Othello

 Othello 

Othello, as H.S. Wilson describes him, 

. . . is great in himself, no doubt,  and we see enough of this earlier in the play--his perfect self-command and command over others, epitomized in a single speech:  "Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them . . .";  his courteous dignity, the natural, unaffected poetry of the man, displayed so finely in his speech to the Venetian senators; his frank and deep love for Desdemona. 27 

Moreover, Othello is fully conscious of who and what he is, and full of the contentment which his well-rounded situation inspires.  When Iago recommends that Othello flee Brabantio and his entourage,  Othello responds: “Not I.  I must be found. /  My parts, my title, and my perfect soul / Shall manifest me rightly”  (I. ii. 28-30).  And when Othello is reunited with Desdemona in Cyprus he describes his situation as one in which 

 

 

  If it were now to die, 

'Twere now to be most happy; for I fear 

My soul hath her content so absolute 

That not another comfort like to this 

Succeeds in unknown fate. (II. i. 187-91)    

As solid, adherent and well-rounded as Othello's world appears, by the middle of Act III, it has begun to fall apart.  As suspicion of Desdemona's infidelity sets in, Othello announces the consequent end of life as he has known it. 

        . . . .   O now, forever 

Farewell the tranquil mind!  Farewell content! 

Farewell the plumed troops, and the big wars 

That makes ambition virtue!  O, farewell! 

Farewell the neighing steed and shrill trump, 

The spirit-stirring drum, the' ear-piercing fife, 

The royal banner; and all quality, 

Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! 

And O you mortal engines whose rude throats 

Th' immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit, 

Farewell!  Othello's occupation's gone!  (III.iii. 342-54) 

Pursuant to her argument with her husband shortly thereafter, Desdemona concludes to Cassio:  "My lord is not my lord; nor should I know him/ Were he in favor as in humour altered."(III. iv. 123-4)   Finally, having discovered the baselessness of his murder of Desdemona, Othello,  in answer to Lodovico's question "Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?"  Othello responds, "That's he that was Othello?  Here I am" (V.ii. 282 -3).   

As Wilson describes the process of Othello's decline: “Under the deft ministrations of Iago, we witness a remarkable transformation in him.  The man of judgement, the commander ‘whom passion could not shake,’ becomes a credulous fool, transported with jealous fury . . . .” 28   Along with the other tragic heroes, Othello suffers the negation of his sense of reality; however, what distinguishes Othello from the lyrical tragedies  is Iago's "deft ministrations." 

Iago's clearly expressed ambition in the play is to drive Othello mad.    

I'll have Michael Cassio on the hip, 

Abuse him to the Moor in the right garb 

(For I fear Cassio with my nightcap too), 

Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me 

For making him egregiously an ass 

And practicing upon his peace and quiet, 

Even to madness.   . . .   (II.i. 304-10) 

Iago presses Othello and responds with glee when the pressure provokes Othello's epileptic seizure.  Iago then displays a frightening knowledge of madness:  "The lethargy must have his quiet course./ If not, he foams at mouth, and by and by/ Breaks out to savage madness." (IV.i.54-6) and predicts that, as Othello's jealousy is fed and bated:  "Othello shall go mad"(IV.i. 101).  We are made mindful of Iago's success not only by the final, furious and outrageous murder of Desdemona or by Othello's suicide, but also by Desdemona's famous penultimate scene in which she sings the "Willow" song about a maid who "was in love; and he she loved proved mad" (IV.iii.29). 

Othello varies from lyrical tragedy in that we experience the negation of Othello's reality through the intrigues of Iago rather than as radiation from the tragic hero himself.  Bradley, in pursuit of his constant theme that tragedy  emerges from character, insists that "we must not call the play a tragedy of intrigue as distinguished from a tragedy of character." 29  However the fact that Iago's conspiracy generates the action and that we view the action largely from the point of view of its perpetrator cannot, in any reasonable reading of the play, be glossed over.  Whereas in the lyrical tragedies we have seen the double bind displayed as an internal conflict generated and symbolized by the whole universe of the tragic hero; in Othello , Iago explicitly places doubts, contradictions and dilemmas in Othello's mind.  Although Iago plays the role of the double-bind personified, of the internal dilemma externalised and objectified, he, unlike the umbrella type characters we have seen in the lyrical tragedies, is no part of the tragic hero.  Iago is the agent of Othello's downfall. Othello, to Iago, is an object and we of the audience are forced to view Othello, if not exactly from Iago's perspective, at least from a perspective which includes Iago and which, therefore, discourages our embracing the subjectivity of Othello's Lebenswelt .   

Of the similarities between Iago and Othello the argument might be made that both men are warriors and both are apparently motivated by jealousy.  Jane Adamson, in Othello as Tragedy, makes the argument that Iago, like all the other characters in the play, is struggling to defend his habits of feeling and "ways of viewing and responding to the world." 30  Adamson's analysis  of Iago is valid and coherent, and her discussion of his role in the play is pertinent.  My objection to her analysis is that while she criticizes other critics because they have "exaggerated Iago's importance," 31  she herself offers an extensive, in-depth analysis of Iago's motives which, I would argue,  belies his role in the play as villain-narrator.  The design of the play is for Iago, alone of all the characters of the play, to broach the allegorical tenor of the characters of the morality play.  Adamson's analysis of Iago forces the conclusion that he is like all the other characters of the drama.  The play, however, emphasizes his difference and thereby establishes his role. 

McElroy also analyses Iago in depth enough to note the contradiction of his feelings of envy and his attitude of nihilism.  As McElroy points out:   

If something is worthless, there is no point in envying those who possess it; conversely, to envy something is tacitly to acknowledge its worth and desirability.  Yet envy and nihilism do obviously coexist in Iago, and, moreover, he gives startling evidence of not believing himself in the glib aloofness from values which he affects when expounding upon the world as he sees it. 32 

McElroy also concludes that Iago, like the other characters, is struggling to hold his worldview together. 

He can best be understood as a man who is trying by sheer force of will to impose cohesion upon a subjective  world that is in constant danger of disintegrating, to insist upon the validity of an interpretation of reality that, with at least one part of his mind, he does not quite believe in himself. 33

 

Clearly Iago's motives and behaviour can be illuminated by this kind of analysis but, in the interests of our understanding and appreciating Othello , should they be?  That we should attend to Iago as one of five or more examples of characters striving for the maintenance of reality is, I believe, counter to all the indications of the play.   The fact that Iago is so conspicuously glib, that he is not introspective, that he is displayed as something nearing a stock villain and that he functions as a kind of chorus/narrator through most of the play--all indicates that he is not intended as an object of analysis in this play.    

Iago has many roles to play in the drama, but focusing on his character and motives puts those roles out of focus.  When Iago offers as motivation for his conspiracy against "the Moor," the afterthought that there was rumour abroad that Othello had cuckolded him,  the implication seems clear enough that Iago's motives are not to be fathomed further.   When Iago offers exactly the same rationale (in a parenthesis) for his willingness to destroy Cassio, the signal is reinforced that Iago's motives are not really part of the design of the play.  In other words the play clearly instructs us not to probe too deeply why Iago does what he does, by immediately showing us that this question is a dead-end street. 

Iago is--as most of us are most of the time--non-introspective, and when he does question himself, like most of us, he has ready and easy answers for his own questions.  On the scale of the Venetian worldview which pervades the world of the play, he is something of the ding-an-sich .   Iago's role is that of the common man, the alehouse humorist, the pragmatist, the materialist, the natural man (in the worst sense of the expression), the a-moral, non-thinker whose instinct is to deflate idealism, civility and sophistication whenever he encounters them.   Like the Stanley Kowalski of another era, Iago's natural inclination is to pull ladies off their pedestals, to strip away the veneer of culture and civilization,  to challenge ideals, values and even rationality with animal cunning and brutality, and, in general, to reduce the world to a level fitting his brutishness. 

Thus Iago presents himself as not unlike the Dionysus of Greek tragedy who punishes those who inflate themselves and refuse to know their own places and limitations.  Iago establishes his enmity against Othello by declaring: 

I know my price; I am worth no worse a place. 

But he, as loving his own pride and purposes, 

Evades them with a bombast circumstance, 

Horribly stuffed with epithets of war; 

Nonsuits my mediators.    (I.i.10-14) 

Othello is not the only victim of Iago's treacherous disfranchisement.  As Michael Long points out in The Unnatural Scene , 

As soon as we look not only at Othello but also at Venice we notice that it is not only the hero who undergoes a dramatic collapse of the personality.  He is parallelled in this by three native members of the Venetian nobility, in whom we witness other very important instances of collapse before experience with which they are unable to deal.  The three are Brabantio, Desdemona and Cassio, and Shakespeare weaves together the lives of all three of them in a way which makes it clear that this propensity for collapse, this vulnerability and incapacity, is a wide and shared cultural weakness. 34      

 

We could for that matter include Roderigo in the list of characters whom Iago strips of their protective covering against the harshness of existence.  In Roderigo's case the protective covering is his money.  Brabantio's reality is intertwined in the themes of propriety and of paternity.  McElroy comments of Brabantio:  "In him we see in miniature the kind of complete destruction of the subjective world which is central to the experience of the tragic hero." 35  If we consider Iago's performance beneath Brabantio's window we derive a fair notion of how Iago proceeds throughout the play.  As Brabantio points out, Iago's boisterous claims that a robbery has taken place challenge the sanctity of Venice.  The bawdiness of his announcement--"you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse,"(I. i.108) and "your daughter and the Moor are making the beast with two backs"(I. i.114)--unhinges Brabantio as a father, as a modest gentleman and as a respected senator of Venice. 

Much of Iago's strength is in his carnality, that is to say, he operates comfortably at a level disquieting to proper Venetians.  This fact is most apparent in his interactions with Desdemona.  At quay side in Cyprus, Iago and Desdemona joust and jest at games of compliment and injury.  The game-scene, as Adamson observes, seems "laboured and clumsy." 36   Adamson fittingly takes note of Desdemona's aside:  "I am not merry; but I do beguile/  The thing I am by seeming otherwise . . ."(II.i.120-1), and Adamson, I believe, rightly interprets the scene as a clash of moral standards. However her conclusion that what emerges from the scene is a more thorough understanding of Iago's cast of mind takes us on the wrong track.  Iago's mind is never really the issue in this play.  The scene is a repetition of what we have just witnessed Iago doing to Brabantio, with the daughter now as victim.  The scene is laboured and clumsy precisely because, though Iago pretends to be uncomfortable,  Desdemona is swimming in unnatural waters which are at once beneath her and over her head.  She becomes involved in banter with Iago to distract him from his attacks on Emilia, and is obviously attempting to trap him into retracting or softening the misogyny of his comments.  Iago cannot insult her, so she demands his critique of her.  Iago does not insult her directly but the bawdiness of his commentary in answer to her makes her the butt of his lewdness.  Iago's victory is not simply that he blemishes Desdemona's innocence.  As Adamson points out, we must ask of this scene, what is Desdemona doing playing the coquette with Iago when her beloved husband may, for all she knows, be dead or drowning?  Iago has not only trapped her into conversation and besmirched her, he has distracted her into absurd behaviour which contradicts her nature and feelings, and overlooks the obvious and compelling nature of her immediate situation. 

This is Iago's role, the bringer of madness and chaos.  Desdemona hints at the key to his methods when she describes his comments as "old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i' th' alehouse"(II.i. 136).  Desdemona fails to recognize Iago as the  serious threat which his perfidy warrants, but her comments accidentally underline Iago's strengths, his weapons, against Venetian civility and rationality:  his knowledge of the world of the alehouse and his use of paradox.   Iago is able to manipulate the Venetians and Othello because they are too innocent or precious to deal with the "alehouse" machinations of sullied passions, promiscuity, prostitution, inebriation and knavery.  Thus, while Desdemona can barely bring herself to even pronounce the word "whore," Iago is able to broach calling her as much in their quay-side conversation and, using Bianca, the courtesan, and Cassio as his pawns,  to arrange for Othello to accuse her of just that crime.  Desdemona's retorts that Iago is "profane" and "liberal" are feeble because her propriety will not allow her to say more.  To Othello's accusation that she is a whore she is barely able to respond. Her innocence precludes her being able to deal with the accusation. 

Iago's stripping Cassio of his  lieutenancy and his reputation through what the Elizabethans would call the ‘madness of drink’  is the clearest prototype of what Iago will eventually do to Othello.  Iago describes Cassio as an "arithmetician" and a "bookish theoric" whose knowledge of warfare is "mere prattle without practice"(I.i.16-24).  Cassio, upon his greetings to Emilia, tells Iago: “Let it not gall your patience, good Iago, / That I extend my manners.  'Tis my breeding / That gives me this bold show of courtesy” (II.i.96-8).  Iago works the difference of their breeding to his advantage by plying Cassio with spirits and orchestrating the drunken brawl which ensues.  When Cassio has lost his "reputation," that "immortal part" of himself "and what remains is bestial" (II.iii. 260-2), then he finds himself on Iago's level and, in fact, looking to Iago as his mentor. 

For the most part Iago achieves his ends not through active conspiracy but by being the quintessential eiron , the dissembler, the "paradoxer."  We have seen his penchant for paradox in his banter with Desdemona, we have noted his ability to non-plus Brabantio, and, earlier still, we see him beguiling Roderigo with the sheer nonsense of his rhetoric.  For example, he pledges himself to Roderigo's service saying:  "For, sir,/ It is as sure as you are Roderigo, / Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago." (I.i.53-4)  In the same speech Iago swears:  "Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, / But seeming so, for my peculiar end."  Iago is comfortable, in fact, well served, by denying heaven and swearing by heaven at the same time.  Iago's ability to play the simple man, to gloss over contradictions and to varnish his incongruities with a veneer of simple rhetoric, and to say quite carelessly, "I am not what I am" (I.i.62), guarantees that he will drive the "perfect," logical Venetians to distraction.  While Iago remains impervious to internal dilemma and self-contradiction, he is acutely conscious of how to manipulate these double-bind components to assure the fall of his victims.    Iago delights in the paradox of his scheme to make Desdemona's innocence the hinge-pin of his malevolent plot: “So will I turn her virtue into pitch, / And out of her own goodness make the net / That shall enmesh them all” (II. iii.357-9). 37 

Iago's diabolical facilities become most apparent in Act III, Scene iii, where he becomes Othello's alter ego.   Like the chorus of Greek tragedy, Iago precipitates a "double vision" of Othello's mind.  However, since, at this point we are most conscious of Iago's intent, what stands out in these episodes is his machinations rather than Othello's mindscape.  What results is an external display of the double bind; the tragic hero as subject becomes the tragic hero as object.  The internal dilemma has now been externalised to such an extent (because we see it as the conscious manipulations of Iago) that we are more aware of the double bind than of the tragic individual. 

Iago's role is not simply that of daemonic spirit but, like the villain of pantomime, he also serves as narrator.  Adamson quite correctly argues that Iago cannot be reduced to "a mere theatrical device--the conventional villain," but, at the same time, she acknowledges that "he is the main means by which Shakespeare affords us--one might almost say inflicts on us--an unrelieved ironic perspective on the action as it takes place before us." 38    

Much of the critical controversy surrounding Othello centers on the question of how we should finally respond to Othello and, therefore, in particular, on the implications of his suicide speech.   Bradley argues that Othello is essentially noble and that his death reinforces that nobility.  F.R. Leavis in his essay, "Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero," challenges this sentimental view underlining Othello's boundless penchant for "self-idealization."  Leavis describes Othello's penultimate speech and suicide as "self-dramatization" and a " coup de théâtre ." 39  Of the same speech T.S. Eliot concludes that  Othello is "cheering himself up" and attempting to escape reality by practicing self-deception. 40  The key factor in the debate, as the title of the Leavis essay indicates, is the influence of Iago.  If Iago is an evil genius then Othello is all the more noble and sympathetic; if we adopt a diminished view of Iago then Othello seems more culpable and flawed. 

Othello, as McElroy has pointed out, is, in essence, like Shakespeare's other great tragic heroes.  What makes the assessment of Othello's character problematic is that we see him from Iago's point of view.  Imagine how our vision of Hamlet would change if Claudius dominated beginning, middle and end of the play with his successful plot to drive Hamlet mad.  Imagine Lear if his story were told and his destiny orchestrated by Goneril, and Macbeth if the Witches spoke directly to us announcing what they would do and how Macbeth would respond. In short, the tragic hero is necessarily diminished if he is presented to us through the auspices of an antagonist-chorus-narrator, and this is clearly the case with Othello.       

Wilson, however, is categorical that "there is no ‘choral’ character in Othello ." 41  He contends that "the effect of the imagery of Othello is dramatic, not choral.  The imagery heightens the dramatic effect of the characters in action but does not interpret the action for us." 42  The point is important for Wilson on several counts, among them that "it is hard to sympathize with him [Othello] if we consider him dispassionately, if we stop to reflect."  Furthermore, "if we cannot sympathize with Othello, we might as well miss the play altogether; indeed, we have missed it." 43        

Nonetheless our sympathizing with Othello is interfered with in the play because we must see him from the ironic distance which Iago and his intrigues impose on the action.  Much of the action is overlaid with Iago's soliloquies.  However, these speeches are not soliloquies in the purest sense of the term.  That is, Iago never really speaks to himself. He is a simple man, impervious to dilemma and untroubled by internal conflict, he has nothing to speak to himself about.  His soliloquies tend to be announcements of his plans.  Furthermore he is lying, devious and ironical even in his soliloquies, which certainly contradicts the convention of the soliloquy as honest self revelation.  For example, after he has persuaded Cassio to present his case to Desdemona so that she may sue to Othello on his behalf, Iago begins his soliloquy:  “And what's he then that says I play the villain, / When this advice is free I give, and honest, / Probal to thinking, and indeed the course / To win the Moor again?” (II.iii.333-6).  Iago is again playing the role of dissembler, but for whose benefit?   Iago pretends to question himself, pretends to wonder at his role.  He continues to play to the audience or to his imagined audience, and thereby establishes himself not only as villain, but as chorus/narrator of the drama speaking more in the tone of asides than of soliloquies. 44 

The upshot of this choral effect is that we see Othello and his destiny under control of the design of the play, clearly drawn and in sharp perspective--and yet know him less intimately.  If Othello appears as either noble cutout or self-dramatizing egotist, it is because we do not know him well enough, have not been drawn into his inner world deeply enough, to feel otherwise about him. 

The action of Othello becomes melodramatic because it cannot be integrated into a dominant vision which encompasses the play and which we associate with the tragic hero.  The inner, organic view is displaced by the external battle of opposites.  And, as we do not empathize, as we do not share in the subjective reality of the drama (to the same degree as in lyrical tragedy) the actions come to us all the more as a shock, the characters are more striking and dramatic, and the emotions are heightened and salient.  The playwright listening to the "voice" of his drama will incorporate further touches of melodrama:  strong contrasts (evil and innocence, black and white, Venice and Cyprus) and the "Willow" scene being the most obvious examples in Othello . 

It is perhaps inevitable then that Othello's valedictory speech and suicide might be judged self-dramatization, yet we should note that this speech, like the final destinies of all the tragic heroes we have considered is marked by madness.  It is a discourse signifying the fragmentation, incoherence and self-negation of Othello's reality. 

Soft you, a word or two before you go. 

I have done the state some service, and they know't. 

No more of that, I pray you, in your letters, 

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, 

Speak of me as I am.  Nothing extenuate, 

Nor set down aught in malice.  Then must you speak 

Of one that loved not wisely, but too well; 

Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, 

Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand, 

Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away 

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, 

Albeit unusèd to the melting mood, 

Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees 

Their med'cinable gum.  Set you down this. 

And say besides that in Aleppo once, 

Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk 

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, 

I took by th' throat the circumcisèd dog 

And smote him--thus. (V.ii. 336-55) 

(He stabs himself.)   

The most apt description of this total discourse is Gratiano's immediate response:  "All that's spoke is marred."  Not only is the speech "marred" by Othello’s stabbing himself, but the speech is marred in itself.  The tone and content of the speech are inappropriate to the situation and self-contradictory.  The speech can only be explained within the context of Othello's madness; that is, in the overwhelming wake of his seizure and delusions.  This context, in turn, for its elucidation requires a brief review of the process of Othello's madness. 

Iago pledges to drive Othello mad.  Othello is seemingly indestructible, save that he is recently married.  His love of Desdemona is both the happy completion of his universe and his Achilles' heel.  His proclamation of his love for Desdemona clarifies Iago's course and forebodes his own downfall:  "And when I love thee not,/ Chaos  is come again" (III. iii. 91-2).  Othello is not plagued by an ambivalent course of action and divided mind, as the tragic hero usually is, and, therefore, Iago makes himself that part of Othello's mind which doubts and questions itself.  Iago arranges for suspicion to linger and jealousy to fester until Othello's mind riots in a confusion of contradictory emotions which cannot be resolved or evaded.  This process reaches a frenzied pitch and its first plateau of madness in IV.i.29ff, after Iago has intimated that Cassio has been blabbing about his trysts with Desdemona. 

OTHELLO     Hath he said anything? 

IAGO   He hath, my lord; but be  you well assured, 

 No more than he'll unswear. 

OTHELLO     What hath he said? 

IAGO    Why, that he did--I know not what he did. 

OTHELLO    What? what? 

IAGO     Lie-- 

OTHELLO   With her? 

IAGO    With her, on her; what you will. 

OTHELLO    Lie with her? Lie on her?--We say lie on her when they belie her.--Lie with her! Zounds, that's fulsome.--Handkerchief--confessions--handkerchief!--To confess, and  be hanged for his labor--first to be hanged, and then to confess!  I  tremble at it.  Nature would not invest herself in such  shadowing passion without some instruction.  It is not words that shakes me thus.--Pish! Noses, ears, and lips?  Is't possible?--confess--Handkerchief?--O devil! 

(Falls in a trance) 

IAGO   Work on. 

My med'cine works!  . . . . 

We note of course that at this point Iago has so conditioned Othello's mind that Iago need not even utter a complete sentence or idea to stir Othello's turmoil. After the seizure Othello is no longer Othello.  Like Cassio before him, Othello has been reduced to Iago's minion, fawning over him:  "O, thou art wise! 'Tis certain" (IV.i.74).  Othello is so divested of himself and his wits that Iago can affront him with impunity and repeat with mock paternalism:  "Good, sir, be a man"(IV.i.66).  From this point forward Othello's perception and behaviour are marked by irrationality.   As Iago reveals his plan to have Othello eavesdrop on his conversation with Cassio and cautions Othello to be patient, Othello responds: “Dost thou hear, Iago? / I will be found most cunning in my patience; / But--dost thou hear?--most bloody”  (IV. i. 90-2).   There is  nothing for Iago to hear, Othello is hallucinating.  In his condition it is little wonder that Othello is deceived by Iago, Cassio and Bianca's little melodrama of the handkerchief.  Othello's responses become hyperbolic, confused and contradictory.  (Later, he goes so far as to claim that  Desdemona "with Cassio hath the act of shame/ A thousand times committed" (V.ii.211-12). )  Having accepted Iago's assertion that the handkerchief Cassio gave Bianca was his, Othello responds with the ambivalence inherent in the double bind. 

OTHELLO     I would have him nine years a-killing!--A   fine woman, a fair woman, a sweet woman? 

IAGO     Nay, you must forget that. 

OTHELLO     Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be damned   tonight; 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 and command him tasks. 

IAGO  Nay, that's not your way. 

OTHELLO    Hang her!  I do but say what she is,  So   delicate with her needle.  An admirable musician.    (IV.i. 178-88) 

When Lodovico arrives with a message from Venice, Othello is at first enigmatic.  Then he seems not to hear Desdemona when she speaks, until he suddenly turns on her asking "Are you wise?" and as she does not understand him (in fact the question--being out of all context--cannot mean anything) he tells her:  "I am glad to see you mad" (IV.i. 238).  Evidently he senses that he has been driven mad and feels it would be just for Desdemona to be mad.  Suddenly he calls her "Devil!" and strikes her. As she leaves, Lodovico asks that Othello call her back to make amends. Othello seeming to misconstrue the request, first suggests that it is Lodovico who wishes to do something with Desdemona, and then uses the opportunity to bitterly display Desdemona as an obedient but hollow object.  Of course Lodovico is compelled to ask:  "Are his wits safe?  Is he not light of brain?" (IV.i. 267). 

Jealousy breeds jealousy, and madness breeds madness, and thus Othello's passions cannot be repaired by Emilia's assuagements or by Desdemona's declarations of innocence.  Wilson, in analysing the murder of Desdemona, I believe, takes the scene far too much at face value and without taking the context and Othello's condition fully or seriously enough into consideration.   For example, Wilson  states that Othello is "utterly convinced of Desdemona's guilt and the necessity of killing her    (‘Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men’) . . . ."   Wilson fails to note the spuriousness, in fact, the absurdity of this logic, particularly as a justification for the murder of a much-loved wife.   Wilson's attempt to argue that the Shakespearean worldview behind this particular play shows through in Othello ("the circumcisèd dog," i.e., a Muslim) displaying sincere Christian altruism at the moment he smothers his wife is arcane.  Clearly the only sense we are to make of Othello's discourse at this point is that it doesn't make sense at the level of logical utterance.  Like Desdemona we understand Othello's fury but not his words.  Desdemona herself credits Othello's madness with the imminent murder when she observes:  "And yet I fear you; for you're fatal then/ When your eyes roll so" (V.ii.36-7). 

Though we cannot depend on the logic of Othello's utterances, as Adamson's analysis of the murder scene ably demonstrates,  we can comprehend him on another level. 

Desdemona is his heart.  The destructive act of smothering her is his attempt to stifle his own feelings.  It is a way of trying to conserve his self, or rather to conserve the only idea of himself he can live with (or thinks he can live with):  as a man forever and entirely devoid of feelings. 45 

Othello has been trapped into the unbearable paradox of having to destroy himself to save himself, of having to unleash chaos in order to save justice.  No action is tenable, inaction is equally untenable.  In his reaction to the murder, as Adamson points out,  “there is no sense of shock at what he has done.  He seems mentally distant, out of touch with its reality, and his heart seems for the time mercifully dulled, even lifeless, like her . . .”. 46 

     The subsequent scenes remind us that Othello's tragedy is to have had his sense of reality undermined, fragmented and stripped away from him.  (The same catastrophe which each of the Venetians has faced in miniature in the course of the play.)  As Adamson points out: 

Neither we nor Othello can miss the significance of his disarmament.  In stripping him of his weapons by which he might attack others, Montano also strips him of his power to defend himself:  the physical disarming mirrors a psychological one, as Othello's next speech makes plain. 47 

The last skin of Othello's reality is his use of language.  Adamson notes: 

In the early acts, we recall, Othello's mastery of speech was a manifest sign, and sometimes the very means, of his mastery in and over his world.  It not only sounded authoritative and conscious of its power, but was actually forceful enough to disarm Brabantio and others . . . . The commanding eloquence of that was no mere trick of language, but sprang from and bespoke the real authority of Othello's self. 48 

In the final scenes, even of this, Othello is flayed.  As Adamson describes it:  "Othello's rhetoric in this speech (V. ii. 257ff.) flounders with his floundering inner state, and betrays it with dreadful clearness." 49 

Of Othello's valedictory we should notice that he is attempting to recover some sense of himself.  In the context of the situation, the suave tranquility of his opening interruption is aberrant.   His argument, "I have done the state some service" (though inane and inappropriate in the circumstances) echoes the Othello of Act I--"My services which I have done the state/ Shall  out-tongue his [Brabantio's] complaints" (I.i.17).  Othello is thus trying to recapture or at least hold onto a fragment of what he once knew himself to be.  As Othello is struggling to hold on to some sense of who he is, hence the importance of the line, "Speak of me as I am."   By the line, "Then you must speak/ Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;" it would seem that Othello has recovered his rhetoric and implicitly some part of himself.  Yet immediately, as he begins his claim, "of one not easily jealous," the structure begins to fall apart again, the old error is repeated, his self blindness and past sins and anguish are harkened to mind, and this idea is never completed.  The ornate and convoluted conceit on which he embarks seems a scrambled metaphor which does not describe him (has he yet shed a tear?), and barely manages to describe what has transpired.  He separates himself into subject and object in the penultimate line.  The act of stabbing himself makes his last line true  but contradicts the whole import of "unlucky deeds" and his extolling the emissaries to "speak of me as I am.  Nothing extenuate, . . ."   

In total then, the speech says nothing that is not "marred."  The effort is neither spectacularly egotistical nor sublimely noble.  We must hear the speech not as words or ideas but as the fury of  a man struggling to regain some sense of himself and of his reality and failing in the attempt.   

Notes

27.  H.S. Wilson,   On the Design of Shakespearian Tragedy  (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), p. 55. 

28.  Ibid, p. 55. 

29.  Bradley, p. 145. 

30.  J. Adamson, Othello as Tragedy  (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 65. 

31.  Ibid, p. 65. 

32.  McElroy, B., Shakespeare's Mature Tragedies (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1973),  p. 103. 

33.  Ibid, p. 106. 

34.  M. Long, The Unnatural Scene (London:  Metheun, 1976), p. 39. 

35.  McElroy, p. 101. 

36.  Adamson, p. 70. 

37.  It is a coincidence but, then again, not insignificant that Iago so closely echoes the central image (the entangling net) of The Libation Bearers . 

38.  Adamson, p. 66. 

39.  F.R. Leavis, "Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero," in The Common Pursuit (London:  Chatto and Windus, 1952), p. 152. 

40.  T.S. Eliot, "Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca," Selected Essays  (London: Faber and Faber, 1934), p. 131. 

41.  Wilson, p. 66. 

42.  Ibid, p. 67. 

43.  Ibid, p. 55. 

44.  Iago  is not choral in the Greek sense.  The Greek chorus presents a "double vision" born out of sympathy for the tragic hero.  Iago is antipathetic to Othello and is, therefore, more independent and distant from the hero.  The double vision he presents is in fact a deliberate double bind. 

45.  Adamson, p. 275. 

46.  Ibid, p. 276. 

47.  Ibid, p. 283. 

48.  Ibid, p. 285. 

49.  Ibid, p. 289.