Othello by William Shakespeare

IAGO: Virtue? A fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners. So that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many—either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry—why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.

Reading my review of Othello from years ago, I'm amazed at some of the things I said: I failed to see, for instance, that Iago's many rationalizations for his hatred of Othello are far less than the sum of their parts.  Or how highly I thought of Othello himself, who now seems, though noble and capable, short-sighted and overconfident in not just his powers but the very stability of his nature.  Like Julius Caesar who calls himself the "North Star" because he doesn't change, Othello's belief in his own stability (and Iago's) becomes dangerous.  It's Iago who doesn't change, because what he is is a nullity, a living paradox: "I am not what I am."  He's so theatrical that I begin to wonder if there is anything beneath his playacting, if even his hatred for Othello is not another kind of act.

I admit that Othello is not my favorite of the tragedies.  It doesn't have the scope of Hamlet or King Lear, or the sheer poetry of Macbeth.  For that reason, I'm really excited to teach it, which I never have before--I think it'll force me to find new things to admire about it.  It's got a few really nice moments: Iago's salesman-like manipulation of Roderigo with the simple phrase, "put money in your purse"; Desdemona's mind-boggling shock at the idea that Iago's wife Emilia considers herself to be sometimes motivated by lust, like men are.  I have always felt that the best lines are Othello's final speech, which seem like a desperate attempt to manage his own legacy, or perhaps his conception of himself:

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
Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;
And say besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him, thus.

"Speak of me as I am," says Othello--but what is that?  Iago has reduced him to almost nothing; and these last words give the impression of a man who knows that his words are all that is left of him.  He is reduced, at last, to this final speech.  He tells a story about killing a Turk, but he's really talking about himself.  Is he the noble Venetian or the traitorous foreigner?  When nothing's left of him but these words, in a way, he can be both.

Othello by William Shakespeare

IAGO: ...Divinity of hell! When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows
As I do now. For whiles this honest fool
Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes
And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,
I'll pour this pestilence into his ear:
That she repeals him for her body's lust,
And by how much she strives to do him good,
She shall undo her credit with the Moor.
So I will turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.

As is sometimes true in Shakespeare, Othello is not really the main character of his title tragedy. The tragedy, to be sure, is his, but we are never so close to him as we are to Iago, who is nearly as accomplished a soliloquist as Hamlet, and who dominates the play. Othello himself is, as A. C. Bradley points out, "the most romantic figure among Shakespeare's heroes" and becomes something like a ruined fairytale, distantly horrific, while we hew more closely to his destroyer. This is, I think, the genius stroke of Othello: Nowhere else in Shakespeare, even in Macbeth, are we so close to evil.

The guiding sentiment of the play is jealousy. It is not, at first, Othello's; he is, as he says at the end, "not easily jealous." But Iago harbors a deep jealousy for Cassio, Othello's newly chosen lieutenant, and it is this jealousy which he manages to push, like a disease-carrier or an accomplished politician, on to Othello. Conventional wisdom holds that Iago has no motivation for his jealousy, but as I read it, Iago has several, including the fact that Othello passed over Iago for Cassio's position and that Iago has suspected Cassio of sleeping with his wife, Emilia. At one point, Iago makes this startling statement:

If Cassio do remain
He hath a daily beauty in his life
That makes me ugly...

I find this fascinating--Iago, who has chosen evil as his good and constantly touts the power of his will, retains a deeply held jealousy for those who make the opposite choice.

The creature that Iago reduces Othello to is like Iago in the seething bitterness of its envy, but in its shallowness and foolishness it resembles also Iago's companion Roderigo, who is deeply in love with Othello's wife, Desdemona. There is some irony to the spectacle of Othello, the romantic warrior-prince, reduced to insanity at the idea that his wife is not his completely:

I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of a dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others' uses.

What is most frightening about Othello is that Othello--just, valiant, accomplished, romantic--is turned into a weapon against himself--

No, my heart is turned to stone. I strike it and it hurts my hand.

--not through any flaw of his own, but because he is overpowered by a stronger will. In any other play, Othello should have towered over every other character, but his misjudging of Iago extends not only to his dishonesty but also his immense intelligence and power. I would venture to say that Iago is the strongest of all personalities in Shakespeare, and that no one but he could have left behind the ruin that he does, extending even to himself. He is like the witches of Macbeth, but more frightening because he is more human.