STORYTELLING
Story-telling is the art of playing with Time: dilating or compressing it at leisure to have a
better command of the listener’s reactions.
1. The first word of the play (“Tush”) AND the last word of it (“relate”) refer to the
art of story telling.
Othello IS a story that is being told: it is the continuation of the last words of the play
pronounced by Lodovico. Once back in Venice, he could have the play performed before the
Duke… THE PLAY IS THE CONTINUATION OF THE PLAY.
2. The first exchange with Othello (I,2, 4-5) is an invented story:
“Nine or ten times / I had thought to have yerked him (Roderigo?) here, under the ribs.”
And Othello answers : “’Tis better as it is.” (6) thus rejecting the story. The Moor prefers
reality as it is.
Iago then proceeds to rewrite the end of the story:
“He [Brabantio] will divorce you,
Or put upon you what restraint and grievance
The law, with all its might to enforce it on,
Will give him cable.”
(I,2,14-17)
Iago equivocates (as the Devil is believed to do): he mixes UNTRUE elements (his story
about Roderigo) with TRUE ones (the allusion to Brabantio). He will also include the arrival
of Brabantio into a fiction…
3. Othello’s account of his life.
The Moor turns his life into a story. This transformation is what SEDUCED Desdemona (and
Brabantio).
It ALSO seduces the Duke and the spectators!!!!! The seduction operates on the stage in so
far as it is re-enacted by the play. We are bewitched by the narrative the way Desdemona was.
Accordingly, the story affects the present situation. This encroachment of the past upon the
present is made clear by the fact that no sooner has Othello evoked cannibals than Desdemona
“with a greedy ear / devour[ed] up [his] discourse.” (I,3, 148-9) What occurs at that precise
moment is a sort of contamination of “reality” by fiction. The effect thus produced consists in
blurring the distinction between reality and illusion.
This phenomenon is reinforced by the fact that the moment when he tells the story is part of
the story (I,3, 128) he is telling::
Othello. Her father loved me, oft invited me,
Still questioned me the story of my life
From year to year – the battles, sieges, fortunes
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days
To the very moment that he bade me tell it; (…)
Let’s focus on the narrative (I,3, 148-157) :
Othello asserts that he MANIPULATED Desdemona and drew upon her reactions. He had
total control of the situation:
And with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse; which I observing
Took once a pliant hour and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intensively. I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered.
(Note the quantity of negative connotations: beguile / tears / distressful /suffer.)
The present speech contradicts flatly his opening statement about his inability to wield
words: Othello is excellent at wielding words!
“Rude am I in my speech / And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace” (I,3, 81-2).
“I will an unvarnished tale deliver / Of my whole course of love.” (I,3, 90-91)
It is amusing to note that Desdemona says: “I cannot say “whore” IV,2, 160, which boils
down to the same kind of attitude in that she proves equal to the task of doing – saying,
actually – something she asserts she is not able to do.
161-168.
She wished she had not heard it, yet she wished
That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake: 165
She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used.
Scrutiny:
161. She wished she had not heard it.
This is the most puzzling line of the speech:
Desdemona seems to be a victim of the story…
Is it not a form of “witchcraft” then?
What Othello is doing is not unlike what Iago will
do to his victims then….
162. heaven had made her such a man.
The lesson to be drawn may be that when you love
someone you want to become the one you love.
This is reminiscent of the approach to love
developed in Plato’s Banquet.
163. If I had a friend that loved her.
The idea of prostitution is introduced here, though
subtly. Desdemona’s suggestion is disconcerting.
164. how to tell my story
What seduces her is his capacity to tell the story,
not the story itself nor the man who tells it…
THEREFORE, she fell in love with his talent as a storyteller = not with him nor with the
story of his life.
166. She loved me for the dangers I had passed. She loved his courage. This is a more
conventional approach that sends us back to
medieval ideals of chivalry.
167. I loved her that she did pity them.
At last!!! It’s reciprocal: so he bewitched himself
in the process!!!!! He fell in love with her
reaction to his story… So she was “half the
wooer” (I,3, 174). The lesson here is that you fall
in love with someone because the other has
fallen in love with you – or has been moved by
your story – , which amounts to loving yourself
through the other. The platonic idea that one falls
in love with oneself only is taken up here.
168. Witchcraft = Indeed!...
____________
As part of the story is told before the Duke, everyone there is under the charm. And so is the
audience and even those who are not there! “I think this tale would win my daughter too.”
(I,3, 170) the Duke says. The audience is SEDUCED and the whole world seems to fall for
The Moor.
Brabantio’s valedictory disillusioned declaration:
“But words are words; I never yet did hear
That the bruised heart was piercèd through the ear.” (I,3,217)
should be modified as follows : “the pure heart was conquered through the ear.” The EAR has
proved to be indeed the way to reach the HEART.
4. TRANSFORMING REALITY
A. Iago & Roderigo (watching Cassio & Desdemona) in II,1. (p. 104-5)
Iago is trying to force Roderigo to interpret what he is looking at in a different way (240-243).
Iago “Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand? Didst not mark that?”
Roder. “Yes, that I did; but that was but coutesy.”
Iago. “Lechery, by this hand…”
But Roderigo is not convinced “Well.” (254) Iago’s strategy has failed in that he has not got
Roderigo to adopt his vision of the scene. His accomplice sticks to his former opinion.
Forcing someone to see something under a different angle is reminiscent of a phenomenon
called ANAMORPHOSIS in the history of arts. The most famous anamorphosis is probably
the 1533 Ambassadors by Hans Holbein (available on the Internet)1 which can be seen in the
British Museum in London. At the foot of the picture is a long stretched figure whose
meaning can be restored by placing a mirror at the base of it. If you look into the mirror, thus
restoring the right perspective, you can see a skull. To see wheat the image conceals you must
adopt a different viewpoint, you must change for a different place. This is what Iago is trying
to achieve: to modify the others’ interpretation of the signs.
B. Iago & Cassio (talking about Desdemona) in II,3, 15-25.
Once again Iago is trying to warp another character’s interpretation of reality. Once again he
fails, but his efforts will prove fruitful in the long run, unfortunately. Here he is trying to turn
beauty and courtesy into lustfulness and provocation:
Iago: “She is sport for Jove.”
Cass. “She’s a most exquisite lady.”
Iago. “And I’ll warrant her full of game.”
Cass. “Indeed she is a most fresh and delicate creature.”
Iago. “What an eye she has! Methinks it sounds a parley to provocation.”
Cass. “An inviting eye, and yet methinks right modest.”
Iago. “And when she speaks, is it not an alarum to love?”
Ass. “She is indeed perfection.”
Iago. “Well, happiness to their sheets!”
Iago has failed again. But he has begun his work that consists in DISTORTING reality and
forcing a different vision of it into the others’ eyes and mind. He is trying to “re-write” the
world around him, to make it part of the story he is striving to put together.
5. THE LIFE OF OJECTS.
The handkerchief has a “life” of its own and is thus not unlike some of the characters… If
objects can have a life of their own, the characters can be reified. The metaphor is a bit easy,
but we may suggest that Iago is using the people around him as if they were mere
handkerchiefs… He uses them, then gets rid of them! The story of the object is told in III,4,
51-64.
That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give:
She was a charmer and could almost read
The thoughts of people. She told her, while she kept it,
‘Twould make her amiable and subdue my father
Entirely to her love; but if she lost it
Or make a gift of it, my father’s eye
Should hold her loathèd and his spirits should hunt
1
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Holbein-ambassadors.jpg
After new fancies. She dying gave it me,
And bid me when my fate would have me wive,
To give it her. I did so, and take heed on’t:
Make it a darling. Like your precious eye.
To lose’t or give’t away were such perdition
As nothing else could match.
Accordingly, what is happening may be caused by the loss of the handkerchief! The two
stories overlap!!! We know this is untrue but Desdemona’s vision is warped.
Right away, Othello begins a new story about the handkerchief (65-71) which tells us about
the very creation of the object:
There’s magic in the web of it:
A sibyl, that had numbered in the world
The sun to course two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sewed the work;
The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,
And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful
Conserved of maidens’ hearts.
Looking for the cause is one of the concerns of the play and delving into the past is one of the
aspects of this approach. The play seems to send us on a wrong track for us to lose our way,
like the characters who can no longer tell reality from fiction. The cause is not to be found in
the past, in the genesis of a given phenomenon: the cause may be the thing itself. The cause IS
Iago. Iago IS the cause! And that’s probably the end of it… You don’t ask a virus in a
computer what its cause is. It is and that’s all!...
Shakespeare sprinkles the play with possible causes: and the more causes we come across the
less we seem to know about the reasons why the whole thing is at work.
6. Iago and Lodovico.
When Othello strikes Desdemona before the messengers from Venice, Iago tries once again to
force a specific vision of Othello into the eyes of the messengers (IV,1, 267-272):
Alas, alas!
It is not honesty in me to speak
What I have seen and known. You shall observe him,
And his own courses will denote him so,
That I may save my speech. Do but go after,
And mark how he continues.
Iago succeeds when he manages to replace reality by his reconstructed vision. And here he
seems to have made it! The point is that he contents himself with saying that what is cannot
be said: he leaves room for the hearers to imagine a specific vision for themselves. Iago seems
to have stepped back (he “will save his speech”) but in fact he has taken an important step
forward: the world will be reinterpreted by the messengers. He has succeeded in getting
people to call reality into question reality and to accept the idea that it may be necessary to
reconsider what has been seen. A different interpretation is available and Iago leaves it to the
messengers to invent the story an extract from which they have been allowed to view.
7. Othello and Desdemona.
Othello’s mind has been contaminated. He sees reality, his own story, as a tale in which his
wife is a prostitute, as indicated in IV, 2, 88-9. He himself becomes a character in a story…
He has been caught into the quicksand of jealousy, a most “theatrical” emotion according to
Roland Barthes.
I cry you mercy then:
I took you for that cunning whore of Venice
That married with Othello.
The play Othello is, from within, regarded as a fiction inhabiting a fiction. Reality has given
way to fantasy…
8. Desdemona about her maid.
Desdemona too resorts to story-telling. She tells Emilia about her mother’s maid, Barbary
(IV,3, 25-32):
My mother had a maid called Barbary:
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad
And did forsake her. She had a song of willow;
An old thing ‘twas but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing. That song tonight
Will not go from my mind. I have much to do
But to go hang my head all at one side
And sing it like poor Barbary.
STORIES have mixed effects:
a/ The characters escape from their (illusory) life and find some sort of refuge, of relief. It
may be what Desdemona was after at that difficult moment.
b/ The style is more attractive: we love stories and me enjoy their presence. Moreover, they
are told at unexpected moments, so we are under the charm. In that case they are audiencecentred.
c/ The spectators are transported away from the present instant. The play has a constant grip
on the audience but distance is necessary at the same time, otherwise the story might be too
harsh! We need a certain dose of detachment.
9. Othello’s death.
Othello enacts his death by telling the story of the death of a Turk he killed. He re-enact the
murder he is relating by killing himself, by killing the stranger in himself! (V,2, 347-352):
Set you down this;
And say besides that in Aleppo once
Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk
Beat a Venitian and traduced the state,
I took by th’throat the circumcised dog
And smote him thus.
This is the moment when story and reality coincide. Othello actually dies in the play he is
performing. (Like Molière in Le Malade Imaginaire ?)
10. Othello’s recommendations:
Othello wants his story to be told. He wants his life to be turned into a story! (V,2, 337-344)
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all its tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unusèd to the melting mood,
Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum.
Othello insists that the story should be a truthful echo of reality. The story must be a faithful
echo of his life, he insists. But he proceeds to give specific indications: one who loved “not
wisely but too well” etc. It is difficult to conciliate these requirements with truthfulness… The
approach is ambiguous here and destabilising. Or is it necessary to step away from the truth to
recapture the essence of reality? The dialectics of life and fiction, the intricate connections
between the world and its literary reflection are contained here. Storytelling is an art, and art
is an outlook from a distance. Being faithful to life in art may imply stepping away from
life… Shakespeare may be speaking here through the character.
THE CHARACTERS
Othello: A black hero.
Othello is a black man, which may induce one to wonder what the reaction of the Elizabethan
audiences might have been.
The choice of this hero could have been the result of a provocative turn of mind or maybe
there were enough Negroes in late XVIth and early XVIIth century London for this sight to
be regarded as unexceptional. Nevertheless, as we saw before, Shakespeare was influenced
by the translation of Giovanni Battista Cinthio’s story: a black hero too or a certain Signore
Moro. But the allusion to the Moorish handkerchief in the Italian text could concur to make
the theory of the originally black hero more credible.
Critics have tried painstakingly to determine whether Othello is a black man or a North
African character. My personal attitude to this problem is rather indifference: never mind…
The point is that the hero should be the representation of a stranger whose skin is dark or at
least darker than that of the other characters. The intra-textual references to his being dark
must remain relevant and make sense.
The sure thing is that the lists of props that have reached us include some make-up (“A Box
of black painting”) and black fleecy wigs. These elements drive it home to us that some
characters at least were black on the Elizabethan stage. We may imagine that some red makeup was also available for the character that is often referred to as “the thick-lips”.
______________
Early modern England was also an age of exploration. Moreover, the courts of
Elizabeth and James I are known to have welcomed North African ambassadors. The English
also dabbled in slavery as they picked up black people on the North and West coasts of
Africa whom they sold illegally to Spanish owners in the Caribbean. Some English sailors
took to bringing back home some exotic creatures who sometimes settled down in London.
Michael Mangan notes that in 1601, Queen Elizabeth was afraid that the situation
might have got out of hand. She was “discontented at the great number of ‘Negars and
blackamoors’ which had crept into the realm.”2 The Queen’s attitude tends to demonstrate
that these people were regarded as threats. One may speak of some kind of ambient
xenophobia.
One should not lose sight of the fact that black was traditionally associated with Evil,
were it but because it stands as the opposite of the light which is the sign of the presence of
God. If God is the light, black and darkness are its opposite and the signs of Satan –
etymologically, “the enemy”. Little importance was given to the fact that darkness can also
be regarded as being produced by light: indeed no shadow can be cast without the presence
of a light. This concomitance was to bring commentators to develop the relations between
Good and Evil, and to demonstrate, however painstakingly, that Evil (and darkness) is
wanted by God (the light) who is the cause of all things.
Though black was a fashionable colour in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (as far as
clothing is concerned at least)3, it still carried negative overtones that such episodes as that of
the dove and the raven in the Bible (Genesis 8) contributed to brand in people’s minds.4
Black is despair and white is hope… Let me remind you that slavery was justified by Genesis
9 in the eyes of slave-owners.
Titus Andronicus (1592), written by Shakespeare before Othello, contributed to disparage the
image of the Moor. In it, the dramatist exploited the “racist” approach his contemporaries
probably shared. The words uttered by the Duke in our play, in I,3, 285-6, may account for
this commonly held viewpoint:
“If virtue no delighted beauty lack,
Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.”
Virtue is equated with fairness, that is being white, whereas shamefulness is associated with
black.
2
Michael Mangan, 155.
For further information you may read the superb essay by Michel Pastoureau entitled Bleu: Histoire d’une
Couleur, Points, Ed. du Seuil, 2002, 82-84.
4
Let me remind you that Noah sent a (black) raven out of the Ark to see if the waters had receded. But it did
not come back, which signified that the bird had not found any piece of land and had probably died. Black is
therefore ominous… When he sent the (white) dove – three times –, it finally came back with an olive twig in
its beak when sent for the second time, thus proclaiming the possibility for a new life and the return of hope.
3
In Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare portrayed a particularly cruel dark-skinned villain named
Aaron. The character described himself in a manner that makes any comment superfluous
(V,I, 125-144):
Even now I curse the day – and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse –
Wherein I did not some notorious ill:
As kill a man, or else devise his death;
Ravish a maid, or plot a way to do it;
Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;
Set deadly enmity between two friends;
Make poor men’s cattle break their necks;
Set fire on barns and haystacks in the night,
And bid the owners quench them with their tears.
Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves
And set them upright at their dear friends’ door,
Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters
‘Let not thy sorrow die though I am dead.’
But I have done a thousand dreadful things
As willingly as one would kill a fly,
And nothing grieves me heartily indeed
But that I cannot do ten thousand more.
Here the Moor is a monster who presents himself as such and declares that he delights in the
“acts of black night, and abominable deeds” (V,I. 65-66). His sky is unclouded by conscience
or remorse and he is careful to elaborate his own myth, giving of himself a larger-than-life
image:
Why, so, brave lords, when we do join in league
I am a lamb; but if you brave the Moor,
The chafed boar, the mountain lioness,
The ocean swells not so as Aaron storms.
(IV,2. 136-9)
It is quite clear that Othello is an inverted image of his literary ancestor, Aaron, who appears
as a dark skinned monster who even wishes to be a devil:
If there be devils, would I were a devil,
To live and burn in everlasting fire
So I might have your company in hell
But to torment you with my bitter tongue. (V,1. 147-150)
On the contrary, Othello, he is a seductive hero “of a free and open nature” (I,3, 380-1), who
can win the heart of the “white dove”, Desdemona.
Michael Mangan’s comparative approach to these characters is particularly successful:
Othello’s personality exists in terms of what he is not. His
character is constructed in resistance to the stereotyped
expectations of what ‘Negars and blackamoors” are like –
expectations held not only by the theatre audience, but also
by some of the Venitians in the play.5
Indeed, Iago describes Othello either in a particularly positive way in a monologue, that is
when he is not being overheard and when, according to Elizabethan conventions, he is being
sincere:
The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not,
Is of a constant, loving, noble nature. (II,1, 270)
On the other hand, he describes him in a stereotyped manner when he is being listened to:
Her [Desdemona’s] eye must be fed. And what delight shall
she have to look on the devil? (II,1, 215-6)
In any case the assimilation of blackness with ugliness or terror is a constant feature in the
play:
I,2, 70-71. Brabantio.
To the sooty bosom
Of such a thing as thou – to fear not to delight.
Brabantio’s prejudice seems to echo Desdemona’s:
I,3, 98. Brabantio And she, in spite of nature,
Of years, of country, credit, everything,
To fall in love with what she feared to look on?
Iago even describes him as the devil:
II,1, 215-6. Iago.
Her [Desdemona’s] eye must be fed. And what delight shall she have to look
on the devil?
In Othello, the presentation of the Moor seems to waver between stereotyped brutishness and
a more sincere and heartfelt approach that the play as a whole seems to point to. Indeed,
Othello’s attitude throughout the play is rational and benevolent, and he keeps posing as the
one whose function it is to put an end to ongoing violence. For example, in act one scene 2
(59), he precludes the confrontation between the parties:
Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.
He declares. And again in Act II scene 3 (153): “For Christian shame, put by this barbarous
brawl.” He is the one who makes barbarous acts impossible both in Venice and in Cyprus.
5
Michael Mangan, 157.
This position as an example to be followed, as a virtuous character, is the aspect that will
cause his fall. Iago is well aware of this apparently paradoxical trait. He says:
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 the nose
As asses are. (I,3, 381-4)
In other words, what should be regarded as a benefit, and should prove to be so, turns out to
be a drawback in a world that breeds such characters as Iago. The idea of the easy and most
momentous fall of virtue is also mentioned in the Sonnets. For example, the last two lines of
Sonnet 94 read as follows:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Othello’s purity is not the cause of his fall but it is some sort of aggravating circumstance that
Iago is most willing to draw upon. As for Desdemona, she too stands as some sort of pure and
spotless character.
Desdemona: the white dove.
I quite agree with Richard Proudfoot who says that Desdemona, who is usually played
as a rather immature character, should be regarded as a more adult and self-reliant character.
Though her pleading in favour of Cassio sounds quite childish and is particularly ill-timed,
her decision to leave her father and to follow Othello sounds very much like the sign of
deliberateness, a trait that maturity only can provide. Her attitude before the Duke -- and in
the presence of her father -- is a further proof of her feeling responsible for her own acts and
of her self-assuredness. She has decided to violate convention by her marriage and she is
totally aware of it.
Shakespeare, who is so good at making the characters as deep and complex as people
of flesh and blood, put in her mouths words that could have been uttered by Iago. In II,1, 1212, she says playfully “I do beguile / The thing I am by seeming otherwise.” This assertion is
puzzling and contributes to make her more complex than could be thought at first sight. She
has a capacity to deceive that the play enhances repeatedly:
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father and may thee.
Brabantio declares in I,3, 288-9. This warning is echoed by Iago’s words in act III scene 3
(208):
She did deceive her father, marrying you;
But this assertion is part of Iago’s shifty efforts to make those around him change their vision
of the world. Accordingly he is striving here to make faithfulness and reliability look like
treachery. He is trying to turn the world upside down.
The aspect that may make Desdemona particularly attractive, and that may stand at the
core of the whole process, is her attitude to sex. Though the point is alluded to by Iago, who
uses it as a strategic tool to get Roderigo’s help, it is also mentioned by Desdemona herself
who asserts, in the Quarto edition only, that her “heart’s subdued / Even to the utmost
pleasure (Q1) of [her] lord.” (I,3, 246-7). (The Folio reads “to the very quality (F) of my
lord”.). The former version makes the young woman more liable to cause other male
characters to develop a liking for her. In this respect she is not unlike the Duchess of Malfi
when she says to Antonio in act I scene 2 (375-380) of John Webster’s eponymous play that
she is a woman and that she has desires:
This is flesh and blood, sir,
‘Tis not the figure cut in alabaster
Kneels at my husband’s tomb. Awake, awake, man!
I do here put off all vain ceremony,
And only do appear to you a young widow
That claims you for her husband.
Desdemona’s sexual appetite is often alluded to by Iago who tries to turn her virtue into a sign
of lustfulness. This is what we saw before in this course in the scenes of anamorphic
distortion. When Iago evokes the doves that might peck at his heart” (I,1, 65-66), for example,
he provides an early instance of modification of a well-known image, that is to say
Prometheus whose liver is devoured by a vulture. Iago is excellent at modifying images and
visions, at recreating a parallel reality that the hearers may confuse with the real world. In the
same way, the vision of Desdemona is modified by the ill-meaning character that draws upon
the elements he picks up on his way through the play. The words uttered by the characters
actually fuel a plot that Iago weaves as he moves forward. The whole thing is an
improvisation. Iago is playing an invisible piano…
Iago: the jazzman.
As we saw before in this study, instead of causing the others to distort reality mentally,
Iago warps it directly and forces the view of it onto the others. The nature of the lie is
different but the method is basically the same. The operation is carried out several times. It is
Iago’s favourite! One of the most stunning examples occurs in act IV scene 1 when Iago plays
a scene with Cassio in front of Othello who becomes a deluded viewer/audience. In this sort
of play-within-the-play, Cassio is speaking about Bianca while Othello is made to think that
he is talking about Desdemona. The words are anamorphic and Iago marvels at his own
ingenuity. He cannot help pitying Cassio sarcastically in the process: “His [Othello’s]
unbookish jealousy must construe / Poor Cassio smiles, gestures, and light behaviour, Quite in
the wrong.” (101-103).
I shall not go as far as to suggest, as some critics do, that Iago is something of an artist.
He is not! There is nothing artistic about causing the fall of the others or bringing about the
death of lovers. The character’s “artistry” is limited to the spinning of an irresistible web. And
his sensitivity to the others’ beauty does not make him beautiful. He has no talent. All he has
is a capacity, coupled with sharp intelligence! Iago also proves excellent at dosing his
response as is evinced, for instance, by his attitude to Othello when asked to denounce the
person who is at the origin of the night brawl. Instead of accusing Cassio openly he pretends
to be reluctant to do what he would be in fact so eager to proclaim. He minces instead of
proclaiming insofar as this choice is sure to provoke a more violent reaction from Othello:
I know, Iago,
Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter,
Making it light to Cassio: Cassio, I love thee,
But never more be officer of mine.
(237-240)
By saying it lightly, he makes the consequences worse for Cassio, and this capacity to
anticipate a reaction, is somehow admirable. The spectators may feel inferior to Iago whose
proficiency as a plotter is astounding. He seems to be faultless until the end when the cat is
finally let out of the bag. Iago’s progress is all the more impressive as the character is
improvising. If an “Othello music” can be heard, as Wilson Knight suggests, it must be jazz.
Iago’s improvisations are constantly and perfectly adapted to the variations that his plot
induces. Like Oscar Peterson or Keith Jarrett, he swings along and enjoys playing: “Pleasure,
and action, make the hours seem short” (369) he declares. But once on its way, the solo must
go on and it follows its own course. It cannot be interrupted all of a sudden and to some
extent, Iago must serve his plan now. A jazz musician knows what chords make up the
melody and he has a series of notes available. Should he step out of this structure, he finds
himself out of tune. The musician knows where he is going, but he does not know everything:
some notes may follow an unexpected course though still in tune, or one of the musicians
might change the tempo, or the response of the audience might cause a change in the melody
to be operated. In other words, jazz is free and open. So is Iago’s plot. And he knows it. And
the audience enjoys attending such a demonstration of virtuosity. For Iago works “by wit, not
by witchcraft” (362) and his actions are carried out “in happy time” (III.1. 30).
The audience may feel that Iago is more than a mere character in a play. Though one
should not go too far in this direction – because it may lead one to assert that the character is
an incarnation of Shakespeare stepping into his play or other such trifle – the idea is attractive.
One should draw the line at saying that the character is the one who pulls the strings until the
final revelation. He is the cause. In a “positive” sort of way, he represents change. It is true
that without this character there would be no plot, no play, no drama. Othello would have
lived with Desdemona and happiness would have replaced chaos. Iago is the most fascinating
character in that he keeps his mystery: he does not explain why he did all this in the end and
his motivations remain unclear.
Part of the fascination exerted by this character may be ascribed to his connection with
jealousy. As a matter of fact, he asserts that he is jealous of the Moor and of Cassio who are
said to have seduced his wife Emilia, though in both cases he says he is not sure the feeling is
justified. He is also jealous, though differently, of Cassio’s achievements and of Othello’s
greatness. Other characters are jealous: Roderigo is certainly, and so is Bianca. The one who
is led to madness through jealousy is of course Othello. Iago asserts:
Yet that I put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgement cannot cure.
(II,1, 282-4)
Whether Othello is mad or not is all the more difficult to determine as one should determine
precisely what madness is first. And the exercise is quite slippery. I suggest we accept a broad
definition of madness and consider that the madman is the one who no longer controls his acts
and choices. As he is manipulated by Iago, the Moor falls into that category. He becomes
furious and loses his self-control. As Horace put it, “anger is a brief madness.” Anger lies at
the back of jealousy that it nurtures. In Renaissance self-fashioning, Stephen Greenblatt
quotes a Puritan divine who declared hat “jealousy, [is] the most devouring and fretting
canker that can harbour in a married person’s breast.” This assertion is confirmed by the play.
Moreover, by causing the hero to fall prey to jealousy, Iago makes the whole thing more
dramatic, more theatrical. Using jealousy as a starting point is quite relevant as, as Roland
Barthes put it in Fragments d’un discours amoureux, “it is a tragic disposition, not a
psychological one.”6 In other words, jealousy makes real life dramatic. In a play it puts the
performance one step further into drama.
When everything has gone, what remains about Othello is the obsessive image of
jealousy-eaten characters. Not only Othello, but also Iago who may even stand for an
incarnation of this terrifying feeling. He declares that jealousy is
“the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”
(III,3, 167-169)
In other words, jealousy is something that assaults people. It is an exterior force that assails
you and devours you. Iago may be that monster! There may be something allegorical about
the character that seems to be devoured by a passion no one can really understand. As
Calderon put it, “preventing the others from being happy is the last consolation the jealous
can enjoy. » Iago is jealousy and the choice of a green-eyed monster to play his part may
make the whole demonstration more relevant. When he says to the Moor, “O beware, my lord,
of jealousy”, (III,3, 167) Iago is actually warning him – ironically – against the dangers he
represents. Jealousy is a form of witchcraft in that it seems to possess the person it
contaminates.
The fascination exerted by Iago is due to this double aspect: he is at the same time
more than a character and less than one. More than a character because he seems to control
the dramatic fate of the others, and less because of this almost allegorical dimension that
makes him close to the dramatic representation of something else (jealousy, in this case).
6
Roland Barthes also describes the pain undergone by those who are jealous : « Comme jaloux, je souffre quatre
fois : parce que je suis jaloux, parce que je me reproche de l’être, parce que je crains que ma jalousie ne blesse
l’autre, parce que je me laisse assujettir à une banalité : je souffre d’être exclu, d’être agressif, d’être fou et d’être
commun. »