In William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello we find a wide array of moral and immoral conduct, a full range of life’s goodness and badness. Let us in this paper examine the specific types of each, and how they affect the outcome.
In Shakespeare’s Four Giants Blanche Coles comments on the lack of veracity in Iago’s speech:
The story that Iago tells Roderigo about the promotion of Cassio over him is not true, although it has been accepted by many discriminating scholars. Careless reading alone can account for this misapprehension, careless reading which for the moment dulls their alertness to one of the most essential requirements of Shakespearean character analysis. That requirement is that the reader must never accept, or must always be ready to challenge, the word of any character unless the veracity of that character has been established, or unless the statement is accepted by more than one person of confirmed honesty. (76)
Iago’s lying is a type of immoral conduct which the ancient practices from beginning to end of the drama. But is lying his chief motivating evil? Roderigo’s opening lines to Iago in Act 1 Scene 1 take us to the very root of the problem:
Tush! never tell me; I take it much unkindly
That thou, Iago, who hast had my purse
As if the strings were thine, shouldst know of this. (1.1)
In other words, the wealthy playboy has been paying off the ancient for the soldier’s intercession with Desdemona on behalf of Roderigo. This payoff has been in progress before the play begins, and it continues even in Cyprus. Yes, it would seem that money is at the root of Iago’s moral downfall, and of all the t…
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…rce of evil, namely his supposedly false wife. But Emilia is the one who, in asserting the innocence of her murdered mistress, resuscitates morality in this play. Emilia refutes the untrue notions which Othello says motivated him to kill; she counters Iago’s lies (“She give it Cassio? No, alas, I found it, / And I did give’t my husband.”) and lays the guilt for Desdemona’s murder on his shoulders. And she sacrifices her very life for the truth; she dies a martyr, stabbed by evil Iago. Othello also is a martyr in a sense, paying in full for the crime that he committed.
WORKS CITED
Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.
Coles, Blanche. Shakespeare’s Four Giants. Rindge, New Hampshire: Richard Smith Publisher, 1957.
General Othello in Othello
William Shakespeare gave us a most moving drama in Othello. In this play we witness the demise of a “paragon” of a wife and a “valiant Moor”, Othello. Let us consider the Moor in detail, with professional critical input, in this essay.
From the text of the play a number of clues can be gleaned which round out the description of the general. In William Shakespeare: The Tragedies, Paul A. Jorgensen describes the general in Othello:
Though scarcely the “barbarian” (1.3.353) he is called, the Moor is emphatically black, probably rough, even fearsome, in appearance, and a foreign mercenary from Mauritania in refined Venice. Though of royal blood, since the age of seven he had a restrictive, painful life, being sold into slavery and spending most of his life in “the tented field” (1.3.85).
His “occupation” (3.3.357), to a degree found in no other Shakespearean hero, is war. He can therefore speak of the great world little “more than pertains to feats of broil and battle” (1.3.87). But that he loves the gentle Desdemona, he would to have given up a life of unsettled war and his “unhoused free condition / … For the sea’s worth” (1.2.26-27). (58)
The first appearance of the protagonist is in Act 1 Scene2, where Iago is pathologically lying about Brabantio and himself and the ancient’s relations with the general and about everything in general. Othello responds very coolly and confidently to the pressing issue of Brabantio’s mob coming after him: “Let him do his spite. / My services which I have done the signiory / Shall out-tongue his complaints.” However, Cassio’s party approaches first, with a demand for the general’s “haste-post-haste appearance” before the Venetian council due to the Turkish attempt on Cyp…
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… rises to the occasion and refutes the lies of her husband – at the price of her life. Her martyr-like example inspires Othello to sacrifice his life next to the corpse of Desdemona; for he “Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe [. . .] .” He dies a noble death, just as he has lived a noble life. Michael Cassio’s evaluation of his end is our evaluation: “This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon; / For he was great of heart.”
WORKS CITED
Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.
Coles, Blanche. Shakespeare’s Four Giants. Rindge, New Hampshire: Richard Smith Publisher, 1957.
Jorgensen, Paul A. William Shakespeare: The Tragedies. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.