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    Othello
    Othello
    Othello
    Ebook376 pages4 hours

    Othello

    By Joseph Pearce and William Shakespeare

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    One of the four great tragediesalongside Hamlet, King Lear, and MacbethOthello is among the darkest of Shakespeares plays, illumining the shadows of the gloomiest recesses of the human psyche and serving as a damning indictment of the world in which it was written. A cautionary tale of the destructiveness of sin and the ruinous consequences of bad philosophy, Othello seems to express Shakespeares rage at the cynicism and brutality of the age in which he lived. From the Machiavellian menace of Iago to the blind and prideful jealousy of Othello, this classic of world literature shows us the shadow falling over a society that has turned its back on the light and life of virtue.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIgnatius Press
    Release dateAug 28, 2014
    ISBN9781681493695
    Author

    Joseph Pearce

    Joseph Pearce is the author of numerous literary works including Literary Converts, The Quest for Shakespeare and Shakespeare on Love, and the editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series. His other books include literary biographies of Oscar Wilde, J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

    Read more from Joseph Pearce

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    Reviews for Othello

    4/5

    3,281 ratings45 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Had to read in high school but I liked it.
    • 5/5
      Shakespearian language is hard to grasp but after studying Othello in Literature I've definitely found it easier to follow. The love within the play is overwhelming but the pure jealousy and rage that can be found within the pages is enrapturing and it makes readers question their own ideals and values. The questions Shakespeare asks of our own relationships is valuable to anyone and his views and values are still relevant today. And who doesn't love a villain? Iago is awesome.
    • 2/5
      This was another exhausting tragedy. It felt entirely too long, and as if the main themes were done better in other plays. Then again, after Cymbeline, I find most Shakespeare plays thin on plot.
    • 4/5
      Though I knew the names Othello, Roderigo, Cassio, Desdemona, and, of course, Iago, I realized very early on that I had absolutely no knowledge of Othello whatsoever, which I found weird. I normally have at least a basic sense of the plot.

      Not this time. And that was a good thing. This one was a fun one to come in cold on.

      And oh, what a story. Iago feels like the original scheming bastard, and all I could think of was Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood character in House of Cards. Iago is almost gleefully sociopathic in his unrelenting need to manipulate everyone.

      While this is a straightforward plot, it was a lot of fun, and carried a fair amount of suspense throughout, especially around that damned handkerchief.

      Really liked this one. Probably because I know and loathe a few Iagos of my own.
    • 5/5
      London Globe Theatre. Mark Rylance as Iago, André Holland as Othello. Immense.
    • 4/5
      A tale of all consuming jealousy versus virtue. Well presented by the company.
    • 4/5
      I read this in preparation for an OU course.

      For the first three acts not a lot happens: Othello is sent to defeat the Turkish navy, but all their ships are destroyed in a storm and Othello's own ship takes many extra days to reach its destination. It seems a weakness to me that we never actually see Othello being particularly noble or courageous. Iago spends the whole play plotting and pulling the strings of all the other characters - that's clearly the most fun role in the play. Things pick up in the final two acts with stabbings wiping out most of the cast, and I am looking forward to watching it performed.
    • 4/5
      I read this seminal tragedy for the first time in anticipation of seeing it next week at The Globe. I'm ashamed to say I have read comparatively little Shakespeare and this is only the sixth complete play I have read. It remains a classic exposition of values of racism, revenge, jealousy and repentance. There are comparatively few characters, which makes it easy to focus on the main four or five and really get under the skin of their motivations.
    • 4/5
      This is a nice edition, with a readable typeface, and appropriate notes and context, including descriptions of selected performances through 2001.
    • 3/5
      My first time reading Othello to completion and I discovered the play was more about Iago than it's titular character. I found Iago somewhat wanting in characterization and I couldn't make him out. I think that to fully understand this play, I'll have to watch a screen or stage adaptation of it. I don't understand how Iago would be played. He seemed to gain nothing from his desire to undo Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, and Roderigo. He did receive some riches from stealing from Roderigo, but this was offset by no political gains (and ultimately his discovery and the accidental murder of his wife).

      I've never been a huge Spakespearean and this hasn't changed. I think to really enjoy this novel, I'd need to further study it, but since I'm not in school anymore, I don't have a reason to. I wished that the place setting was stronger, I didn't really feel Venice in it. A worthwhile read just to say I have it under my belt (and recognize when it's plot is being used in other places), but I wasn't as impressed with this as with Titus or Romeo and Juliet.
    • 4/5
      Huh. Well, I'll lay myself open to charges of philistinery and admit that Othello – the only one of the Big Tragedies that I'd not read until now — disappointed me. Our noble hero is even more easily duped regarding his “beloved's” faithfulness than Claudio (Much Ado about Nothing), and the true-hearted Desdemona is even more of a doormat than Viola (Twelfth Night).

      Given the references I've seen so often to the “noble Moor,” I expected Othello to be an intelligent, competent, stalwart sort of fellow, who would only be misled as to his wife's faithfulness through the most devious maneuvers and false evidence. All it actually took, though, was a dropped and stolen hankie. I mean, REALLY? If Othello had given it a moment's thought he'd have remembered that Desdemona pulled the handkerchief out to mop his grumpy brow after one of his (many, many) temper tantrums, and that he dropped the thing on the floor, complaining that it was too Small for his big, manly head. What a freakin' moaner. I was appalled by his self-absorption – his whole reason for “loving” Desdemona was that she hung on his every word and felt sorry for all the troubles he'd suffered. What he wanted was not a Wife, but a particularly devoted German Shepherd. And Desdemona, who initially was an appealingly spunky girl, gets slapped around in public and dissolves into a puddle of masochistic goo. Iago is plenty villainous, but his villainy is so all encompassing that it really seems pretty pointless. He's just mean. His scheming – the astute way he uses suggestion to arouse Othello's insecurities and jealousies – is impressive at first, but after a while his one-trick character gets dull. At least Thersites (Troilus and Cressida), another evil-for-no-reason character, offers astonishingly creative invective to liven his performance, whereas when asked to explain himself Iago just harumphs and says he has no intention of explaining anything.

      So, the play offers seemingly endless histrionics from Othello, who somehow earned the friendship of a nice fellow like Cassio and the love of the sweet Desdemona despite the fact that all we ever see from him are braggadocio and raging insecurities, and evil schemes to no particular end but the general misery by Iago. Not one of my favorites.

      I read this in the Oxford Shakespeare edition, which has nice heavy paper and dark print, but I have to say that the cheap paper and larger print (and less copious notes) of the Folger editions are easier reading. I listened to the Archangel recording, which is really, really excellent. Iago is just Perfectly done, and Desdemona is wonderful. Othello – well, the actor does a great job with what he had to work with; an insecure, egotistical, hysterical bully.
    • 4/5
      Othello, believing the report of the lying Iago, believes his wife Desdemona was unfaithful to him. Much of the evidence rests on a handkerchief. It's definitely sad as are most tragedies. Sadly there are far too many people who tell lies with consequences just as devastating as the ones in this play. It also shows the consequences of jealousy.
    • 5/5
      Iago has to be one of the nastiest villains in all of literature. Good, old, Honest Iago. In a matter of hours, he takes a happily married man and a successful general and turns him into a jealous, vengeful caricature of his former self. Iago uses innuendo to sow the seeds of distrust, then sits back to watch what he's set in motion. When it looks like things are straying off course, a gentle nudge from Iago keeps things moving in the direction he's set. I'd love to believe that people like Iago exist only in fiction, but I fear that there are too many Iagos in the halls of power, intent on corrupting any whose nature is too trusting.
    • 4/5
      This is perhaps Shakespeare’s darkest play – featuring characters that are flawed and damaged, but which completely captivate us. Our title character – Othello, the Moor - is a highly regarded general. As the play opens he has recently eloped with the lovely Desdemona, to the consternation of her father and others who were hopeful suitors. Egged on by Iago (one of literature’s most reviled villains), they accuse Othello of somehow bewitching Desdemona, but the couple successfully convinces everyone that their love is true and pure.

      Iago is a true sociopath. Rules do not apply to him, and duplicity is second nature to him. His oily manner convinces everyone that he has only their own best interests at heart while he plants seeds of doubt everywhere, ensuring that everyone becomes suspicious and disheartened. Iago uses the other characters as his pawns some sort of game he plays for his own benefit. He particularly targets Othello, recognizes the chink in his armor is his relationship with Desdemona, and manages to turn this noble general into a homicidal, emotional wreck.

      I do wonder how Othello, Cassio, and Roderigo (among others) can be so easily swayed by Iago. Othello, in particular, should be able to see through this smarmy false friend. I’m completely perplexed by Emilia’s role in this tragedy. How can she abet her husband’s evil plans? Is she really so clueless?

      Shakespeare writes a true psychological drama, exploring the darkest human emotion and motivation.
    • 4/5
      I don't think there is any point writing a formal review of Othello - there is nothing that a simple country boy such as myself can say that will add in any useful manner to the vast corpus of more worthy comment.

      It is, of course, marvellous, yet simultaneously repulsive. The manipulation of Othello by the scheming of Iago is dreadful to see. Othello contributes to, indeed almost collaborates in, his own downfall, while Desdemona is left prey to malign forces entirely beyond her control, or even her understanding.

      Quite frankly, I think I find it too dark and oppressive. There seems no let up, not even much in the way of Shakespeare's excruciating 'comic' roles. Iago may be my namesake (more or less) but, on balance, I think that when it comes to scheming, Machiavellian figures I prefer Bosola, Richard III or even Lorenzo from 'The Spanish Tragedy.
    • 4/5
      Love, jealousy, lust, revenge, ambition -- it doesn't get much better than this. Iago is the consummate villain, dripping in evil. Othello is, of course, an idiot -- albeit a noble one. Very tight plot and narrative. Holds up well after hundreds of years -- that still blows me away.
    • 3/5
      Shakespeare has built thefoundation of modern drama. I can totally see in "Othello" the elements of Pinoy telanovellas. This one is a real tragedy (which Pinoy teleseryes lack - tehy always end in happy endings. Funny thing about this are the lines the characters say before they die which is very FIlipino. Characters in Shakespeare does not die easily. Cassio is also very smart, too bad he got a "too honest" wife - another common Pinoy plot but the wife is usually the bad one and the husband is not "too honest" but "too stupid".

      I still like "Romeo and Juliet", "AMND" and "Twelfth Night" than "Othello" and I believe that plays are better watched than read especially if its a Shakespeare play.
    • 4/5
      It is a bit difficult to read Shakespeare in English if it is not ones mother language, but it is still an enjoyable experience. Poor Othello, deceived by his 'honest, honest' Iago.
    • 3/5
      Despite the great dramatic aspects of this famous play, I really struggled to maintain my interest. I don't know why the language here seemed so much more difficult than in Titus Andronicus… will have to reread this someday to see if it just my inability to concentrate or whether it was actually the play that is the cause.
    • 4/5
      Read this in preparation for seeing it on the Boston Common tonight. This is probably the third time I've read the thing, and there's something weird about it; I like it, but I keep failing to love it. I feel like this is a personal problem; Othello's one of the best, everyone says so, right? And it has some scenes that are incredibly powerful; the (uh, spoiler alert?) bit where Othello kills Desdemona is brutal. And, of course, it has Iago, the apotheosis of Shakespeare's "As evil as I wanna be" villains.

      Maybe it's Othello himself who throws me off. He's sortof a wimp, y'know? Awfully easily manipulated, anyway. I guess he's insecure, because there's no other explanation for his fall, but that's not really reflected in anything he says - just what he does.

      Everyone always focuses on his race: "As an outsider, he doesn't believe his position is secure; therefore he's all too ready to believe Iago's lies." But none of that is really in the play. Iago, Roderigo and Desdemona's dad engage in some vicious ranting right at the beginning, but that serves to set up Othello's introduction as an eloquent, respected general; the difference between their description and his reality simply establishes their villainy.

      Traditionally, the tragic hero must have flaws that lead inexorably to his downfall; here, I'm left guessing at what Othello's flaws might be. Despite some moving scenes and the presence of one of Shakespeare's best villains, Othello doesn't stand with Shakespeare's best plays.
    • 4/5
      I've seen "Othello" performed before but never picked it up and read it through... and I'm glad I finally did. "Othello" has a reputation as one of Shakespeare's great tragedies and it is well deserved. The story is well-paced-- full of action and great passages of dialog that move the plot a long. This is one of his plays that never drags.

      In the play, the villainous Iago plots against the Moor Othello by driving a wedge into his marriage with Desdemonda by convincing Othello that his wife is cheating on him. Iago plays the other characters like chess pieces to achieve his aims and destroying them all in the process.

      Overall, this tragedy was a fun read... lots of good tidbits in the dialog to pour over, interwoven in a strong and compelling story.
    • 5/5
      Iago is EVIL! Just sayin'. Iago is the serpent of Genesis 3 in human form. He is possibly the most evil character of all of literature. Which is why this play is so amazing!

      I saw this performed on stage at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, but this is the first time I have ever read the play. It was good to have the visual picture of the blond haired Iago on the black background of the stage with the big, burly, black Othello contrasted on the white part of the stage, and the shift in the colors and lights when Iago gets a hold of Othello's ear. Chilling. I remember all of us who had attended the play sitting, unnerved at the end. It reaches to your heart . . . and rips it out.

      I think Shakespeare was meant to be heard. So, I listened to this unabridged dramatic version while following along on my Kindle. The host of actors in this were superb.

      Here is the cast:

      Othello, The Moor, a general in the service of Venice – Hugh Quarshie
      Desdemona, a daughter to Brabantio, and wife to Othello – Emma Fielding
      Iago, his ancient, a villain – Anton Lesser
      Emilia, wife to Iago – Patience Tomlinson
      Cassio, his honourable lieutenant/2nd senator – Roger May
      Bianca, a courtesan, in love with Cassio – Alison Pettit
      Duke of Venice/2nd Gentleman/Herald – Roy Spencer
      Brabantio, senator, father to Desdemona/3rd Gentleman/Gratiano, brother to Brabantio – Peter Yapp
      Roderigo, a Venetian gentleman/1st Gentleman/Sailor (I,iii) – John McAndrew
      Lodovico, kinsman to Brabantio/1st Musician/1st Senator/Messenger (III) – Stephen Thorne
      Montano, Governor of Cyprus before Othello/Messenger (I,iii)/Clown –
      Jonathan Keeble
    • 5/5
      Othello, a moor from Africa, is a well-loved and respected Venetian nobleman. After the beautiful Desdemona falls in love with him, the two wed in secret. Their blissful existence is thrown into chaos as Iago, Othello's personal attendant, begins to plant doubts of Desdemona’s faithfulness in Othello’s mind.

      Iago is one of the most conniving and depraved characters I’ve ever read. His cold calculating nature is sociopathic. He feels that Othello has slighted him and sets his mind to destroying his life. He moves each pawn to further his plan, all the while maintaining his alleged devotion to Othello and poisoning his thoughts with rumors of jealousy. He does it in such a calm, unbothered way that it’s all the more disturbing.

      The worst part of the whole things is that Othello is in the thralls of newly-wedded happiness. He and his wife Desdemona are so incredibly in love and then he acts as the tool for his own destruction. He is manipulated by someone else, but no one truly forces his hand. He allows himself to be persuaded to believe that worst about his wife and causes his own downfall by his lack of faith and trust.

      I loved the character of Emilia. She’s Iago’s wife, but she’s also Desdemona’s hand maid. She asks as a conscience for the players, holding them accountable when they have committed a wrong. She stands up for her lady’s honor when others doubt it.

      Othello pulls no punches when it comes to the issues it touches on. It deals with marital abuse, racism, trust, jealousy and more. It gives readers a lot to chew on and would be a great book to discuss. I’ve never seen this one performed live, but I’m sure it would be incredibly powerful.  
    • 5/5
      Setting: This play reflects on the love Othello has for his wife on the island of Cyprus

      Plot: Othello's jealous servant Iago schemes to come between the Moor and Desdemona and nearly succeeds.

      Characters: Othello (protagonist)- a Moor, general in Venice; Desdemona- Othello's wife; Iago (antagonist)- Othello's scheming servant; Cassio- a soldier

      Symbols: the handkerchief

      Characteristics: a major tragedy

      Response: I understood better the performance by reading the play. I also appreciated Shakespeare's clever insights into human nature through all his characters especially Iago.
    • 3/5
      too much talking, not enough happening. This is definitely a play that's better watched than read.
    • 5/5
      Read this for A-Level English and really enjoyed it. I love the story of Othello - my favourite Shakespeare as of yet.Iago is one of the best villains I have ever read - I absolutely loathe him but he is so fascinating. People who can manipulate you psychologically like that, tap into people's weaknesses and use them against people - truly very fascinating.
    • 4/5
      This is a sad story.
      Everyone in this story is very poor.
      Without crying, you can't read this book.
    • 4/5
      1603, claustrofobe tragedie, over jaloezie en roddel
      Huiselijke tragedie; de intrige is belangrijker dan de karakters. Een één-thema-drama.
      Grote eenheid van tijd en ruimte (behalve I), blind noodlot overheerst.
      - Othello: neger, nobel en simpel, krachtig, maar geen subtiliteit, beheerst door zijn obsessie (jaloersheid)
      - Jago: fascinerende, complexe schurk, type machtswellusteling, verstrikt in zijn eigen list, maar geen andere keuze, wel ijskoud monster
    • 5/5
      Whew!I've read this drama at least 3 times; in fact, I teach it every fall semester.I doubt my review will shed anymore life on this tragedy, so I'll go for the gist of it, and how I relate it to 16 year old I-Pod/internet/cellphone/sparknotes/cliff notes instilled with apathy and teenaged-drama inclined students:Iago is just plain wicked, amorally so; he has a real beef about Othello, a well-respected General who has passed him over for a lieutenant's position in favor of Cassio, who has very little if any military experience. Of course, such a choice flies into the face of Iago, and lights the fuse of his quest to destroy Othello.Iago employs that ol'human shortcoming of jealousy, and he does it very well. Iago knows that Othello is open, trusting, loyal, and faithful. These qualities Othello demonstrates to his friends as well as to Desdemona, his wife.From there Iago creates havoc at every turn; you would think early on after setting up Cassio in a brawl with a governor, resulting in Cassio losing his position, and Iago replaces him, that it would end all there, but noooooooooo! That's not good enough for Iago; he has to go to great lengths to manipulate all of those around him to bring Othello to a jealous pile of mush.Anyway, I think this tragedy is very revelant about Othello's racial difference among white society even by today's standards, and how instead of seeing the goodness in others we are only too inclined to not trust even if we have good qualities. Also, there are some real literary gems like "the beast with two backs" and other sexual innuendo which appeals to 16 year old hormonal instincts.Usually of course, I take the easy way out--since my students'attention spans are only geared toward the latest edition of Guitar Hero, I show the 1995 film version with Laurence Fishbourne and Kenneth Branaugh if the students find the actual study of the play or me too much.
    • 5/5
      One of my favourite Shakespeare plays. Had the privilege of playing Desdemona; being in a Shakespeare play really gives you such a feel for what he's trying to convey. As is frequently noted, his messages and metaphors never seem to fade with time. Beautiful.

    Book preview

    Othello - Joseph Pearce

    INTRODUCTION

    Joseph Pearce

    Aquinas College

    Nashville, Tennessee

    One of the four great tragedies—alongside Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth—Othello is among the darkest of Shakespeare’s plays, illumining the shadows of the gloomiest recesses of the human psyche and serving as a damning indictment of the world in which it was written.

    A survey of the situation in England at the time of the play’s composition will enable the modern reader to understand something of Shakespeare’s motives for writing such a gloom-laden and doom-laden tragedy. First performed on All Saints’ Day (November 1), 1604, Othello was written in the second year of the reign of James I, who had acceded to the throne in March 1603.

    James was the only son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who had been executed on the orders of James’ predecessor, Elizabeth I, in 1587. Mary was considered by Catholics to be a martyr for the Catholic faith, a view that was expressed with beauty and eloquence by the Jesuit poet Robert Southwell, whom Shakespeare probably knew and to whose poetry Shakespeare alludes in several of his plays. Southwell’s poem Decease Release, written in the first person with the Queen of Scots as the narrator, casts the queen as pounded spice, the fragrance of which ascends to Heaven:

         God’s spice I was and pounding was my due,

         In fading breath my incense savored best,

         Death was the mean my kernel to renew,

         By lopping shot I up to heavenly rest.¹

    Although the poem is clearly Southwell’s tribute to the executed Queen of Scots, its being written in the first person gave it added potency following Southwell’s own execution in 1595. Like the martyred queen of whom he wrote, Southwell was also pounded spice whose essence is more pleasing and valued for being crushed: God’s spice I was and pounding was my due. Shakespeare was clearly alluding to this line of Southwell’s poem in King Lear, written a year or so after Othello, in Lear’s use of the phrase God’s spies, a play on God’s spice but also a veiled reference to Jesuits, such as Southwell, who were traitors in the eyes of the Elizabethan and Jacobean state but were God’s spies and God’s spice in the eyes of England’s Catholics. As a Jesuit in Elizabethan England, Southwell had been one of God’s spies who, being caught, became God’s spice, ground to death that he might receive his martyr’s reward in Heaven. Upon such sacrifices, Shakespeare exclaims through the lips of Lear, the gods themselves throw incense (5.3.21).²

    Unlike his mother, James was not a Catholic, having been raised as a Protestant, but he had hinted heavily that he would introduce religious toleration should he become king. At first it appeared that the new king was as good as his word. In the first year of his reign it was decreed that fines and other penalties would no longer be imposed for recusancy, the crime of refusing to attend Anglican services on grounds of religious conscience. With the onerous pecuniary burden removed, thousands of conforming or closet Catholics stayed away from Anglican services and sought once again to practice their faith fully and openly. It was at once apparent, wrote Mutschmann and Wentersdorf, that Elizabeth’s policy of extermination had not achieved its purpose, and that Catholicism still constituted a formidable power in most parts of the country.³

    Fearing a resurgent and resurrected Catholicism, Parliament immediately began to put pressure on the king to reintroduce penal measures against the papists. In February 1604 James yielded to the intense pressure and once more banished all Catholic priests from the country. In July 1604 a bill was passed that confirmed all the Elizabethan statutes against recusants. Armed with this new draconian law against religious freedom, the authorities renewed their persecution of Catholics with renewed vigor. The short-lived joy of the Catholics was plunged into the abyss of despair, their hopes dashed by the knowledge that James had reneged on all his promises of religious toleration. This sense of desolation or despondency was summarized by the Shakespeare scholar and historian Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel:

    In the 1590’s . . . many of Elizabeth I’s subjects . . . looked to the Scottish king with hope and expectation, thinking that James would relieve their plight. They were soon disappointed. The king’s proclamations that the anti-Catholic penal laws would remain unchanged were in stark contrast to his earlier statements. The secret Catholics in England, the Catholics-in-exile and even the powers in Rome, accused James of breaking his word and of treachery. There was much anger, particularly among the sons of the Catholic gentry in the Midlands who had suffered particularly badly under the anti-Catholic legislation and had sustained great financial losses. . . . The Catholics must have regarded James I as a fallen angel, as Lucifer himself. Within a very short period, their plight became even worse than it had been under Elizabeth I.⁴

    Many Catholics had held on to their faith grimly, in the knowledge that the aging queen could not live forever and in the hope that things would be better under James. Now they were faced with the dark and stark reality that there would be no respite under the new king. For some, this was the final straw. Realizing that there was no immediate prospect of religious liberty, many succumbed at last to the state religion, conforming reluctantly; others were tempted to violence as a last desperate effort to restore the faith of their fathers. Whereas the former group had surrendered, the latter group became involved in various plots to kill or kidnap the king and his ministers, culminating in the following year with the notorious Gunpowder Plot.

    As a Catholic himself, Shakespeare would have shared with his coreligionists an intense anger toward the king and would have experienced the deep sense of desolation at the renewal of the persecution, following as it did so soon after the initial exhilaration at the queen’s death and the king’s accession. Shakespeare’s own father had been fined for his Catholicism in 1592, and his daughter would be fined for her Catholic faith in 1606. It is, therefore, no surprise that the plays written after the renewal of the persecution, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, are amongst Shakespeare’s darkest. It is the apparent morbidity of plays such as these that led G. K. Chesterton to describe Shakespeare as being delirious.⁵ In truth, the plays were no more delirious than the times in which the playwright lived, times in which an Edmund or Iago lurked with Machiavellian menace in the corridors of power, and times where faith itself was not only feverish but often times deadly. They were times that were encapsulated in the closing lines of King Lear, Shakespeare’s most delirious play:

         The weight of this sad time we must obey,

         Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

         The oldest hath borne most: we that are young

         Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

    (5.3.325-28)

    Shakespeare’s venting of his spleen against the Machiavellian machinations of King James and his ministers is most evident in Macbeth, in which the eponymous villain is clearly a thinly veiled representation of James himself, whose own ruthless role in the sinister slaying of two Scottish nobles had already been the subject of a banned play, The Tragedy of Gowrie, which was twice performed before large crowds in December 1604, only a month after the first performance of Othello, before being apparently banned by the censors. It is indeed intriguing that, at the very time that Shakespeare was working on Othello, a playwright affiliated with Shakespeare’s acting troupe, the King’s Men, was writing the play based upon the Gowrie conspiracy. Why did this unknown playwright seek to write such a controversial and inflammatory play about an event that had happened in 1600, only four years earlier? Was this mysterious playwright Shakespeare himself? And what did the play say about the conspiracy? Did it accept the king’s official version that the aim of the conspiracy was his own assassination, or did it hint at a darker duplicity at work behind the scenes? It is, of course, inconceivable that the play should accuse the king of treachery directly, even if the playwright suspected him of it, since such a play would not only be banned but the playwright would find himself in prison, perhaps en route to the gallows. Shakespeare’s friend Ben Jonson had already found himself in prison, seven years earlier, following his writing of a play that had committed the crime of satirizing Queen Elizabeth’s government. It is unlikely that the writer of the play on the Gowrie conspiracy would commit the same indiscretion. Perhaps, as Stephen Greenblatt has surmised, the play was written to test whether the censorship imposed by Elizabeth would still be enforced under James.⁶

    The reason for the banning of The Tragedy of Gowrie was evident in a contemporary report that hints at James’ discomfort at its being performed: Whether the matter or manner be not handled well, or that it be thought unfit that Princes should be played on the Stage in their Life-time, I hear that some great Councilors are much displeased with it, and so ’tis thought it shall be forbidden.⁷ The play has not survived, so it is impossible to know how the unknown playwright handled the controversy surrounding the conspiracy. It is, however, clear that James was not happy with it, suggesting perhaps that his own role in the sordid affair was not something on which he wished to dwell. Whether or not it be thought unfit that Princes should be played on the Stage in their Life-time, it was perhaps the case that Machiavellian princes did not want reminding of the unfit parts they had played in real-life events. As Macbeth reminds us, False face must hide what the false heart doth know (1.7.82).⁸ Had the unknown writer of The Tragedy of Gowrie succeeded in exposing King James in the same manner in which Hamlet had exposed King Claudius with the staging of The Mousetrap, the play within a play, the play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king? (2.2.600-601). Had the king’s conscience been pricked, provoking the banning of the play?

    Although no definitive answer can be given to the foregoing questions, it is surely reasonable to see a connection between this earlier Scottish play, with which Shakespeare was almost certainly involved, either as its writer or as one of the actors of the King’s Men who performed it, and the other Scottish play on which Shakespeare began to work almost immediately afterward. If this is so, it is difficult to see the sinister conspiracies unfolding in Macbeth without seeing the shadow of the Gowrie conspiracy looming ominously in the background. As Hammerschmidt-Hummel surmised, Shakespeare’s inspiration for the character of Macbeth was—as it appears—not so much the historical figure of the medieval Scottish king, as James I himself.⁹ This being so, and considering that Shakespeare was writing Othello at around the same time that the banned play The Tragedy of Gowrie was also being written, it might shed light on the dark inspiration for Othello to know something of the real-life tragedy in which King James played a murky part.

    In August 1600, three years before his accession to the English throne, James, as king of Scotland, visited Gowrie House, the estate of the Earl of Gowrie. According to the official account, the king was lured by Alexander, the earl’s brother, into a turret of the castle. The king’s retinue, not knowing his whereabouts, were about to set out from the castle to search for him when they were startled by the sight of James leaning from a window of the turret, screaming, I am murdered! Treason! One of the king’s men ascended the staircase to the turret and found James still struggling with his assailant. Alexander Gowrie was stabbed to death, as was his brother, the Earl of Gowrie. A witch hunt ensued of those alleged to have been coconspirators and, under severe interrogation using a torture device known as the boot, which crushed the bones of the feet, a full flurry of confessions was obtained, quickly followed by the execution of those deemed guilty of taking part in the conspiracy against His Majesty.¹⁰

    Although few dared to question the official line of inquiry about the conspiracy, many suspected foul play on the king’s part. Rather than the king being the victim of a treasonable conspiracy, it was widely believed that he had been its perpetrator. Two powerful nobles whom the king distrusted and to whom he was £80,000 ($32 million in current value) in debt had been killed, conveniently removing both the nobles and the debt in one murderous stroke, and, to add insult to injury, the king’s final Machiavellian coup de grace was the seizure of the Gowrie estate as compensation.

    In the wake of the trial and execution of the Gowrie conspirators, Scottish ministers were commanded to praise God for the King’s miraculous delivery from that vile treason.¹¹ Although most complied, however reluctantly, several refused to do so, unwilling in conscience to be guilty by association with the suspected foul deed, or of making a sinful prayer of praise for its success. These conscientious objectors suffered the consequence of acting according to their Christian principles by being summarily dismissed from their posts.

    What did Shakespeare think about the intricacies of this morbid and macabre saga, a saga that seems to foreshadow the grotesque and grisly plot of Macbeth?. Was this modern-day horror story as much a part of the dark imaginative backdrop to his Scottish play as the distant history that is the play’s ostensible theme? Was it also part of the equally dark imaginative backdrop of Othello?

    Since Macbeth is a historical figure, it is of course a pure coincidence, though a deeply ironic one, that MacBeth means son of Beth, that is, Elizabeth, a coincidence that must have resonated with Shakespeare and his Catholic contemporaries as being grimly and providentially apt, considering James’ continuation of Elizabeth’s persecution of religious dissenters. There is, however, no coincidence in the connection between King James and the character of Iago, the Machiavellian monster at the dark and deadly heart of Othello. In the source from which he drew inspiration for the play, Cinthio’s Hecatommithi, Shakespeare changed the name of Alfiero, the Machiavellian character, to Iago, a Spanish variant of the name James, thereby deliberately connecting his ruthless and cynical villain with England’s new king. He also changed the villain’s motive from that of an adulterous lust in the original source to that of a deep-rooted political and philosophical cynicism, mirroring the sordid reality of Jacobean realpolitik, in his own version of the story.

    At this juncture it is worth noting that all four of Shakespeare’s great tragedies are characterized by the potent presence of the irreligious and morally iconoclastic Machiavel. In Hamlet, King Claudius poisons Denmark with his ruthless and murderous deception, assisted somewhat ineptly by his spymaster Polonius; in King Lear, a menagerie of Machiavels (Edmund, Regan, Goneril, and Cornwall) brutalize Britain and ultimately each other in self-destructive self-assertion; in Macbeth, the murderous and treacherous Macbeths form a double entente, dabbling with diabolism on the road to ruin. And yet it could be argued that Iago upstages all of his unwholesome rivals as the master Machiavel, at least in terms of his sheer nastiness and lack of redeeming qualities. King Claudius has moments of near repentance that humanize him, teasing a degree of reluctant sympathy from the audience; Edmund’s illegitimacy paradoxically legitimizes, up to a point, the resentment that animates his actions; even the Macbeths have vestiges of virtue, as seen in Macbeth’s noble and courageous beginning, all too soon perverted, or Lady Macbeth’s niggling conscience, manifested in her final madness. Iago, on the other hand, seems to be malice personified, a manifestation of manifold vice with no discernible vestiges of grace. This is the reason that many critics have seen him as little more than a personified abstraction, signifying vice or malignity itself. Many have seen parallels with the figure of the Vice in medieval morality plays, in which the human personality of the character is sacrificed in order to demonize the vice itself. If this is so, as seems pretty incontrovertible, it transforms Iago into a trope or type, crudely allegorical, in which he is deprived of personhood and personality, the traits of a fully human character, in order to accentuate the moral to which he points. Iago is dehumanized so that he can be demonized. He is monstrous so that he might be a monstrance, showing forth the moral that the playwright wishes to demonstrate to his audience. Once this is understood, the full power of Shakespeare’s choice of Iago, that is, James, as the name for his monstrous Machiavel becomes startlingly apparent.

    In the very first scene of the play, Iago reveals himself in starkly satanic terms with his declaration that I am not what I am¹² (1.1.66), the antithesis of God’s declaration of himself in Scripture as I am that I am.¹³ A couple of scenes later, Iago responds scornfully to Roderigo, dismissing the very notion of virtue and the grace that is necessary for its practice: Virtue? A fig! ’Tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus (1.3.319). In this solitary line, Iago declares himself to be not only a nonChristian but an anti-Christian. He is a homo superbus (prideful man) who believes that he has the power to be what he wants to be without the need for God. Having hatched the plot to bring about Othello’s downfall, his proclamation of his intention to bring it to destructive fruition is expressed in unequivocally demonic terms: I ha’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light (1.3.397-98). Later, as the plot thickens and darkens, Iago is even more brazen in his devil worship and the cynical deception it demands:

                   Divinity of hell!

         When devils will their blackest sins put on,

         They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,

         As I do now.

    (2.3.339-42)

    Iago’s deceitful words pour [a] pestilence into [Othello’s] ear (2.3.345), enflaming the Moor’s latent jealousy through the insinuation that Desdemona is in an adulterous relationship with Cassio, thereby poisoning the Moor’s love for his hapless wife.

    Iago’s pouring of the pestilence into Othello’s ear reminds us of Claudius’ pouring of poison into the ear of Hamlet’s father, a murderous act that is itself a metaphor for the lies poured into the ears of those whom Claudius deceives for his own cynical ends. As Hamlet and Othello both testify, envenomed words are as poisonous and as deadly as envenomed swords, a grim fact of which the venomous Iago is only too aware:

         The Moor already changes with my poison.

         Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons

         Which at the first are scarce found to distaste

         But, with a little act upon the blood,

         Burn like the mines of sulphur.

    (3.3.329-33)

    Here, however, it is not Iago’s words alone that are poisonous but the dangerous conceits in Othello’s prideful heart. It is the Moor’s violent jealousy, itself the bitter fruit of his pride, which is venomous. Iago will simply use the canker of jealousy already eating away at Othello’s heart to manipulate the Moor’s own downfall. Iago is the tempter, the disseminator of lies and half truths, but it is the poison inherent in Othello’s own sinful nature, his dangerous conceits, that will cause his blood to burn like the sulfurous pits of Hell. Thus Iago’s role is that of Satan and Othello’s that of sinful Adam, man himself, who falls through the folly of his own pride. It is the Moor’s own tragic flaw, his prideful jealousy, that leads to the forsaking of his love for Desdemona, and it is his demonic invocation of the power of Hell itself that turns his love into hate:

              Look here, Iago—

         All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven.

         ’Tis gone.

         Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell.

         Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne

         To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,

         For ’tis of aspics’ tongues.

    (3.3.448-54)

    In exorcising the love for Desdemona from his heart, dispatching it contemptuously to the Heaven he has also rejected, he exorcises Heaven itself and its grace, yielding his heart to a tyrant (jealousy) that fills it with the serpent’s venom. It is, therefore, necessary to refute the misreading of the play by many critics, of whom A. C. Bradley is the most prominent, who see Othello as a noble and largely blameless figure who is merely a victim of Iago’s treachery.¹⁴ Other critics, such as F. R. Leavis, have argued convincingly that it is Othello’s tragic flaw, his prideful jealousy, that makes the play an authentic tragedy.¹⁵ It is Othello’s jealousy that blinds him to the truth of his wife’s innocence, and it is this same prideful blindness that makes him such a credulous dupe of Iago’s malevolent plans. Othello can be considered a true tragedy precisely because the hero is culpable for his own catastrophic fall.

    If, however, Othello is not the noble figure painted by Bradley, does Shakespeare’s negative depiction of him indicate a degree of racism on Shakespeare’s part? Although this has been argued by some critics, such arguments are ultimately untenable.

    The lines most often quoted to justify claims of racism on Shakespeare’s part are those from the play’s opening scene in which Iago informs Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, that Othello is fornicating with his daughter:

         Even now, now, very now, an old black ram

         Is tupping your white ewe. Arise, arise;

         . . . . . . . . . .

         Or else the devil will make a grandsire of you.

         Arise, I say.

    (1.1.89-90, 92-93)

    These are indeed offensive words, but let’s not forget that they are being uttered by an offensive person. Iago may indeed be a racist, but since he is also a thinly disguised depiction of the devil himself, it can hardly be argued from the words that Shakespeare places in Iago’s demonic mouth that Shakespeare is himself a racist. On the contrary, since we are clearly meant to dislike Iago and everything for which he stands, might it not be more convincingly argued that Shakespeare means his audience to find Iago’s racist language distasteful? To argue that Shakespeare is a racist because of the words of Iago is akin to arguing that he is a relativist because of Polonius’ words in Hamlet to his son Laertes that there is no higher truth than being true to oneself (This above all: To thine own self be true [1.3.78]),¹⁶ or that Shakespeare is a nihilist because of Macbeth’s final judgment on what he perceives to be the meaninglessness of life (Life’s . . . a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing [5.5.24-27]). Polonius is a blithering idiot whose philosophy is blithering idiocy; Macbeth is a bloody murderer whose philosophy is contemptuous of life; Iago is a hate-filled misanthrope whose philosophy is full of hatred toward his fellow man. The very fact that Shakespeare puts these philosophies into the minds and hearts of such despicable characters is a strong indication that he found the philosophies as despicable as the characters.

    It is thought that the physical

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