Tag: Othello

Social Class in Othello

flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello all,

Below I’ve just dumped an essay plan on the presentation of social class in Othello. A tricky question that should anyone be inspired to write an essay of their own on this topic, I hope the following will provide some useful ideas.

Please look forward in the next few weeks for the next crop of talent to take over the English blog with their own writings and talents. But, in the meantime, enjoy the following piece!

EXPLORE THE PRESENTATION OF SOCIAL CLASS IN OTHELLO

Abstract Ideas

  • Essential part of reputation in Venetian life – delegates power, respectability, and morality. In this way, Iago defrauds the corruption inherent to even Venetian society, forming a microcosm for the larger social landscape through Othello’s Venetians. Reputation is a greater quality than the merit of one’s character or achievements – Iago implies Cassio was promoted through corrupt favoritism, not merit.
  • Linguistic barrier of classes through the ability to employ blank verse in appropriate settings, e.g., “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” connoting civilized conversation
  • Iago as an indigenous member of Venetian society: white, married, respectable who is passed over for promotion by the aristocratic, Cassio
  • CONTEXT: The portrayal of Othello as existing within the uppermost ranks reflects the contemporary ethnic diversity of Venice in which the interchange between Europe, Africa, and Asia became common – in Venice, many African moors achieved the highest ranks in society, such as Allesandro de Medici who ruled Florence.
  • Ralph Berry says ‘class as motivation is central to motivation in Othello.’ In relations between military rank and social class lie the cause of tragedy. Enlarging the miliary dimension of the play, reversing the relative military standing of the from his source, Shakespeare thickened the motivational texture of the play that makes the class relationships between the principle characters of the play significantly freshened.

CRITICAL RESPONSE: If Berry is correct to assert that the causes of tragedy in the play lie in the relationships of ranks and class, then it is imperative to believe that Iago’s initial and foremost motivation is to secure military promotion and thus seek to discredit Cassio to obtain the promotion he was denied originally, or even seek to destroy Othello to punish him for choosing Othello in his place. Indeed, both outcomes do occur, but not necessarily for the reasons that Berry suggests. It would appear that he neglects the ‘motiveless malignity’ that A.C. Bradley suggests and warns of Iago’s intrinsic unreliability of his communications, “I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: I am not what I am.” [1.1.63]

IAGO – ICON OF MERITOCRACY (?)

QUOTATIONSMEANINGCONTEXTCRITICAL VIEW
“I know my price: I am worth no worse a place.”All Iago’s intelligence, efficiency, and caprice have availed him nothing for he remains ‘his Moorship’s ancient.’ The genesis of this tragedy, thus, is in his determination to secure justice for himself, restore the hierarchical order to one of ability and merit; rather than find recourse in law, in which he is aware that there is no resolution, he takes affairs into his own hands and devotes all his intelligence and ability to his own interpretation of executive justice.Iago’s conspiracy against Othello might be interpreted as an allegory for civil unrest and rebellion, as in the Gunpowder Plot against James I in 1605. Shakespeare condemns the corruption that runs throughout the veins of long-standing, infallible institutions, like military organization.  

Perhaps, the blasphemic nature of Iago’s speech is what really denotes the radicalism of his ideology, even discounting an invocation in the divine providence of God to be the base of the Venetian social order. Such ideas would have likely struck a discordant chord with the more plebeian, theological tastes of contemporary audiences.    

Venice worked powerfully on English imaginations during the Renaissance as an object of desire, evoking wealth, art, and Italian sophistication, but also as an object of repulsion, evoking Italianate greed and decadent sexuality. The collusion between civilization and primitivity makes for the perfect cause of Iago’s machinations, exposing this society for all of its hypocrisies and insidious effects – “There’s many a beast then in a populous city / and many a civil monster.”		John C.McCloskey – “His tragic intrigue has its genesis, consequently, in his determination to secure justice for himself.”
“His Moorship’s ancient,” “Curse of service,” “In following him, I follow but myself.”Discarding the social norms dictated by hierarchical status, Iago makes a mockery of the subservience demanded of him through the pejorative term, ‘Moorship;’ he reciprocates the same disrespect he believes he has received in the passing over of his name for promotion. When confronted with injustice, he chooses to emulate it rather than reject it.   The impulse that governs Iago is a keen awareness of the ordering of the Venetian social ladder.   The phrase, “I follow him to serve my turn upon him,” suggests that altruistic love is impossible: all loyalties are founded on ulterior, egotistical motives. Here, Shakespeare might be alluding to the emerging system of capitalism, implying that all human relations are corrupted by the need to compete for survival. Pun upon. ‘serve’ interweaving duplicity and loyalty.
“Tis the curse of service; / preferment goes by letter and affection, / Not by the old gradation.”Shakespeare undermines all gradations of meritocracy in Venetian, or contemporary English, society; he suggests that favoritism, nepotism, and elitism are the values that underpin our society. The “curse of service” is that that social class – the boundaries that prescribe social relations – are the inevitable consequences of unequal power, egotism, and greed (See: Cassio and “Reputation, reputation, reputation. I have lost the eternal part of my soul, and what remains in bestial”); here, A.C. Bradley’s description of Iago’s ‘motiveless malignity’ appears rather a reduction of his cynical thought. Iago is not merely a malcontent, intent in inciting chaos, but a symbol for the discontentment of the lower classes. Iago, an ensign, is subordinate to the majority of characters in the play: he desires to uncover the “pitch” that lays beneath the naïve “virtue” of the Venetian cast.
“In Venice they do let God see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands. Their best conscience / is not to leav’t undone, but keep’t unknown,”Iago is a fierce critic of the decadent sensuality of Venice as the, “Pleasure capital” – he condemns “unbittered lusts” and the “fruits of whoring.” He is a keen opponent of the sexual and moral liberties within Venice, and the façade it perpetuates (a habit that he returns in “I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”)  In this way, Iago is a conservative traditionalist, preaching the inherent dangers of sexual desire and falsehoods whilst pushing for the change of his own personal liberties. Above all, in his paradoxical sense of progressivism, Shakespeare presents Iago’s ideology as ultimately shaped by egotism. He is in no way a moral guardian, but intelligently seeks self-benefit in social anarchy.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IAGO AND CASSIO

QUOTATIONSMEANINGCONTEXTCRITICAL VIEW            
“One Michael Cassio,   a Florentine,” “That never set a squadron in the field, nor the division of a battle knows” “Mere prattle without practice is all his soldiership”Here, Iago’s worlds might elicit surprising sympathy amongst a naïve audience for the voices the typical antipathies of doers and thinkers, men of action and mere scholars, workers and bosses. Still, such a complaint in motivated by hatred and fed by jealousy and resentment, thus intrinsically unreasonable, even in perfectly egalitarian society it is not expected that soldiers who have fought, “At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds” are only qualified for command positions. We recognize that to serve, and command entails completely different abilities and responsibilities.Bradley wrote that Iago was not of gentle birth or breeding. For all his powers, he is a vulgarian, schooled in the barrack-room raconteurs by which Iago talks about Othello’s marriage-night (“He’s made forever”) even in the sexual connotation of ‘boarded’ that Iago intends to convey.    
The word ‘knave’ by which Iago repeatedly dubs Cassio, had its origin in class, being often used in contrast with the word ‘knight; and developed to mean ‘a base and crafty rogue.’ This context indicates that Iago means to impugn the gentlemanliness that so clearly distinguishes Cassio from him. He brings Cassio to his social level first in words, only secondly in deeds.   Elizabethans knew well from campaigns in Ireland, the Netherlands and at Cadiz the hazards of inexperienced gentlemen being appointed to command positions.		Ralph Berry says ‘class as motivation is central to motivation in Othello.
“It must not be. If Cassio do remain, he hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.”Iago’s self-serving speech suggests that he is deeply hostile towards Iago: a hostility that perhaps stems from class antagonism. Class is the single-most and defining aspect of the relationship between Iago and Cassio.
Iago: “Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carract. If it prove lawful prize, he’s made forever.” Cassio: “I do not understand.”The central feature of this passage is in emphasizing that Cassio and Iago have a communication problem: “I do not understand.” Iago shrouds his communication in metaphor. Arguably, Cassio understands Iago’s words, but rejects the register of the discourse and its attempts to situate Cassio within Iago’s linguistic milieu. When Cassio claims not to understand Iago’s communication, he rejects the offensive code employed of someone by a lower social status.  Key in this is that Cassio and Iago employ different speech codes based on social class.
Cassio: “Let it not gall your patience, good Iago, That I extend my manners; ‘tis my breeding that gives me this bold show of courtesy.”Shakespeare confirms Cassio’s social superiority in the gentlemanly courtesies he extends to the wife of a colleague of a lower social class, even commenting on the gaping social gulf between them.
Cassio: “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal part of myself and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!”Desperate repetition of ‘reputation’ – importance of one’s reputation, social standing as a man of status – long-living, more so than the corporeal body. Self-interestedness of the personal pronoun, ‘my.’ Exclamative – devastation at loss of his status. This loss of respectability is mirrored in Shakespeare’s choice of prose rather traditional meter.  Essential part of reputation in Venetian life – delegates power, respectability, and morality. In this way, Iago defrauds the corruption inherent to even Venetian society, forming a microcosm for the larger social landscape through Othello’s Venetians. Reputation is a greater quality than the merit of one’s character or achievements – Iago implies Cassio was promoted through corrupt favoritism, not merit. 

CONSENUS BETWEEN OTHELLO AND IAGO – VALUE OF EGALITARIANISM AND ACHIEVEMENT

QUOTATIONMEANINGCONTEXTCRITICAL VIEW
Othello: “My parts, my title, and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?”Ordinarily, we might accuse such certainty of his services to the state as being hubristic, but his racial status relieves him of such a label. He demonstrates a belief in the show of his history of achievements and ability ‘broils and battles’ that Iago believes he has been denied.The portrayal of Othello as existing within the uppermost ranks reflects the contemporary ethnic diversity of Venice in which the interchange between Europe, Africa, and Asia became common – in Venice, many African moors achieved the highest ranks in society, such as Allesandro de Medici who ruled Florence.‘Othello’s tragedy is that he lives according to a set of stories through which eh interprets the world…He is living the life of a chivalric warrior in a world run by money and self-interest.’ – Sean McEvoy
Iago: “Not to affect many proposed matches of her own clime, complexion and degree, whereto we see, in all things nature tends”Iago awakens Othello’s mind to the alien nature of his relationship, of early prejudices to racial miscegenation as a gross betrayal of a ‘natural order’ – Othello’s fragile self-image, inextricably tied to how Desdemona validates him, collapses at thought of his social inferiority. Iago exposes Othello to realizing the gap in age, sympathy, and manners between him and Desdemona – this incongruity lends some credence to the insinuation that the marriage cannot last. According to the racialized prejudices of the Jacobean audience, which stress the supremacy of white characters, Othello’s very presence as a military commander, sitting at the top of the social strata and married to a white woman of high wealth and esteem would all appear very ‘unnatural’ – the tragedy of Othello meets at this intersection of race and class.

“My parts, my title, and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly. Is it they?”

INTRODUCTION: Through Othello, Shakespeare explores all the gradations of social class that colored his contemporary society, revealing the corruption that courses throughout long-standing, once infallible institutions like military rank. Shakespeare depicts Iago as an insurrectionist, impelled to the destruction of such a hierarchy from the inside and determined to bring about the anarchy and order in which all notions of authoritarian power are destroyed. The class antagonism between Iago and Cassio emphasizes the falsehoods upon which the exterior walls of Venetian class society were built: the communicative codes of blank verse necessarily exclude the ‘vulgarian’ figures of Othello and Iago. Othello’s assimilationism into the world of gentility and manners produces resentment and jealousy in Iago; the former betrays the value of egalitarianism that Iago holds sacred. Thus, the genesis of the tragic course lies in the hierarchy of social class – an inevitable consequence of greed, egotism and power relations – and the attempt to destroy its bearings in the colony of Cyprus.

– Tara Flynn

Character Analysis of Desdemona

flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello all,

Below is an essay plan on the portrayal of Desdemona in Othello. I hope it’ll be able to provide some inspiration for some essays of your own. In the lead-up to exams, it’s always a good idea to plan out potential essays; there is particular impetus to plan one out for Desdemona considering a character question on her has yet to appear in past exam papers. I hope the rough plan below will be useful!

Explore the presentation of the character Desdemona in the play.

General Ideas

  • Softness of speech and spirit (“His unkindness may defeat my life but never taint my love”) vs. hardened visage in defense of her own purity (“No, as I am a Christian. If to preserve this vessel for my lord from any hated foul unlawful touch be not to be a strumpet, I am none.”)
  • Her own slowness to suspect that she might be suspected does frustrate the audience – dramatic irony that assures us of her perfect innocence, even to the point of annoyance – Othello: “The handkerchief!” / “I pray, talk me of Cassio.” [3.3.90]
  • Interesting structural point at hand – in Venice, she wields the most power – she talks freely in a court of men, free exchange of blank verse – “My noble father, I do perceive her a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education.” As the play moves into Cyprus, continuing unto her marriage, she confines more to the role of the perfect woman – idealized wife – versus a climate of sexual permissiveness (“Goats and monkeys!”)
  • Class dimension – wealthy, high status, caliber of education that far surpasses Othello’s – splendor of moral virtue – unquestioned in Venice.
  • Audience response: moral culpability of all onlookers, even the audience ourselves. Even though Iago engineers this tragedy, he is enabled by Venetian customs. We cannot condemn the passivity of men that condone this male-female violence without condemning ourselves.
  • Sole guiltless character in the text, even where others succumb to vice and temptation.

ESSAY PLAN

“O these men, these men! Dost thou in conscience think […] that there women do abuse their husbands in such gross kind.”

Main argument = Desdemona is a character in whom love endures, even empowering her being – this virtue renders her a paragon of wifely virtue. However, the key to her undoing is that whilst she loves Othello, she does not fully understand him, and her venetian sympathies only estrange her further from their marital course. That is not to say, however, that she lacks affection for Othello. A.C. Bradley’s understanding of Desdemona as “helplessly passive” unfairly diminishes her character, in setting the example of Christian kindness regarding how to avoid hate of self or other, she upholds Erasmu’s conception of the woman warrior.

Dramatic function = Despite subscribing to the patriarchal dogma of her age, in her Venetian confidence of her own merit, und innocent to even the suspect of jealousy, she is tragically unaware of the dangers of the masculine ego: she maintains that her husband is better than such a base emotion, even when faced with the violence of his fury and is ultimately killed upon its altar. In this way, she commits herself to the fate of martyrdom. The ironic truth of her faithfulness turns her death into a call to arms for women. In death, Desdemona becomes a saint: “heavenly true.”

Sub-argument one: Self-assertion of earlier scenes – interference in military matters and Cassio’s reinstatement – compared to her seeming passivity of the latter half of the play – dichotomized person.

Despite Brabantio’s characterization of her as a “maid never bold” (Act 1, Scene 3), there are key moments in the play that present Desdemona’s assertiveness and self-assuredness.

Desdemona: “Why then, tomorrow night, or Tuesday morn; On Tuesday, noon or night; on Wednesday morn! I prithee name the time, but let it not exceed three days.” [3.3.63] [Bv]

Desdemona takes liberties with her husbands that refute the patriarchal standard for female subservience, a public notion as Cassio declares her ‘Our great captain’s captain,’ that in her request for Cassio’s reinstatement she oversteps her boundary – military affairs do not involve her. Her officiousness in military matters might even be interpreted as a colonial attitude. The pushiness implicit in the repeated time frames could be taken as emasculating.

Desdemona: “My noble father, I do perceive her a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education:” / “And so much duty as my mother showed to you, preferring you before her father.” [1.3.180] [Bv]

The transfer, however, is represented not as a violation or betrayal but an affirmation of traditional order. In moving from father to husband, Desdemona claims to be reenacting the movement of her own mother from her father to Brabantio himself. In this exchange of loyalty and duty, she nowhere affirms her own rights against the prerogatives of male authority and therefore does not seem to challenge but reinforce the structure of order on which Brabantio’s own authority is based.

CRITICAL VIEW: ‘Desdemona becomes a stereotype of female passivity.’ – Lisa Jardine

Sub-argument two: Cultural estrangement from husband – naïve disconnectedness. Although Desdemona is secure among Venetians, she is insecure and uneasy in her marriage to a man she does not fully understand e.g., even she refers to Othello as the ‘moor’ implying estrangement.

Desdemona: “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind and to his honours and his valiant parts.”/ ” If I be left behind, a moth of peace, and he go to war, the rites for which I love him are bereft me.” / “Let me go with him.” [1.3.254] [Bv]

This implicit denial of physical attraction shows that Desdemona tries to separate Othello’s essential humanity from his appearance, but it also shows that she is sensitive to and disquieted by the insinuations that there must be something unnatural in such a love. She does not say that she found Othello’s blackness beautiful but that she saw his visage in his mind

Emilia: “Is he not jealous?” / Desdemona: “I think the sun where he was born drew all such humours from him.” [3.4.30]

Naivety and uncertain racial assimilation; pathetic irony of Desdemona’s claim that the ‘sun where he was born drew all humours from him,”  linkage between hot climates and hot passions was an Elizabethan cliché.

CRITICAL VIEW: ‘She sees the image of her ideal warrior, is liable to experience moments of revulsion from the strange passionate creature she as yet knows so little.’ – Maud Bodkin

Sub-Argument three: Bewilderment, out of her depth, but not necessarily defeated in her marriage – Christian warrior in her charitable courage of sacrificing her reputation or honour, not dared by any male in the play, as a self-proclaimed suicide to save Othello.

Desdemona: “These men, these men! Dost thou in conscience think – tell me Emilia – that there women do abuse their husbands in such gross kind?” [4.3.60]

Loving and being loved means everything to Desdemona. When she believes she has lost Othello’s love, she loses herself; unlike her self-assertion in earlier scenes, she seems unsure and even infantile as she laments her lost love rather than recognizing the precarity of Othello’s mental state. Desdemona’s incredulity about sexual promiscuity reflects the patriarchal demands of Renaissance men; she sees it as an absolute that is worth more than her life.

Othello: “Are you not a strumpet?” / Desdemona: “No, as I am a Christian. If to preserve this vessel for my lord from any hated foul unlawful touch be not to be a strumpet, I am none.” [4.2.84]

CRITICAL VIEW: [Desdemona] ‘accepts her cultures dictum that she must be obedient to males and is self-denying in the extreme when she dies.’ – Marian Cox

QUOTATIONANALYSISCONTEXTCRITICAL VIEWS
Cassio: “A maid/ That paragons all description” (Act 2, Scene 1)Key element of Desdemona’s characterization is her innocence, virtue and loyalty that all denote her status as the perfect ‘maiden.’ The sole sin that she might possess is her ignorance of the machinations of military culture, inevitably creating friction between her and Othello.Pathetic irony of Desdemona’s claim that the ‘sun where he was born drew all humours from him,”  linkage between hot climates and hot passions was an Elizabethan cliché.  

Subordination of women to men; all that they owned would become their husband’s possessions.  

Venice was though of as a city notorious for its sexual liberties it offered to its inhabitants e.g., Othello calls Desdemona the “whore of Venice.”		“[Female] characters divide into virgins and saints or whores and devils.” -Marian Cox

“[Desdemona] accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males and is self-denying in the extreme when she dies.” – Marilyn French  

Play is “a tragedy of incomprehension, not at the level of intrigue but at the very deepest level of human dealings.” – John Bayley

Emilia: “Is he not jealous?” / Desdemona: “I think the sun where he was born drew all such humours from him.” [3.4.30]Desdemona is tragically unaware of the dangers of the masculine ego: she maintains that her husband is better than such a base emotion, even when faced with the violence of his fury. Her naïve outlook on married life is dichotomized with the incredulity of her female counsel, Emilia.   Her cultural estrangement from her husband – even if she finds it alluring – might explain the critical paradox in Desdemona’s behavior: the contrast between her independence and aggressiveness in Venice and her helplessness and passivity in Cyprus.
Desdemona: “My noble father, I do perceive her a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education:” / “And so much duty as my mother showed to you, preferring you before her father.” [1.3.180]Much like her husband, Othello, Desdemona is often placed in the middle of tensions: for instance, between Othello and Brabantio, and Othello and Cassio. Her diplomacy and empathy is brought to the forefront. She is altruistic to the extreme. And so, in these ventures, the conflicts of the play eventually meet their forceful ends at her death.
Desdemona: “Prithee, tonight lay on my bed, my wedding sheets; remember, and call my husband hither.” [4.2.107] [Bv]Although Desdemona is secure among Venetians, she is insecure and uneasy in her marriage to a man she does not fully understand.” She responds to Othello’s jealousy with the tragically inappropriate reflexes of a Venetian lady. Asking Emilia to make the bed with their wedding sheets, these gestures are intensely ironic because they reflect her lack of understanding of Othello. ,
Othello: “Are you not a strumpet?” / Desdemona: “No, as I am a Christian. If to preserve this vessel for my lord from any hated foul unlawful touch be not to be a strumpet, I am none.” [4.2.84]Despite Brabantio’s characterization of her as a “maid never bold” (Act 1, Scene 3), there are key moments in the play that present Desdemona’s assertiveness and self-assuredness.
Desdemona: “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind and to his honours and his valiant parts.”/ ” If I be left behind, a moth of peace, and he go to war, the rites for which I love him are bereft me.” / “Let me go with him.” [1.3.254] [Bv]In the beginning of the play, Desdemona’s love has the ability to lift her spirits and liberate her from the rigorous demands of the Venetian state. Love empowers he in this regard in the declarative that she makes to the senate: “Let me go with him.” Her unconditional love endures to the very end. She is faithful to him in mid and body, rendering her a paragon of wifely virtue.  
Desdemona: “If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me one of these same sheets.” [4.3.24]At the end of the play, Desdemona commits herself to the fate of martyrdom. Her dialogue increasingly becomes morose and mournful, a key departure from the colorful imagery from earlier. Her compliance with her fate might be interpreted as a surrender, or even as a strength of will. The ironic truth of her faithfulness turns her death into a call to arms for women. In death, Desdemona becomes a saint: “heavenly true.” (Act 5, Scene 2)  

CLASS INTRODUCTION

Below is the introduction to an essay on Desdemona that was planned out in Mr Durrant’s class so note that it doesn’t correspond to some of the ideas written in the plan above.

“I have not deserved this.” [4.1]

According to Marilyn French, Desdemona possesses a “masculine assertiveness” that is opposed by an “obedience to males,” which interprets Desdemona as a character “divided.’” Caught between the Elizabethan hegemonic ideal of masculinity and her own latent sense of liberty, even female rebelliousness, which is more obviously embodied in Emilia. Desdemona functions as a tragic victim of these divisions, fulfilling by act five the view that she is little more than a ‘passive character’ overwhelmed by the misogyny of the male characters.

Varieties of Language

flynnta16Leave a comment

Below is an essay question for Othello that Mr Durrants’ class planned last week. I hope it will be useful.

EXPLORE SHAKESPEARE’S PRESENTATION OF DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE IN OTHELLO.

  • Contrast between prose – everyday speech reserved for the lower-class – and blank verse.
  • Racialised and class expectations of language use – Othello’s deft capacity to speak in verse, Iago’s crude expletives and sexual imagery – “Black ram is tupping your white ewe”. Othello – “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” [in blank verse] / “Feats of broil and battle”
  • Reflection of contemporary attitudes in language – “wild cats”
  • Verbal irony – direct/ indirect speech – ways in which language obscures meaning – “The handkerchief!” / “I pray, talk me of Cassio.” /  “The handkerchief” – depicts the disintegration of Othello and Desdemona’s marriage
  • Language of insinuation – “Ha! I like not that” – language manipulation is the source of Iago’s power e.g., blunt soldier-speak with Roderigo,
  • Function of Cassio’s courtly language (typically employed in romance) in developing character e.g., “He hath achieved a maid / that paragons description and wild fame.”
  • Racial epithets undermine Othello’s personhood; the eponymous is not mentioned once: racialised language harshly depicts the ugliness of contemporary prejudices
  • Absence/ right to speech in female characters e.g., Desdemona’s monologue in act one, scene three: “My noble father, I do perceive her a divided duty. To you I am bound for life and education.”
  • Language that subverts stereotype – Desdemona’s powerful declarative “I have not deserved this.” – clipped lines deserve attention. Why? What does it emphasise?
  • Use of Othello’s language to reflect his dissipating sense of self over the course of the play – charting his downfall e.g., “My blood begins my safer guides to rule”
  • Blank verse soliloquies that are typical of the villain in tragedy e.g., “So I will turn her virtue into pitch.”
CRITICAL VIEWS (AO5)
F.R. Leavis comments that the theme of the tragedy is concentrated in Othello’s final speech.
Grennan – “The speech of the women … occupies a pivotal understanding in the play’s moral world”

POINTS TO CONSIDER:

  • Awareness of uses of blank verse and prose
  • In blank verse and iambic pentameter, what words/ syllables are stressed and what are the implications of this?
  • Consider Shakespearean lines as lines of poetry: analyse effects of caesurae and enjambment
  • Short / clipped lines
  • Shared lines – indication of intimacy (“O my fair warrior!” / My dear Othello!”) (O: “I am to blame” / “Why do you speak so faintly?”) – latter quotation signals a newly-broken chasm in their marriage.
  • Imagery / tone
OTHELLO AND LANGUAGE
Charts his downfall – mental disintegration.
Lower citizen according to racialised hierarchies
Uncertainty in using language / confidence in material achievements – “My parts, my title, and my perfect soul”
Outsider status to the refinement of Venice
Physical and dynamic force, versed in “feats of broil and battle”: perhaps, this is the reason why Iago’s deft persuasion is so effective and unfamiliar to him? 
QUOTATIONANALYSISCONTEXTCRITICAL VIEWS
Othello: “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” [in blank verse] / “Feats of broil and battle”Despite his hesitation, Othello speaks with a measured calm in blank verse, typically reserved for civilized conversation – clashing of confidence (“My parts, my title and my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly”) and uncertainty about his status and his abilities – outsider to the refinement of Venice. Othello is more characterized as a corporeal, dynamic force from his ‘feats of broil and battle.’  Galenic system of humours (Renaissance humanism) –
Othello identifies with a choleric temperament: jealous, ambitious, vengeful.

Inherent racialised hierarchies for Jacobean audiences: Othello ought to be in the lower caste accordingly (Great Chain of Being)

Racial other; conscious of his status		“Othello’s fatal flaw is his credulity” – Kenneth Muir  

“Othello’s tragedy is that he lives according to a set of stories through which he interprets the world… He is living the life of a chivalric warrior in a world run my money and self-interest.” – Sean McEvoy

“He is a stranger, a man of alien race.” – Helen Gardner
Othello: “O blood, blood, blood!” / Othello kneels [3.3.454]Asyndetic repetition, exclamative  – obsessive focus on bloodlust, submits to defeat and even racial stereotyping
Othello: “O, vain boast, who can control his fate?” / “Where should Othello go? Now: dost where thou look now? O ill-starred wench, pale as thy smock. When we shall meet at compt this look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven and fiends will snatch at it.”Rhetorical questioning and third-person: induced insanity. Disassociation from physical frame invoked by the third-person.

AO2 LANGUAGE ANALYSIS OF ACT 4, SCENE 1: BIANCA

Establishing his social superiority and his contempt for Bianca by insulting her (‘fitchew’), Cassio feels molested, ‘haunted’ by here mere presence.

Yet, still, her social inferiority assuages his concerns for his own status – he takes joy in her dependence upon him as she ‘hangs and lolls and weeps upon [him].’

Despite the prose marking her as a low-status character, she grasps power in the violent confrontation of her language (“Let the devil and his dam haunt you!”), making insulting exclamatives and a tone of incredulity that betrays her inner sense of esteem, otherwise robbed of her by the nature of her social background as a female prostitute.

Essay Plan

“Rude am I in speech and little blest with the soft phrases of peace.”

Shakespeare employs different varieties of language to demonstrate in Othello, in all the violence and chaos that is engendered, the great power of language to meld and manipulate the human mind (Renaissance humanism): language is the mobilisation of hierarchies of power and status in action.

Iago as the ‘chief playwright of the play.’ Verbal manipulation is his source of power, foil to Othello’s physicality. His language defies the boundaries of drama and the stage – strategy.

Iago revels in the falseness of his performance, of “outward action,” but his self-identification as the villain of the play immediately tips the audience’s favour in Othello’s direction (despite any existing racial prejudices of the Jacobean audience). However, due to being held audience to his dramatic monologues, typical of a tragedy’s villain, we are caught in his schemes even as passive spectators; the dramatic irony of the play forces the audience into an uneasy complicity with Iago’s villainy.

Othello, in contrast, is most familiar with ‘feats of broil and battle’ that might require the actor on the stage to perform as a more corporeal, dynamic force comparative to others in the play.

Iago is a metacharacter in that he undoes the typical expectations of an actor: that is to create a convincing illusion of reality by converting dialogue into speech, script into natural behaviour. Instead, he turns his ostensible impromptu speech back into dialogue and script – note his inversion of biblical verse, “I am not what I am.” It is appropriate, therefore, for A.C.Bradley to claim he is the ‘chief playwright’ because his Janus-like profile reveals knavery to us but “honesty” to his Venetian fellow.” Iago, as a character, emblematizes the pervasive duplicity of Shakespeare’s work, that of making a play that matches life.

At the end of the play, it is Iago’s lack of speech, “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know” that defines him – truth that we are so anxious to know dissolves into silence

Ways in which language conveys social hierarchies of contemporary Jacobean society: race, gender, and social class.

Play uses discriminatory descriptions, such as “Thick lips,” “Sooty bosom,” “Lascivious moor,” regarding Othello’s race in order to reinforce Jacobean prejudices against Black African residents in England and the growing European participation the slave trade is reflected in Iago and Roderigo’s comments towards Othello. Othello’s sexual relationship is seen as unnatural, establishing a black-white binary from the beginning. The crudeness in which Iago and Roderigo speak might further undermine the authority of the Great Chain of Being which informed much of Iago’s racial ideology, as he subjects him to animalistic imagery as a “Beast of two backs;” perhaps, through this blunt, dysphemistic language, Shakespeare holds a mirror to the manufactured setting of Jacobean prejudice.

The first monologue of the play is given at the duke’s discretion as he asks, “What in your part can you say to this?”, implying that Othello requires permission in the public sphere to speak at will. This makes an interesting parallel to how Desdemona is permitted to speak, ‘I pray you, hear her speak,’ here emerges a complicated intertangling of gendered and racial hierarchies manifested in speech. Both Othello and Desdemona are marginalized from the public sphere by nature of their ascribed statuses.

Grennan comments that “The speech of the women … occupies a pivotal understanding in the play’s moral world” and it is Desdemona’s powerful declarative, “I have not deserved this.” As the clipped line makes a sharp departure from the regularity of the iambic pentameter, she too cuts through the mystification of moral groundings of the play as she demands why she, who has made no false action, is being punished.

Tragedy befalls Othello for his inability to perceive beyond the surface of language and implications.

Othello: “Rude am I in my speech and little blest with the soft phrase of peace,” [in blank verse] Despite Othello’s unsurety in his practice of civilised speech, he demonstrates the ability to deftly compose a measured form of blank verse as to his needs in his monologued depiction of his and Desdemona’s courtship, thus the audience bears witness to his communicative faculties that lead the duke to admit, “Your son-in-law is more fair than black”.

Progressively, throughout the play, however, we observe that he is increasingly robbed of his abilities of communication that is in stark contrast to the confident (even bordering upon hubristic) declaratives of his earlier statements that “My parts, my title, and my perfect soul shall serve me rightly.”

Indeed, as Kenneth Muir writes, “Othello’s fatal flaw is his credulity” and what demonstrates this hamartia better than his failure to grasp the signs of language – signifiers and the signified fail to exist in any dramatic reality, ensnared in the Bradley-like doubled illusions of Iago represented in his ironic subversion – “I am not what I am.”

Shakespeare, tracing the course of Othello and Desdemona’s marriage, from their covert marriage merely appearing as husband and wife upon the stage in act one, scene three that is, at this point, perfectly harmonious from the rich, romantic tapestry of chivalric love evoked from their shared lines of pentameter, “O my fair warrior!” / My dear Othello!” By act 4, their relationship has been irredeemably fractured, even beknownst to Desdemona in the cruel irony of their dialogue, “The handkerchief!”  “I pray, talk me of Cassio.”  “The handkerchief!” stresses the interplay of direct and indirect speech, stressing the newly broken chasm between their once-perfect harmony.

Concluding: As a playwright himself, Shakespeare knows all too well the power that language, both implicatory and suggestive, can hold on and enmesh the human mind. It is the method by which our social world and relations come to fruition. Othello’s tragedy is a consequence of his failure to express – produced more of social unsurety than ability. He is destroyed by the symbolic value of language to Venetian society; something that he fails to comprehend by the end of the play.

Class Introduction

“I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear.”

For Grennan, as dramatic means and thematic ends, ‘speech is of vital importance to this play.’ Othello explores a cross-section of Jacobean society, presenting a variety of language representing race, gender, and social status – more specifically, the antagonisms between European and the ‘other,’ male and female, wealthy and the destitute. Finally, Shakespeare’s purpose is to engage the audience in the characters’ power struggles, dynamics and often, their powerlessness as revealed in the language they use. For Honnigman, Iago enjoys a ‘God-like sense of power’; this power is manifested most obviously in his manipulative use of language.

Fate in Othello

flynnta16Leave a comment

Hello All,

Apologies for the long hiatus, but we are back in action having completed our mocks. Many thanks to Efe and Alex for filling in whilst we were gone. In the coming weeks, look forward to an abundance of English content.

The following is an in-class Othello essay that I wrote in Year 12. It was given full marks for its eloquent expression with a flair for incorporating the wider socio-religious contexts. Looking back, there are sections where my line of argument loses clarity from being excessively verbose. I would have also liked to have included a structural addition in terms of the features of greek tragedy.

Explore the Presentation of Fate in Othello.

‘What may you be? Are you of good or evil?’

Shakespeare explores, through Othello, the tension between the tragic inescapability of external forces and the notion of free will as heralded by Renaissance humanist thought. In this, the audience is left a victim of fate as a mystifying force that obscures the ‘cause’ of Othello’s downfall, that of masking the malevolence of man in Iago’s schemes. As Lytton Strachey notes, ‘[Iago’s] wickedness should lie far deeper than anything that could be explained by a motive’ wherein the blurring boundary of ‘cause’ may be ascribed to an attempt of absolution, negating, and overlooking man’s own involvement. Fate is but a convenient pretext that separates man from the terrors of his own action. This becomes evident in Iago’s drafting of the tragic narrative — a figure that encapsulates the human potential to ‘follow but [himself].’ Thus, Othello’s own tragic journey is a signifier of a Renaissance drift from assumptions of Calvinist predestination to a point of ambiguity where human motives, whilst elusive, drive the tragic momentum of the play. As the audience, we are left to distinguish between the ‘fated’ and ‘free’ parts of life. Our tendency and capacity to transcend these cultural and normative barriers: Othello ultimately falls prey to this tension, unable to wrench himself free; his demise is ultimately a product of his own actions.

In all purposes, Iago appears as a puppeteer of fate: he is a figure who probes, questions and actively transgresses against traditionalist Christian discourse which provided members of Jacobean society with identities, moral constraints, and ideas of political dominance and submission like that observed of ‘lieutenant’ Cassio and Othello, his general. Graham Bradshaw writes that Iago is ‘Shakespeare’s most extraordinary example of a dramatist.’ Even Iago appears to relish in the role, within one soliloquy, he makes direct address to the audience to, ‘And what’s he then that says I play the villain.’ As a character, he possesses a double awareness, that of his purposeless purposiveness and in his dramatic function as a ‘villain’ to Othello of ‘noble nature.’ The ‘he’ that relates to the audience is both accusatory and dismissive whereby Iago, now a figure of fate, is to be observed by the audience that is to occupy a role of pseudo-divinity, of ‘Heaven [as his] judge.’ Perhaps, the ‘motiveless malignity’ (that Coleridge writes of) provides the audience little catharsis for ‘what you know: you know,’ relegating the audience, his witness, to the perilous occupation of the divine in the emergence of the enlightenment and dawn of secularism. The narrative of the play is so deftly intertwined to Iago’s Machiavellian machinations that it indeed does become ‘Iago’s play’ in wielding power and authority to influence even the ‘peculiar end[s]’ of other characters. Indeed, he becomes the external force, of uncontrollable and elusive circumstance’ upon which Othello’s fall is predicated. Iago acts a secular agent, yet with the fluidity of the divine in shaping creation, his Renaissance didacticism that ‘our bodies are gardens to which our wills are gardeners’ as an extended metaphor, constructed upon ironic reference to the Garden Eden that calls for the allocation of free ‘will’ — notably, it is the notion of ‘will’ as an idea of self-determination to seek a balance of psychological interiority that is also a sentence of moral culpability. The prose in which he speaks denotes the blasphemic error of his speech, rejecting the Calvinist dialogue of predestination but also in a solicitation of moral repercussion. Shakespeare, in his manifestation of Iago, may represent an undeniable fact of the endemic presence in human society, that of pointless malevolence towards one’s fellow beings (‘honest knaves’) that presents the inexhaustibility of this ethical mystery to those that believe that human behaviour may be rationally governed. Shakespeare’s exploration of the hubris of the ‘villain’ who expedites the tragic momentum of the play also navigates the peril of the virtues of Christian predestination and the potential evil inherent to man’s free will.

Throughout Othello, the audience is at confrontation with a critical paradigm shift wherein myths of progress and liberation of the Enlightenment begin to connect to modern notions of self. S.L.Bethell describes this dynamic through the character lenses that ‘Othello [and] Iago’ participate in the age-long warfare of good and evil.’ The dichotomy between the ‘noble nature’ of Othello, rallied by a tragic narrative of the extrinsic forces upon him and the ‘motiveless malignity’ of Iago in the brutality of being his own ‘master.’ The immediate detachment of ‘virtue, a fig;’ he begins by emptying himself of all categories of virtue and kindness, in regard to that of ‘virtue’ as a Greco-Christian pursuit of good and the related notion of a fixed human nature in harmony with larger cosmic structures. It is Iago’s essential duplicity that frames him as ‘good’ or ‘honest’ to Othello preying upon his trusting character. The fact that Iago can harness this vulnerability to ‘make the moor thank me, love me, and reward me for making him egregiously an ass.’ This praise from the antagonist distinguishes his ‘fated virtue’ into an intellectual error deriving from the supposed ‘honesty’ that initially promoted him. Iago, architect of fate, manifests Othello’s character as an ‘honourable murderer,’ this oxymoron that negates his involvement as ‘[Othello] smothers [Desdemona.’ The final judgement that ‘naught did I in hate, but all in honour’ is a judgement affirmed by all on stage as it is noted that Iago has been the diabolical cause of all the evil that has transpired. However, in this web of necessity and plausibility, to ‘enmesh ‘em all,’ he has destroyed Othello’s own charge of innocence. Thus, the play seems to weigh in favour of the transformation of English Renaissance society from a theocentric, hierarchy stagnancy to one liberated from older traditional restraints to  a ‘modern’ secular form in the dark figure of Iago.

Othello, as a play, reduces moral culpability, self-responsibility, and the consequences of one’s actions as being ‘fated’ or naturally hierarchical. The purity of living such an existence, that of being free from vice, is best seen in Desdemona in her abidance of socially normative gender roles. Where Wilson Knight remarks that ‘Othello just misses tragic dignity,’ we can account for it satisfactorily when accounting for Desdemona. Othello regards his actions, even having slain her, as being the direction of the ‘chaste stars.’  The lexical and syntactical breakdown of the final scene in his speech demonstrates the chaos within his decision, torn by questioning that of ‘what’s best to do?’ even his denial of her existence in ‘what wife?’ He is condemned by the audience for his cruel apathy, rooted in the chaos of his own self-destruction, denying the audience of any catharsis or respite. In Desdemona, she too is initially bound by prophetic foreshadowing of ‘Look to her moor, if thou hast eyes to see, she has deceived her father and may deceive thee.’ It is key to note the imperative verbal form of ‘look,’ that Desdemona is the observed centres her in the futility of patriarchal drama in her passivity then culminating in her death. Her final statement of, ‘kill me tomorrow’ acquiescing to a Christian ‘lie’ of female martyrdom, a sinless saint, that the Jacobean audience must witness fall as a cruel, yet beautifying subject of fate.

To conclude, within Othello, Shakespeare incorporates two mutually exclusive ideologies — a morality play of free will, temptation, ‘master’ and ‘servant,’ and a predestination theology. In the centre of this theological conflict, the audience must confront of the faint influence of God in Othello; yet in this play, seemingly forsaken by the divine, playgoers are forced to confront the Reformist Protestant doctrine of predestination, left to in the labyrinthine mire of human motive.

— Tara Flynn

Model Essays: Othello

shuruiLeave a comment

A selection of Othello essays for help/reference:

1. ‘For a hero, Othello is too easy to pity, too hard to like.’ By considering the dramatic presentation of Othello, evaluate this view.Download
2. ‘Othello is an outsider in a closed society.’ To what extent does the opening act of the play support this opinion?Download
3. Explore Shakespeare’s presentation of betrayal in OthelloDownload
4. “Iago is cynicism incarnate. He stands for a ‘devil world’; he is limited, formless, negative with nothing to merit.” – Maud Bodkin. To what extent do you agree with Bodkin’s view of Iago?                       Download

Othello Articles

shuruiLeave a comment

These are a few juicy articles I found helpful when looking for better understanding/essay arguments, critics and context. There are tons available online, so if you’re struggling with a certain concept of the play, try and find an article related to it on google.

Context: Othello

shuruiLeave a comment

Context is very important when writing your Othello essays, but can seem quite difficult to incorporate. The easiest way is to include it is within your text analysis:

e.g ‘My blood begins my safer guides to rule, And passion, having my best judgment collied’, with a semantic field of red, rage and passion, Othello enforces the renaissance stereotype of a ‘lascivious Moor’. – you would then continue your analysis in relation to the play as a whole.

Read More »