Othello Act IV Revisited
Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve
Welcome to Reading Revisited, a place for friends to enjoy some good old-fashioned book chat while revisiting the truth, beauty, and goodness we’ve found in our favorite books.
Welcome, friends, into Act IV. I hope that your Christmastide has been filled with families, friends, and leisure.
Now, on towards the end of our Shakespeare month.
“I put myself back in the narrative.”
-“Eliza Hamilton” in Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton
Timeline, Sleep Deprivation, & Stress
If you would like a more complete summary, I’ve put it in this footnote.1 Otherwise, this time around I’m going to take the opportunity to focus upon the extremely fast course of events in this play (a timeline which Shakespeare chose to speed up and truncate).
Day 0 (Act I) - wedding night. If I were to schwagger how long Othello and Desdemona were married before they were called into the street, the court, and the war, I’d guess around an hour.
(Days Off Stage Sailing from Venice to Cyprus. We don’t know exactly how long it took since there was a storm, but Google gives me a rough schwagger of 1-2 weeks. During this time, presumably, everyone is either seasick, afraid they’ll drown, or anxiously preparing to fight the enemy Turks as soon as the storm clears. In other words, it’s a pretty dang stressful time. No matter how good these folks sleep habits, routine, or hygiene are, you can’t convince me anyone’s Oura ring score was above 50.)
Day 1 (Act II) - everyone lands in Cyprus throughout the day/afternoon/evening, but that night there’s a brawl in the street, and Othello is forced to dismiss his good friend and right hand man. No one sleeps this night.
Day 2 morning to afternoon (Act III)- Beginning at first light, everyone is up, never having gone to sleep. Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona is sleeping with his former friend, and that both Cassio and Desdemona should die.
Day 2 afternoon to evening (Act IV)- still no one has slept, and a message arrives that Othello needs to get back on a ship, make the same journey in the same storm season to the city he just left, and he has to leave Cassio in charge…
I’d like to make two points, one on our hero (in order to cut him as much slack as possible) and one on our heroine (in order to give her as much credit as possible).
Othello - the man is stressed. Since the onset of this play, he’s been in the physical presence of his wife for maybe 36 hours, and in that time he hasn’t slept, he almost died, he built up a lot of aggression in order to fight an enemy which wasn’t used, he hasn’t had intercourse with his new wife, he’s lost his best friend due to a stupid brawl and political correctness, he thinks his wife is sleeping with that best friend, and he’s just been asked to retrace his entire journey and leave the now-hated friend in his position of power… You want a recipe for making a good man a murderer? This is it.
Desdemona - this is brand new bride. She’s young. She has no experience in marriage. Her new groom has called her a “whore” multiple times, and he’s hit her. I would expect her to begin to doubt whether she even knew the man she married.2 I’d expect her to begin thinking there were perhaps grounds for an annulment. I’d expect her to begin to retreat, to withdraw, to give no more, and to protect herself. This is not what she does.
Desdemona’s Life-Giving Virtue
“Good night, good night. God me such uses send, not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend!”
-Desdemona, IV.iii.102-103
In this Act, I’ll spend the majority of our time contemplating the goodness of our heroine.
Let’s begin with scene 1, when Othello is first cruelly rude to her.
The stage is set, Othello has just said he wants to cut Desdemona into bite-sized pieces, and on she walks. The audience cringes in anticipation.
But look at the angelic meekness of her responses:
Othello: Devil! [He strikes her]
Desdemona: I have not deserv’d this.
…
Othello: O devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,
Each drop she falls would prove crocodile.
Out of my sight!Desdemona: I would not stay to offend you.
(IV.i. 238-239, 240-243)
Without the Christian lens, I do not enjoy this dialogue.
Seen through the lens of the world, their exchange is outrageously overblown on the one side and weak-as-water on the other. A submissive, weak-willed, two-dimensional woman, what’s admirable (or even dramatic) about that? An angry man yelling at a push-over girl, where’s the character? Without the Gospel message to heroically turn the other cheek, this scene falls embarrassingly flat for England’s greatest bard.
But, seen through the lens of a bard who knew that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, Desdemona grows in stature.
I will assume that you, like me, are also seeking to be great Christian. Therefore, let us step into Desdemona’s shoes, feel the slap in our face, hear the insults in our ears, see the expressions of shock and scandal on our friends’ and co-woker’s faces, and then make ourselves respond in her measured, succinct, and honest tone.
She does not insinuate, or suggest, or in any way even accidentally use those thousands of hidden daggers which we married people so frequently and with so little conscious decision, use against each other.
Do you begin to sense the powerful triumph of her responses? Do you begin to understand to what a great degree her soul has mastered her mind, body, and tongue? Do you begin to appreciate, alongside me, how strong her will must be?
Desdemona’s actions reveal that she has done the hard and good work to habituate herself to virtue.
As darkness darkens, light shines brighter. As this play devolves into plots of murder, here, in the fourth act, Desdemona begins to rise as the hero.
Look to the second scene to see Shakespeare draw more out of her, ask more of her:
Desdemona: Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?
Othello: [many lewd insinuations…] Impudent strumpet!
Desdemona: By heaven, you do me wrong.
Othello: Are you no strumpet?
Desdemona: No, as I am a Christian.
If to preserve this vessel for my lord
From any other foul unlawful touch
Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.Othello: What, not a whore?
Desdemona: No, as I shall be sav’d.
Othello: Is’t possible?
Desdemona: O, heaven forgive us!
(IV.ii. 70~89)
Compare her answer, to its source material. In this, the worst moment of her life, from where does Desdemona find the words to respond? Directly from Scripture.
We have renounced disgraceful underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God…For what we preach is not ourselves…But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.
(2 Corinthians 4:2,5,7-10)
Desdemona’s reference to the vessel of her body, directly reminds me of St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. And his words, for me, summarize who Desdemona is, and what she is doing in this play, as a Christian.
Then, after Othello leaves, her confidence becomes bewildered innocence.
Those that do teach young babes
Do it with gentle means and easy tasks.
He might have chid me so: for, in good faith,
I am a child to chiding.(IV.ii.111-114)
These lines confirm, in my reading, that Desdemona is a Christ-like figure.
In this Christmas season, we keep before us the memory of Christ as a child, and thus His supreme innocence. Desdemona is yet a child. And if this causes you, like me, to doubt if one so young could really be so virtuous, remember the Lord’s rebuke to Jeremiah.3
Then, Desdemona fully forgives Iago (without knowing it’s him she is forgiving), just as Christ fully forgave when He said, “they know not what they do.”4
If any such there be, heaven pardon him!
(135)
However we, poor audience that we are, are in danger of failing to keep up a sustained admiration for Desdemona’s meek strength. Thus Shakespeare, with masterful timing, mercifully gives us Emilia:
A halter pardon him! and hell gnaw his bones!
Why should he call her whore? Who keeps her company?
What place, what time, what form, what likelihood?
(137-139)
Finally, we groundlings laugh and agree—there hasn’t been time for an affair, this is all absurd!
But to return to Desdemona:
O God! Iago,
What shall I do to win my lord again?
Good friend, go to him; for, by this light of heaven,
I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel.
If e’er my will did trespass ‘gainst his love,
Either in discourse of thought or actual deed,
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
Delighted them in any other form,
Or that I do not yet, and ever did,
And ever will—though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement—love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.
(150-162)
Desdemona is not distracted by pre-Christian handkerchief false sacramentals. Desdemona is true to the covenantal sacrament she has entered.
Her spouse’s unkindness may kill her (and the whole audience catches its breath at that line) but it will never cause her to cease to love. Does this not, sound like Christ?
Now let us turn to the final scene of this Act.
Desdemona has already revealed much of her character, but now she begins to undress, and thus we understand that now who she is will be fully revealed. Her exterior shows are being removed, leaving only her interior truth.
And what do we see?
Nothing more, nor less, than what we have seen the previous two scenes. Who Desdemona is in the public sphere, is the same as who she is in the private sphere. Her exterior reveals her interior. Her words match her actions. The appearance of who she is, is the same as the reality of who she is. Her exterior garments/appearance are an outward sign of an interior reality. She is a sacrament. She is fully herself. She is one.
Iago, the diabolical, is divided. No part of him aligns with himself. His words do not match his actions. His exterior and interior are misaligned in order to hide who he is, instead of reveal himself to others. His words are a constant sacrilege, destroying the connection between what is said and what is true.
Emilia, married to Iago, jaded by too-close proximity to the twisted mask man can deform his face into, says about Othello:
I would you had never seen him.
But Desdemona, with the purest of hearts, responds:
So would not I: my love doth so approve him
That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns—
Prithee unpin me—have grace and favour in them.
(IV. iii.16-20)
St. Catherine of Siena says that, “All the way to Heaven is Heaven.” Similarly, C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce says that the end of the story works its way back through the whole, and retroactively makes the whole thing Heaven or the whole thing Hell.
Desdemona’s words enact this same thought. Her love for Othello works upon his actions, covering them with grace. Christ-like, again.
Knowing the end of this play, this, for me, is wear I hang my hope.
The final dialogue of this Act is witty and logical on Emilia’s side, and (in the eyes of the world) absurdly naive on Desdemona’s side. But thanks be to God, we know that what is absurd to the world, is deepest, strongest virtue within Christ’s redeeming grace.
Desdemona continues as the anti-Iago. Iago sees bad in all men, and cannot believe that any man is truly good. Desdemona sees good in all men, and cannot believe that any man would choose to do evil. Emilia’s smart rejoinders and logical, relativistic advice would be true, if Christianity were not more true.
And Desdemona, having said her say, closes the discussion with this good-hearted prayer:
Good night, good night. God me such uses send,
Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend!(IV.iii.102-103)
To view Desdemona as the Christ-figure of this play, I believe, makes the story richer.
If Desdemona is merely a small, young, pale, weak-willed, overly-obedient, trapped wife, then this play is still a tragedy, but— But, what? Do I dare say Othello falls flat if Desdemona is lame? No.
But I do dare to say, that this tragedy is much deeper, much richer, much more beautiful, if Desdemona is a paragon of women. If Desdemona is one-of-a-million weak lambs, killed by an angry butcher, it’s sad, but not redemptive. But, if Desdemona is the one-in-a-million lamb who lays down her life for the butcher. Well, then. This play is just fantastic.
He that was not sin, became sin for us, that He might save us. She that was not sinful, was called sinful by name, that she might save her spouse.
Othello Redemption
“Let nobody blame him; his scorn I approve—”
-Desdemona, IV.iii.50
For the sake of his wife, I would like to acknowledge some goodness in our tragic hero, and I will do so by comparing him to Iago, our villain.
At the beginning of the play, we said: Iago cares nothing for men, but everything for what men think about him.
Othello, like Iago, deeply feels the pain of other men’s mockery:
but, alas, to make me
The fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at! —O, O!
But, thanks be for hope, there is something else which hurts him more:
Yet could I bear that too; well, very well;
But there, where I have garner’d up my heart,
Where either I must live or bear no life,
The fountain from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up—to be discarded thence!
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,
Patience, thou young and rose-lipp’d cherubin—
Ay, here, look grim as hell.
(IV.ii.48-65)
Othello mourns the loss of love, more than the loss of good opinion. There is hope in this.
Othello’s trial, then, is in his fight to maintain an image of love, which is as much to say, an image of God.
All marriages are an image of God. When that image breaks, so does our ability to see God clearly. This is one reason divorce is so destructive.
But more specific to this play, I believe Othello saw Desdemona rightly at the outset. He saw and knew her Christ-like qualities. As Iago mars Othello’s image of Desdemona, he also mars his image of Christ. To discover that Desdemona is false, is like discovering that God is false. Iago’s words are so catastrophically destructive, because by destroying Othello’s marriage, he destroys his Christianity, and his faith. If Desdemona is not pure, nothing can be pure. If Desdemona is not good, goodness does not exist.
This is an existential crisis. This is a world-view shattering lie which Iago has engendered.
And is this not similar to many of the bad moments which occur to us in life? Be it divorce or another-cup-of-spilled milk, if one searches one’s soul, often it is not the exterior details of the problem which are so painful, but it is the interior doubt which this large or little trial engendered —ay, there’s the rub. An interior doubt, which asks: God, are not good after all? If You allowed this, do You not care? Is goodness a lie?
Othello’s tragedy, is our tragedy. Desdemona, pray for us.
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
In Case You Missed It:
On the Podcast:
Read Along Guides for Othello:
What We’re Reading Next:
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
A Few Reminders:
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Plot Summary with Little Bits of Commentary Thrown In:
Scene 1 (279 lines)
Setting is “before the citadel.” It is still the same day, currently mid-afternoon/evening. (More on the timeline later.)
Iago tells Othello that Cassio has admitted that he’s slept with Desdemona. Othello falls into the first of his epilepsy fits, during which Cassio arrives and is told by Iago to return shortly. Othello recovers. Iago tells him to hid. Iago then baits Cassio by asking about Bianca (in the Kenneth Branagh version, this line is whispered). Cassio laughs and in everything he says seems to confirm Othello’s worst fears. Cassio departs, Othello comes out of hiding to swear that he will kill Desdemona tonight. (Folks, it’s been less than 24 hours since he first began to suspect anything.) He asks Iago to get him poison, Iago tells Othello he should strangle Desdemona instead.
Desdemona enters with Ludovico (an emissary of the Duke of Venice) who has a letter for Othello commanding him to return home, and to leave Cassio in charge in his place. Othello hits Desdemona in front of everyone, and exits after he invites Ludovico to dinner that night. Ludovico is shocked, Iago does his manipulator tricks, and makes Ludovico think even worse of Othello.
Scene 2 (243 lines)
Setting is “the citadel.” Scene opens with Emilia swearing to Othello that Desdemona is faithful. Othello doesn’t believe her (his pride telling him that she’s too simple/dumb/uneducated/base to know the truth), sends her to bring Desdemona. When she arrives, Othello grossly insults Desdemona, openly calling her a whore. Desdemona is kindness itself. Othello leaves.
Desdemona asks Emilia to lay her wedding sheets on her bed tonight. Iago arrives. Emilia wishes that every honest man be given a whip to punish “outrageous knaves” (The exact opposite of her husband’s former wish to “whip me such honest knaves”). She’s refreshingly logical, asking “when, where, how?” this purported adultery could have possibly occurred. And she reveals that similar lies were told to Iago, making him suspect her. (Thus we understand that Iago is mimicking the same evil he received, thus continuing a revenge cycle.)
Desdemona gives another admirable speech, then is called to dinner with Othello and Ludovico.
Roderigo enters, annoyed that he hasn’t gotten Desdemona yet, and that he’s given all his jewels and money to Iago to give to Desdemona. Iago convinces him that if he kills Cassio tonight he will enjoy Desdemona’s love tomorrow night. (Also stupidly illogical.)
Scene 3 (103 lines)
Setting is “the citadel” after dinner. Othello dismisses Desdemona to get to bed directly.
Desdemona and Emilia then fill the rest of this scene with their dialogue. Emilia reveals herself as a pragmatist and relativist, being willing to perform a bad action for a “good” end. Desdemona, cannot even imagine that any person could ever do anything truly bad. She sings the infamous “willow” song. And when Emilia gives a strongly relativistic defense of a woman’s right to be just as licentious as men, Desdemona responds with a wish to be given by God the virtuous habits to heal wrongs, rather than engage in them.
In Middlemarch, Rosamond Vincy doubted her marriage to Dr. Teritus Lydgate with far less provocations, and still it is possible (for some) to pity her.
Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak. Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.” Jeremiah 1:6-8
Luke 23:34 “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”