To celebrate William Shakespeare on his birthday in April, my plan is to locate a staging of six plays. I'll listen to and watch these on my MacBook, following along to as much of the original text as is incorporated by the production. Later, I'll read the entire play in the modern English version. A good friend I've had since high school recommended this system to me and it's been a very good system for delighting the mind in Shakespeare.Next up, Othello. As with Romeo and Juliet, I was surprised to learn that Shakespeare adapted this 1604 play from existing material, in this case, a novella by Giraldi Cinthio published in Italian in 1565. In the novella, a cautionary tale of interracial marriage, Iago is in love with "Disdemona" and conspires against Cassio, the man he believes his lady desires. Iago plots the murder of the couple with Disdemona's husband Othello. Iago strangles Disdemona, then succeeds in having Othello arrested, tortured and exiled. Among the many changes made by the Bard, the tragic element certainly wasn't soft pedaled.The staging I chose was a 1995 feature film produced by Castle Rock Entertainment, adapted and directed by Oliver Parker. Laurence Fishburne plays Othello, Irene Jacob plays Desdemona and Shakespearean protectorate Kenneth Branagh plays Iago. The film swelters in racial and sexual tones, but was disconcerting to me as a first time reader because it skips all over the original text. The actors are remarkable. Othello took me longer to wrap up than almost any book I've read since joining Goodreads. The exceptions are The Stand and Swan Song, which needed 1,000 pages a piece to destroy America. Shakespeare destroys a marriage at a much faster clip, but I spent three weeks with these characters and plot in hopes that the cunning dialogue and intricate plotting might be redeemed. They were not. Othello is a sinister and completely nihilistic take not only on marriage, but human weakness via jealously, deceit and revenge. It offers no hope and I felt worse than I did when I started reading it. That said, it's a damn good tragedy.The play begins on a dark street in Venice, where the ensign Iago uses his silver tongue to prod the simple-minded Roderigo into action. Iago carries a grudge against his master Othello, a respected general and Moor, for passing him over for promotion in favor of the dashing Cassio. Rather than resign, Iago intends to keep up appearances of loyalty while looking out for his own interests. Roderigo is despondent that his gifts to Desdemona, the daughter of the senator Brabantio, have been ignored and that on this night, she's eloped with Othello. Iago cajoles Roderigo into waking the senator with this news, with Iago staying hidden in the shadows to maintain his good standing.Finding his daughter missing, Brabantio flies into a rage. Iago reports Roderigo's treachery to Othello, who's been summoned by the Venetian government to repel a Turkish naval expedition headed for the isle of Cyprus. Standing before the Duke of Venice, Brabantio alleges the Moor has used witchcraft to steal his daughter from him, but when Desdemona appears in court to tell of how they met under the supervision of her father and fell in love, the Duke is no position to intervene. Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Iago set off for Cyprus, after Brabantio warns his son-in-law that if Desdemona deceived her own father, she may one day deceive her husband.With the Turkish assault repelled, Othello returns to Cyprus a conquering hero and a guest of Montano, the governor of the isle. Cassio shares the secret of Othello's naval success with Montano:H'as had most favorable and happy speed:Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,The gutter'd rocks and congregated sands,Traitors ensteep'd to enclog the guiltless keel,As having sense of beauty, do omitTheir mortal natures, letting go safely byThe divine DesdemonaOthello and Desdemona are overjoyed to be together again, but Iago sees an opportunity to disrupt their bliss by observing how affectionate Cassio is toward her. Iago tells Roderigo that the pair are conducting an affair and that if provoked into a fight, Cassio will lose favor with Desdemona and her husband. The villain Iago, who has everyone's ear and the trust of best intentions all around, succeeds in plying Cassio with enough wine to goad him into a duel with Roderigo. When Montano attempts to separate the men, Cassio attacks the governor, wounding him, and is stripped of his command by Othello.The next day, Cassio makes a plea to Desdemona's attendant Emilia, Iago's wife, to speak to her lady on his behalf. Desdemona promises Cassio she will pester her husband to reinstate Cassio, but Iago uses their relationship to plant seeds of doubt in Othello's mind that his wife might be sleeping with his captain. Emilia picks up a handkerchief belonging to Desdemona, a family heirloom Othello trusted to his wife, which Iago plants in Cassio's quarters. Once Othello sees his captain with the handkerchief, bragging about his bedroom skills with a local girl Othello mistakes to be Desdemona, he begins plotting the murder of both, with Iago lurking in the background.The strengths of Othello are bountiful. Rather than prancing around the mulberry bush as he did in his comedies, Shakespeare plunges the reader into the heart of darkness here. This play requires a seat at the grownup's table, confronting both racial and sexual tensions head-on. The implication seems to be that a marriage is a house of cards capable of collapsing with a tremor at its weakest support. The suspense is palpable. And the dialogue is bar none.IAGO: The Moor is of a free and open nature,That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,And will as tenderly be led by th' noseAs asses are.I have't. It is engender'red. Hell and nightMust bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.I admired Othello, even though I didn't much like it. The play has all the joy of watching a cat torment a mouse it's captured. Iago is a villain for all time, a man who values all others on the basis of their material possessions and what they can offer him if taken advantage of. But Iago isn't fooling strangers, he's pulling the wool over the eyes of men and women who've known him long enough to know better. From his master to his peers to his wife Emilia (my favorite character in the play, ripped between her loyalty to her husband and loyalty to herself), nobody seems to have ever observed any shady behavior in Iago to give them pause about implicitly trusting this guy. Because none of the characters in the play seem sentient enough to suspect Iago, I didn't respect them. Othello, the title character, is a control freak favored on the battlefield by luck but a complete loser when it comes to earning the love of a good woman. Desdemona, the senator's daughter, should be able to spot a plot in her sleep, particularly after keeping her romance with Othello secret from her father, but never intuits that her husband's ensign might be a little off. Roderigo allows himself to be robbed blind by Iago before seeking a second opinion on this guy. They remain gullible for one reason: this is a tragedy, and if Iago had a foot put in his ass, the play would be over. Happily. Shakespeare is serving a different brew here and my weeks spent with the play made me value it for its adult tone. Iago is one of the greatest villains of all time and in a way, represents the blind faith couples ill-prepared for matrimony can place in the institution of marriage. Joe's Current Ranking of Shakespeare Plays (From Best to Worst):1) Much Ado About Nothing2) Twelfth Night3) Macbeth4) The Merchant of Venice5) Othello6) A Midsummer Night's Dream7) King Lear8) Romeo and Juliet9) The Tempest
Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devilWhy he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?-Othello, end of Act VWhen I was about 9 years old, I put a healthy, live mouse into my parents' microwave oven. It was a summer day and I was all alone. I had this devilish feeling inside me. I knew it was wrong, but I had to do it. I grabbed a kitchen chair, dragged it across the floor, stood on it, opened the door, and threw the mouse in. Then I hit start.At first it was no big deal. The light turned on inside, the mouse sniffed around, and I watched from outside, keen to see the first sign of distress. I felt exhilarated, euphoric, omnipotent. This living thing— this twitching, whiskered, beady-eyed creature— its life was mine for the taking, its fate mine for the making.After ten seconds, I stopped the microwave and cracked the door. The mouse seemed unfazed and crawled toward me. I shut the door again and hit start: twenty seconds this time. It was just enough. When I cracked the door again, the mouse was visibly shaken. It crawled much slower and traced a clumsy arc across the microwave floor. I shut the door again and hit start. Another ten seconds. Then ten more. Then ten more.I never felt any hate for that mouse. I wasn't seeking revenge for its past acts. I didn't even draw any specific pleasure from its pain or agony. Why then? Why would I, a young and well-adjusted child of God, a pillar of Cub Scout values and lover of mothers and cousins and little brothers... why would I nuke this helpless rodent in the mortal chamber of parents' microwave oven?Why? Because I could.And I believe Shakespeare's Iago would say the same thing to Othello's question above. Why did Iago ensnare the Moor's soul? Why did he devise, occasion, direct, and execute the collapse of the man's entire world? Why? Because he could. Rodrigo, Cassio, Desdemona, Othello... mere mice in Iago's oven. The fact that he can destroy them so cleverly, so precisely, so artistically functions as proof to him. It proves the superiority of his will over theirs, just as my minute-mice experiment proved the superiority of a 9-year-old's will over another creature's entire existence.I find little mystery in the psychology of Shakespeare's Iago. His motivation is clearly all-too-human. The real mystery of the play and the play's deepest question is why that is so. Why do such beings like Iago, like the 9-year-old me, like the thousandfold prison guard, priest and parent who, seduced by omnipotence, inflicts terror and torment on a fellow living being... why do such creatures exist?It’s a sublime question asked by a sublime play. Iago is evil, no doubt. But the kernel of his wickedness is commonplace among men. Be honest. If I were suddenly to place you at the almighty helm of mankind, can you really be sure you wouldn’t inflict on man the kinds of calamities and catastrophes wrought by old Jehovah? Overflowing with power, knowledge and time, could you really avoid torturing man? Even if you were the only one watching?Read this play, or better, watch it. I assure you, if you're honest, you will see a bit of yourself in Iago and a bit of him in you, and you will be properly horrified._____...........Disclaimer: the "mouse" was actually a spider. Sorry for the embellishment, but an Arachnid didn't have the same "punch" as a Mammal.
What do You think about Othello (2004)?
Courtesy of Sarah Caudwell"Julia took me to see it once. And I said afterwards I thought it was pretty silly, because the Othello chap's meant to have done frightfully well in the army and be a wiz at strategy and all that. And in that case, he wouldn't be the sort of twit who thought his wife was having off with someone else just because she lost her handkerchief. And Julia didn't agree. Well, what she actually said was that I was a semi-educated flibbertigibbet whose powers of dramatic appreciation would be strained to the utmost by a Punch and Judy show...You see, the way Julia saw it was that a chap who'd spent all his life in the army was just the sort of chap to get a bee in his bonnet about pure womanhood and so on, because he wouldn't get the chance to find out that women were more or less like anyone else and he'd start getting all idealistic about them. So as soon as he'd found out Desdemona wasn't perfect--I mean, the first time she split coffee or dropped cigarette ash on the carpet--he'd start feeling disillusioned and thinking she'd betrayed his ideals. And after that, making him think she was having it off with some other chap would be absolute child's play... It was just what happened to my uncle Hereward."
—Miriam
In my opinion, Othello focuses upon one of Shakespeare's great literary devices. The misunderstandings between characters fuel this intelligent plot and provide grounds for Shakespeare to tantalize his audience. We the reader (or the viewer) recognise that of course Desdemona is innocent and that Iago is the mischief maker in the plot. And so to build suspense Shakespeare dangles this information tantalisingly in front of our very noses. The one problem I have with Othello is the nature of its characters. It was easy enough to see from a glance that Othello did not truly love Desdemona. If he did then why did he rush to convict her of being unfaithful to him? Particularly when the only evidence he possessed was not solid but rather based on the account of one man: Iago. Because he rushed into marriage it is my belief that Shakespeare intended to reveal that rather than being in love Othello felt only desire for Desdemona. Rather than being a typical hero Othello was, rather, revealed as a man caught by lust and passion. He didn't love the character of his wife but rather her body and what she was to him. I found this element of the play unsavoury and found the lack of any true heroes frustrating.Iago was, however a brilliant villain and like the rest of the characters well devised. He acted like a serpent to bring mischief and cause misery. This I find is the manner of all Shakespeare's best villains. And despite my misgivings about the text the clever construction and wordplay make this a worthwhile Shakespearian play.Note: And since I now have a 1892 copy of the entire works of Shakespeare I may in the future finally continue where I left off after this volume, progressing through all of Shakespeare's plays that are known.
—Jonathan
This is my father's favourite of Shakespeare's plays, and having seen the new production (in contemporary setting) at the National Theatre yesterday & knowing my dad, I can see why (I read the play a few years ago).It is the story of a lying villain, Iago, whose motivation is pure malice and hatred of his Black boss, the honoured general Othello. Against the latter's nature he is made jealous of his young White lieutenant Cassio.Apart from that of the raving racist Brabantio, the prejudice against Othello is as subtle and insidious as racism is today. His second-in-command feels he should have the general's place and uses White supremacy to undermine him out of spite.Patriarchy is another issue in the play; Desdemona is passed as a chattel from father to husband, each feeling inclined to dispose of her at his will. In the conversation she has with Iago's wife Emilia, the latter expresses quite a strong feminist idea"... Let husbands knowTheir wives have sense like them: they see and smellAnd have their palates both for sweet and sour,As husbands have. What is it that they doWhen they change us for others? Is it sport?I think it is: and doth affection breed it?I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs?It is so too: and have not we affections,Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?Then let them use us well: else let them know,The ills we do, their ills instruct us so."So, not only is Othello a well structured play, with an engaging cast, powerful speeches and immortal lines; it's also one of the most stingingly 'relevant' of Shakespeare's works.
—Zanna
