Commentaries



ISSUES OF THE PLAY

[Taken from the Norton Shakespeare introduction to Othello by Walter Cohen]

The plot of Shakespeare's Othello is largely taken from Giraldi Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi, a tale of love, jealousy, and betrayal; however, the characters, themes, and attitudes of the works are vastly different, with Shakespeare's play being a more involved study of human nature and psychology. There are, however, a few deviations from Shakespeare's source, one of which being the motivations of the Iago figure. Cithio's Iago was driven to revenge when Desdemona refused to have an affair with him; Iago's motivations are not nearly so plain in Shakespeare's version.

Othello also touches upon a major issue in Europe of this time period; the intermingling of Muslim religion and culture with the West. Written just a century after the Muslims were driven out of Spain as a part of the Reconquista, there are obvious threads of hostility within the play about Othello's Moorish origins, and his differences in religion and culture. The hostility between the West and the East is also shown in the conflict between Venice and the Turks; the Christian Venetians want to protect Christendom from the influence of the Muslim Turks, and ironically, Moorish Othello is the one sent to complete this mission.

Othello is considered to be a prime example of Aristotelian drama; it focuses upon a very small cast of characters, one of the smallest used in Shakespeare, has few distractions from the main plot arc, and concentrates on just a few themes, like jealousy. AS such, it is one of the most intense and focused plays Shakespeare wrote, and has also enjoyed a great amount of popularity from the Jacobean period to the present day.

The character of Iago is a variation on the Vice figure found in earlier morality plays; he deviates from this model because of his lack of a clear motivation, and because of his portrayal as a very malignant figure. However, Iago is less of a character than a changeable device for the plot, and in this sense, he is a clear descendant of the omnipresent "vice" figure. Iago's great cunning, manipulative abilities, and almost supernatural perception mean that he is a very formidable foe, and this makes Othello's fall seem even more inevitable and tragic.

One reason for the overwhelming popularity of the play throughout the ages is that it focuses on two people who defied society in order to follow their own hearts. Shakespeare scholar Walter Cohen cites the popularity of Othello during times of great rebellion and upheaval; the play was most popular during the European wars of the mid-19th century, the fall of Czarist Russia, and also during World War II in America. These productions tended to emphasize the nobility and love of Othello and Desdemona, and made their fall seem more tragic and ill-deserved.




BACKGROUND

Othello was first performed in front of James I of England on November 1, 1604. One of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies (written after Hamlet but before King Lear and Macbeth), Othello is set against the backdrop of the wars between Venice and Turkey that raged in the latter part of the 16th century. Cyprus, which is the setting for most of the action, was a Venetian outpost attacked by the Turks in 1570 and conquered by the Ottomans the following year. Shakespeare's information on the conflict probably derives from The History of the Turks, by Richard Knolles, which was published in England in autumn on 1603--so the play was composed at some point between that time and the summer of 1604.

Shakespeare's choice of a black man was strikingly original. (Othello is called a Moor, which can suggest Arabic descent, but the language of the play insists that he is a black African.) Blackness in Elizabethan England was a color associated with moral evil, decay, and death, and Moors in the theater were usually stereotyped villains, like Aaron the Moor in Shakespeare's early play Titus Andronicus. Othello embodies none of the characteristics typical of the "Moor"; instead of being lecherous, cunning, and vicious, he is a noble, towering figure whose fall is therefore all the more difficult to watch.

Like many of Shakespeare's plays, Othello is derived from another source--an Italian prose tale written in 1565 by Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi. The original story contains the bare bones of the tale: a Moorish general is deceived by his ensign into believing his wife is unfaithful. To Giraldi's story Shakespeare added supporting characters like the vainglorious Roderigo and the unhappy Brabantio; he compressed the time frame and set it against the backdrop of military conflict; and, of course, he turned the ensign, a minor villain, into the artist of evil that we know as Iago.

SETTING

Venice is left behind, and the action of the play shifts to Cyprus. This change of setting has important consequences for the events that follow. Venice, in Shakespeare's presentation, is the classically ordered city, ruled by law and reasoned government. Iago's attempts to stir up trouble for Othello in Venice fail because Brabantio's grievances are not immediately acted on, but rather judged in a court of law that weighs evidence and pronounces judgment. As Brabantio himself says when he first hears Roderigo and Iago's clamor: "what tell'st thou me of robbing? This is Venice; / My house is not a grange" (I.i.102-3). This is Venice, in other words, where chaos has no place.

Cyprus, by contrast, is not nearly so secure. It is an outpost of the city, vulnerable to assault, and surrounded by ocean, where the only authority is invested in Othello. It is also a place where, in classical mythology, Aphrodite (the goddess of love) was first carried ashore. Indeed, Cassio's greeting to Desdemona, when he says "the riches of the ship is come ashore... hail to thee lady!" (II.i.83-85) seems to invoke this image of the goddess of love making a landing. The rest of the play sees the steady encroachment of these forces--the civil disorder of an outpost community, and the power of Aphrodite, manifested in Othello's jealousy--on attempts to maintain order. Iago could not use the forces of lawlessness and riot in Venice, but in Cyprus his power can be unleashed. The subsequent brawls in the streets of the city, and the chaos to which Othello's inner life is reduced, reflect how easily Iago exploits the vulnerabilities of the island outpost.



The Turks in Shakespeare's Othello

"Are we turned Turks, and to ourselves do that Which Heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?" (II.iii.)



Thus cries the distraught Othello, in Shakespeare's play of the same name, on observing dissension in his own ranks. His turn of phrase brings again to mind the Turks, those shadowy enemies always lurking in the background but never seen. Though invisible in the drama, the Turks play a significant part in Othello: references to the Turks and their Islamic/infidel culture illustrate the progress and illuminate the themes of the tragedy.

... In 1604, when Othello's first recorded performance took place, the Ottoman realm stretched from Arabia to Egypt to Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) to the Crimea to Hungary. The Turks and their vassal states surrounded the Black Sea, and their vassal states covered the south coast of the Mediterranean -- Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli (modern Libya). Only the defeat dealt at Lepanto had kept the Turks from dominating the Mediterranean, and even so, their armies were formidable. They imported 20,000 Russian and African slaves annually for the army. Their "toll of boys" required that every fifth Christian boy be surrendered to the elite "janissaries," a corps of Christian children brought up as slaves to become fanatical Moslem warriors. Any production of Othello must be aware that the Turks were the terror of Europe.

... Iago is successful in his machinations, and Othello gives in completely to his veiled suggestions of vengeance -- the Moor has become a janissary of jealousy. Othello recognizes this servitude in some ways, such as his berating of himself as "O cursed, cursed slave!" (V.ii.274) after discovering Iago's duplicity. And, recognizing the Turk in himself, Othello feels he must punish him. The last mention of Turks in the play is in Othello's death-speech: "And say besides that in Aleppo once, / Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk / Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, / I took by th' throat the circumcised dog / And smote him -- thus." Othello has ruined himself through his jealousy, and damaged Venice as well through the chaos in his military command. But he dies acknowledging he has "turned Turk," and attempting to destroy that part of himself.

... The Turks, their Ottoman Empire, and their Islamic culture and heritage yield both the crisis that sets Othello in motion and layers of meaning which reinforce the play's themes and imagery. The deception, ferocity, and misogyny in the play can all find expression as Turkish derivatives. In his admittedly ethnocentric view, perhaps Shakespeare sets his play as a struggle between the liberal, enlightened Europeans and the savage, maurading Turks. Othello must wage an inner struggle between the two, and overcomes his sinister side, the Aleppine Turk -- but only at the expense of his honor, his family, and his life, the traditional sacrifices of a Shakespearean tragedy.