Structuralist Shakespearean Analyses: Othello

Othello First Impressions

Othello has long been one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, partly due to Giuseppe Verdi’s magnificent setting (and it is his only work, other than Falstaff, whose original performers made recordings of their roles!). Otello was also the first complete opera I ever saw, so I’ve enjoyed comparing Verdi’s setting of it to the original later in life. In the process of going through it this time, I was reminded that some of my favorite numbers, such as “Credo in un Dio crudele,” “Era la note” through “Si pel ciel,” and “Niun mi tema,” depict some of my favorite moments from the play itself -- Act I, scene iii, Act III, scene iii, and Act V, scene ii, respectively.

Additionally, though I love Laurence Olivier’s 1965 filmed version of the play, I opted this time for Paul Robeson and Uta Hagen’s LP recording from 1944. Listening to the dialogue rather than watching it play out very well may have helped me identify with the characters more – particularly Iago and Othello, even though they’re deeply flawed and, at times, downright evil. For instance, I’ve long wondered what Iago was getting at in Act I, scene iii, when he keeps repeating the phrase, “Put money in thy purse” to Roderigo. In this reading, however, it dawned on me that it may be a prescription to do something that I’ve long observed myself doing: to sublimate feelings of sadness or loneliness into work/studies in the (at times subconscious) hope that it will eventually ameliorate some of them. The following may be a stretch, but I wonder if, given that Iago is deceiving Roderigo in this exchange, Shakespeare intends to cast doubt on this proposition. (I certainly have found this impulse to be a bit of a double-edged sword at times.)

Speaking of Iago’s deception of Othello, I believe that Shakespeare intends there to be several reasons why Othello trusts Iago, not least of which is because he writes the latter as an ingenious villain. Iago says in his famous first soliloquy, “The Moor is of a free and open nature / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so” (I.iii.443-444), and he does an excellent job of appearing honest to the court. For instance, in Act II, scene iii, and Act III, scene iii, he pretends to be incredibly hesitant to incriminate Cassio, even though his entire plan is contingent upon him doing so. However, and not to beat a dead horse with this kind of analysis of mine, but I think that Shakespeare also means to imply at the very least a homosexual tension between Othello and Iago, making the former less likely to suspect the ill intentions of the latter.

One of the scenes that I think buttresses this interpretation is Act III, scene iii (one of my many favorite scenes in Shakespeare’s oeuvre), as it is notably queer in nature. When Othello begins interrogating Iago, Iago parrots all of his words back at him – implying the two are one. In the process, Othello gets frustrated and tries harder to penetrate Iago’s mind, whereupon the latter says, “My lord, you know I love you” (III.iii.134); an exchange that practically screams “homoerotic.” Iago even later says “I am your own forever” (III.iii.546)! Other moments that connote Othello and Iago’s homosexual dynamic include one of Iago’s other soliloquies in Act II, Scene I. In it, he says that he is resolved to sleep with Desdemona, just as he believes Othello has slept with Emilia. I say that this has gay implications because of the many times that Othello and Desdemona refer to themselves being “one,” perhaps implicating Othello in Iago’s desires by way of the transitive property. The conflation of these three is further expounded upon in Act III, scene iii when Iago tells Othello that Cassio groped and kissed him in his sleep, thinking he was Desdemona – an act that in and of itself is queer, but also continues to paint Iago as Othello’s love object.

Another one of the reasons my mind made this association is actually attributable to Giuseppe Verdi's setting of the play (it's easily my favorite, and I think the best, musical adaptation of Shakespeare's work). Specifically, the famous duet between Othello and Iago, "Si, pel ciel," is known as one of the most homoerotic in the operatic literature – a dynamic that I’ve argued is mirrored in the dialogue of the scene it depicts (Act III, scene iii). Enrico Caruso and Titta Ruffo's is my favorite recording of the duet, and I hope it's apparent why my mind instantly makes this association: https://archive.org/details/78_otello-si-pel-ciel-we-swear-by-heaven-and-earth_enrico-caruso-and-titta-ruffo-v_gbia0317512a

Although sexism might play some role in Othello's trust in Iago over Desdemona, I wonder if the sexism that both characters display doesn't also have homosexual implications. This attitude is particularly evident in Iago's exchange with Emilia and Desdemona in Act II, scene i, wherein he nastily lampoons women, saying, for instance, that they "rise to play, and go to bed to work" (II.i.128). I know that the stereotype that gay people dislike members of the opposite sex is an old and pernicious one, so I immediately wondered if this couldn't be more coding on the part of Shakespeare. It's important to note, though, that Emilia does the same thing in Act III, Scene IV when she says that men "are all but stomachs, and we all but food; / They eat us hungerly, and when they are full / They belch us" (III.iv.121-123). As with all things Shakespeare, I think this implies that whatever role sexism plays in Othello is multifaceted.

While on the subject of the reciprocal nature of the gender dynamics in Othello, the bulk of my notes on this play, which I expounded upon in my paper, detail how I see what I believe to be its primary message playing out – namely, that Othello went mad because he was unable to possess his love object, Desdemona, even though she was as devoted to him as is humanly possible. I had assumed that this was solely Othello’s folly, but in reading back over this scene, I was struck by how Desdemona expresses somewhat similar sentiments, albeit much more subtly. I’m specifically referring to the parallels between Othello’s account of his courtship of her when he says that she told him, “If I had a friend that loved her, / I should but teach him how to tell my story, / And that would woo her… She loved me for the dangers I had passed” (I.iii.194-193) and the devastating final scene when Othello says to her “I will kill thee / And love thee after” (V.ii.20-21). In both cases, Desdemona and Othello are expressing their love for their own imagined conception of the other rather than the other in and of themselves. Though it bears mentioning that the aforementioned exchange between them in Act I is relayed to the audience through Othello’s words, so it might be more indicative of Othello’s mental state than Desdemona’s.

As an aside, probably my favorite acting performance on record is of this moment when Othello relays his courtship of Desdemona. It’s performed by Edwin Booth, who was regarded as the greatest American actor and perhaps Hamlet of the 19th century. Here’s a link to the cylinder he cut of it, along with a transcript of the text in question: https://archive.org/details/OthelloByEdwinBooth1890.

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Iago as a Drive for the Sublime; The Implications of Edgar Allen Poe’s “Poetic Principle” in the Marriages of Othello

            The question of whether or not Desdemona and Emilia are victims of their marriages is an incredibly complex one and partly contingent upon what one intends to signify by the word “victim.” On the one hand, both express a significant amount of agency within the play. Desdemona disobeying the will of her father in her marriage to Othello and Emilia both implicating Iago and condemning Othello in the final scene are just a few of the most notable instances of said autonomy. Consequently, it feels somewhat reductionist to label them as “victims.” However, they are indeed victimized by their respective husbands, Othello and Iago.

Not only do both men kill their wives in the final scene, but throughout the bulk of the play, they objectify them in the most profound sense of the word – meaning they never actually encounter Desdemona or Emilia. Instead, they either use them as pawns to further their schemes in the case of Iago, or go mad at their inability to possess them, as with Othello. I believe this dynamic is attributable to the fact that Shakespeare intends Iago to be the voice of a phenomenon that Edgar Allen Poe noted in his 1903 essay, “The Poetic Principle,” which he summarized as humanity’s “struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness” (Poe).

            According to Poe, humankind has an innate yearning for something “more” that can never be satiated. He believed that this impulse for the evanescent sublime “is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone” (Poe). Arguably, Othello’s confrontation of this impulse within himself serves as the driving force of the play’s action – a confrontation spurred on and given voice to by Iago. However, the stage upon which this dynamic plays out is in Othello’s relationship with Desdemona.

            Upon the audience’s first introduction to Desdemona, it is clear that many people desire to metaphorically and literally possess her. In fact, when Desdemona proclaims her genuine love for Othello, her father states that “my particular grief / Is of so floodgate and o’erbearing nature / That it engluts and swallows other sorrows” (I.iii.65-67), immediately after which he says that she is dead to him. Interestingly, even though Brabantio expresses this sentiment at his supposed loss of Desdemona to Othello, it foreshadows the same attitude Othello adopts when he believes her to be unfaithful. Brabantio responds to his mourning by disowning her, whereas Othello decides to kill her and himself because of it. In both instances, these characters desire that Desdemona be utterly devoted to them and attempt to destroy her when they feel this is not the case. And, as is revealed in Act V, scene ii, their loss of her results in both of their deaths of grief.

            With Othello, this attitude towards Desdemona is further complicated by the fact that Iago is the one who planted the seed of her infidelity in his mind, even though it has no bearing in reality and is in contradiction to her constant proclamations of her love for him. Here, the dynamic that Poe observed comes into play, in that Desdemona is as devoted to Othello as anyone could be, but, like that moth to the star, he needs more than that to sate his loneliness. Othello even says as much to beautiful effect in the final scene. After realizing the error of his ways, he says that when one tells his story, “must you speak / Of one that loved not wisely, but too well… / of one whose hand, / Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes, / Albeit unused to the melting mood, / Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees / Their medicinable gum” (V.ii.403-411). This brief monologue perfectly encapsulates the crux of the connection between the story and Poe’s theory. Othello acknowledges that he had everything he could have ever wanted in the form of Desdemona, but in his desire for “more,” he was blind to it, which resulted in more heartbreak than could be expressed in human tears. Consequently, the only place in which he can find solace is, to quote Poe, “beyond the grave.”

            One of the reasons why Iago is a metaphor for this drive for the unattainable is not just because he is the one whose manipulation leads to Othello’s ruin but because he directly speaks to this dynamic in his famous first soliloquy. In Act I, scene iii, Iago says to Roderigo, after he too says that he will kill himself if he can’t be with Desdemona, “I never found / man that knew how to love himself” (I.iii.355-356). Throughout the play, there are instances of Othello demonstrating this very inability to love himself. For example, in Act III, scene iii, upon first thinking that Desdemona is cheating on him, he becomes self-deprecating and says that she must not love him, “for I am black / And have not those soft parts of conversation / That chamberers have, or for I am declined / Into the vale of years” (III.iii.304-307). Immediately afterward, he draws the connection between his lack of love for himself and his desire to possess Desdemona when he says, “She’s gone, I am abused, and my relief / Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage, / That we can call these delicate creatures ours / And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad / And live upon the vapor of a dungeon / Than keep a corner in the thing I love” (III.iii.311-313). It is here that Othello first explicitly realizes that he can’t have all of Desdemona and, as a result, must lash out and victimize her.

            Then, of course, there's Emilia, who similarly plays a complex role in the play with an admixture of victimization and heroism, all while representing something grander. Though Iago initially manipulates her to provide him with the handkerchief that convinces Othello that Desdemona is cheating, she is also the one who fulfills Iago's prophecy at the beginning of Act V, when he says, "This is the night / That either makes me or fordoes me quite (V.i.150-151). Not only does Emilia go on to implicate Iago in front of everyone when she realizes what he's done, but she also curses Othello right before Iago murders her. In doing so, she says, "O murd'rous coxcomb, what should / such a fool /Do with so good a wife?" (V.ii.278-280); a sentiment that Othello later espouses in his aforementioned monologue, once the error of his ways has sunk in. In this way, Emelia serves as a foil to Iago and, in some ways, Othello, not just by "fordoing" the former and damning the latter, but by contradicting what both metaphorically stand for: an obsessive drive for the ephemeral "supernal Loveliness."  

            As Ruth Vanita mentions in the preamble to her article, "Proper" Men and "Fallen" Women: The Unprotectedness of Wives in Othello," the question of who is ultimately to blame for the deaths of both Emilia and Desdemona has been the subject of quite a bit of scholarship and debate over the years (Vanita 341). Consequently, it is difficult to ascertain if they are "victims" of their circumstances and at whose hands or if they are the protagonists of the story. However, it should be clear that Shakespeare intends their treatment to be metaphors for a particular facet of humanity – one that is never content with our lives "as they are" and is always hungrily seeking a sublimity that may never be attainable. In their deaths, which coincide with the deaths of their respective husbands, Shakespeare astutely drives home the message that regret and destruction lie in the ceaseless pursuit of this and that happiness is ultimately contingent upon being able to find meaning in the present moment.

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Works of Edgar Allan Poe: The Poetic Principle.” Etc.usf.edu, Educational Technology Clearinghouse, 1903, https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/147/the-works-of-edgar-allan-poe/5363/the-poetic-principle/.

Shakespeare, William. “Othello.” The Folger Shakespeare, Folger Shakespeare Library, https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/othello/.

Vanita, Ruth. “‘Proper’ Men and ‘Fallen’ Women: The Unprotectedness of Wives in Othello.” ScholarWorks at University of Montana, Global Humanities and Religions Faculty Publications, 1994, https://core.ac.uk/display/267570908.