Shakespeare, Othello

Othello holds a unique place in my heart. It was the only one of the Big Four tragedies (Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth being the others) that we didn’t read in high school, and when I read it in college, it instantly became my favorite. The longer I thought about it, the more subtleties it seemed to possess. The paper I wrote on it was the first paper that I felt happy with, a paper that, funnily enough, more or less landed me the job I currently hold. The character of Iago, especially, was a character unlike any other; he became my touchstone for how the greatest writer in the English language conceived of evil.

Rereading the play after so many other wonderful works by Shakespeare has been somewhat mixed, in the way that returning to anything that has been enlarged by imagination and reminiscence is. Iago’s evil does not appear as earth-shattering now in light of, say, Blood Meridian’s lengthy disquisitions. At the same time, reading Shakespeare is nothing if not profitable, and the insights I gained in previous readings, less important to me now, have brought forth ideas more nuanced, fresh, and complex.

The Banality of Evil

As Shakespeare chooses to do, let us dive into our discussion of the play by beginning with Iago, easily one of my favorite Shakespearean inventions. There is ample evidence of his role as villain, from his inversion of God’s “I am that I am” into “I am not what I am,” to the contrast between his and Othello’s skin tones (switching the traditional light/dark opposition). Yet what frustrated me when I read the play in college was why Shakespeare chose to give such an obviously evil character—easily the most “obvious” of the evils we’ve encountered so far, I’d argue—why he would be given such reasonable speeches. I’ve commented on this before, referencing the deceptive nature of evil in Edward Norton’s performance in American History X, and I would still contend that evil is most effective under the guise of reasonableness, but we can say more than this.

The first thing to add is that Iago performs some of the same functions in the play that Falstaff performed in the Henriad. Consider these two passages, the first from Falstaff:

“Well, ‘tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. What is honor? A word. What is that word honor? Air – a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis an insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it.” 

And the second from Iago:

 “As I am an honest man, I had thought you had received some bodily wound. There is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all unless you repute yourself such a loser.”

Certainly there is a difference in the pitch and quality of these speeches, but the sense is very similar: ideals like honor or reputation are not real things, the way that bodily harm is. Harold Bloom writes that Othello is one of only two plays that “exclude all laughter, as if to protect [Othello] from the Falstaffian perspective.” We will talk about laughter later, but we notice that Falstaff’s words rely on being taken as humorous to be so characteristically Falstaffian. When he speaks them, it is as if he is casting off shackles that had been binding him and, by extension, us. When Iago speaks them, we feel a similar lightness, only to find that we have been trapped in another way. (I am reminded here of Kafka’s “A Fable” and David Foster Wallace’s commentary on it; as I wrote the preceding paragraph, I ended up at the same conclusion that he came to seemingly by chance, though that can hardly be the case.)

This is to say that when Bloom writes that “only humor could defend against Iago,” it is like saying “only being happy can defend against being sad”: it is cold comfort when the world is bereft of happiness. Which returns me to my original question: why does Iago get the powerful rational speeches? I would answer: For the same reason that Kafka’s sense of unease is accompanied by the sound of logic; for the same reason that Hamlet’s speeches are philosophical and Angelo’s judgments do not yield to Isabella’s pleas: in all, there is a denial of life, a dependence on the mechanistic grinding of logic’s gears, and a sense of being closed off from any possibility that you are not driven to through labyrinthine reasoning. Iago is “a fecund abyss,” Bloom writes, capturing both the endlessness of his lies and the bottomlessness of his inhumanity. This point is emphasized by Wilson Knight, who contrasts Othello’s high-minded language (we will discuss this momentarily) with Iago’s:

“Iago works at the foundations of human values. Cassio is a soldier: he ruins him as a soldier, makes him drunk. So he ruins both Othello’s love and warrior-heart. He makes him absurd, ugly… It is a formless, colourless essence, insidiously undermining a world of concrete, visual, richly-toned forms. That is the Iago-spirit embattled against the domesticity, the romance, the idealized humanity of the Othello world.”

Iago’s world is colorless (similar to, yet unlike, Othello's black-and-white world), formless; it is the epitome of nonbeing.

A Man’s Man

Which is not to say that Othello plays no part in his own downfall. He is complicit insofar as he allows his self to be identified with his accidents: “My parts, my title, and my perfect soul / Shall manifest me rightly.” He has planted his own garden, in Iago’s vernacular, and he shall reap what he sows. This is not a new thought, and it’s a variation of what I argued in that paper I wrote several years ago. There are other considerations, however, which are newer to me than this, so rather than retreading old ground, let us look for other explanations of Othello’s tragedy.

Othello as a character is about as grand as Shakespearean heroes come, and grandness is not easy to write. Yet even without seeing the play performed, one can understand the sort of man Othello is. Consider these lines, and then consider what Wilson Knight has to say:

“Nay, had she been true, / If Heaven would make me such another world / Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, / I’d not have sold her for it.”

And Wilson Knight:

“Notice the single word ‘chrysolite’ with its outstanding and remote beauty: this is typical of Othello. The effect in such passages is primarily one of contrast. The vastness of the night sky, and its moving planets, or the earth itself—here conceived objectively as a solid, round, visualized object—these things, though thrown momentarily into sensible relation with the passions of man, yet remain vast, distant, separate, seen but not apprehended; something against which the dramatic movement may be silhouetted, but with which it cannot be merged. This poetic use of heavenly bodies serves to elevate the theme, to raise issues infinite and unknowable. Those bodies are not, however, implicit symbols of man’s spirit, as in King Lear: they remain distinct, isolated phenomena, sublimely decorative to the play.” 

Decorative is a good word, but it gives Othello’s diction a sort of frivolity which detracts from its pathos. It would be better to say, as Wilson Knight does later, that these images injected into otherwise plain passages bring value to “the human passion which cries out to them.” Othello’s speech is like Othello himself: a master of the civilized world who still knows how to regale his admirers with fantastical tales. “The final result makes us forget the emotion in contemplation of the image. Beauty has been imposed on human sorrow, rather than shown to be intrinsic therein.”

A Small World

Othello’s way of speaking reflects a way of looking at the world. When we talked about Hamlet last time, we mentioned how the play problematized the idea of the afterlife, to the point that the notion of life after death felt limiting, claustrophobic, rather than freeing. In pointing out the uses of Othello’s language, we notice that he, too, may feel claustrophobia, limited by his self-conception and his conception of his life and love.

First, consider this discussion between Emilia and Desdemona on the topic of adultery:

Desdemona: “Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?”

Emilia: “The world’s a huge thing; it is a great price for a small vice.”

Desdemona: “In troth, I think thou wouldst not.”

Emilia: “In troth, I think I should; and undo’t when I had done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any pretty exhibition; but, for all the whole world – ‘Ud’s pity! who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for’t.”

Desdemona: “Beshrew me if I would do such a wrong for the whole world.”

Emilia: “Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’ th’ world; and having the world for your labor, ‘tis a wrong in your own world, and you might quickly make it right.”

The comparison to Measure for Measure is obvious. Isabella cannot dream of sleeping with Angelo for Claudio because “more than our brother is our chastity,” and Desdemona can’t imagine breaking her wedding vow in order to grant her husband more glory. Yet Emilia, clearly the shrewdest person in the play outside of Iago (which proves to be problematic for him), knows that such an act is not greater than the world: it is “but a wrong i’ th’ world”; in Judge Holden’s words, it is “but a fact among others.” What kind of idiot would not do such a thing?

Well, Othello. Recall the “chrysolite” quote from earlier. Even more than that, consider the words Othello utters after he has killed Desdemona: “Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse / Of sun and moon, and that th’ affrighted globe / Did yawn at alteration.” He dreams that the world should shudder at his sin, but forgets that the sin is but a wrong in the world: it is not the world, and it does not create in the world a sense of obligation, as Stephen Crane would say.

Indeed, Othello often expects his deeds to shake the earth on its very foundations. When he begins to feel jealousy, he says, “Nature would not invest herself in such shadowing passion without some instruction. It is not words that shakes me thus.” He looks for vindication in nature, inverting the order of causation. As Desdemona says, “Men’s natures wrangle with inferior things, / Though great ones are their object.”

Who’s There?

I’d like to close this discussion by meditating on an incredible essay by the philosopher Stanley Cavell, called “Othello and the Stake of the Other.” The essay comes from a collection by Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, and I have to say it’s one of the more difficult works I’ve read in recent memory. It reminds me—forgive the odd comparison—of the way Thomas Pynchon writes: it creates in me a feeling of uncertainty, where each phrase may begin in one place and end up somewhere else entirely. His sentences are idiosyncratic, sometimes dense and tortuous, other times fragmented and conversational. I haven’t referenced him much in our discussions of the tragedies, but I will now, and I will also highly recommend reading his essay (not only because it touches on Montaigne, one of my personal favorites).

In his essay, Cavell considers Descartes’ skepticism and how it can help us think about Othello’s strange inclination to believe Iago over his own wife. One could say that Descartes’ project was to confirm the belief that a person other than myself is a human being like, but different than, myself; that the beings I see from my window are people and not just cleverly disguised robots; that “the knowledge of a human self by a human self,” to quote Cavell, is possible. Upon this fact “the integrity of my (human, finite) existence may depend.” And in Othello, Cavell finds the epitome of man’s struggle against skepticism.

The demon of skepticism, of course, is Iago, injecting his topsy-turvy view of the world into Othello’s less-than-Stoic heart. Yet it is not that Iago convinces Othello against the latter’s better judgment. From Cavell:

“It is not conceivable that Othello believes Iago and not Desdemona. Iago, we might say, offers Othello an opportunity to believe something, something to oppose something else he knows.”

Iago does not wrench the belief in Desdemona’s faithfulness from the iron jaws of Othello’s heart. I would not even say that Iago poisons Othello with words. If Othello the play is about the fragility of love, as the introduction puts it, Iago needs only to introduce the idea into the realm of possibility. One would not think of a pink elephant unprompted; but if I said “Don’t think about a pink elephant,” it’s all you can do. So it is with love. Such a powerful emotion, made all the more powerful by Othello’s (and yes, Desdemona’s too) absolutism, that “To be once in doubt / Is to be once resolved,” could not withstand a simple suggestion: for Othello and Desdemona alike, it’s all or nothing. Cavell writes:

“But then this is what I have throughout kept arriving at as the cause of skepticism – the attempt to convert the human condition, the condition of humanity, into an intellectual difficulty, a riddle. (To interpret ‘a metaphysical finitude as an intellectual lack.’)”

There’s more to think about here than can be put down easily in this post. At its heart, though, is Othello’s inability to bend the way Iago can, to mold himself to the situation. When uncertainty appears, it is taken for a threat, a problem that must be solved. It is very possible that I am interpreting his words incorrectly, but as I understand it, interpreting “a metaphysical finitude as an intellectual lack” suggests that Othello is incapable of understanding, as Descartes found in his project, the supreme difficulty of proving in an exhaustive sense the existence of another person; Descartes had to posit no less than God Himself in order to do it. We are human, bound to uncertainty; it is a result of our finitude, not evidence of our flaws. Cavell again:

“All these topics should be food for thought and moderation, not for torture and murder as fit for rue and laughter as for pity and terror; they are not tragic unless one makes them so, takes them so; that we are tragic in what we take to be tragic; that one must take one’s imperfections with a ‘gay and sociable wisdom’ [quoting Montaigne], not with a somber and isolating eloquence.”

But we’ve learned from Wilson Knight that Othello cannot help but be eloquent, somberly or otherwise. He continues:

“It is advice to accept one’s humanity, and one can almost see Iago as the slanderer of human nature (this would be his diabolism) braced with Othello as the enacter of the slander – the one thinking to escape human nature from below, the other from above.”

We recall Rosalind from As You Like It, who must be the exalter of human nature if Iago is its slanderer. Love, according to her, is a vitalizing force, and to think it brings chaos, as Othello does, is flat-out wrong. One can imagine Othello as a caricature of Orlando, who wishes to die for Rosalind's love; his teenage (I think?) brooding turns to murderous jealousy in Othello's hands. Yet we get the feeling from thinking of these two plays together that Cavell and Bloom together are right: had Othello responded to the suggestion with laughter, could tragedy have been avoided?

Returning to the essay, Cavell’s thesis, which I find very powerful, is that there can be no proof of another’s humanity, nor of the accidents of another’s humanity (faithfulness, etc.). Yet it is essential to believe, despite skepticism, in what is reasonable and likely in order not to fall into the depths of despair that plague Othello and Desdemona (and probably Descartes, too, had he not found his way out). One must take things in good faith, which emphasizes the evil of Iago: that he would take advantage of people who are trying to get through their lives without confronting that horrible skepticism that floats in the periphery of our consciousness.

Cavell does not, however, leave us without armor against the Iagos (Iagoes?) of the world. His advice – perhaps it’s not only his, but that which he dispenses – is to hold such skepticism at a distance, with Montaigne’s gay and sociable wisdom never far at hand. Above all, we must remember that what is tragic is in our hands, and that all events are equally fit for laughter as they are for grief. It is not a denial of what we know, but a yielding to what we know; it is a rejection of disbelief and an exaltation of belief. He concludes:

“So they are there, on their bridal and death sheets. A statue, a stone, is something whose existence is fundamentally open to the ocular proof. A human being is not. The two bodies lying together form an emblem of this fact, the truth of skepticism. What this man lacked [one could read instead 'what man lacks'] is not certainty. He knew everything, but he could not yield to what he knew, be commanded by it. He found out too much for his mind, not too little.”

Stray Observations

• Iago’s incredible opening speech: “You shall mark / Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave / That, doting on his own obsequious bondage, / Wears out his time, much like his master’s ass, / For nought but provender, and when he’s old, cashiered, / Whip me such honest knaves! Others there are / Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty, / Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves, / And, throwing but shows of service on their lords, / Do well thrive by them, and when they have lined their coats, / Do themselves homage. These fellows have some soul [i.e., look out for themselves], / And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir, / It is as sure as you are Roderigo, / Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago. / In following him, I follow but myself. / Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, / But seeming so, for my peculiar end, / For when my outward action doth demonstrate / The native act and figure of my heart / In complement extern, ‘tis not long after / But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at. I am not what I am.”
• Duke: “When remedies are past, the griefs are ended / By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended. / To mourn a mischief that is past and gone / Is the next way to draw new mischief on. / What cannot be preserved when fortune takes, / Patience her injury a mock’ry makes. / The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief; / He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.” Brabantio answers: “But words are words. I never yet did hear / That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.”
• Iago’s next incredible speech: “Virtue? a fig! ‘Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many – either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry – why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the beam of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most prepost’rous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal strings or unbitted lusts; whereof I take this that you call love to be a set or scion.”
• Iago: “Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ.”
• Othello: “Now art thou my lieutenant.” Iago: “I am your own forever.”  I love this quote for the sheer creepiness with which it could be played.
• Othello: “Thou art on thy deathbed.” Desdemona: “Ay, but not yet to die.” A subtly powerful response. He informs her that she’s about to die, but she says that her death is approaching but far off. Her marriage bed she hopes will be her deathbed as well, so much she loves Othello.
• Finally, Othello’s last speech, which I also think is one of Shakespeare’s greatest pieces of poetry: “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 unused to the melting mood, / Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees / Their medicinal 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 circumcised dog / And smote him – thus.” Wilson Knight: “In that last scene, too, he utters the grandest of his poetry. The Iago-spirit never finally envelops him, masters him, disintegrates his soul.” As an aside, there's a short story by Nabokov, I believe, titled "In Aleppo Once..." I always thought the title was beautiful, "Aleppo" being a characteristically Nabokovian-sounding word, but I had forgotten that it was from Othello.