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Assistant professor Daniela Brown

Civilization: William Shakespeare
English A, 3rd year, University of Bucharest

Unit 7
Othello, The Moor of Venice
On psycho geography and the power of language

I. The definition of Othello as a tragic hero

---nobility
---ideal/interests
---ascent
---forces at work to push the hero to commit a hybris
---suffering and lamentation
---sublimation?

II. The power of the sword and the power of the word
Iago
Iago to Roderigo:
Thou knowst we work by wit and not by witchcraft.
P603. Wit= skilful language, associated with Iago, Venetian politics, wordplay,
doubleness, plots and plotting, maleness
Witchcraft= with Othello and Africa, magic, charms, women
Wit and Witchcraft=reason and passion
He uses language
--to imply,
--insinuate,
--pull out of peoples imaginations the dark things, their negative fantasies.
He is a mind reader and a provocateur
He commits crime by suggestion
(to Othello about Cassio departing from Desdemona):
That he would steal away so guilty-like/Seeing you coming.)
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Iago is inside as outside Othello (voicing Othellos suspicions)

P611. He turns white into black, false into the truth.
P612: his manipulation of language is through subtraction: insinuation, artful echo, and
silence

Othello
P595. Brabantio accuses him of witchcraft; his charm islanguage (his story of himself).
P596. Throughout the play his language is so beautiful that critics have called it the
Othello music.
P597. His story is out of the tradition of romance and epic, with monsters, deserts, caves,
cannibals, things that were true. The Duke likes it too.
In Othellos perception, Desdemona loved him for what he did and he loved her because
she admired and pitied him
He confuses the personal with the public (he mixes up the body politic and the personal
body)
His tragedy begins when he loses this capacity to enchant through speech and he loses the
vestiges of civilization

Othellos loss into incoherence, fragments of sentences about fragments of bodies

(Noses, ears, and lips! Ist possible? Confess? Handkerchief? O devil!) (4.1.40-41)
Loss of words with Othello=loss of humanity

III. Theme: race, class, gender and sexuality

(Garber 588) Race, class, gender and sexuality become crisis points when they are
different, out of place from the point of view of traditional society:
---a black man marries a white woman and is chosen by the nation to lead it in time of
peril
---a soldier sees his place given to another, given to a courtly educated snob who believes
in rank
---a woman asserts herself, making her own choice in marrying against her fathers will,
speaking out in public on civic matters, daring to contradict her husbands view and
offering him advice
She openly and frankly speaks about sexuality
These are signs of transgression, questioning boundaries.

IV. Dichotomy
A./ Psycho geography: Venice and Cyprus
There is a geographical change from a civilised orderly space (Venice) to a wild,
passionate, confusing one (Cyprus)
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Cyprus=Venus
B./ Light and darkness (Brabantio asks for light) mirrors the dichotomy of Venice and Cyprus.
(In act 2, scene 3, in Cyprus, Cassios drunkenness, triggered by Iago, is structured
identically to the opening scene, with Desemona and Othello being woken up by the loud
noise in the night and a cry for light. The scene is repeated in act 5, scene 1 with the
wounding of Cassio and the murder of Roderigo: in the dark, and another cry for light.
P592. In all 3 scenes, Iago pretends to be the light-bringer, providing order and clarity,
although he is the source of chaos. Lucifer is also the light-bringer, name for the rebel
archangel. Iago brings light in order to enforce darkness.
Hamlet also starts in darkness, with a wedding which will be part of the tragedy to come.
These 2 tragedies start with the end of comedies.
C./ Black and white
Iago and Roderigo resent Othello not so much because he is black, but because he is a
stranger.
Othello looks black, but Iago who becomes the pole of moral negativity (conventionally
associated with blackness).
Black skinned Othello and inwardly, morally black Iago.
Shakespeare plays with false forms of whiteness: Bianca, the courtesan, means white:
White whore Bianca and morally white Des. Black and white, in Christian terms it mean
sin and virtue

V. Psychomachia
P593. Psychomachia=the conflict of the soul
The struggle of 2 forces: a good angel and a bad angel for a mans soul: Iago and
Desdemona are fighting for the possession of Othello
Iago is a more sophisticated version of the medieval Vice from morality plays (his
purpose was to coax the hero into sin).
Or both Iago and Desdemona are reflecting aspects of Othellos mind, so the struggle is
within Othello.
Othello contains the word hell and Desdemona, the word demon.

VI. Othello: a blackman, a stranger, a problem with his body politic and his
personal self
---not fit in the Venetian world.
---a soldier, rather than a statesman or courtier
--- P602. Othellos problem in the beginning of the play is a refusal to acknowledge
the private nature of his own passion and his own person. He will ultimately blame
Desdemona for inciting passion in him.
--- his energies are concentrated on the public self (reputation of a great warrior). He
distrusts his own feelings
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---history: he presumably comes from Northern Africa, where Mauritania, the place of
origin of the Moors was, on the other side of Morocco.
--- Othello turned Christian.
---Cassio is everything that Oth thinks he is not. Cassio is a Florentine and Florence was
for the English Renaissance a centre of culture and courtship. He admires Cassios easy
ways and good manners. Othello feels vulnerable at the court, away from the battlefields
and in private. He excessively tries to control himself and reason with everything in
public and in private because he feels doubtful as a Venetian and a lover (not as a
soldier). This will make him burst
--- P609: since his wife is unfaithful, as he believes her to be, his professional identity is
lost, the private and the public are confusedly intertwined (3.3.350-362). It is Othellos
shame not Desdemonas.
---he is the only warrior of Shakespeare whom we never see in a fight

VII. Iago
The only onstage confidant is Iago who makes us complicit to his designs (addressing us
in asides)
P605. The plays malign and conscienceless stage manager
Although his name is Spanish, like Roderigos, and may reflect English-Spanish tensions,
he is identified as Venetian.
Like Oth, Iago is jealous of Cassios courtly ways
He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly.
(5.1.19-20)
So Iago has a social grievance against both strangers: he pretends:
--that Othello has slept with Emilia
--that Othello has made Cassio his lieutenant
--that he himself lusts for Des
--Cassio has slept with Emilia
His motives: sexual jealousy, political envy and reputation: UNCONVINCING
He does not seem to care about reputation; he does not seem to be possessive about
Emilia
His movieless malignity (Coleridge) seems to be that he hates the Moor
Iago is the medieval Vice with his constant attempts to win over the soul of the hero for
hell
He is part of Renaissance drama as the parasite who lives off another (Ben Jonsons
Mosca character in Volpone)
He is explicitly satanic at times
P606. Hate for hates sake. He is successful because he has no doubt, no compassion
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He does not do things, he triggers them in the dark, he is the living proof that words have
enormous power.

VIII. Desdemona
She chooses between father and lover (like Juliet, Ophelia, Jessica, Rosalind). She does
not hesitate to prefer the Moor. She is brave, open, generous, sure of herself, unlike
Othello.

Desdemona:
My noble father,
I do perceive her a divided duty.
To you I am bound for life and education.
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you. You are the lord of duty,
I am hitherto your daughter. But heres my husband,
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord. (1.3.177-188)

P598. In the council scene and thereafter, Desdemona presents herself as a social actor
(when she tries to intervene on the side of Cassio) in the context of a man-to-man
negotiation.
Othello prefers a posture of obedience and admiration (She loved me for the dangers I
had passed), he thinks a woman should know her place.
Desdemona is flawed in being too flawless for the world of tragedy