipice.

Circumstances too seem to conspire with the evil lago to produce the
situation in which tragic catastrophe seems inevitable. Chance is an incalculable
factor in the cosmos, lago’s own calculations play their role when Othello
complains of a headache and Desdemona offers to tie his aching head with a
handkerchief, and the same fatal handkerchief is dropped accidentally. This
handkerchief is of great importance as Desdemona treasures it dearly because it

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was one of her first gifts from Othello and he had asked her to keep it with her
always. Emilia finds this handkerchief by chance and gives it to lago who had
been asking for it so often. Later on, this handkerchief dropped in Cassio’s room
by her proves to be the sufficient proof for Othello to abandon ail faith in
Desdemona. Othello worked on by lago concludes that Desdemona either gave
the handkerchief to Cassio as a token of their love or left it at Cassio’s lodgings
after a rendezvous, lago the villain had planned it all that way so that Othello, as
he says:

Bum like the mines of sulphur.. .

Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owedst yesterday (III. iii. 334-38).

W e know the facts but Othello is ignorant of the whole trap. He is like any other

protagonist of Shakespearean tragedy: Othello, like the other tragic heroes, has

limits to what he can see, and fails to see the entire truth. He is engulfed by

chance, and forces which seem too powerful to escape for any individual whose

only virtue is nobility and its concomitant trustfulness.

Othello, the model commander, the premier soldier finds his "occupation
gone” (III. iii. 363). Convinced of Desdemona’s infidelity, he feels incapable of
participating in any action befitting a warrior. This metamorphosis from a man of
military prowess and confident nobility to an anxious husband makes him feel
fallen, in his own eyes. H e comes to feel that the inferior state of his love for
Desdemona and his feeling of her being morally corrupt, are gradually gnawing at
him and corroding his heart and soul. Such an agonized perception of
Desdemona makes him psychologically alienated from his mind, body and soul,
where he had treasured his love for Desdemona. Here Shakespeare wants to
emphasise that believing in Desdemona’s infidelity is an intolerable torture.

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Though lago’s engines are active Othello seems to be desperately clinging to his
trust in beloved Desdemona. If we charge Othello with culpability, and say that he
should not be vulnerable to lago, we need to notice that the play reflects not only
on those aspects of man’s nature and actions which he is capable of altering and
exercising authoritative control over, but also the state of his relatedness to
chance and fate over which he has no control whatsoever. The recurring
question that lies at the centre of the play is: in what sense can we say that
Othello was free to act or able to do anything that he was not fated to? W as not
lago an incarnation of Othello’s doom?

iv

Shakespeare’s instinctive motive clearly seems to present Othello as a man

who is ‘not easily jealous’ but as a victim of lago’s machiavellianism, whose every
act of suspicion of Desdemona’s fidelity puts him into extreme emotional distress,
unbearable mental pain and intense suffering. That is the reason why snarling at
lago’s villainy Othello turns on him and utters a true appraisal of that villain:

Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore...

If thou dost slander her, and torture me,
Never pray more, abandon all remorse.
On horror’s head horrors accumulate:
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth am az’d;
For nothing canst thou to damnation add
Greater than that. (III. iii. 365, 374-78).

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 Othello is not easily ready to tolerate Desdemona’s virtue being stained,
which seemed all divine to him. This is indeed the mark of true love. He is more
concerned about the reputation of Desdemona than his own as he says:

I’ll have some proof: her name, that was as fresh

As Diana’s visage, is now begrim'd, and black
As mine own face: If there be cords or knives,
Poison, or fire, or suffocating streams,
I’ll not endure it: Would I were satisfied! (III. iii. 392-96)

Here we find in Othello the seeds of jealousy germinating. But as Coleridge had stated,

this feeling of jealousy is not Othello’s inherent characteristic, it is:

rather an agony that the creature whom he had believed angelic, with
whom he had garnered up his heart and whom he could not help still
loving, should be proved impure and worthless. It was the struggle not to
love her. It was a moral indignation and regret that virtue should so fall12.

Othello’s feeling of jealousy for Desdemona is indeed justified. Lily B Campbell .

aptly cites The Blazon o f Jealousie:

Jealousie springeth from the Propertie or Right that w ee have, when

we(enjoying our Lady or Mistresse) would have her soly and wholy unto
our selves: without being able (by any meanes) to suffer or endure, that
another man should have any part or interest in her, any way, or at any
time13

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘jealousy’ as being “envious of someone

else’s possessions, achievements or advantages; suspicious or resentful of a
perceived rival; o r fiercely protective or vigilant o f one’s rights or possessions" (my

12 op. cit, p.350.

13 Liiy B Campbell, Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes: Slaves o f Passion, (Methuen, London, 1930),
p.150.

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italics). W e usually think of jealousy in terms of meanings disposed to suspect
rivalry or unfaithfulness and hostility toward a rival or one believed to enjoy an
advantage, such as an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend becoming enraged when the
person they love starts dating other people, or a husband or wife being unduly
suspicious of his or her spouse, and then making unreasonable accusations or
demands. These are the commonplace senses of jealousy. But we could go back
to the Bible and see what the word originally implied.

God is said to be jealous as He is intolerant of our being unfaithful to Him

(in the sense of our worshiping something or someone other than Him), and He is
vigilant in guarding our virtue, for it ultimately harms us to worship false gods and
not have the benefits of God's love and blessings. T h e Bible is also full of

indicators that our God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5; Deuteronomy 6:15;

Joshua 24:19; Joel 2:18; Nahum 1:2; Zephaniah 3:8). The Bible teaches us that
God's name is, in fact, “Jealous” (Exodus 34:14). Most references to jealousy in

the Bible are along the lines of Exodus 34:14 - "For thou shalt worship no other
god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." God is often
presented as a jealous God in the Old Testament. The jealousy of God, as in

Exodus 20:5, "For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God," may be defined as the
attribute of God which does not endure the love of his creatures to be transferred

from him. To cite from Joel 2:18, T h e n the LORD became jealous for his land,

and had pity on his people'; Nahum 1:2, T h e LORD is a jealous God and
avenging, the LORD is avenging and wrathful; the LORD takes vengeance on his
adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies’. They talk about how God wants his
people to worship him and him alone. This leaves us with the question: How can a
holy God, who is without sin and blemish, be jealous? W hat is this “divine
jealousy”? How does it show in our lives? It is indeed not a feeling of 'insecurity' or
'self-interest', but rather a powerful emotion in support of loyalty and intimacy. One
may say that God has a "righteous jealousy," just as he has a “righteous anger”
towards evil. In the same way, a husband or wife has a right to feel jealous

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if the spouse cheats on them with someone else. Consider a young couple who
have just got married. Wouldn't it be strange if the husband was not concerned for
the love of his wife? Wouldn't it seem odd if he was not protective of his
relationship with her? In the relationship of matrimony we see glimpses of God's
jealousy. This word is generally used negatively in today's culture and modern
parlance. But "jealousy" (in the biblical sense) is essentially a passionate
commitment to someone, and his well-being, a consuming, single-minded pursuit
of a good end. This positive usage is frequently associated with the marriage
relationship where jealousy for the exclusiveness of the relationship is the
necessary condition of its permanence. Jealousy in essence is an intolerance of
rivals. It can be a virtue or a sin depending on the legitimacy of the rival. God
would allow no rivals in the covenant between him and Israel. He bound Israel
exclusively to his service and he swore to protect her against all enemies. This is
a beautiful picture of the love that God has for His chosen ones, and puts
'jealously' into an entirely different light. The word that is used can also be
translated as “zealous; vigilant; or anxiously watchful". A full revaluation and
revalidation of the term jealousy is absolutely necessary to appreciate Othello’s
relationship with Desdemona.

This love and possessiveness of Othello cannot be termed as ‘jealousy’ of

the ordinary parlance as w e might see jealousy cropping up between husbands
and wives of Restoration comedy where the husbands have no love for their wives
and just seem to feign true love for the sake of public exhibition, whereas, in true
sense of the term, love holds no meaning for these couples. The Restoration
comedy tends to feature recurring comic types: the graceful young rake, the
faithless wife, the deceived husband, all in a world in which honour is but a word
and virtue but a pose. In Wycherley’s The Country Wife, the marriage between
Margery and Bud Pinchwife represents a hostile marriage between an older man
and young woman, ‘a May / December marriage’. The element of jealousy in
marriage seems to be very much prevalent in the play. In

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Act IV, scene ii, Mr. Pinchwife says, in an aside, “so, ’tis plain she loves him
[Horner], yet she has not love enough to make her conceal it from me, but the
sight of him will increase her aversion for me and love for him”. He insults her
and does not believe she is innocent. To him, every woman cam e out of nature’s
hands is "plain, open, silly, and fit for slaves, as she and Heaven intended 'em".
Mr. Pinchwife isn’t especially bright, but in his jealousy, he becomes a dangerous
character. He becomes passionate in his mad ravings, thinking Margery had
intended to cuckold him. As it is, when she disobeys him, he says holding up the
penknife, “I will stab out those eyes that cause my m ischief. Mr. Pinchwife
continuously locks Margery in the closet, calls her names, and in all other ways,
acts like a stock jealous and suspicious husband. Because of his abusive nature,
Margery’s affair with Horner is not a surprise. In fact, it is accepted as a regular
social norm. In Congreve’s The W ay o f the World (1700), the trend of the
Restoration Comedy continues, and marriage becomes more about contractual
agreements and greed, than about love. Millamant and Mirabell iron out a pre nuptial
agreement before they agree to marry. After they list conditions in their relationship,
Mirabell says, “these provisos admitted, in other things I may prove a tractable and
complying husband”. Love may be the basis of their relationship, as Mirabel! appears
to be honest; but their alliance is a sterile romance, devoid of the emotions and
devotedness which we hope in a true courtship. But then, that is the way of the
world. Then Millamant seems to be more willing to marry her cousin Sir Wilful, so
that she can keep his money. Marriage and love here is a battle of the wits rather
than a battlefield of emotions. In a polar contrast the marriage between Othello and
Desdemona is the union of two souls. It is a sacred marriage of two noble minds
which is not based on the merely physical love, attraction or economic
convenience. For such husbands of Restoration if Chryseis is not there Briseis would
do, as Ovid recommends in his Art o f Love. But for Othello it is either Desdemona
or no life at all.

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 Jealousy of a murderous nature is very much apparent in

The Winter’s Tale. In his Introduction J H P Pafford rightly notes:

The force which starts the play into action is 'the great foe to faith, foul
jealousy.14

In The Winter’s Tale the jealousy is the motive power which starts the play off and
leads to the belief that a wife is apt to be unfaithful and further leads to a criminal
desire to have her killed; this belief and desire are paralleled in Cymbeiine also.
Shakespeare was concerned to show here jealousy as a pathological disease,
which never needed any external factor to ignite it. Leontes notes sharply that
Hermione can persuade Polixenes to stay back but “at my request he would not”
(I. ii. 87). Polixenes’ stay for nine months makes Leontes go to the extent to
believe that Polixenes is the father of the expected child, though he has no proof
howsoever faint to believe all this. Leontes’ jealous outburst:

Too hot, too hot!

To mingle friendship far, is mingling bloods.
I have tremor cordis on me: my heart dances,
But not for joy - not joy. This entertainment
May a free face put on, derive a liberty
From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,
And well become the agent: 1 may, I grant:
But to be paddling palms, and pinching fingers,
As now they are, and making practis’d smiles
As in a looking-glass; and then to sigh, as 'twere
The mort o’ th’ deer - O, that is entertainment
My bosom likes not, nor my brows. Mamillius,
Art thou my boy? (I. ii. 108-119)

14 J H P Pafford, The Arden Shakespeare• The Winter's Tale, (Routledge, London & New York, 1966)
p.lxvii.

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Shakespeare almost cheerfully caricatures Leontes' mad jealousy who vainly

imagines his wife to be “slippery” (I, ii. 273). Emilia’s words in Othello are a

comment in advance on Leontes:

But jealous souls.. .

They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: ’tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself. ( Othello: III. iv. 157-60)

They do not apply to Othello. Leontes is not faced with an lago who is all avid to
consume the happy married life of Othello and Desdemona; instead he has a
Camillo who like Kent in King Lear tries to dissuade him from committing a most
heinous crime of getting his son Mamillius and his wife Hermione killed.

Consummate schemer that lago is, he knows what must be done to protect
himself. He must feign another vow of honesty and concern for Othello’s welfare,
lago then introduces the bestial images for now he tells a bold lie, claiming that he
himself slept beside Cassio recently, kept awake by a raging toothache that night,
and heard Cassio moan in his sleep “Sweet Desdemona, / Let us be wary, let us
hide our loves!” (III. iii. 425-26) lago further tells that Cassio seized his hand,
kissed him hard on the mouth and threw his legs over lago’s thighs and while
kissing him cried “Cursed fate, that gave thee to the Moor!" (III. iii. 432). This is
lago’s sudden ‘proof a horrible gamble. The situation becomes darker and denser
and psychologically everything figured by lago could compel any man to believe
that his wife has had illicit relations with another man. It is necessary to note that
what the tragedy here shows us is the fact of evil as inescapable and irreparable
which corrodes or destroys human happiness. Othello ‘convinced’ of the fact that

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Cassio has had illicit relations with Desdemona and in rage, the Moor declares

bestially:

I’ll tear her [Desdemona] all to pieces. (III. iii. 438)

Here we can say that Othello has indeed become a total victim of ‘the green-eyed
monster’, jealousy, which is injected into him by lago’s sharp intellectual sting.
Sublime love disintegrates into a grotesque and horrid jealousy’. His very virtue
becomes his vice. One may be reminded of Shakespeare’s own line, ‘lilies that
fester smell far worse than weeds’ (Sonnet no. 94).

lago who cannot resist torturing Othello further, refers now, as a last turn of
the screw, Desdemona’s handkerchief with its intricate strawberry embroidery
which Othello gave to his wife as a valuable token of love and tells the Moor that he
saw Cassio “wipe his beard with" (III. iii. 439) it that very day. This makes Othello
enraged to the point where he is convinced that absolutely all his suspicions are
true and utters:

All my fond love thus do I blow to h eaven ,.. .

’Tis gone.
Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow cell,
Yield up, O love, thy crown, and hearted throne,
To tyrannous hate... (III. iii. 452-56)

lago even while he is almost stunned by the success of his own strategy
adds further fuel by urging Othello to be patient knowing very well that he has
done enough to victimise him. Then follows the well known Pontic Sea simile in
which Othello compares his bloody thoughts to the seas’ compulsive current, one
which never ebbs but keeps on its course until it reaches its destination, the
junction of the Propontic and the Hellespont. In this simile Othello stresses his
high stature as w e should expect a tragic hero to be of, identifying himself with

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large and mighty elements of nature. Equally important is that this simile makes
the absoluteness of Othello’s character clear. Once he has decided which course
to take, he cannot turn back. He is not like the Buridan's ass: a term of medieval
logic concerning the behaviour of an ass who is placed equidistantly between two
bundles of hay. The behaviour of the ass is entirely ass-like; it has no reason to
prefer one bundle to the other and keeps hesitating between the bundles. Stuck in
its original position, it perishes. As Bradley writes:

Othello's nature is all 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. . . Love, if he loves, must be to him
the heaven where either he must live or bear no life. If such a passion as
jealousy seizes him, it will swell into a well-nigh incontroilable 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. Undeceived, he will do like execution on him self.15

As the play progresses it truly reflects what Othello is, as

Jane Adamson rightly observes:

what a man sees or does not see reflects what he values; what he
values reflects what he is; and no less than in Shakespeare’s other
tragedies . . . this is both the basis on which all the characters in Othello
are dramatically realised, and also partly what the tragedy is about.16

For Othello love of Desdemona is everything, he cannot see the world beyond her
love and when he sees Desdemona having an illegitimate relationship with
Cassio, then there is no hope for him. He must either die or let her live. In his
fury, he wants to sacrifice her since he believes that she has profaned love itself.
If Othello sees Desdemona as simply false or doubts her chastity, it would seem a

15 op. cit., p.163.

16 op. c it., p.68.

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pretty thin reason for us to look for some negative trait in his character. But to

Othello she is all in all, the summun bonum, the life of his life, and he cannot just

see her fallen so low.

As the play advances, the gap visibly widens between what Othello feels
and what the truth is, as lago inexorably pushes him to believe. Othello sees
himself as a rightful scourge, as executing public justice and not merely seeking
personal revenge when he solemnly utters:

Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace

Shall ne’er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swailow them up. Now by yond marble heaven,
In the due reverence of a sacred vow
I here engage my words. (III. iii. 464-68)

Since Othello is now poised for the supreme sacrifice, he states his ultimate resolution

to lago:

Within these three days let me hear thee say

That Cassio’s not alive (III. iii.478-79)

As for Desdemona’s fate Othello says that he will find “some swift means of
death, / For the fair devil” (III. iii. 484-85). Othello’s soul is ensnared in lago’s web
of treachery and lago has secured the fullest dominance over Othello’s soul. As
for lago his victory is not secure till Cassio and Desdemona are alive. His very
survival now depends on effacing all clues to his triumphant lie.

The bond between Othello and Desdemona is established again as he

calls her lovingly as his “chuck” (III. iv. 48). Here again w e find the role of chance
in worldly affairs as Desdemona innocently mentions Cassio's name and the bond
between both of them is further cracked. Othello demands her his handkerchief

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which she cannot produce and at the same time he reveals the wider power of the
handkerchief which till now was simply a personal love token. To this Desdemona
is panicked into lying “It is not lost: but what an if it were" (III. iv. 81) and leads the
conversation back to Cassio. Othello repeats “the handkerchief!” (III. iv. 79) and
comes to know that she does not have it. All this is enough to madden him totally
and torture him with the mental picture of Cassio wiping his beard with it. For
Othello, the handkerchief, which was once the symbol of love and loyalty is now
the symbol of betrayal. Thus, the treacheries of luck and chance are afflictions to
which he is subjected. To quote Sidney, “it teacheth the uncertainty of this world,
and upon how weak foundations gilden roofs are builded"17 and so in us is excited
a feeling of “admiration and commiseration’’18, that is, wonder for the workings of
chance and pity for the tragic hero who faces such divine operation.

lago’s instinct for wrecking others’ lives was the main reason for which
Othello’s world of happiness and love was destroyed. He still works on him to tell
him that Cassio has confessed to have relations with Desdemona. This revelation
would be too much for anyone and the same happens with Othello who becomes
incoherent, and faints. He is shown to be tormented by his love for Desdemona
and so the very thought of her lying with Cassio makes him collapse as he is
unable to bear the pain, lago tells Othello to hide and observe Cassio who too is
emotionally fooled by lago to understand that lago is manipulating him when he is
talking to him about Bianca and not Desdemona. Othello sees Cassio’s smiles
and laughter but cannot hear the details and so believes that he is speaking
humourusly about how much Desdemona dallies with him. At this moment chance
again plays its role and luck seems to be playing against Othello as Bianca enters
with Desdemona’s handkerchief which she throws at Cassio and that very moment
Othello sees the handkerchief in Cassio’s hand.. This is enough for

17 Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, included in Tragedy: Criticisms and Development, A
Casebook Series, ed, by, R P Draper, (Macmillan, Hong Kong, 1980), p. 70.
18 ibid, p. 70.

223
Othello to convince him of Desdemona’s infidelity as he finds it an “ocular proof

(ill. lii. 366) and decides that he must kill both Cassio and Desdemona that very

night:

And, let her rot, and perish, and be damned to-night; for she shall not
live; no, my heart is turned to stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand. O,
the world hath not a sweeter creature; she might lie by an emperor’s side
and command him tasks. Hang her, I do but say what she is: so delicate
with her needle, an admirable musician, O, she w il sing the savageness
out of a bear; of so high and plenteous wit and invention! (IV. i. 177-85)

Even while manifesting his deepest perception of Desdemona’s beauty Othello

decides to enact the deadly deed of executing his wife as soon as possible
thinking that she may not betray more men. Othello is convinced of his actions as
deeds committed to affirm justice. lago indeed has succeeded in killing two
persons with one handkerchief: Desdemona and Cassio!

vi

To say that othello is ruled here by passion and not reason is not a proper

justification. Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are thought to be ‘slaves of passion’ by

Lily B Campbell. She thinks that in them there is domination of passion over

reason and writes that:

Shakespearean tragedy made concrete Elizabethan moral teaching and

that teaching was centered about the conflict of passion and reason in
man’s soul. When passion rather than reason comrols his will, man errs
or sins. And the punishment for error and for sin is first of all seen in the

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 turbulence of soul created by passion. . . (Then] the disintegration and

turmoil grow.19

W e see in Othello how the unsuspecting frankness and open nature of the Moor
is played upon and exasperated by the artful dexterity of lago. Othello, indeed, is
maddened by ‘reason’ itself, the subtle strategy of lago. Othello too is satisfied
with nothing less then ‘ocular proof, another form of ‘reason’. Here I would like to
note the words of J H Newman as cited by W H Auden in his essay
The Joker in the Pack, where Newman writes that:

Reason is God’s gift; but so are the passions.

Reason is as guilty as passion.20

There is always some or the other reason behind what a tragic protagonist does. He
walks on a double-edged razor path as whatever he does he is bound to cause
his fall. The very fact that he is a mortal is an invitation to tragedy. He is caught in the
web of fate, chance and many other circumstances and the divine factor also plays
its part. W e are at once reminded of the words of Cordelia where she says:

W e are not the first

Who, with best meaning, have incurr’d the worst. (King Lear, V. iii. 4)

W hat aggravates the sense of pity and terror in us and anguish in the heart
of Lear is not so much his lack of reason but the petrifying indifference, the cold
and calculative selfishness of his daughters. Shakespeare’s Hamlet explores the
steep and thorny way of self-realization from this very capacity to reason. He
knows fully well that ‘blest are those whose passion and judgment are well
unmingled’. Othello for whom love is differentiated from lust finds that if two souls

19 op. cit., p. 248

20 J H Newman, W H Auden's epigraph to his section, T h e Joker in the Pack’, The Dyer’s Hand,
(The Vintage Books, New York, 1968), p.246.

225
are separated, then there is no significance or solace in the world. Tom Mcalindon
rightly puts that in Shakespearean tragedy:

. . .an essential part of the hero’s experience is the horrified discovery

that the world he knows and values, the people he loves and trusts, are
changing or have changed utterly. He feels cheated and betrayed ‘to the
very heart of loss’. 21

Each tragedy whether it is King Lear, Hamlet, Othello or Macbeth depicts the
same experience. Othello is shocked by the thought of betrayal by his wife and
the world seems to hold no value for him if in it a Desdemona too is false. The
picture of the world is one of chaos. In the same way King Lear is horrified when
Cordelia says “nothing” (King Lear, l.i.86) because she was the one whom he
expected would surpass in protestation of love his other daughters and when she
refuses to speak Lear is depressed to the core of his heart. Later when Lear’s two
ungrateful daughters display “filial ingratitude" (King Lear, III. iv. 14) the world
seems to end for him. Hamlet feels driven to the verge of suicide in disgust for his
mother’s indecently hasty marriage to Claudius when fewer than two months have
elapsed after his father’s death and the country no longer mourns King Hamlet’s
passing away and not even the bereaved widow misses him. Macbeth realises
that because of the tempting of the witches he soaked his hands in blood and wore
a “fruitless crown” (Macbeth, III. i. 60); cosmic evil had undone him. Shakespeare’s
tragic heroes are fated to feel utterly dejected when the persons in whom they had
reposed full trust seem to change entirely and this is the reason why the hero is
driven to act brutally against those who are closest to his heart and to whom he is
bound by love and trust. Still such a Shakespearean hero tries to come out of this
wild disorder in which he is thrown, and this makes the fall of the hero genuinely
tragic and arouses the feeling of pity and fear.

21 Tom Mcalindon, The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. by. Claire
McEachern, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), p.6

226
 • m
VII

Othello asks lago to get him “some poison” ( IV. i. 200) in order to kill
Desdemona before ‘her body and beauty’ is able to change his mind. The monster
of evil that lago is does not stop at this. Instead, goes further and serves him
with a better device, a ‘juster’ one, to “strangle her in her bed, even the bed she
hath contaminated” (IV. i. 203-4). As for Cassio, he suggests, that he will himself kill
him. A master manipulator that lago is, constantly distorts the truth, pierces the heart
and does everything to destroy the innocent who are in his cruel grip. But before he
resolves, Othello experiences his final agony in the perennially echoing
statement:

Ay, that’s certain; but yet the pity of it, lago!

O lago, the pity of it, lago! (IV. i. 191-92)

This perhaps is the profoundest moment of his consummate love, the cry of his
heart and being, revealing how he is not a brutal butcher but an ideal lover at the
altar of a sacred sacrifice.

W hen Othello enters his bed chamber he does not mince words and does

not try to hide his intentions to prove the infidelity of Desdemona. The very

thought of this breaks his heart as she utters: “W hy do you weep / Am I the

occassion of these tears” (IV. ii. 43-44). Here he seems to believe that though

heavens have joined hands with the forces on earth for their own pleasure, and

are trying to test his patience. He says,

Had it pleas’d heaven

T o try m e with affliction, had he rain’d

All kind of sores, and shames, on my bare head,

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 Steep’d me in poverty, to the very lips,
Given to captivity me and my hopes,
I should have found in some part of my soul
A drop of patience (IV. ii. 48-54)

The very thought of Desdemona being false to him tortures him the most as she is
the one in whom he had reposed all his trust, love, loyalty and all other feelings of
his heart. She had been the very fountain from which life flows and her being
disloyal to him dries up that very stream of life. Likewise Sidney in his
Astrophel and Stella repeatedly desires Stella instead of heaven. Othello wishes
heaven to have inflicted upon him all kinds of afflictions rather than taking away
from him the love of his wife Desdemona. He cannot tolerate that stream of life
which Desdemona is, to be used like a tank for foul toads to breed in.

Othello's farewell to Desdemona is a return to his former eloquence, the

revelation of the protagonist’s nobility though it is also a farewell to his own peace
and his life. Though he believes Desdemona's soul to be black, he can only focus
on her whiteness; he pledges not to mar "that whiter skin of hers than snow,"
(V. ii. 4) yet he is determined to take her life as he feels that otherwise “she’ll
betray more men” (V. ii. 6). Then Othello says, “put out the light” (V. ii. 7). The
metaphor highlights Desdemona's innocence, as does comparing her to a "light"
to be put out. There is an unmistakable irony in Othello’s references to
Desdemona here: he describes her with words that suggest her brightness and
innocence, yet he is determined to condemn and kill her. She is also "the rose"
(V. ii. 13) to Othello; another supremely beautiful, innocent image to relate her
with. Othello's allusion to Prometheus explains his wish to put out Desdemona's
light in order to restore her former innocence. Even when the act of murder is
drawing near, Othello seems intent upon dwelling on beautiful images and poetic
metaphors to hide the alleged ugliness and falseness of Desdemona on the one
hand and his own heinous act on the other.

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 Here, Desdemona learns too late of the trap that was set for her with the
handkerchief; this symbol of her love has come back to condemn her, just as all
the protestations of her love and devotion for Othello do not soften his resolve to
kill her. Desdemona is greatly more lovable and tragic than Ophelia. She is the
paragon of love, who is physically, emotionally and psychologically in love with
Othello. Yet she is blamed for something she has never done. Desdemona, the
angel has not yet experienced the mistreatment of the world and when Othello ill-
treats her she does not even question him and sings a sad song as Ophelia when
out of Hamlet’s love, sings the willow song. Shakespeare by placing apt words in
the mouth of his characters makes them express their feelings. Desdemona’s first
words in the play express her duty towards her father and her husband, both a sense
of “divided duty” (I. iii. 181) very much like Cordelia. Her last words when Othello
charges her with sins: “They (the sins) are loves I bear to you" (V. ii. 40). They
express her infinite love. Shakespeare’s women characters in tragedies whether it
is Ophelia or Cordelia or Desdemona, though are mild by nature, and do not question
their authorities, are indeed strong in will who live and die for the cause of love, and
represent the feminine principle of devotion and loyalty at the most superhuman
level. Desdemona who always spoke to Othello with full compliance as when she
says “be it as your fancies teach you; / What e’re you be, I am obedient” (III. iii.89-
90), stands for preserving her dignity when Othello strikes her publicly by saying “I
have not deserv’d this” (IV. i. 236). In the end too, she exhibits her ideal stature
when she asks Othello “never taint my love” (IV. ii. 163) and as she dies she becomes
the epitome of feminine goodness by putting the blame of her murder on her own
self.

Though Desdemona is divine, Othello too does not consider her as a

separate being but a part of himself, the completion of his entity. His very
existence is in question without Desdemona. And that is the reason why Othello
takes Desdemona's cries for mercy and her remorse at Cassio's misfortune, as
proof of her indiscretion. Although his rage in the end is tempered, he is still bent

229
on having her dead. If w e ponder over as to what is it that makes Othello so

blatant about his intention, we realize that he sees himself as one who is

dispensing what he sees as a deserved justice, he is essentially saving

Desdemona from becoming a withered soul. Bradley rightly observes:

. . .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; 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.22

Othello refers to the belief of the time, that to die with one's sins repented meant
that the soul was saved for heaven. Othello, in love with his wife, kisses her
awake, asks her to prepare her soul for death. He asks Desdemona if she has
prayed, and urges her to do so if she hasn't. This shows a strange kind of mercy
built into Othello's love to see that this way she can be in a state of innocence
when he kills her. Here w e need to contrast Othello’s desire for Desdemona’s
restoration to heaven to Hamlet’s refusal to kill King Claudius while he was
kneeling down for prayer. Hamlet resists the chance to kill his enemy at this point
because he does not want to send the fratricide to Heaven. By an apt corollary,
Othello sees his purpose differently. He feels that if Desdemona is killed after she
has made her prayers he will help her blissful soul to reach Heaven. W alter
Kaufmann rightly states that:

lago has succeeded in his scheme insofar as the Moor kills his wife, but
he has patently not succeeded in reducing Othello to his own level. The
scene is most numinous in the whole drama, awe-inspiring rather than

22 op. cit., p.169.

230
 fearful, and Othello, instead of frothing at the mouth with jealousy, acts
with a solemn majesty . . . Desdemona, lago and the others in the play,
as well as most readers and listeners, to be sure, take that for “a murder,
which I thought a sacrifice . . . Othello's murder [is] a sacrifice.
He had not thought of Desdemona as mortal; she was his very god. In
that sense, there was no proportion between Othello’s conception of
Desdemona and the essentially inconsequential, if beautiful and faithful,
object of his love. If the Moor were to understand her limitations and the
sheer brevity of her existence, this would not be another insight but the
catastrophic dissolution of his faith, his religion, iago is the poet’s
instrument for bringing about this tragic end and does it, not by opening
Othello’s eyes to Desdemona’s true nature - the play is not a philosophic
allegory - but through a villainous deception. Nothing less would have
offered a sufficient framework for the d ra m a.23

Othello's reaction after smothering Desdemona shows an even greater rift

between his resolve and his emotion. He does not want to admit that Desdemona

is dead; he speaks to her, ponders over her stillness, and seems very hysterical.

He is grieved by his action;

I think she stirs again...

My wife, my wife, my wife, I ha’ no wife;
O, unsupportable! 0 heavy hour!
Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse
O f sun and moon, and that the affrighted globe
Should yawn at alteration (V. ii. 96-102)

He says, referring back to the light / dark imagery of the play to communicate how
unsettled and unhinged he feels. He begins to show signs of remorse, apparently
aware that he has crossed an invisible line and has disturbed the order of the
cosmos. Othello laments for the situation and feels that the earth should open

23 Kaufmann Walter, From Shakespeare to Existentialism, (Princeton University Press, Princeton,

1980), p. 41.

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great fissures and cracks in response to the eclipse, that is, his murder. Othello's
reaction to Desdemona's death is a mixture of shock, hysteria, and anger; still, he
is very bewildered at the act he has committed. The play transcends here the
limits of a domestic tragedy. It reaches the moral sublime since Othello feels that
his act is related to a cosmic upheaval and he is but an element in a vast moral
chaos. No domestic tragedy has ever transcended the four walls of a house: no
tragedy of intrigue has ever reached the summit of a cosmic event.

viii

The greatest irony of the play is that it is only after killing Desdemona that
Othello learns the truth about her. He finds out that she was blameless, and that
lago was manipulating him into believing otherwise and his fixation on the
handkerchief is ended when Emilia reveals how the token was used to make him
believe in the scandal. Shakespeare here deepens the inherent capacity of
tragedy to exhibit the agony of the tragic protagonist for whom love is not a merely
physical attraction but the union of two souls, as it is only his natural inclination to
love intensely that makes him jealous, and who murders his wife as he himself
confesses “for nought did I in hate, but all in honour” (V. ii. 296). The play finally
shows Othello as the most unfortunate man who is crushed by grief. This is the
main reason why the play is so deeply disturbing. The play makes us realise how
wicked people for their own reasons, or no reasons at all, inflict harm on others,
and it also exposes the essential human limitedness that one can never detect
what every other human being could be. W e are forced to believe that one’s
freedom lies only in realising that one is necessarily bound to a course of action
which one can neither ignore nor change, which makes one capable of inflicting
pain on others and also a greater pain on one’s own self. This reality shakes the
ground beneath us and stuns us with pity and terror.

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 At last, Othello's grief comes to its positive fruition, as his reason and
speech are finally and fully restored. Othello laments: the images of pain and
torment reflect the feelings which overwhelm him. In his final speech of the play,
Othello contemplates his fate. In the battlefield he was unstoppable but here he is
brought low in his own eyes. W e are made to think that where Othello once had
command over everything in his life, fearing nothing and no one, is now the victim
of fate, the one entity that proves the fatal thing from which no one can escape
however hard he may try. Full realization of what he has done comes home to
him. He juxtaposes heaven and hell to explain his despair, and the virtue he
knows again that Desdemona did possess:

Where should Othello go?

Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr'd wench,
Pale as thy smock! When we shall meet at count,
This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,
And fiends will snatch at it: cold, cold, my girl!
Even like thy chastity. (V. ii. 272-77)

He is now painfully aware of the blunders that he has committed, noting

Desdemona’s cold body referring not only literally to her lifeless state but also
figuratively to her chastity. Here we have a suggestion of the scene from King
Lear where Lear in his heavenly reunion with Cordelia describes her in celestial
terms, where he thinks that he is in hell while Cordelia is angelic: “Thou art a soul
in bliss; but I am bound / Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears / Do scald like
molten lead.” (IV.vi.40-42). In the same way Othello’s response is equally
profound. He feels that when they both will finally meet on the judgment day, her
look is enough to hurl him into hell. One is also inevitably reminded of the
stunning encounter of Aeneas with Dido in the under world (Aeneid, VI. 440-476).
Othello’s powerful poetry and his profound remorse at the end of this scene
reinstate him in his native nobility.

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 Aware of the error of his judgment that had led him to this end Othello cries out

to the ultimate powers above for a total mortification:

O cursed slave! Whip me, you devils,

From the possession of this heavenly sight,
Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire*
0 Desdemona! Desdemona! Dead!
Oh, oh, oh! (V. ii. 277-83)

These words of Othello are some of the most poignant of Shakespeare’s tragic
passages. Othello makes no attempt to pass off his unspeakable action as
justifiable. Instead, he calls to the powers of Hell for utmost punishment, lago
was definitely the cause for Desdemona's death and Othello's jealous rages; and
the seeds of jealousy and suspicion were never inherent in Othello. It certainly
makes the resolution of the play neater when Othello returns to his nobility. He
now redeems himself by openly confessing to the deep wrong he has committed,
and embracing the penal fury of hell. One is inevitably reminded of Oedipus the
king, another toy of fate, embrace his unspeakable fate. Shakespeare by making
Othello so enormously remorseful hints at the total redemption of Othello,
rehabilitates him, totally exorcising the green-eyed monster, jealousy.

O f course, all loose threads are tied up in this last scene of the play; letters
are produced that expose lago's part in these unfortunate events. Thus, the
enduring tragedy of Othello rings in our ears, especially in his last speech.
Though Othello knows that it was all because of lago that his happy married life
was ruined and he murdered Desdemona, he does not put the entire blame on
even lago. W e do find in him a justified anger for lago who is a kind of
Mephistopheles who seduced Faust. Othello calls him a “demi-devil” (V. ii. 302)
but he leaves the villain to his fate:

1 look down towards his feet; but that’s a fable.

234
 If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee. (V. ii. 287-88)

and acknowledges that he has done wrong to Desdemcna, the pearl who like the
base Indian he has thrown away. On knowing that lago had dropped the
handkerchief near Cassio’s lodging so that it was easy for him to find, he jumps
forward at lago and says:

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil

Why he hath thus ensnar’d my soul and body. (V. ii. 302-3)

The once valiant Moor is now fallen a victim to fortune’s vagaries. Othello
magnificently accepts the responsibility for what he has done and so he urges the
men:

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of them as they are; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down ought in malice; (V. ii. 342-44)

This, again, reminds one of Hamlet who requests Horatio to deny himself the
felicity of death, to tell the world his story. We once again see the positive and
noble side of Othello as he wants that his actions should be narrated truthfully in
all their glory and shame. We see a man conscious of the fact that he threw away
his most precious possession in sheer delusion. We see a man begging us to
realize that he wasn't normally this way, but that he did it because he became
"perplexed in the extreme” (V. ii. 347). In his address to the world at the end of the
play, he speaks of himself as:

Of one that lov’d not wisely, but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought
Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdu’d eyes

235
 Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their med’cinal gum. (V. ii. 345-52)

Othello mentions four "facts" that he wants the officials to report. First, he was a
man whose basic fault was an excess of love. He loved not wisely but too well.
Secondly, that he was not by nature a jealous man but, when driven to the
extreme, that noxious emotion surfaced. In Othello's words, he became
"perplexed in the extreme". Third, he wants them to report that the essence of his
fault was that he threw something very valuable (Desdemona) away and in doing
so became like the base Indian in squandering something of great value. Fourth,
he wants to portray himself now as a grief-stricken man. Calling upon his
penchant and skill in exotic description, Othello links his weepy self now to the
Arabian trees shedding their gum. The tears he sheds at his wife Desdemona’s
death are tears of remorse at her death but are combined with tears of joy for
Desdemona has proved to be a divine soul as he always thought her to be. It
seems that what Othello most wants the officers to report is a tale of sadness told
not in order to evoke pity in the hearers but as a statement of fact. In sum,
Othello wants to be remembered as a man who lived and loved greatly with due
attention to the value of something that was infinitely inestimable.

T S Eliot remarks about the ending of the play in his essay “Shakespeare
and the Stoicism of Seneca” and writes:

. . . I have never read a more terrible exposure of human weakness - of

universal human weakness -than the last great speech of Othello . . . It
is usually taken on its face value, as expressing the greatness in defeat
of a noble but erring nature . . . W hat Othello seems to me to be doing in
making this speech is cheering himself up. He is endeavouring to escape

236
 reality, he has ceased to think about Desdemona and is thinking about

himself24.

I would like to say that Eliot’s comments are hardly fair to the extreme painfulness
of the play’s ending and the anguish and miserable state of Othello and of course,
to the general spirit of the play. Eliot deals with the character of Othello rather
coldly. Shakespeare never intended to condemn Othello as some egotist or moral
coward. Othello has always been concerned with his reputation and public image
but this was never the reason for his delivering a speech after killing Desdemona.
His last speech reveals that he is "not easily jealous," but that he is very
possessive of his wife. This last speech is filled with a genuinely heroic language.
He does not want to reduce the foulness of the murder and beg sympathy. His
statement is a great act of voluntary remorse with no axe to grind. He believes he
belongs to hell as rightly as Desdemona does to heaven. Neither Shakespeare,
nor Othello need a justification. In fact Othello does not want to cheer himself up
at all.

Othello still the consummate fighting man, seeks out another sword that he

has hidden in his bedchamber and he dies in reunion with Desdemona and his

final words are a reminder of that union in death with the love and loyalty which he

had destroyed:

I kiss’d thee ere I killed thee: no way but this;

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss. (V. ii. 359-60)

The separation of loving souls is existential death. Unwilling to be eternally

separated from the woman he eternally loves, Othello stabs himself and
extinguishes his life. And in his act of making amends for his wrong doing he
merits divine grace, lago destroys love, the force that unites and binds, that is, the

24 T S Eliot, Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca, included in Selected Essays, (Faber and
Faber, London, 1961), p.130.

237
divine bond which leads to marriage and the creation of the world. It is a
fundamentally creative force as opposed to all the forces of destruction. When in
tragedies love does encounter forces of destruction it is generally in order to meet
them head on, and so reverse them in a glorious moment of redemption. The
ending of Othello though leaves us somewhat with a sense of outrage as if
something deep in the order of things has gone wrong, there is also the sense
that love and goodness finally triumph. Tom Mcalindon rightly argues that:

. . . the most positive aspect of Shakespearean tragedy is the final

restoration of the protagonist’s nobility, shown by the manner in which he
meets death. The quality usually involved here is that of constancy,
which signifies truth to self and one's values: a spiritual triumph over
forces of change . . . change here is not just one of worldly fortunes; it is
above all else interpersonal, moral and psychological change . . .
constancy was the supreme virtue in Stoic and nec-Stoic thought. . . In
its most extreme form constancy involves suicide, signifying a calm
refusal to submit to a superior force and live in misery, dishonour or
disgrace. . .Othello’s hell is that he is eternally separated from
Desdemona: yet his dying on a kiss carries the suggestion of an
‘atonement’ coextensive with the reintegration of self achieved by
acknowledging and punishing the erring barbarian that he had become.25

Shakespeare’s tragic heroes display a high degree of psychological and

behavioural consistency; they are pure in mind as in their actions. Though Othello
knows very well that he is bound to suffer the tortures of hell his act of executing
rightful punishment upon himself shows that as he could not tolerate
Desdemona’s infidelity, he cannot allow himself to pass without any punishment
for the grievous wrong that he has done in killing his beloved. This act of his
eventually redeems him. Othello like all the Shakespeare’s tragic heroes reflects
the traditional pattern of the Christian soul engulfed by the evil present in this
world, which through suffering and self crucifixion learns to attain salvation. And in

25 op. cit. pp.15, 6.

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the end this attainment of salvation by the tragic protagonist restores, as Hegel

has put it, “the ethical substance ”26 or dike which affirms order.

IX

Shakespeare throughout the play focuses on one very important aspect as

he makes Emilia deliver a very important statement:

Thou hast not half that power to do me harm

As I have to be hurt. (V. ii. 163-64)

Shakespeare wants us to notice the relationship between the power of men or

gods above us to harm and the power one possesses either to bear the harm or
to hurt oneself. Othello’s act of killing Desdemona extinguished all the happiness
and peace of mind in him and his consequent act of stabbing himself proves that,
even more than the pain he could inflict on Desdemona, he has the capacity to
inflict suffering on himself. As the Renaissance man is decentered from the
universe, the tragic hero is the one who experiences the direst displacement. In
Othello Shakespeare is revealing another vision of the relationship between the
tragic protagonist and his fate. This suffering of Othello reveals man’s intrinsic
nature, that is, his courage and integrity in enduring a fate he is powerless to alter.
This way man grows in stature even as he is being destroyed. This is a higher
humanism. As Adam the mere man who was superceded by more-than-man
Christ, the awakened tragic hero transcends himself and rises far above himself.

26 G W F Hegel, Tragedy as Dramatic Art, reprinted from: Hegel and Tragedy, ed. by. Anne and
Henry Paolucci; included in Tragedy, ed. by. John Drakakis & Naomi Conn Liebler, (Longman,
London, New York, 1998), p. 27.

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 Despite his murder of Desdemona, Shakespeare emphasizes that the
fallen Othello is too noble a person to commit the fatal act on his own. He is
essentially a trusting and loyal man who expects other people to be alike. His

hamartia is not to have murdered Desdemona in jealousy, but to have reposed his
entire trust in lago who manages to camouflage his wicked mind from the world,
and who is constantly referred to as ‘honest lago’, by all around, and who takes
advantage of the free and open nature of the Moor. It is not only Othello, but even
Cassio and Desdemona who call him ‘honest’. Both Othello and Desdemona
remain victims of that subtle evil embodied in lago who eats into and corrodes
their guileless world. Innocence is engulfed by evil. Here we are made to ponder
whether justice oversees this riot of destruction being played by demi-devils like
lago. So to look for some flaw in Othello alone is to do injustice to him as it is not
his frailty which leads to the tragic catastrophe but the overpowering machinations
of evil. W hen lago contrives a situation about Destiemona’s betrayal and her lack
of virtue, and when Desdemona and Cassio blunder in their anxiety to please
Othello, and when fate too seems to favour lago repeatedly, this man
characterized by honour and integrity, noble by nature and loving at heart
murders his wife for “the cause” (V. ii.1), as a sacrifice. W hatever lago skillfully
dramatizes, Othello being of a “free and open nature” takes it seriously, and if this
is a fault then no faith or idealism will ever prevail in a given world. So a naTve

concept of hamartia does not hold a key to the significance of the tragedy. In

every exercise of decision, error is possible but this kind of earth-shaking

experience is not possible, only because of some wrong action, attributable to bad
judgment or ignorance or inattention to detail. W hen tragically fatal things happen

we cannot explain them by some hamartia in the tragic protagonist, as such

events shake up the very foundation of moral life or human existence.

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 I am not going to remark on Othello under the enchantment of “coup de

theatre"27 as mentioned by Leavis’, but want to recognise Othello’s nobility genuinely.

Leavis’ account of the play where he finds Othello and not lago as the agent of tragic

disaster writes that:

In Shakespeare’s tragedy of Othello, Othello is the chief personage -th e

chief personage in such a sense that the tragedy may fairly be said to be
Othello’s character in action, lago is subordinate and merely ancillary . . .
Othello yields with extraordinary promptness to suggestion, with such
promptness as to make it plain that the mind that undoes him is not
lago’s but his own, it does not seem to need urging . . . [It is] Othello in
28
whose essential make-up the tragedy lay.

W e should not forget that all the characters in the play considered lago as
‘honest’ who with great difficulty spoke the truth against Cassio knowing very well
that the post left vacant after Cassio’s dismissal could go to him. lago is shown in
the play as a person with a keen desire to help all, who asks Desdemona to
intervene in the matter to help Cassio, to get him excused by Othello. Even
Emilia, lago’s shrewd and worldly-wise wife who knows him well, is deceived by
his pretence. In fact, Roderigo, Cassio, and who knows who else, are also
cheated by him. Shakespeare projects lago as ‘honest’ in public and a man with
foul motives in private: and it is this nature of his that makes Othello susceptible to
his strategies. Then Chance plays its unique role that Desdemona should drop
her handkerchief for Emilia to pick it up for lago. Then Cassio happens to wipe his
beard before Othello with the same handkerchief and Bianca too arrives precisely
at the same point when Othello is looking for some “ocular p ro o f (III. iii. 361). All
this is enough for any husband to enter into a wild rage against his wife. Thus,
without the external stimulus, or an agent who provoked him, Othello would never

27 F R Leavis, Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero (1952), Source: The Common Pursuit (1952),
included in: Shakespeare: Othello, A Casebook ed. by. John Wain, (Macmillan Press, London,
1971), p.142.
28 ibid., p p .1 2 5 ,1 32 ,140.

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have acted the way he did. Moreover, these facts make us think of the fate of
these mortals, be it Othello or Oedipus, who cannot escape from what is destined
for them. And even more when the overall circumstances or condition in life, an
unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result, destiny,
chance, fate, are all favouring a villain like lago, then no noble person, however
good and without any flaw he may be, can avoid the tragic catastrophe.

Furthermore, the doctrine that nothing matters except the agent’s intention
is a peculiarity of Christian and especially post-Kantian thought. Othello slays
Desdemona not in a passion of mad anger, but for his intense love of her.
Thinking that Desdemona fails him and his love, he is “perplexed in the extreme”
(V. ii. 347) killed her to “love thee after” (V. ii. 19) her death, knowing very well
that in heavenly sorrow, “it strikes when it does love” (V. ii. 22). Othello always
intended well and the series of actions propelling him to kill Desdemona in fact,
tend towards killing something deep in himself. None can ever pronounce him
guilty of a criminal charge. Further, Othello never forgives himself for the murder
of Desdemona. Morally innocent though he is, he commits suicide as he is
conscious of the fact that he is the man who bears the heaviest burden of
disaster, even as Oedipus voluntarily blinds himself. He feels that he has done a
terrible thing and the horror of his actions oppresses him, and he feels that he has
no longer any place in the society. W e know that even if there is no fault of his in
the murder, he has destroyed a precious piece of human life, which cannot be
restored. But surely, Othello is a play about human greatness. It is a tragedy
which does not leave us detached from its hero especially when he kills himself
and the play evokes in us a feeling of sympathy for the hero. Othello is great in
virtue of his self-condemnation, “one whose hand/ Like the base Indian threw a
pearl away" (V. ii. 347-48), judging himself to be unfit to live in this world.
Moreover, Othello is very much human who could not see what life holds for him.
Fate and Divine Providence are beyond his understanding. Othello’s tragic error is
his simplicity. He loves Desdemona “not wisely but too well" (V. ii. 345). If he

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could foresee life as gods can, he would have avoided the tragic catastrophe.

Indeed, Shakespeare wants us to notice that the tragedy is Othello's; it is his pain,

folly, and misfortune which reverberate, and makes this drama so compelling and

so telling of the human nature which errs, and at the same time has the ability to

accept its error fully. This rarity of excellence, of self-growth that the tragic figures

achieve at the culmination, which lies at the heart of tragedy, justifies tragedy as a

great art form.

Though everything is fixed by the unseen powers Othello takes the whole
blame of all the sins upon himself, even like Oedipus. Sartre warns of the dangers
of acting on the self-deceptive motives by which people often try to evade
responsibility for what they do. In the lecture I'Existentialisme est un humanisme
(Existentialism is a Humanism) (1946), Sartre describes the human condition in a
summary form: freedom entails total responsibility, in the face of which we
experience anguish, forlornness, and despair; genuine human dignity can be
achieved only in our active acceptance of these emotions and our responsibility.
Othello takes full responsibility of his actions and in doing so, the highest
meaning the responsibility implies is affirmed in the ‘catharsis’ of the emotions as
it enables us to reach to the amazing impact of the tragedy. Othello’s last act of
stabbing himself is the first gesture which he commits by his own free will,
otherwise he is always “led by the nose” (I. iii. 399), by the wicked workings and
the evil machinations of lago. Othello or Oedipus rise as moral giants through
acceptance of a moral responsibility which they could have easily shirked.

In The Winter’s Tale, where Leontes would have been led to put his wife

Hermione to death had it not been for Apollo’s intervention through the death of

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Mamillius his son; Posthumus in Cymbeline, because of lachimo’s intrigue,

thinking his wife faithless, orders for her murder, but is later reunited to her with
repentance and regret. Leontes too in the end is reunited to Hermione and there
is regeneration and renewal through the younger generation and the ultimate
impression w e are left with is that of an orderly and harmonious universe. But in
the world of tragedy there is no such hope for reconciliation: the tragic
protagonist’s acts are final in their consequences. George Steiner rightly suggests
that:

. . .tragedy is irreparable. It cannot iead to just and material

compensation for past suffering. Job gets back double the number of she-
asses; so he should, for God has enacted upon him a parable of justice.
Oedipus does not get back his eyes or his scepter over Thebes. Tragic
drama tells us that the spheres of reason, order, and justice are terribly
limited.29

Othello’s killing of Desdemona is irrevocable and is immediately followed by his

own suicide and the arrest of lago. The harmony that has been disturbed is
certainly restored and the order re-established but the universe is certainly poorer
for all its recovered harmony, as it has lost Hamlet, Lear, Othello and Macbeth.
But that does not mean to display how stark and awful life is. There is always a
solemn consolation that the protagonist of tragedy has reached the apex of his
nobility by the end of the play. Though the loss is incalculable, the immensity of
the loss is directly proportional to the fully grown stature of the hero. One such
effective use of such designs is Othello’s huge remorse over Desdemona's death.
When he finds out what he has done, his own death reenacts a deed of recompense,
which he does in order to punish himself for the rashness with which he had killed
Desdemona. Though his extreme degree of love, has failed in the domestic orbit one
hopes that, the Heavens are sure to throw their incense at the

29 George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy, (Faber and Faber, London, 1961), p.8.

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act of his stabbing himself, and the two loving souls would reunite at a deeper
plane. Susan K Langer aptly observes noting the special nature of the tragic form:

Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual

future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in
comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune - what the world will bring, and the
man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the
man brings, and what the world will demand from him. That is his Fate.
W hat he brings is his potentiality: his mental, moral and even physical
powers, his powers to act and suffer. Tragic action is the realization of all
his possibilities, which he unfolds and exhausts in the course of the
drama. Destiny conceived as Fate is, therefore, not capricious, like
Fortune, but is predetermined. Outward events are merely the occasions for
its realization.30

The nobility, the sentiment and the pathos that w e experience at the deliberate

execution of death upon himself is the mark of spiritual growth in him as we see a man

who is not only just guilty of abusing and killing his wife but who possesses courage

enough to accept his guilt and suffer even more. So finally tragedy is a spectacle of

the growth of a great soul which is overwhelmed by forces far beyond himself but

strong enough to stand firm in the teeth of an all-devouring disaster.

It is essential to notice that Shakespeare’s tragic heroes seem to show a

loss of will to live in this world not because they are unfit for this world but
because they have completed the role to be played by them in this material world
and now nothing is left for them to do but to embrace death gracefully by
accepting the wrongs done by them. W alter Benjamin citing Schopenhauer who
thought of tragedy as Trauerspiel [sorrow-play]:

30 Susan K Langer, The Great Dramatic Forms: the Tragic Rhythm; reprinted from Feeling and
Form: A Theory o f Art, included in Tragedy, ed. by. John Drakakis & Naomi Conn Liebler,
(Longman, London, New York, 1998), pp. 323-24.

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 W hat gives to everything tragic, the characteristic tendency to the
sublime, is the dawning of the knowledge that the world and life can

afford us no true satisfaction, and are therefore not worth our attachment
to them.31

Citing the difference between the Stoic and Christian thought Benjamin further

quotes Schopenhauer:

Stoic equanimity is fundamentally distinguished from Christian

resignation by the fact that it teaches only calm endurance and unruffled
expectation of unalterably necessary evils, but Christianity teaches
renunciation, the giving up of willing. Christian tragedy shows the giving
up of the whole will to live, cheerful abandonment of the world in the
consciousness of its worthlessness and vanity. 32

Benjamin further writes that:

Death is an act of atonement, in the tragic ending, which grants the

victory to man... Death thereby becomes salvation. 33

The springs of tragedy are embedded in human existence, which is bound up with
mortality. Man is a creature who has to die and we can only redeem him by
making him tragic. To sum up, I would like to quote Helen Gardner who gives a
very solemn reason for death. She writes:

Although at first sight it seems strange that in Christian Europe, whose

prime doctrine was the Resurrection, the mere thought of death and
physical corruption was almost enough in itself to arouse tragic feeling,

31 Walter Benjamin, Trauerspiei and Tragedy, reprinted from: The Origin o f German Tragic Drama,
translated by John Osborn; included in Tragedy, ed. by. John Drakakis& Naomi Conn Liebler,
(Longman, London, New York, 1998), p. 114.
32 ibid., p.114.

33 ibid., pp. 112,110.

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 and most discussions of tragedy today assume its end should be death
and regard death as the great tragic fact, it is surely this very doctrine
that marks or creates a different attitude to death. The doctrine of the
Resurrection, which is very different from belief in the survival or
immortality of the soul, makes death more than the payment of our debt
to nature or the release of the soul from imprisonment in the body. The
moment of death becomes the moment of judgment, and the moment
when man, through the victory of Christ over sin and death, is remade. If
creation is the cardinal Hebrew doctrine, the Resurrection, or the new
creation, is the cardinal Christian doctrine, on which all else hinges. It
concentrates the imagination on the absoluteness and finality of death,
as the great test of faith. No other religious tradition has stressed as the
Christian tradition has the duty of contemplating death and preparing for
death.34

Othello thinks of himself as destined for hell, so his act of killing himself becomes
an act of inflicting true justice upon himself, for the wrongs for which Othello sees
himself as guilty. His act of self-slaughter is not just a means to escape from a
painful world. This is his sacrifice, his act of atonement and in doing so Othello
dies truly penitent. And we need to recognize this essential goodness in the tragic
protagonist, and such a human being is not easily available on the earth. He is
the one who deserves to be the citizen of a better world and this fact deserves a
genuine recognition.

To return to the theme of the thesis, we can see from Othello too that any

exclusive focus on hamartia either as a congenital moral flaw or intellectual error

totally distorts the great tragic vision and diverts it from its true intent, the

34 Helen Gardner, Religion and Literature, (Faber & Faber, London, 1971), pp.72-73. I may add
that The Bhagwad Gita (VIII. 5-13) emphasises the necessity and value of the moment of death as
the moment of focus of one's life on the ultimate, as the resolution of life's harmony. The moment
of death becomes the gateway to the realm of deathlessness. Or as St. Luke puts it ‘whoever
seeks to preserve his life for himself will lose it, and whoever loses it will preserve it alive’ (17.33).

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affirmation of the indivisible human spirit vis-a-vis the enormous forces of evil
which constantly aim at its extinction.

248