Othello Act I Revisited
I know my price
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Hello fellow Othello friends, welcome to Shakespeare month, the best time of the year.
First, a note from me:
“Rude am I in my speech.”
-Othello
Shakespeare is a difficult person to write about. Not because it’s hard to find things to say, but because there is so much that has already been said really well. Therefore, not only do I not want to get things wrong, but I don’t want to say the right things but in a worse manner than they were said before.
This line of thinking leads to what Hannah has called a writer’s identity crisis…where I spin my wheels trying to be something I am not (namely: a super credentialed scholar with a lot of research time) instead of what I am (a well-enough credentialed Shakespeare lover with a tightly scheduled nap window).
So if my intent is neither volume nor superiority, what will my path into Othello be?
Trust.
I’ll trust that if you’re here, we’ll both enjoy noticing the same things. And we will all agree to return again and again to Shakespeare, because his plays are a means for souls to turn and turn again, and that, my friends, is a purposeful allusion to metanoia.
Therefore, shall we begin?!
To Begin, A Confession of Good Bias
In this play, there are characters I love, and characters I despise, and I won’t be seeking to nuance this. I won’t be searching for a psychological understanding of Iago’s inner jealousy. I’ll just call him evil. I won’t be wondering if Desdemona has a complex. I’ll call her virtuous.
Characters to Love
I love Othello. As our tragic hero, there certainly must be a fatal flaw in him, and I do read for it in order to try to avoid that same flaw within myself and in order to find a path of redemption for him, but it’s because of my love for him that I search for his flaw, not in spite of it.
I equally, though distinctly, love Desdemona. She is goodness in this play.
Characters to Hate
I hate Iago. Roderigo is a lustful pawn in Iago’s devilish paws, and I duly despise his weak-willed imprisonment to his own passions. But Iago is the devil himself. At the end of the play, when Othello looks for hooves instead of feet on Iago, I look too. I hear Iago’s speeches as the words of a man so completely warped by his own self-obsession and clutching-desire for more, that he cannot see any good anywhere, and thus shares a vision of the world with Beelzebub himself.
Why no nuance?
Because, I believe the story and text are richer when I do not seek an undermining subtext. I think one reason some readers might think they don’t like Shakespeare is because they believe there is a crucial “subtext” that they are not getting, and they don’t want to feel stupid for not understanding that when Shakespeare said “x” he meant “y.” I reject this notion. When decently good characters (Cassio, the Duke, Othello, etc.) say that another character (Desdemona) is good, I believe them. Accepting the idea that Shakespeare’s good guys are good (even if flawed) and his bad guys are bad (sometimes diabolically bad) causes the play to open before me. (Reference: Why Read Shakespeare (Othello Version).) Without an undermining subtext of too-nuanced, anything-goes reading, the play can again be read and understood on the surface level. Then, from this honest starting point, insights which go deeper than the surface level text add resonance, but do not reverse the entire meaning of the plot.
Therefore, Iago be damned, and God save Othello.
Quick Plot Summary
(Stating simple plot facts helps me to notice themes and structure.)
Scene 1 (184 lines)
Iago and Roderigo talk at night on a street of Venice about their mutual hatred of Othello. Roderigo lusts after Desdemona (who Othello just married). Iago hates Othello purportedly because he has promoted Cassio instead of Iago. The two men wake Desdemona’s father, telling him to search for his daughter. (Lots of bawdy and racist terms bandied about, with some very skillful comedic timing.)
Scene 2 (99 lines)
Still in the street, Iago has run to “warn” Othello. Cassio arrives to summon Othello to the Duke’s counsel of war because the Turkish fleet is close to attacking Cyprus (a colony of Venice). Desdemona’s father (Barbantio) and lustful Roderigo join the party in the street, the former yelling at Othello for stealing and bewitching his daughter. All go to the Duke to settle domestic and political strife.
Scene 3 (398 lines)
Scene opens on the Duke discussing Turkish ship movements with his senators. Onto this scene burst Brabantio, Othello, Iago, Roderigo, & followers. Duke attempts to discuss political strife with Othello, but Brabantio interrupts discussions with his complaint of domestic strife. Othello admits he has married Desdemona that night, and that she fell in love with him while listening to his life’s story in her father’s house. Brabantio says that Othello must have used magic to beguile her. Othello requests that Desdemona be brought into the Duke’s counsel to speak for herself. Desdemona respectfully and eloquently states that her duty lies with Othello, her husband. Duke gives Brabantio advice to “let it go,” Brabantio begrudgingly says to “proceed with affairs of state.” Othello is asked to defend Cyprus, he accepts, only pausing to request assistance in giving his new wife a home while he’s away. Desdemona requests the Duke’s permission to go with Othello. Othello promises that she will not distract him from his duties. Duke gives permission, all leave to prepare to set sail for Cyprus. Iago and Roderigo are left on stage. Iago tells Roderigo not to drown himself in desperate and foolish suicide but to sell all he can and “put money in thy purse,” for he’ll help Roderigo get Desdemona from “the Moor.” Roderigo leaves. Iago is the last on stage. He gives a deeply evil soliloquy on his hatred for Othello, in which he mentions for the first time, and only now when alone, that he’s heard rumors that Othello may have slept with his wife, making him a cuckold. With this motive, he sets forth a cruel plot of revenge to make Othello believe that he too has been cuckolded.
First Things First or “Laying the ground work carefully”
In his outline for one of the initial chapters of Our Mutual Friend, Dickens wrote, “Lay the ground work carefully.” Since then, I have been attentive to how an author chooses the details of his opening with an eye for establishing the foundation. Two questions I ask:
Who gets the opening lines?
What themes are present?
Opening Lines
Roderigo and Iago get the first words, not Othello. (But that’s not necessarily a surprise since Shakespeare plays don’t often begin with the main character.1)
The most memorable aspect of this first scene is how evil Iago is. Let’s look at two of his earliest lines:
“‘Sblood, but you will not hear me. If ever I did dream of such a matter, Abhor me” (I.i.4)
Iago begins with cursing Christ’s blood and lying.
“I follow him to serve my turn upon him” (I.i.42)
Everything Iago does is for Iago. He does homage to himself. He recognizes no authority, of man or God, above his own selfish ends.
And it is worth examining his first speech in closer detail:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are
Who, trimm’d 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 ‘em and, when they have lin’d their coats,
Do themselves homage — these fellows have some soul;
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 particular end.
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment 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.
(I.i. 49-66)
Folks, we’re barely 50 lines into this play. That’s about 2 minutes. It’s taken you much longer to read this post than it takes a live audience to arrive at this virulent speech. Iago’s been spewing about 40 lines of spiteful complaints since the curtains opened (with Roderigo barely getting a “yeah, you tell ‘em boss” interjection in edgewise) and to cap it all, this man, bursting with bile, delivers 25 lines of anti-Christian, anti-person, anti-anyone-but-himself dogma.
Let’s examine it slightly more closely.
Iago disgustedly states that honest men, who do the good they appear to do, should be whipped. Instead, he lauds the man who obsequiously appears to be a good servant, while underneath these outward shows is a premeditated plan, which best benefits himself. (A strong start to the Appearance vs. Reality theme we’ll touch on later.)
Pause on line 54: Iago says that the dishonest men who homage themselves, who worship themselves, “have some soul.” That line twists a pit into my stomach.
In the final line, we get the Shakespeareanism: “to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve.” Iago uses this genius phrase (which we English speakers have used for the last 400 years) to say that on the day his external actions match a good, internal intention, he’ll tear his heart out, sew it onto his sleeve, and call to the birds to eat it. Gruesome.
Compare this impenetrable stance, to the men described in last month’s book, A Christmas Carol. In Stave Three, when the Ghost of Christmas Present is showing Scrooge a happy, busy, hearty shopping scene, full of people buying Christmas foods in the best spirit possible, Dickens describes the good men thus:
The Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh, that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose (65).
If one wishes to be joyful, and connect and communicate with one’s fellow man, one must be vulnerable. Iago is never vulnerable.
Moses received the revelation that God is: “I AM who I AM” (Exodus 3:14), that God is Being itself.
At this time of the year, Christmas time, we remember that Being itself came down into the enfleshed, able-to-be hurt-by-anything body of a Baby. God, infinitely above all things, came down, and placed Himself at our mercy, within the confines of the most vulnerable among us: a child. God, through the womb of a woman, made for Himself a literal, physical heart, and on Good Friday a lance pierced through where His sleeve would have been if we had not stripped Him naked, and pecked out the last drops of His most precious Blood. Christ, it could be said, wore His heart upon His sleeve.
Iago claims the antithesis: “I am not what I am.” This villain rejects Being, even rejecting even his own personal being, and shores himself up against pain, keeping his heart and his true intentions locked within his cage of ribs. But this is an infernal spiral downwards into nothing, reminiscent of the devolving, every-shrinking nature of Milton’s Satan. Will Iago, the master manipulator of words, also devolve into silent nothingness in the very success of his own nihilistic plans?
Themes
In the Introduction & Schedule post, I mentioned some themes, which Othello explores. I’m going to add to and rearrange them, so that we are thinking about them thus:
Discernment (how does a person decide who to trust, and what are the consequences of intimate, bad counselors)
Marriage
Money
And, themes specifically of opposition:
Appearance vs. Reality.
Words vs. Actions
Political Sphere vs. Domestic Sphere
Discernment
In this first Act, I feel the stage being set for this theme, but that for now, while we are still on Venetian ground, things remain well ordered, and well discerned. The Duke makes the major decisions in this Act, and he does so well. He is a good authority.
Is it leaving the presence of sanctioned authority that will allow evil to dismantle the heart of society, which is marriage?
I also find it telling that while in Venice, Othello understands men’s character well enough to promote Cassio, not Iago. What is it about the new location of Cyprus that creates an environment where Iago’s counsel gains strength? Iago is just as evil in this first Act as he will ever be, but his plots do not bring about bloodshed. The Duke’s authority maintains an environment of truthful speech and peaceful decisions. Is there something about Cyprus (as either the city itself, or as a symbol for something) that allows Iago’s machinations to succeed? Or is there something about Venice that disallows Iago’s machinations? If most in a society recognize a just and right authority, does that effectively steal away evil’s power to do ill? Can we take from this an example of how good state governance (& good church governance) curbs evil and promotes human flourishing?
Marriage
I found myself asking: Is the marriage of Othello and Desdemona good?
While reading Pride and Prejudice, we discussed the importance in marriage of not only the right people, but also the right circumstances. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet (while a good match in the end) would not (perhaps) have been set up for a smooth marriage if she had married him after his first proposal. Similar thoughts can be said of Jane Eyre. After Mr. Rochester’s first proposal, he is too obsessed and passionately doting, too apt to make her a play thing, or an idol, for this marriage to be set up to flourish.
Therefore, I asked myself, is this clandestine marriage doomed from the beginning? Is this a morality tale on imprudent marriage?
I don’t think so. Shakespeare’s source material emphasized the imprudence of this marriage, whereas Shakespeare’s Othello downplays these aspects.
Therefore, I’ll look for a “moral” elsewhere.
Though they may not have married under the most prudent or perfect of circumstances, now they are legitimately married. So perhaps it is best to focus all of our desires onto the success of this marriage, instead of being told-you-so critics that say, “it was doomed from the start.”2 Meaning, I’ll accept Othello and Desdemona as two people who fully love each other, body and soul, and that this is a marriage worth defending.
To bolster this position, examine Iago’s perspective on the marriage:
“If sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou [Roderigo] shalt enjoy her; therefore make money.” (I.iii.51-55)
Iago sees no strength in these marriage vows, and catalogs the reasons this marriage will break, intending to use his wit and all the tribe of hell to assist it in its demise. I will be taking his perspective as a primer on what not to think.
Lastly, I’m keeping in mind that the original attack on mankind was initiated against a man and a woman, against marriage, and that a primary goal of the virtuous life is to keep the covenant unified. In C.S. Lewis’ The Space Trilogy (which we will read next month), he does an excellent job describing all the cosmic forces which have been concentrated on the separation of one marriage, against the union of one silly man and one silly woman. Marriage is the battle ground, and the opponents do not lie within it, but without.
Money
Money is a surprising theme in this play. Yet I get the hint that it must be important since Roderigo mentions it in almost the opening line of the play, “That you, Iago, who as had my purse/As if the strings were thine” (I.i.2-3), and since Iago advises Roderigo to “put money in thy purse,” no less than 11 times in the final dialogue of this Act.
Even so, I find myself dismissing the monetary aspects as a distraction. But, is that money’s power? That it convinces you that it is not, in fact, the root of all evil when inordinately loved?
Themes of Opposition
Appearance vs. Reality / Exterior vs. Interior / Words vs. Actions
“Though I do hate him as I do hell pains,
Yet, for necessity of present life,
I must show out a flag and sign of love,
Which is indeed but a sign.”
-Iago, I.i.155-158
The great theme of this play, could be said to be the relationship between what a man shows on the outside and what is really going on within him.
It’s an immense theme.
It’s no less than the goal of the entire spiritual life for man to align his outward actions and his inward desires towards the good.
In Iago’s first speech, where he maligns Cassio, he phrases this theme as: prattle vs. practice. Which is of greater value, the ability to speak well or act well? Of what importance is “book learning” or the being an “arithmetician” or having mastery of words and ideas versus experiential knowledge? And, what does it mean that Iago begrudges Cassio’s ability to “prattle,” when Iago is the play’s evil master of manipulative prattle?
A sacrament is an outward sign of an inward reality. If words are signs and symbols of realities, is Iago’s misuse and abuse of words a sacrilegious act?
Looking to Othello in Act I, his ability to prattle and practice are aligned. Othello’s appearance and reality, his external and internal, are all directed toward the good.
“Rude am I of speech,” say both Othello and Mark Anthony, but both utilize this line as a tool of rhetoric before winning the debate floor. Neither man is actually rude of speech, but eloquent. Othello displays his understanding of words not only when defending Desdemona’s love for him, but also prior to the opening of the curtain, when it was his storytelling ability that won him her love.
If words are signs and symbols to express Reality, is Othello’s beautiful and right usage of words a sacramental act, in opposition to Iago? And if so, how does a man whose external actions and internal disposition are correctly aligned and directed towards the good, fall? Othello stands, here at the beginning of the play, as a good man. How does he fall, my heart asks. How does this great man become a tragic hero? Lord, save me from myself.
Political Sphere vs. Domestic Sphere
“If it takes a war for us to meet, it will have been worth it.”
-the character Alexander Hamilton in Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton
This theme could also be nested under the External vs. Internal theme, as well as Marriage. Questions I’m asking:
What will happen with the Turkish/Ottoman war going on in the background? Will what appears to be mere backdrop scenery of affairs of state be influenced by the “small” and “domestic” tragedy of Othello and Desdemona?
And (since it does) some of the conclusions we’re being led to from the start are that:
what happens in the domestic sphere does have consequences on the international stage;
the home is of immense importance;
no problem is particular;
what happens to one man affects all men;
marriage is hugely consequential - on both individuals and nations
A final note on Iago, the villain
Have I mentioned that Iago is evil? Well let’s just seal the deal.
List of his devilish traits (and I don’t mean this as a compliment)
swearing
anti-sacramental language (the sign is not an external symbol of an internal reality, but instead his sign creates a masking lie for his interior state)
Perhaps there’s never been a man who “respects himself” more than Iago. “I know my price.” But his great “self-image” is but a crust over a seething cauldron of envy.
When he complains as if he were the victim of the world’s malice, I read this as a lie he has not only curated, prepared, cooked, and plated, but also eaten. You are what you eat. And Iago has served himself a diet of hatred, and has so become hatred, that there’s no saving him. His speeches read like Satan’s in Paradise Lost, or Screwtape’s in The Screwtape Letters. And for me, he stands as a warning to other literary characters like Pride and Prejudice’s Wickham and Jayber Crow’s Troy, who each (to differing degrees) also concoct their own reality, and suffer the consequences.
Despite the title character Othello being an epically drawn tragic hero, I still find that Iago keeps stealing center stage in this first Act. And not only does he steal the stage, he sets the stage. He has some of the first words, and he has the last words of this Act. Will Iago’s words shape and direct the arc of the action? Who will have the final words of this play?
Last Things Last
I’ll leave you with the final lines of this Act. They are a summary of the plot yet to come. Iago conceives these lies in his mind, and engenders these lies into the play. He is an anti-creator. Everything you don’t want to happen is said in these lines, and everything Iago says will come to be. They are diabolical, and they are epic. God save us from such men.
Thus I do ever make my fool my purse;
For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane
If I would time expend with such a snipe
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor;
And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets
’Has done my office. I know not if’t be true;
Yet I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety. He holds me well;
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man. Let me see now:
To get his place, and to plume up my will
In double knavery. How, how? Let’s see:
After some time to abuse Othello’s ear
That he is too familiar with his wife.
He hath a person and a smooth dispose
To be suspected—fram’d to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so;
And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose
As asses are.
I ha’t—it is engender’d. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.
(I.iii.377-398)
In Dante’s Inferno, there is a young man who cared so much for the false rumors about himself, that he committed suicide.
In that glorious duty I
kept faith so well, I lost my sleep, and wore
My pulse away. But she who never turns
her eyes from Caesar’s house—the harlot Envy,
vice of the court and death for all mankind,
Inflamed against me every other soul…
My spirit, relishing the taste of scorn,
thinking that I could flee their scorn in death,
made me against myself, though just, unjust.
(Inferno, XIII.62-67, 70-73)
This man, now rooted within the seventh circle of Hell, cared more for his reputation, for what people said about him, than for who he was, than for life itself. He cared more about the appearance, than the reality.
Iago exposes himself to be a similar man.
Alone now, Iago reveals that the deep core of his hatred is that “it is thought abroad” that Othello has slept with Iago’s wife. Instantly, Iago undermines the reality, or legitimacy, of this slur by saying, he “knows not if it be true,” which, coming from Iago, is as good as saying that this rumor is false. But, mere suspicion is enough to enact Iago’s revenge.
Iago, the man who is not what he is, cares more for mere prattle than practice, cares more about rumors than realities. And woe to the men (Othello and Cassio) who even appear to be connected with belittling him, those men, he will seek to rebirth and uncreate into monsters.
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
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February
Out of the Silent Planet AND Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
March
That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
April
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
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Examples: Much Ado About Nothing begins with Leonato (not one of the four main lovers, or the villain, merely an “extra”); Romeo and Juliet begins with the chorus & then two lowly servants, again “extras”; Hamlet begins with two guards, again “extras.” But also, Roderigo isn’t as lowly of an extra as, say, the guards on Hamlet’s tower, he’s the pawn of Iago.
Perhaps a commentary on Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine?