In William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello, love comes in many colors. Consider Othello’s love of Iago; the ancient’s so-called love for Emilia; Desdemona’s spotless love for the general; Bianca’s love for Michael Cassio; Brabantio’s love for his daughter. This essay will explore the various types of love as portrayed in this tragedy.
Initially the play presents a very distorted type of love. Act 1 Scene 1 shows Roderigo, generous in his gifts to the ancient, questioning Iago’s love for the former, whose concern has been the wooing of Desdemona. Roderigo construes Iago’s love for him as based on the ancient’s hatred for the Moor. Thus the wealthy suitor says accusingly, “Thou told’st me thou didst hold him in thy hate.” And Iago responds, “Despise me, if I do not.” Partly out of hatred for the general and partly out of proving his faithfulness to Roderigo’s cause, Iago asserts in detail the reasons for his hatred of Othello, who has given the lieutenancy to Michael Cassio, a Florentine. Secondly, Iago suggests that Roderigo and he awake and disturb Brabantio, the father of Desdemona:
Call up her father,
Rouse him: make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets; incense her kinsmen,
And, though he in a fertile climate dwell,
Plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy,
Yet throw such changes of vexation on’t,
As it may lose some colour. (1.1)
Thus a hue and cry is raised in front of the senator’s residence – partly for the sake of Iago proving his love for Roderigo so that the financial rewards will continue coming to the soldier. Once the senator has been awakened, Iago makes a series of loud…
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… They do not point on me. (5.2)
The Moor straightway suffocates his innocent wife. Shortly, Emilia comes upon the scene, and Desdemona revives just enough to tell her friend that she dies a guiltless death. Her final words are ones of kindness for Othello, “Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell!” Emilia exonerates Desdemona and accuses Iago of causing the murder. She actually gives her life for her lady since Iago stabs her to death for revealing the truth. Othello, grief-stricken by remorse for the tragic mistake he has made, stabs himself and dies on the bed next to his wife, his sorrow being as deep as his love for Desdemona prior to Iago’s machinations.
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.
Shakespeare’s Othello: Is Jealousy the Cause?
The hero in William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello is guided to murder by his passions. Which passions? Jealousy? Sexual jealousy? In this paper let us look into these questions.
In the volume Shakespeare and Tragedy John Bayley denies that jealousy is a major causative factor in the play: The play eludes with ease any attempt to pin it down to a solution: why it happened, what caused it, what weakness in Othello was involved? Even jealousy as such is not the reason. Jealousy is a long-term affair, with its own rules and customs, its own subterranean animosities and grudges. (204)
Contrasting with this critical opinion is that of another esteemed critic. Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes definitively categorizes Othello as a “study in jealousy”: Othello has suffered less in its modern interpretation than any other of Shakespeare’s tragedies, it would seem. So insistently did Shakespeare keep this tragedy unified about the theme of jealousy and the central victims of the passion, so obviously did he mould his plot about the black Moor and the cunning Iago and the victims of their jealousy that no interpreter has been able to ignore the obvious intention of the author. Yet if we study the contemporary interpretations of the passion here portrayed, we find that Shakespeare was following in detail a broader and more significant analysis of the passion than has in modern days been understood. The play is, however, clearly a study in jealousy and in jealousy as it affects those of different races. (148)
Can we narrow down the concept of jealousy in this play to a specific type? Helen Gardner in “Othello: A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune” sees this play as a study in sexual jealousy: Othello is not a study in prid…
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…vington, David, ed. William Shakespeare: Four Tragedies. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.
Campbell, Lily B. Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes. New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1970.
Ferguson, Francis. “Two Worldviews Echo Each Other.” Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Shakespeare: The Pattern in His Carpet. N.p.: n.p., 1970.
Gardner, Helen. “Othello: A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune.” Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from “The Noble Moor.” British Academy Lectures, no. 9, 1955.
Jorgensen, Paul A. William Shakespeare: The Tragedies. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.