Othello

Othello is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, written around 1603-04 for the King's Men. It follows a Moorish general of Venice destroyed inside his own marriage by the insinuations of his ensign Iago, and is set for HSC English Advanced Module B: Critical Study of Literature.

Othello, a Moorish general in the service of Venice, secretly marries Desdemona, the daughter of a senator. Accused of witchcraft before the Senate, he answers with the story of how he wooed her - "She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd" - and Desdemona affirms her free choice. Needed against the Turkish fleet, Othello is posted to Cyprus, where a storm ends the war before it begins and the play narrows to the garrison.

There Iago, Othello's ensign, sets his design in motion. He engineers a drunken brawl that costs the lieutenant Cassio his rank, then advises the disgraced Cassio to beg Desdemona to plead his case, knowing her advocacy can be twisted into evidence of an affair. In the play's central temptation scene, Iago works on Othello with hints, questions and pretended reluctance, warning him against "the green-eyed monster" even as he feeds it. A dropped handkerchief, Othello's first gift to Desdemona, is planted on Cassio and becomes the "ocular proof" Othello craves.

Othello's disintegration accelerates: he falls into a fit, strikes Desdemona in public, and finally smothers her in their bed, calling it a sacrifice. Emilia, Iago's wife, exposes the whole design and is killed for it. Othello, understanding at last, mourns "one that loved not wisely but too well" and takes his own life. Iago, unmasked, refuses to explain: "Demand me nothing: what you know, you know."

Othello is the great anatomy of jealousy, and Shakespeare is careful to show it as something done to Othello rather than native to him. Iago names the emotion into being - "It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on" - and the play's horror is how little material it needs: "Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ." Othello's transformation is measured in his language, from "when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again" to "I'll tear her all to pieces" within a single scene.

Othello's status as an outsider is the fault line along which Iago drives his wedge. The play's racism is loud and ugly, and Shakespeare gives it to the villain: Iago's bestial "an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe" reduces the marriage to monstrous coupling. Against this stands Desdemona's love, which sees past the surface - "I saw Othello's visage in his mind" - while the tragedy is that Othello, primed by Iago, turns the culture's contempt on himself: "Haply, for I am black." Emilia's final fury inverts the colour code against the white villain - "you the blacker devil!" - exposing black and white as moral rather than racial categories.

Nothing in the play is as it seems. Its arch-deceiver announces the theme himself - "I am not what I am" - and then spends the play trading on the reputation of "honest Iago". Reputation is identity for the play's men: Cassio's "I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself" enacts a man undone by the loss of his name, and Iago works both sides of the value, dismissing reputation to Cassio and calling it "the immediate jewel" of the soul to Othello.

Above all, Othello is a tragedy accomplished almost entirely through language. Iago controls Othello not with lies but with insinuation, questions and pretended reluctance that make his victim do the imagining - and his final withdrawal into silence, "From this time forth I never will speak word", denies the play the one thing his language never gave: a reason.