BACKGROUND
Othello (The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603. It is based on the story Un Capitano Moro ("A Moorish Captain") by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565. [1] The story revolves around its two central characters: Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army and his unfaithful ensign, Iago. Given its varied and enduring themes of racism, love, jealousy, betrayal, revenge and repentance, Othello is still often performed in professional and community theater alike, and has been the source for numerous operatic, film, and literary adaptations.CHARACTERS
- Othello - General in the Venetian military
- Desdemona — Othello's wife; daughter of Brabantio
- Iago — Othello's trusted, butjealous and traitorous ensign
- Cassio - Othello's loyal and most beloved captain
- Bianca - Cassio's lover
- Emilia - Iago's wife and Desdemona's maidservant
- Brabantio - Venetian senator and Desdemona's father (can also be called Brabanzio)
- Roderigo - dissolute Venetian, in love with Desdemona
- Doge of Venice
- Gratiano - Brabantio's brother
- Lodovico - Brabantio's kinsman and Desdemona's cousin
- Montano - Othello's Venetian predecessor in the government of Cyprus
- Clown - servant
- Senators
- Sailor
- Officers, Gentlemen, Messenger, Herald, Attendants, Musicians, etc.
ACT I
Roderigo, a wealthy and dissolute gentleman, complains to his friend Iago, an ensign, that Iago has not told him about the secret marriage between Desdemona, the daughter of a senator named Brabantio, and Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. Roderigo is upset because he loves Desdemona and had asked her father for her hand in marriage.Lago hates Othello for promoting a younger man named Cassio above him, whom Iago considers less capable a soldier than himself, and tells Roderigo that he plans to use Othello for his own advantage. Iago convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio and tell him about his daughter's elopement. Meanwhile, Iago sneaks away to find Othello and warns him that Brabantio is coming for him.
Brabantio, provoked by Roderigo, is enraged and will not rest until he has beheaded Othello, but he finds Othello's residence full of the Duke of Venice's guards, who prevent violence. News has arrived in Venice that the Turks are going to attack Cyprus, and Othello is therefore summoned to advise the senators. Brabantio has no option but to accompany Othello to the Duke's residence, where he accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft.
Othello defends himself before the Duke of Venice, Brabantio's kinsmen Lodovico and Gratiano, and various senators. Othello explains that Desdemona became enamoured of him for the sad and compelling stories he told of his life before Venice, not because of any witchcraft. The senate is satisfied, once Desdemona confirms that she loves Othello, but Brabantio leaves saying that Desdemona will betray Othello: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:/She has deceived her father, and may thee," (Act I, Sc 3). Iago, still in the room, takes note of Brabantio's remark By order of the Duke, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus, accompanied by his new wife, his new lieutenant Cassio, his ensign Iago, and Iago's wife, Emilia, as Desdemona's attendant.
ACT II
The party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Othello orders a general celebration and leaves to consummate his marriage with Desdemona. In his absence, Iago gets Cassio drunk, and then persuades Roderigo to draw Cassio into a fight. Montano tries to calm an angry and drunk Cassio down, but end up fighting one another. Montano is injured in the fight. Othello reenters and questions the men as to what happened. Othello blames Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank Cassio is distraught. Iago persuades Cassio to importune Desdemona to convince her husband to reinstate Cassio.ACT III
Lago now persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona. When Desdemona drops a handkerchief (the first gift given to her by Othello), Emilia finds it, and gives it to her husband Iago, at his request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello reenters and vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after which he makes Iago his lieutenant. Act III, scene iii is considered to be the turning point of the play as it is the scene in which Iago successfully sows the seeds of doubt in Othello's mind, inevitably sealing Othello's fate.ACT IV
Lago plants the handkerchief in Cassio's lodgings, then tells Othello to watch Cassio's reactions while Iago questions him. Iago goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca, a local courtesan, but whispers her name so quietly that Othello believes the two men are talking about Desdemona.Later, Bianca accuses Cassio of giving her a second-hand gift which he had received from another lover. Othello sees this, and Iago convinces him that Cassio received the handkerchief from Desdemona. Enraged and hurt, Othello resolves to kill his wife and tells Iago to kill Cassio. Othello proceeds to make Desdemona's life miserable, hitting her in front of visiting Venetian nobles. Meanwhile, Roderigo complains that he has received no results from Iago in return for his money and efforts to win Desdemona, but Iago convinces him to kill Cassio.
ACT V
Roderigo, having been manipulated by Iago, attacks Cassio in the street after Cassio leaves Bianca's lodgings. Cassio wounds Roderigo. During the scuffle, Iago comes from behind Cassio and badly cuts his leg. In the darkness, Iago manages to hide his identity, and when Lodovico and Gratiano hear Cassio's cries for help, Iago joins them. When Cassio identifies Roderigo as one of his attackers, Iago secretly stabs Roderigo to stop him revealing the plot. Iago then accuses Bianca of the failed conspiracy to kill Cassio.Othello confronts Desdemona, and then strangles her in their bed. When Emilia arrives, Desdemona defends her husband before dying, and Othello accuses Desdemona of adultery. Emilia calls for help. The former governor Montano arrives, with Gratiano and Iago. When Othello mentions the handkerchief as proof, Emilia realizes what her husband Iago has done, and she exposes him, whereupon he kills her.
Othello, belatedly realising Desdemona's innocence, stabs Iago but not fatally, saying that Iago is a devil, and he would rather have him live the rest of his life in pain.
Lago refuses to explain his motives, vowing to remain silent from that moment on. Lodovico apprehends both Iago and Othello for the murders of Roderigo, Emilia, and Desdemona, but Othello commits suicide. Lodovico appoints Cassio, Othello's successor and exhorts, to punish Iago justly. He then denounces Iago for his actions and leaves to tell the others of what has transgressed.
THEMES
1. Iago versus Othello:
Although its title suggests that the tragedy belongs primarily to Othello, Iago plays an important role in the plot. He reflects the archetypal villain, and has the biggest share of the dialogue. In Othello, it is Iago who manipulates all other characters at will, controlling their movements and trapping them in an intricate net of lies. He achieves this by getting close to all characters and playing on their weaknesses while they refer to him as "honest" Iago, thus furthering his control over the characters, A. C. Bradley, and more recently Harold Bloom, have been major advocates of this interpretation. Other critics, most notably in the later twentieth century (after F. R. Leavis), have focused on Othello.
2. Race:
Although characters described as "moors" appear in two other Shakespeare plays (Titus Andronicus and The Merchant of Venice), such characters were a rarity in contemporary theatre, and it was unknown for them to take centre stage. There is no consensus over Othello's ethnic origin. E. A. J. Honigmann, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, concluded that Othello's race is ambiguous. "Renaissance representations of the Moor were vague, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. As critics have established, the term 'Moor' referred to dark-skinned people in general, used interchangeably with terms such as 'African', 'Somali', 'Ethiopian', 'Negro', 'Arab', 'Berber', and even 'lndian' to designate a figure from Africa (or beyond). Various uses of the word black (for example, "Haply for I am black") are insufficient evidence for any accurate racial classification, Honigmann argues, since black could simply mean swarthy to Elizabethans. Iago twice uses the word Barbary or Barbarian to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by Berbers. Roderigo calls Othello "the thicklips", which seems to refer to Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally.
Michael Neill, editor of The Oxford Shakespeare, notes that the earliest critical references to Othello's colour (Thomas Rymer's 1693 critique of the play, and the 1709 engraving in Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare) assume him to be Sub-Saharan, while the earliest known North African interpretation was not until Edmund Kean's production of 1814. Honigmann discusses the view that Abd eI-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish ambassador of the Arab King of Barbary (Morocco) to Queen Elizabeth I in 1600, was one inspiration for Othello. He stayed with his retinue in London for several months and occasioned much discussion. While Shakespeare's play was written only a few years afterwards, Honigmann questions the view that ben Messaoud himself was a significant influence on it.
Othello is referred to as a "Barbary horse" (1.1.113) and a "Iascivious Moor" (1.1.127). In 3.3 he denounces Desdemona's supposed sin as being "black as mine own face". Desdemona's physical whiteness is otherwise presented in opposition to Othello's dark skin: 5.2 "that whiter skin of hers than snow". Iago tells Brabantio that "an old black ram / is tupping your white ewe" (1.1.88). In Elizabethan discourse, the word "black" could suggest various concepts that extended beyond the physical colour of skin, including a wide range of negative connotations.[27 Othello was frequently performed as an Arab Moor during the 19th century. He was first played by a black man on the London stage in 1833 by the most important of the nineteenth-century Othellos, the African American Ira Aldridge who had been forced to leave his home country to make his career.
The first major screen production casting a black actor as Othello did not come until 1995, with Laurence Fishburne opposite Kenneth Branagh's Iago. In the past, Othello would often have been portrayed by a white actor in blackface or in a black maslc more recent actors who chose to 'black up' include Ralph Richardson (1937); John Gielgud (1961); Laurence Olivier (1964); Anthony Hopkins (1981), and Orson Welles (1952).Ground-breaking black American actor Paul Robeson played the role in three different productions between 1930 and 1959.
The casting of the role comes with a political subtext. Patrick Stewart played the role alongside an otherwise all-black cast in the Shakespeare Theatre Company's 1997 staging of the play and Thomas Thieme, also white, played Othello in a 2007 Munich Kammerspiele staging at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford. Michael Gambon also took the role in 1980 and 1991; their performances were critically acclaimed. Carlo Rota, of Mediterranean (British Italian) heritage, played the character on Canadian television in 2008.
The race of the title role is often seen as Shakespeare's way of isolating the character, culturally as well as visually, from the Venetian nobles and officers, and the isolation may seem more genuine when a black actor takes the role. But questions of race may not boil down to a simple decision of casting a single role. In 1979, Keith Fowler's production of Othello mixed the races throughout the company. Produced by the American Revels Company at the Empire Theater (renamed the November Theater in 2011) in Richmond, Virginia, this production starred African American actor Clayton Corbin in the title role, with Henry K. Bal, a Hawaiian actor of mixed ethnicity, playing Iago.
Othello's army was composed of both black and white mercenaries. Iago's wife, Emilia was played by the popular black actress Marie Goodman Hunter. The 2016 production at the New York Theatre Workshop, directed by Sam Gold, also effectively used a mixed—race cast, starring English actors David Oyelowo as Othello and Daniel Craig as Iago. Desdemona was played by American actress Rachel Brosnahan, Cassio was played by Finn Wittrock, and Emilia was played by Marsha Stephanie Blake. As the Protestant Reformation of England proclaimed the importance of pious, controlled behavior in society, it was the tendency of the contemporary Englishman to displace society's "undesirable" qualities of barbarism, treachery, jealousy and libidinousness onto those who are considered "other". The assumed characteristics of black men, or "the other", were both instigated and popularized by Renaissance dramas of the time; for example, the treachery of black men inherent to George Peele‘s The Battle of Alcazar (1588).
It has been argued that it is Othello's "otherness" which makes him so vulnerable to manipulation. Audiences of the time would expect Othello to be insecure about his race and the implied age gap between himself and Desdemona. Religious and philosophical The title "Moor" implies a religious "other" of North African or Middle Eastern descent. Though the actual racial definition of the term is murky, the implications are religious as well as racial.
Many critics have noted references to demonic possession throughout the play, especially in relation to Othello's seizure, a phenomenon often associated with possession in the popular consciousness of the day. Thomas M. Vozar, in a 2012 article in Philosophy and Literature, suggests that the epileptic fit relates to the mind-body problem and the existence of the soul.
The hero There have been many differing views on the character of Othello over the years. A.C. Bradley calls Othello the "most romantic of all of Shakespeare's heroes" (by "hero" Bradley means protagonist) and "the greatest poet of them all". On the other hand, F.R. Leavis describes Othello as "egotistical". There are those who also take a less critical approach to the character OT Othello such as Wllllam Halett, who said: "the nature of the Moor IS noble but his blood is of the most inflammable kind".
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