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Richard Marriott English
English Lecturing and Tutoring
Othello Sample Essay
This sample essay shows how to meet the assessment objectives at the highest level.
What intimations of tragedy have you found in Othello so far?
The presence of a Machiavellian villain in the false Iago, a hero in the ‘Noble Moor’, and a tragic setting, Christendom under siege, are the first intimations of tragedy in Othello. There are as well signs that the play is not a tragedy: it flouts the Aristotle’s unity of time and the neo-classical ‘unity of place’ that is frequently attributed to Aristotle. There are even signs of comedy: an old man deceived by a sexually active daughter suggests the pantalon of the commedia dell’arte. The cuckold is an archetypal comic figure in Elizabethan drama and the idea that Othello may think himself a comic and be none is a further comic development on male sexual anxiety. The play has been read by Michael Bristol as a charivari , not a tragedy at all, but a savage carnival in which the black man who dares transgress the marriage conventions of white society is mocked – and then beaten for his outrage.
The duplicity of Iago, hell-bent upon the destruction of his unwitting master, Othello, intimates tragedy. Shakespeare reveals heroic potential in Othello from the outset in the nobility of character which others comment on and in the words and action he utters himself. His potential for tragedy is evident in his obliviousness to the treachery of Iago, a man he insists on calling honest. He is not alone: Iago’s treachery glides through the play unobserved, revealed only in his private moments with Roderigo and his soliloquies to the audience. More than that, Shakespeare presents Othello as a hero is a man upon whom Shakespeare shows the fate of nations to depend. If Churchill was the only man who could save England from German National Socialism, then Othello seems the only man capable of shoring up Cyprus that far Christian outpost against the terrifying onslaught of Islamic aggression. If Othello falls, then Christian Europe may fall with it. Othello is that Aristotelian great man upon whom the fate of many hangs. His fall, bringing others down with him, will be tragic.
Shakespeare gives us the tragic villain in advance of the hero. He is a villain in Machiavellian style. Although Machiavelli’s treatise, Il Principe , did not appear in English until Edward Dacres’ 1636 translation, the ideas were part of the intellectual milieu of sixteenth century Europe. In essence, Machiavelli offers the princes of catholic Europe licence to waive the inhibiting precepts of their faith and pursue whatever moral course is necessary to keep power; the assumption being that political stability is of higher value than personal morality. The duplicity he recommends formed the subject of much debate and theatrical representation in the sixteenth century. Shakespeare has already offered us Machiavellian villains in Don John in Much Ado About Nothing and more especially Claudius in Hamlet : the fratricidal traitor to the King who disinherits the rightful prince and marries his brother’s queen, might, from a Machiavellian point of view have simply been attempting to secure the safety of Denmark from the threat of Norwegian invasion.
Machiavelli’s advice to Princes in Chapter XVIII offers a guide to the key notes of Iago’s character; “it is necessary to know well how to disguise . . . to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.” Necessary ‘to disguise’ says Machiavelli; “trimmed in forms and visages of duty”, I i 50, says Iago. To ‘trim’ is to adorn, to decorate, as a milliner might decorate a hat. So Iago adjusts his appearance to disguise his true nature. Likewise he assumes the ‘visages’ the facial expressions of the dutiful servant. His boasting continues: he is one who throws out “shows of service”: a show is an appearance, a representation, a simulacrum, not the thing itself. He does all this for his “peculiar end”, his private purposes, private even against Roderigo.
Machiavelli goes on to state that “a prince, especially a new one, cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity, and religion.” Iago flouts all those precepts: he is disloyal to the man he has fought with, unfriendly to the man who treats him as a friend and inhuman in his revenge. His hatred is boundless, disproportionate to any cause for vengeance and lies beyond the purview of his master. Machiavelli reiterates the instruction: “appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and know how to change to the opposite.” Iago evinces all those opposite qualities. Shakespeare presents him as the character who might be the hero: he is named Iago. The name recalls the contemporary patron saint of Spain: Iago Matamoros. The name, Kim Hall observes, means Iago the Moor-Slayer. (Hall uses the emotive, fairy-tale word, ‘slayer’ – a more literal, prosaic translation would give us ‘killer’.) He ought, by his name to be the European hero who slays the evil dragon that Othello would represent. Not only that but Shakespeare presents a man who appears honest and trustworthy. He proclaims a ‘conscience’, an internal sense of right and wrong, talking to Othello before the Sagitarry, I ii 2 which prohibits premeditated violence. He swears , or professes, friendship to Roderigo and a bond that is powerful, visible and tangible of ‘cables of perdurable toughness’ – yet all the while cynically takes his money in a courtship cause that is already lost. He is similarly cynical as he bemocks his own honesty in an aside to the audience, swearing by it even as he embarks on a dishonest act , “I’ll set down the pegs that make this music/As honest as I am”, ii I 195. The music metaphor has far-reaching implications: musical harmony is divine in its source. The ultimate harmony is the music of the spheres: the music of the planets in their divine and majestic progress around the earth, as it was believed at the time. If music is an image of divine order, then Iago’s threat is a diabolical threat of disorder. And this is the man to whom Othello entrusts his wife, taking him at face value as a man ‘of honesty and trust’! (I iii 281) Most clearly he flouts his religion, allying himself with the forces of Hell:
I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.
I iii 403-4
His plan is ‘engender’d’ the metaphor is of conception and birth. The forces of Hell and darkness then are the midwives to his diabolical treachery. Typical of Iago, he will have someone, something do this dirty work for him. The word, ‘monstrous’, suggests an unnatural birth that is as contrary to nature as hell is to heaven. In Oliver Parker’s film a horizontal camera shoots Kenneth Branagh’s face, as Iago, staring through the pieces of a chessboard with flames rising behind him. An image that suggests the flames of Hell. The Machiavellian villain, the prince licensed to defy his faith, becomes an agent of Hell. The consequences for the unwitting Othello and the Venetian state depending on him have indeed tragic potential.
Returning to my first reference to Machiavelli, quoted above, “he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.” The phrase ‘allow himself’ to be deceived is interesting: even in these early stages, Roderigo is deceived by Iago, so too Cassio and of course Othello. Indeed neither Duke nor Senate question Iago’s character when Othello proclaims him a man of ‘honesty and trust’ – so much honesty and trust that he entrusts to him that which above all things is most precious: his wife, Desdemona.
Iago then is the tragic villain, of a Machiavellian stamp, who will be at least ‘partly responsible for the hero’s demise’. His ‘peculiar end’ is not clear. What revenge does he want: in Suzman’s production, Richard Haines as Iago stands triumphant astride the arms of the Duke’s throne. By implication he seems himself engaged in ‘a contest of power’, more than this he uses his arms to mime a giant penis. He seems to be seeking both constitutional power through his usurpation of the throne and sexual power or at least to recover a sense of his manhood.
The tragic villain must have a hero to bring down. Othello qualifies for the role. Iago who is at least clear sighted recognises his “constant, loving, noble nature”, II i 287. The words bear examination: constant means ‘faithful’, the quality Machiavelli eschews in princes; loving implies at the least ‘friendship’, again to be eschewed in friendship. ‘Noble’ is an interesting word. Nobility in the sixteenth century is an attribute of birth. Like royalty, one is born noble – or not. Shakespeare is not the first to challenge the idea. And Othello is anyhow royal-born, fetching his “life and being/ From men of royal siege”, I ii 20. It is his nature, though, not his birth that Iago is observing: Shakespeare creates in Othello a noble man – fit for heroism, whose fall we can justly pity.
Aristotle observed in his Poetics that great tragedies have common elements, chief among them the tragic hero: “He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous- a personage like Oedipus”, Othello is has such high renown and prosperity. When Iago names him to Brabantio as ‘the Moor’, it is clear he knows which Moor he is talking about: there is only one. He is famed by the First Senator as ‘the valiant Moor’. His prosperity is evident in his marriage to Desdemona – he has prospered in love as he appears to have done in love, reaching the rank of General. Aristotle’s examples of heroes of ‘high renown’ princes of royal blood, kings or heirs to the throne: Oedipus, Creon Aegisthus. Their fall has consequences for their royal house and for the people they rule. Othello, as a mere General, would seem to be an exception to this rule, except that Shakespeare presents him as the last bulwark against Ottoman invasion: if Othello falls, Cyprus, Christendom even, may fall to the Turk.
In the first Act, Shakespeare sketches in a life journey that is in itself heroic, fetching ‘his life and being / From men of royal siege’ I ii 22, Othello carries princely blood. He hails from one of those ‘few families only’ whose members may, ‘furnish the subjects of tragedy’. He has been ‘sold to slavery’, won redemption, travelled to remote lands and been a soldier from the age of seven (I iii 83). The vicissitudes of his life: prince to slave, soldier to lover, global traveller, have a heroic scale. And Shakespeare shows this man who has risen so high, so nearly attained a place in the ruling classes of the most civilized state in Europe, this man of such ability, on whom so many depend, on the brink of a fall, a fall that could only be tragic.
From the first he appears noble and heroic. At his first entrance in I ii, when Iago would have him hide from Brabantio and his vigilante party bent on revenge, “You were best go in.”, Shakespeare gives him the reply: “Not I; I must be found.”. The two utterances comprise a line shared between the actors: Iago’s urgent trochee (the stress seems to be on ‘You’, ‘best’ and ‘in’) is interrupted by the resounding rebuttal, in which every syllable seems to be stressed. The ‘Not I’ is proudly spondaic; the caesura shows a man in no hurry; the power of the words is allowed to sink in. The line concludes with the powerful assertion, “I must be found.” in which every syllable could conceivably be stressed in performance. The repeated ‘I’ offers a proud assertion of ego and ‘found’ provides a resonant, bass echo resonating at the end of the line. Fechter’s Othello closes the door and pockets the key: making escape impossible. Julie Hankey (Shakespeare in Prodcution, Othello , Cambridge) comments on the entrances of various Othellos to the stage in this scene. Kingsley, she says, is ‘Ghandi-like’ a dazzling figure robed in white enters a dark stage with everyone on it wearing black, a ‘grave’ and ‘grey-bearded ancient’. His difference is palpable, qualitative, not simply a matter of race or colour. Salvini is a ‘bronzed’ and ‘towering figure’. Other Othello’s are not so immediately heroic: Fechter enters leaning on his ensign’s shoulder. By the end of the scene however, his conduct is unequivocal: ‘Keep up your bright swords’, ‘Hold your hands’: Shakespeare’s imperatives, (‘Keep’, ‘Hold’) reveal a figure comfortable and assured in authority. Furthermore Aristotle specifies the relationship between hero and villain: ‘the tragic incident occurs between those who are near or dear to one another- if, for example, a brother kills, or intends to kill, a brother.’ Othello and Iago are near and ostensibly dear to one another. Iago recounts a long campaigning history in Rhodes and Cyprus and ‘other grounds/Christian and heathen’: they are brothers in arms.
Most important of all the tragic hero must have his hamartia , his tragic flaw. He must be a ‘man like ourselves . . . whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty’. If Shakespeare gives Othello a frailty, a flaw it seems to be his judgement. Was he wrong to overlook Iago for promotion and perhaps provoke revenge. Or was he instinctively right to keep down this unstable, vengeful character. Was he wrong to promote the smooth-tongued Cassio, impressed perhaps by his polished manners despite his lack of military experience? Or does Shakespeare show a brilliant strategist who has complementary qualities in his closest officers: the theoretician and the battle-hardened war veteran. Shakespeare makes his greatest error his marriage to Desdemona. He does not, as Romeo, does have youthful infatuation to excuse his deceit. Perhaps he has instead the innocence of a man unused to city, to Venetian ways, a man who, for all his military experience, is unused to the ways of the world.
By end of II i however his heroic military cause is lost and he is locked in a battle with himself instigated by Iago over his wife’s fidelity he is filled with comic potential.
It is probably a mark of genius in an artist in any medium to challenge or re-invent the boundaries of form. Shakespeare arguably does this in Othello in two ways: first of all he flouts the Aristotelian unities of time and place and secondly, he perhaps writes in the comic tradition of the charivari . In distinguishing epic and tragic poetry, Aristotle observes, ‘Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun’. Clearly with the sea voyage to Cyprus and two nights of brawling (in the streets of Venice and then Cyprus) the action occupies more than a single day. And yet Aristotle is concerned that the story be, ‘concisely told’, and not seem ‘weak and watery’. I might argue that the compression of three actions in one night create the same intensity that might be achieved by a play confining itself to a ‘single revolution of the sun’. The street scene culminating at Brabantio’s house, the council scene, the Sagittary scene all serve to reveal a different aspect of Othello’s character. The continuity of time – we follow the clock round – and the compression of action provide the intensity of that ‘single revolution.’
Venice was to Elizabethans a pinnacle of cultural achievement and commercial prosperity, and a centre of Christianity. Shakespeare presents a city in crisis: the consequences should it fall would be tragic.
The play opens at night. It opens on the Venetian streets. The first Act gives us in quick succession three snapshots of Venetian life: the street scene, the War Council – and the vivid report of the gondolier-borne, father-disobeying Desdemona gliding to her marriage (as Jessica disobeyed Shylock in the earlier Venetian play). Night-time becomes a metaphor for the dark-side, the savage side of human nature; it is the time of drunken street disturbance, of brawling, of plotting and family breakdown. Venice represents cold political calculation: a night meeting of the war cabinet reveals an intellectual out-manoeuvring of the enemy and an amused condescension to the feelings of the human heart. This is a city where a daughter is not loved but stolen. This is a city comfortable with its institutionalised racism towards outsiders, comfortable in buying the services of a freed slave and a mercenary to fight its wars. When Brabantio exclaims indignantly, ‘This is Venice’, it is as if he has to remind himself (and inform the audience) of where he is. What we have seen does not conform to our impressions of this city of light and culture at all: it is city of darkness and savagery: a tragic transformation.
But Shakespeare profoundly confounds expectations in this play. Iago, named after the Spanish patron saint, Iago Matamoros, ought as the moorslayer to be the hero – not the villain he turns out to be. Othello, whose black skin suggests Muslim incursor and whose secret marriage tramples on convention ought to be the villain. And Michael Bristol would persuade us that this is indeed the case.
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