Michael:

I’m struck first of all by the risk that Shakespeare took in beginning the characterization of Othello with so much negative discourse as we get from Iago and Roderigo, then from Brabantio, right up into the first third of scene 3. Othello does speak to Iago with some confidence of his personal claims in scene 2 — “My services, which I have done the signiory,/ Shall out-tongue his complaints” –  but he’s generally rather taciturn about his defense until he describes his wooing of Desdemona in scene 3. A contemporary audience’s expectations, whether they know the play well or not, go in a different direction; we know that Othello is the heroic center of the play, famous for being Black and noteworthy for achievement, and that Iago is a nasty piece of work.  But Elizabethans, late in Elizabeth’s reign, didn’t have the benefit of all that stage history, and there’s a good deal of emphasis on his being over-sexed, animalistic, and barbarian, as well as a practitioner of dark magic, right up to the end of the act. Shakespeare must have had a great deal of confidence in Richard Burbage to convey a dignified and powerful figure even in his low-key presence early in the play.

That line, “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,” may signal the first indication of his strength and authority. It’s also the first indication of what G. Wilson Knight memorably called “the Othello music,” his use of a language that suggests something exotic and remote. Nothing exotic here, but the idea of Venetian fog being a danger to metal, itself dangerous, seems oddly imaginative. Othello’s language often contains strange words — anthropophagi, chrysolite, antres — that seem to suggest that it has been learned, and in being learned prizes the odd gem-like words or combinations of words that distinguish his speech. He claims “Rude am I in my speech,” but even at this moment the phrases are delicate and balanced in such a way that suggest a foreigner’s wonder at the acquired language. By contrast, Iago’s language seems quick and colloquial. We tend to associate him with phrases like “the beast with two backs” and “old black ram tupping your white ewe,” “gross clasps of a lascivious Moor,” and such-like.

A lot has been written about where exactly Othello is from, and a lot has depended, it seems, on how black he is. There’s enough in the play, I think, to suggest he has black African features as well as complexion. And this seems to affect the characters in the play in different ways. But it probably doesn’t finally make any difference. Shakespeare seems to have been at pains  to make Othello attractive and noble early in the plays, and what he becomes later is something we’ll grapple with.

In 1.3 the Venetian council seem basically sympathetic to Othello and inclined to remonstrate with Brabantio. The Duke speaks in rhymed couplets at 1.3.203ff to try to reconcile Brabantio to the situation; rhymed couplets seem necessary for sententious wisdom. And Brabantio speaks rhymed couplets back to the Duke to express doubt.

Before this there’s an odd distraction in what the sailor brings in about the Turks, that they are changing course for Rhodes, but then supplemented by the messenger who says they are actually coming toward Cyprus. Does this mean anything?

Desdemona’s plea to go with Othello of course advances the plot, and the Duke doesn’t have any opinion of the matter. Brabantio’s parting advice/curse looms over the action.

What to make of the parting dialogue between Iago and Roderigo? Iago has a very “modern” mechanistic sense of human nature, rather like Edmund in King Lear, and easily manipulates Roderigo. His repeated “Put money in thy purse” seems strange, except that it’s what Iago is counting on. And its reductive (and repetitive) character leads us to a sense that everything can be reduced to the lowest level, that Roderigo’s ambitions and Iago’s motive of revenge are all that counts against the high-flown language and love between Othello and Desdemona. Iago’s stated suspicion that Othello has, between the sheets, done Iago’s “office,” must at this point seem entirely invented. This doesn’t seem Othello, as we’ve seen him, but does seem Iago.

Off to Cyprus and the molestation on the enchafed flood.

Dusty:

What strikes me is that from the beginning of Act 1 we learn of the central conflict in the play — Iago hates Othello —  and of Iago’s essential nature: “I follow but myself . . . I am not what I am.” There’s also irony here, since Roderigo doesn’t fully register what Iago has said or imagine that Iago might well be using him.

Since we know from the outset that Iago hates Othello, that Roderigo is a disappointed suitor, and that news of Othello’s marriage catches Brabantio unawares, do we credit what Iago, Roderigo, and Brabantio say about Othello? I think Desdemona’s testimony leads us to discredit Othello’s enemies/rivals.

I like your idea that Othello is a Black African with African features, and that his English (or Italian, or whatever he is imagined to speak) is acquired, somewhat formal, and deliberate. He seems to take sober delight in speaking. As for the “Othello music,” did Iago perhaps give G. Wilson Knight the hint for that term, when he says in 2.1 that he will distort the music that Othello and Desdemona make?

The private business of Iago, Roderigo, and Brabantio gets interrupted by the public business of the Turkish threat to Cyprus, so any plotting against Othello must be set aside while Othello is assigned the task of opposing the Turks. Everybody sails off to Cyprus, “a town of war.”

I am not sure what to make of the dialogue between Iago and Roderigo at the end of the act. The business about money and purses, which you flagged, comes up right away, at the beginning of 1.1.  When Roderigo says Iago has “had my purse,” is he speaking metaphorically? Does he just mean that Iago knows all Roderigo’s private concerns, or does he really mean that Iago has access to Roderigo’s money? Does “put money in thy purse” mean something figurative, e.g., pay attention to your own interests, or literal: be prepared to spend money in order to get what you want. I don’t think Iago is particularly interested in money.

His soliloquy — the first of many in the play — suggests that he does not have a plot fully worked out. He improvises as he goes, as things unfold. It’s as if he is thinking aloud.

Dusty:

At the beginning of Act 2 it’s hard not to think of Verdi, who begins his opera with Othello’s arrival. Shakespeare stages the separate arrivals: first Cassio, next Iago and Desdemona, and finally Othello, all arriving in separate ships. This provides an opportunity for Iago and Emilia to talk. How should that scene be played? Do they tease each other in a good-natured way, or is there an edge in what they say? Probably the latter, given what Iago later tells us about his suspicions about his wife. (The scene also contrasts Cassio’s polite, smooth way with women and Iago’s bawdy manner.) A very strange exchange ensues, in which Desdemona and Iago seem to banter in a somewhat saucy way. Very inappropriately, so some critics have thought. Maybe, as Granville Barker suggests, Desdemona is covering up her anxiety about Othello’s safety by prompting Iago to chatter. A good actress could probably suggest both the brittle surface and the subterranean worry.

It soon appears that the Turks are no longer a threat, so the attention of the audience can be redirected from public business to private business. It would be quite a different play if Othello had to do battle with the Turks. “Our wars are over,” says Othello, but little does he know that a different kind of war is already underway, a domestic one. That makes the play somehow smaller and more contained than, say, Lear and 1 Henry 4, where there are both private concerns and public ones.

Iago’s plot seems to be to displace Cassio, and get the place — as lieutenant — that he thinks he deserves. But he wants more than that: ultimately he wants to displace Othello, or destroy him. His hatred of Othello doesn’t seem to be the “motiveless malignity” that Coleridge saw. It is given a rational basis: 1) he was passed over, and 2) he thinks it’s possible that he is being cuckolded, by Othello and even by Cassio.

The short scene in 2.3, the proclamation, sets up and makes possible what follows in 2.3: the call for sport, celebration, liberty, which leads to “a night of revels,” to the “flock of drunkards,” and to Cassio’s drunkenness. So it’s a little odd that Othello comes in and denounces the revelry. This is no time and place, he says, for “private and domestic quarrels.” This is “a town of war” — apparently forgetting that he already announced that “my wars are done.” Othello quickly demands an answer to what has happened. Cassio says at 180 that he “can’t speak.” Is that because he is hurt, or drunk, or mortified into silence? (He is “well enough now. . . recovered” just 70 lines later.) So Othello asks Iago, who smoothly implicates Cassio. Why doesn’t Othello then ask Cassio for his side of the story, before cashiering him? Is this a sign that Othello is credulous, that he makes a quick decision after hearing an accusation?

We get two more soliloquies from Iago before the scene is over. At 327 does he speak to the audience when he asks “what’s he then, that says I play the villain?” Or is he again talking to himself, turning things over in his mind? In the latter part of the speech he seems to stand outside himself, commenting on his actions (” . . . they do suggest at first with heavenly shows,/ As I do now.”) Would the Elizabethan audience think of the old Vice figure? In the short soliloquy at the end of the scene (371-78) it seems that he is thinking out loud: yes, this is what I’ll do, “I’ll set her on . . . ay, that’s the way.”

Michael:

I don’t think we credit Othello’s rivals and Brabantio, but the build-up of negative characterizations, maybe especially the black magic, is striking, especially in view of Othello’s racial and outsider status. Then the calm demeanor and the cool authority meets that head-on.

I tend to think that Iago is milking Roderigo for whatever money he can get, and that the encouragement to put money in his purse is literal as well as possibly figurative. Since he’a both foolish and in love Roderigo is a perfect mark for Iago.

That banter between Desdemona and Iago (2.1), in which they engage in a kind of game of wit, does seem just be killing time as they wait. It ends with Iago describing the good woman, who could be Desdemona, but he’s unable to complete it, unable perhaps to admit it. So the one confrontation of evil with goodness in the play (I can’t think of another) ends with this standoff.

Not exactly Coleridge’s “motiveless malignity,” but I don’t think we really believe Iago’s motives, at least not the one that has him being cuckolded by Othello and Cassio; even he doesn’t really to believe that, but says he’ll act as if it’s true. As for being passed over for the lieutenancy, this seem a motive, but not sufficient for destroying his captain in the way he does. I tend to think of it as an irrational motive, something that gives a possible rationale, but rather a crazy one. The way he shares this with the audience does seem to link him with the morality Vice, but now made into something darkly recognizable, something inhumanly human. It will culminate of course when Othello looks down at his feet, but then concedes that hooves are just a fable. To argue with Coleridge, it might be something like a malignity that seeks a motive, a malignity that creates its own rationale.

I guess Othello does tend to forget his proclamation in favor of celebration, or at least that it may involve the guard as well, but do we have to assume that Iago’s plot to get Cassio to fall off the wagon was a matter of degree and Cassio’s place in charge of the guard? Poor guy. He didn’t want to drink, but people kept insisting, and Iago’s plan seems both clever and plausible. The fact that Cassio seems initially very drunk, then sobers up rather quickly, must be an element of the “double plot” or double time scheme that some critics found in the play some time ago. Othello doesn’t seem entirely sensible in cashiering Cassio immediately and without an explanation on Cassio’s part, but perhaps his idea of military discipline requires it. The drunken quarrel has apparently resulted in a major disturbance. And of course the plot requires it. Iago’s soliloquy, or maybe aside to the audience – “And what’s he then that says I play the villain” – does seem a nod to theatrical tradition at the same time he’s insisting on his psychological plausibility.

Michael:

Act III seems the long and decisive heart of the play, especially the 480-line scene 3. The clown and his verbal quibbles are the only comedy — and it’s pretty thin comedy — in the play, so I assume the first part of 3.1 was to employ that member of the cast. The initial dialogue between Othello and Desdemona sets up the latter end of the scene, when Iago has planted the handkerchief. And Othello’s exclamation — “Excellent wretch . . .” – serves as a forecast of what’s coming. And what’s coming must be one of the most psychologically wrought scenes in all of the plays. That wonderful moment just before the middle, when Desdemona and Emilia enter and Othello says, “Look where she comes,/ If she be false, O then heaven mocks itself,/ I’ll not believe it” –  has visual stage appearance and theatrical language clash significantly. But Othello, feigning cuckold horns, creates his own destruction when he knocks the handkerchief away. My Arden stage direction supplies “She drops her handkerchief.” But I see this rather as a violent sort of gesture on his part. If she just drops it, it’s an accident. If he knocks it aside, it’s his act. If he had responded to her physical presence, he would not have pretended cuckold horns, would not have damned himself in pushing her and the handkerchief aside.

Clearly this is the turning point of the scene when we learn what Iago is going to do with the handkerchief. It also represents the turn in Othello’s mind to an imagination of monstrous proportions and a total loss of his selfhood in the “Farewell” speech. When Othello kneels at his “O Blood, blood, blood” we get a kind of anti-religious rite. (I recall Olivier’s mad – if racist — return to a barbarian past as he rolled his eyes crazily upward – this in 1965, I think, and some Othellos have portrayed a fit.) But the language in the imagination of the Pontic, Propontic, and Hellespontic seas suggest something of a return to, or maybe a perversion of, his earlier control of language. When Iago also kneels, also a direction in the actual text, it looks like the continuation of the irreligious rite as the two swear their allegiance. This seems to me a potent transformation of the earlier, naive theatrical tradition into something quite terrifyingly psychological.

3.4 gives a bit more work to the company’s clown, easily cut in modern performance, then the working out of the handkerchief business. Othello’s account of the handkerchief could be his construction, the Egyptian, the 200-year-old sybil, the “magic in the web of it,” the magic worms, the maiden mummy dye — all quite dark and exotic. But his prediction of its loss will be borne out by the end.

Cassio and his suit come back at just the wrong time. Iago refers to Othello’s brother, after we’ve just heard about his father and mother, “puffed” by a cannon’s blast, an unusual usage and not, in my shorter OED, given as a usage; must look up the word in the actual OED. At the very end of the act, Bianca, Cassio’s girlfriend, comes in with her suspicions about the handkerchief.

Dusty:

Further thoughts on Act 2:

I now think you are right about Iago milking Roderigo for money. That’s clear in 4. 2, when Roderigo complains that he has not got any return on the jewels he gave Iago to give to Desdemona.

The banter between Desdemona and Iago in 2.1 seems more than killing time. Maybe it’s a sign of Desdemona’s pure innocence and naivete, undefiled by Iago’s bawdy. But it is still odd that Desdemona, while waiting for Othello’s arrival and worried about him, would be relaxed enough and worldly enough to engage in that kind of banter. That’s why I like the idea that she is nervous and trying not to think about Othello’s safety. An actress could convey that if only by repeatedly glancing seaward while she chats with Iago.

I think you are right that Iago does not really believe that Othello is cuckolding him, but is ready and willing to use anything he can find to destroy his enemies. But I do think he is really pissed off that he was passed over for the job, and that Cassiio — not a real soldier — got it.

Further thoughts on Act. 3:

I’d like to think there is another reason besides making use of a comic actor for Shakespeare to include a few lines of thin comedy at the beginning of  3.1 and again in 3.4. But I can’t think of a good one. I’d guess that modern directors cut these lines. Interesting that Cassio is said to be a Florentine (line 40). He is later called a Roman (4. 1. 118). Maybe the main point is that he is not a typical Venetian, who is more “cunning” (nb. Othello calls Desdemona a “cunning whore of Venice” at 4. 2. 91). Like Othello, Cassio thinks Iago is notably “honest.” How did Iago acquire that reputation?

Yes, Act 3 is remarkably long. What’s really remarkable is that so much of it is taken up with dialogue between Othello and Iago. The first “temptation scene”  is 170 lines. Is there a longer scene involving only two characters in all of Shakespeare? And then they are alone together for another 50 lines (339-386). Initially Othello seems to be of two minds: on the one hand “to be once in doubt,/ Is once to be resolved.” That is, once you have any doubts, act quickly and decisively to resolve the matter. On the other: “I’ll see before I doubt, when I doubt, prove.” That suggests that you take things one step at a time, and make sure you have proof before you decide. We see the same split later when he demands “ocular proof” but seems to have decided on Desdemona’s guilt already. The proof would just confirm his decision. He doesn’t see the handkerchief until 4.1.155, and then only by chance. By then he has already convinced himself.

On the dropping of the handkerchief: I take your point that it would make good stage sense for Othello to knock it out of her hands, but the text seems against that. At 3.4.19 she says that she “lost” it and doesn’t know where. Emilia witnessed the fall of the handkerchief, and doesn’t say anything about Othello’s action either at the time or later. At 3.3.315 she says Desdemona “let it drop by negligence” and “will run mad” when she realizes that she doesn’t have it. (It’s possible that she is lying to Iago.)

Iago’s soliloquy at 3.3.326-38 is another case of Iago talking to himself (although it could be directed as an aside to the audience). My editor thinks the wonderful lines about the “drowsy syrups of the world” seem incongruous in Iago’s mouth and present a problem for the actor. But I don’t think the actor’s choices are either “malignant and almost snarling triumph” or “rounded poetry.”

Othello’s big speech — not big-long but big-major-utterance — at 3.3.354-63 is odd. Yes, because he now thinks he knows the ugly truth about Desdemona, he says farewell to “the tranquil mind” and “content.” But why should he press on immediately to say farewell to the warrior’s life, to his “occupation”?

When Iago reports that he has slept with Cassio who talked in his sleep and threw his leg over Iago’s body, what are we to think? It’s pure invention, and isn’t it so unlikely that even credulous Othello would not believe it?

Emilia is a crucial character, and I’m not sure I have a clear idea of  her. I think she genuinely loves Desdemona and wants to serve her faithfully. She seems attracted to Iago, maybe against her will or better judgement, but is a little suspicious of him. When it’s clear to her that Desdemona is “most unhappy” at the loss of the handkerchief, and that this is connected with Othello’s jealousy, why does Emilia not tell her that she gave it to Iago?

Dusty:

Now to Act 4: My editor refers frequently to the differences between F and Q1 and Q2, and to the several textual cruces (cruxes?). Even where the text is clear, it can be difficult to understand the meaning, especially when Iago speaks.

Again, much of the act presents Othello and Iago on the stage together, at first alone (1-43, 59-92), then with Othello concealed (93-165), then alone again (166-209). That concentrates our attention, and builds the pressure on Othello. There’s nobody else on stage to engage him, distract him, or tell him he is wrong. Everything comes to him via Iago.

In 4.1 Iago, with apparent innocence, provokes Othello with his repeated questions. Later, Othello will take up the habit. My editor wonders why Iago brings up the handkerchief at 4.1.10, thinking that it’s unnecessarily risky (if it were to provoke Othello to challenge Cassio directly, and to have Cassio refute the charge). At 4.1.43 Othello falls, presumably in an epileptic fit. Did he really have one “yesterday,” as Iago says, and if so why did we not hear about it? Iago now has to manage two different gulls — three if we count Roderigo — and we see that he’s very good at it. Then Bianca arrives, unexpectedly, I think, and although she could prove another problem for Iago, he manages to use her too. So he’s both agile in his villainy, and lucky.

It’s quite shocking when Othello strikes Desdemona. This time somebody is there to see it, Lodovico, who thinks nobody will believe it. The emotional intensity in the play has been wrought to a very high pitch, and it’s only the beginning of Act 4. It stays intense right to the end of the play. The characters (and the audience) must be exhausted.

In 4.2 Othello gets a chance to question a third party, but he dismisses Emilia as a “simple bawd.” When Desdemona comes in, she kneels, recalling the joint kneeling of Othello and Iago earlier. When Othello goes off, he leaves Emilia and Desdemona together, but they are not together (and alone) for long (just 97-108), so there isn’t much chance for Emilia to say anything about the handkerchief. There’s a lot of coming and going in this scene. At one point (109-11) Desdemona is left alone on stage, and I suppose her three lines are not “addressed” to anybody. Maybe she is bewildered enough to talk to herself. When Iago returns with Emilia at 112 Emilia suspects “some eternal villain.” Why does she not suspect that the villain is her husband? My editor notes her “obtuseness.” Why does she not reveal or even feel any guilt about giving Iago the handkerchief? Why does she not even seem to remember it, or connect it with Othello’s rage?

When Desdemona appeals to “good Iago” at 150, there’s an extraordinary tension between what she thinks and what the audience knows. Somehow Iago wriggles out of trouble, and is suddenly confronted with another problem: Roderigo. But by quick thought and improvisation he wriggles out of that corner too. Can the audience prevent itself from feeling some guilty admiration for his mental agility and fertility?

In 4.3 Emilia has another scene alone with Desdemona, from 11 to 105, and here you would think she could do or say more on behalf of her mistress. But instead Emilia treats Othello as just another man, and reveals her own worldly cynicism, and flexible morality that accommodates a lot, including adultery. By contrast, Desdemona is never more pure and unworldly. (It’s quite odd that she notes, as she is being unpinned, that Lodovico is “a proper man.” Isn’t that the sort of thing that Emilia, with her worldly eye, is more likely to say? My editor thinks the speech has been misappropriated to Emilia.) Do we think Desdemona is beginning to go “mad” (like Ophelia) in this scene?

Michael:

First a few comments on Act 4. 4.1.35-43 seems crucial as the point where Othello’s language simply breaks down and he’s spitting out words with little connection, especially “Pish, noses, ears, and lips. Is it possible? Confess! Handkerchief! Oh, Devil.” And then he “falls in a trance,” which must be something like an epileptic fit, as Iago says to Cassio. I think this must be a completion of his earlier farewell to everything he has known and explains why he becomes so single-minded and utterly cruel in his speech and action. He’s literally been driven crazy by Iago. Is Iago lying about an earlier fit, to “explain” it to Cassio? After this point, until the murder, Othello makes less and less sense. And he doesn’t even seem to notice or care about the handkerchief at 4.1.171.

Yes, the striking of Desdemona is shocking to the audience and to Lodovico. And Othello’s confrontation of Desdemona after this is perhaps the cruelest moment in the play; he has been driven utterly mad by Iago, and his questions and accusations of Desdemona indicate a complete breakdown and reversal of his character.

4.3 between Desdemona and Emilia, with the willow song, is a powerful and touching moment. I tend to think Emilia is initially teasing Desdemona with her seemingly cynical view of cheating wives, and Desdemona seems not to believe her. And it introduces a moment of general reality about the relations of men and women, even as Emilia admits that some women are driven to betrayal by the infidelity of men. What the dialogue emphasizes is the goodness and delicacy of Desdemona; she herself can hardly imagine the situation that has now consumed Othello’s mind.

Michael:

Act 5 is filled with action and business, and as it progresses, every element of Iago’s plot is finally unraveled. Iago says he can’t lose in the matter of the Roderigo/Cassio confrontation, and the best thing would be for them to kill each other. But it’s useful for the unraveling that Cassio is only wounded so he can bear witness to his lack of guilt in having the handkerchief. Iago wounds Cassio, but later he gives Roderigo the coup de grace. In fact this whole scene is a bit confusing, and in the middle Bianca turns up. Roderigo is killed, but he must make his own way off stage, as there’s no indication of his being taken off.

5.2 is the killing of Desdemona. But does his realization of the finality of what he’s about to do bring Othello to something like his earlier state of mind? The language, the poetry, is such that we wonder if he can really bring himself to murder. When she wakes, his concern with her spiritual state, and her speaking back, may make us wonder momentarily whether he can really kill her. Do we momentarily imagine her eloquent protestations can actually turn him back? Maybe not. But maybe that hangs as a possibility, especially since he’s worried about her spiritual state and wants her to confess and to clear her spiritual state. But of course he does go against all of her protestations of innocence and kills. I wonder what stage business accompanies his “So, so,” which seems to signal his final killing. Since Emilia is calling, there is some need to hasten the killing. Some have wondered how she could have revived and spoken if she has been smothered to death. Does the “So, so” represent the thrust of a dagger, which might make her calling out more plausible? Or is there some other possibility? In any case the crucial thing is her forgiveness in response to Emilia’s question “who hath done /This deed?”: “No one, I myself. Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord — O, farewell.” Othello rather horribly first takes it as exoneration, then just as horribly seems to reject the forgiveness in calling it a lie. Then Emilia must take in the fact that Othello reports that it was her husband who made the accusation and caused the murder. Iago must have been hiding his true nature from her. She ignores Othello’s sword in calling out the murder. Is Othello unable to kill her too? Is the truth of the matter just beginning to penetrate? Or do Montano and Gratiano rush in just in time to save her? Emilia becomes the essential truth-teller in all that follows. Othello’s “O! O! O!” denotes a sustained howl as the stage direction says he falls on the bed. But he still maintains his motive for the killing — but only until Emilia speaks the truth about the handkerchief. The stage direction in the quarto text states that Othello runs at Iago and Iago kills Emilia. Othello now knows the full truth, it seems. That line of Othello’s – “Are there no stones in heaven,/ But what serves for thunder?” – seems oddly metatheatrical, since stones in some sort of basin served to make the sound of thunder on the stage. But it doesn’t seem to function self-reflexively here. Instead we have Emilia still alive enough to convict Othello and sing a line of the willow song. Othello retrieves a sword, but doesn’t use it. Since Iago has fled, Montano and Gratiano have to go after him. Othello’s speech, “Behold I have a weapon,” suggests that in the disclosure of truth, some sense of his mind and his soldierly identity have returned. And consequently he uses the sword against Iago, but right after he suggests that if Iago is the devil, he cannot be killed. And Iago is not killed. He must be then a version of the devil? Othello calls him a demi-devil, who has ensnared him body and soul, and this seems to be the judgment of the play; Iago says he will not speak again. Othello’s self-characterization that he was an honorable murderer and killed not in hate but in honor is of course entirely inadequate, just like his later claim that he loved “not wisely, but too well.” The final detail to be sorted in Othello’s mind is how Cassio came by the handkerchief.

Othello’s final speech seems to restore the “Othello music,” and perhaps returns some measure of what he was. The great crux of the speech is whether he compares himself to the “base Indian” or the “base Judean,” both of which are textually possible. To me the “base Judean” makes better thematic sense, comparing himself to Judas, the only Judean disciple of Jesus, and the rejection of the “pearl of great price.” But the Arden text I read used “Indian.” Othello’s suicide seems the only possible conclusion of the play, recognizing as he does the enormity of what he’s done.

What can we say of Othello in relation to the other great tragedies? Is it the most emotionally powerful? We may tend to favor Lear (as I do) or Hamlet, but it’s hard to deny the concentration and just gut-wrenching sadness and horror of Othello.

Dusty:

You make a good point about the breakdown of Othello’s language — and the restoration of it in the final scene. But it is odd, isn’t it, that he recovers his poetry at the beginning of that scene, well before he kills Desdemona? I think the “Othello music” resumes with “It is the cause . . .”

Othello seems to have two weapons with him, a sword and a dagger. He tries to kill Iago with the first and kills himself with the second. I incline to think he “stifled” her and took her “breath.” If he had stabbed Desdemona, would not there need to be some stage business with the bloody dagger? Would there not be some comment about the blood on it when he pulls it out again? Or would Othello not say something about killing himself with the same weapon that he used on Desdemona?

When Desdemona dies does she “forgive” Othello, or lie in order to try to save him?

I had not focused on the Judaean/Indian, but am persuaded by the Arden editor that Indian is the more likely reading. Who could be worse than Judas, so if that’s what Othello means is it likely that he would top Judas with the “malignant and turban’d Turk”? And doesn’t “tribe” fit better with Indian than Judean?

The self-silencing of Iago is remarkable. In another play, some way would have been found to kill him. But he lives, and will presumably be tried in a court of justice. (Probably not for his most damnable crime, the destruction of Othello, but, according to the two letters that show up, for conspiring against Roderigo and Cassio.) Iago’s power had been in his language, his ability to use it to manipulate and entrap people. At the end of the play he is not dumbfounded, unable to speak, unable to defend himself and wriggle out of yet another corner. Instead, he refuses to speak, and so in some way still retains a kind of power. As he says, he is wounded but not killed. And I think that even torture will not open his lips. But his silence also means that it’s Othello’s speech that dominates the end of the scene.

Yes, I agree that the play is gut-wrenching. There are deaths of the protagonist at the end of the other tragedies, and there are suicides (Lady Macbeth, Cleopatra, Antony), and a play in which both lovers die (Romeo and Juliet), but no play (I think) in which a husband kills a wife — whom he still loves. It’s emotionally powerful because of the TWO deaths — either one would have been devastating, and we wait more than 200 lines after Desdemona dies before Othello kills himself. And there is almost no sense, despite what Othello says about Desdemona’s soul, that flights of angels will wing them to their rest.