Harvard ENGL E-129 - Lecture 4: Othello

so our text for today is a fellow before we come to talk about it let's let me make sure that you all have copies of the information about the paper topic anybody who doesn't have this document this has been a very carefully crafted exercise that is designed we hope to get you working as close to the text of the language of the plays as is possible and we are happy for you to expand your thinking beyond these passages in fact we invite that in our description but we we very much want everything you argue to have its basis in the language of the plays and so we also felt that this would be a kind of paper and we discussed this a little bit last time which since it is so focused and the passages are presented to you will take you we hope less time to assemble then would be something where you had to sort of go out and hunt down the the selected passages that you're going to work with though there you'll see that there's a and the expectation here that you're going to partner this with some some other passages that you observed from the plays so have a look at this maybe at the beginning right after break we can see if we there are questions about this this document and when it says here three to five pages that's double-spaced with normal margins okay which means margins not too no not no margins questions about this at all okay okay so we move on to a fellow and do the I'm guessing that this is a play with which you are more familiar than you have been with the previous two or at least more culturally familiar that it's a play that you have perhaps seen perhaps heard about or heard of and that it's a play to which you are willing to grant some degree of what used to be called greatness that is to say that it's it's an important play it's a play that has had an effect upon upon culture and institutions I thought we might begin by just listing some topics that you think this play brings up or or to bring up so floor is open yes race indeed okay others evil excellent what else okay I mean call that loves okay loves with a cool okay sir jealousy indeed okay and what else so a theme familiar from the plays that we have already been looking at indeed yes whatever the opposite of honesty turns out to be falsity would be one of the many many many options here yes say more about what you mean by introspection ah can we call it self-knowledge okay okay because interest I mean on introspection is also a very soaps or self-knowledge introspection is also a very pertinent notion here since there are fellow in particular I spend some time thinking about how he's thinking about himself thinking though the great introspective figure in this play is who who is it who spends a lot of time yaga yaga exactly and the degree to which self-knowledge is or is not itself a sufficient good or an indication of either trustworthiness or virtue or anything like that is obviously in a set of issues that this play brings up anything else that you yes class class very good okay and maybe we want to partner that with nation a little bit or nationality or you know what exactly what what one wants to call the difference between Florence and Venice or the difference between Mauritania and Venice or whatever it is but let's call it nation or place just as a placeholder something else yes I think I think maybe yes that it will but but honor of course is a honor and honest both have a kind of physiological and we still have honor killings today in today's news which are all about the supposed sexual violation of a woman who is thought of as the property of a man and this question of your honor as a as actually the physical sign of virginity or virginity as the women have physical honor and men have spiritual honor so to speak this this physical metaphorical issue is actually quite germane yes okay great great yes please I'm sorry okay good good good show women women's rights great great okay ah so let's imagine that you all leave the room and then you come back in and you see these things on the board do are you easily able to guess which Shakespeare play it is that we are discussing yeah I think so I mean I think they're yes yeah well okay so let's talk about that let's talk about that because there have been decades and decades in which people denied that this play had anything whatever to do about race the the first half of the 20th century almost I mean even though we can talk about how about about what kind what is the more and what did Shakespeare think of more was and we'll talk about that in just a second but there there have been many critics especially oh say from post-world War two period through the 60s through the early 60s who wanted to claim that a fellows race was an incidental issue that he was assigned that to talk about his race was to take away something about his universal humanity and that it in fact aligned you with the bad readers or the prejudiced readers within the play now obviously it to us this seems like a very very narrow reading but it was thought of as a very liberal reading at the time that looking past his race that a colorblind reading of a fellow was for some critics thought of as a more elevated that you didn't get them in the trap of being like Brabantio or brute like Yago that one should should like like Desdemona see a fellow's village in your mind and that that you wouldn't see color you would see his is his generosity or his majesty or his magnificence or something like that so that even if it seems to us the most obvious things precisely that this is a play about race about color about racial difference but I assure you that there very many great critics in the middle of the last century wanted to say that that was a an incidental issue and not a central issue and that the central issue was to look past the surface the with Desdemona as your model here yes with the whole dichotomy between honesty and falsity and also the reputation versus you know what really happens in private is aren't they kind of entered like intertwined you can't really separate the you know you can't really separate a fellow skin from what's inside of him because did the two things the outside and inside of a person in interact so much in the play they're both equally important in the play well that mean it I think that you could make an argument to that to that point but I really I can cite you chapter inverse of people who say that that is a surface reading of the play the play is really about you know manhood or humanity or seeing through the surface rather than seeing the surface they again it just to give you a little bit of a kind of stage history in connection with this there's a difference between how the play is read with the eye and performed as well people like John Quincy Adams and Abigail Adams for example famously found that seeing the play performed and of course in in England in the 18th century the actor playing Othello was a white man in black paint not not a an African or a man of African descent but seeing the black man kiss the white woman was for these liberal speakers intolerable they they found themselves unable to watch this or unable to be comfortable watching it even though in their reading of the play they found liberality and generosity in virtues of all kinds in a fellow nonetheless being confronted with the physical fact of an interracial marriage of an interracial love affair their response as viewers was different from their response as readers where the color is a piece of information rather than a and often open an epithet often something that is thrown at a fellow from outside who talks about a fellow's color des Mona's father does what's his name rev auntie Oh probe auntie Oh what does he have to say about it a maiden never bold to fall in love with what she feared to look on the idea I mean his his fantasy of his daughter about as as much at odds as a fellow's fantasy of why it is the Desdemona fell in love with him everybody seems to sort of under read Desdemona but his fantasy of Desdemona is that she what do we know about Desdemona's it past history as a as a an adult woman with suitors is this her very first romance is it she's turned down other people and and we have any description of the other people that she's turned down the curl into darlings of the nation so the idea here is that these are the sort of matinee idols that the dandies that I think we have to assume that these are Venetian princes that these are our are our insiders who are very stylish and very you know the this is again Brabantio is language so he wants to oppose this the outsider Othello to the Kurland darlings of the nation that she's she has refused or declined the suits of other men and then she picks this one and why would she pick this one so we talked in a second about why shouldn't pick this one who else though talks about about a fellow's color yes a fellow does What did he say about it his blackness is blackface what do you remember any long said he still speaks yup in the back oh oh repeat it Larry that's right well there's a there's a line at the end I can't remember it exactly but something along the lines of my soul has become as black as my skin after his murder of Desdemona well even earlier happily for I am black and have not those soft parts of conversation the chambers have what are chambers in is in a sentence like that happily for I am black and have not those soft parts of conversation that chambers have what's a chamber er do you think what's a chamber chamber is a room chamber is a room so what is it chamber ER exactly exactly so it's it's it's a it's again a diplomat or a core here or somebody who's indoors rather than outdoors I think the have have not those soft parts of conversation I'm not good with line Oh Chris he's fabulous with language this is this is the contradiction that all critics find that what what I who is it Wilson I once famously called the Othello music this wonderful flowing language that belongs to a fellow is something that he disparages and says I can't talk good core hear or speak so his self doubt if it is self that doubt is connected to happily means you know perhaps because I'm black or because I don't have the right courtly language this might be one reason why she might in fact be unfaithful to me so somewhere in him is this self identification as black but it does of course come out at the very very beginning who at the very beginning of the play talk to me bro but we have robot you who else Yaga ah and and who's your Yago talking to it's beginning to play Roderigo Roderigo so so look at the frame of the play play begins and this is so true of many many Shakespeare plays all together particularly the tragedies it begins with an intimate conversation before a big public scene and in this intimate conversation you learn something of the back story of what you're about to see so before you see the hero before you see a fellow before you see King Lear before you see Macbeth you're going to hear Yago and Rodrigo in this case in the case of King Lear you're going to hear the Gloucester brother is talking in the case of Macbeth you can hear the witches talking in each case you some expectations are you know true ones or false ones are going to be set up for you before the stage brightens and you see the hero and in this case when I say the stage brightens I mean this very very advisable it could have put night and day on this list too because so much of the play takes place in the dark the the it's implies it important that the opening scenes of the play take place in the door why are they most dramatically effective because they take place in the dark sir this is mystery that's it's drummed up I think especially in those this the scenes where everything happens very quickly well there's Sara seems like that but I guess you're quite right good fit it's good because y'all go and Roger Iago does this several times he wants to create a kind of tumult he doesn't word Rigo at the beginning of the play where he gets him to shout under Rabanne Tio's window and it's confusing noise it's epithets it's you're an old black RAM is tupping your white cue the idea that awake awake awake go to your moneybags and so forth same thing will happen in Cyprus when he wants to create this this fight between Rodrigo and cast again that it's at night the Bell is clanging that there's there's confusion because it's night and these voices come out up out of the dark and they seem to be when Brabantio says so chillingly this accident is not unlike my dream what you're telling me about this idea that my daughter has left the house and is actually in bed with a fellow he's already dreamed it he's already imagined it he says that that it's night and this is like a dream for him but his stuff the nightmare come true and of course it's described in the most vivid and aversive animal imagery now when Rodrigo talks about Othello's color how does he describe him maybe remember Rodrigo who's not an elegant person at all calls him among other things a thick lips that he is particularly pointing at his race as well as his color and this phrases like that and Rodrigo is what you would call in a novel an unreliable narrator not necessarily somebody who speaks the truth here because he may be lumping together all persons of color and picking physiological characteristics because he does not distinguish among them the big a big debate about among critics of this play has been you know where does a fellow come from is he a northern or a southern African is does he look like a moor with with with Caucasoid features does he look like a sub-saharan African sir thick lips is what he says yes but so the question is do you do we believe Roderigo Roderigo is in many many ways an untrustworthy and unsophisticated person when he says the thick lips when he uses this as an epithet do we actually think that a fellow has a particular kind of physical formation or it does this just belong to a kind of grab bag of terms that Yago that sorry that Rodrigo is using to distinguish a race other from other than his own or a nation other than his own but because there there are confusing different the where for example does the handkerchief come from from Egypt yes an Egyptian charmer gave it quite far away from from from southern Africa so so get different kinds of signals in this play as to to wear a black Othello might come from and there are at least two strong theatrical traditions of the black fellow and of the tawny more tawny here being brown rather than black and and two very distinct acting traditions have emerged out of this if you've seen the the olivier film and before that the play of a fella he's very blacked up and he is a caricature really of a kind it's almost like a minstrel show but there are portraits in the period for example of the Moorish ambassador very elegant portraits in which he's quite light-skinned Moors are this is this is Mauritania it's Libya it's this is the very northern part of Africa it's the southern part of the Mediterranean so the question of a celos race even if we acknowledge that race is important is not fully determined in this play that there are lots of different ways of performing it in lots of different ways of understanding it whether it matters or not how black Othello is since they describe him constantly as black and he calls himself black he is another question but the the the location from which he comes and the his connection to Mauritius is somewhat in dispute one of the mysteries of these plays in fact what is a fellow's own background where does he come from what is he how is he described Roderigo calls him famously an extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and everywhere and what is stranger meaning in this case what's the what's the force behind a word like stranger yes it's a Catholic right a Florentine preppy was a stranger or absolutely the strong word doesn't merely mean someone new to town it means not us it means someone estranged from us someone is strange as well as a stranger we might put a slightly different positive spin on it and say exotic I mean in indeed this is a moment in in early modern history in which there is a lot of exploration in discovery in which people from North American Indian tribes are brought and from Africa are brought to England and put on display and integrated into society and so if we did there's a kind of a cultural plus to being a stranger as well as a cultural - to being a stranger but the the idea is that this is not us that this is and and indeed the fellow a lot of Othello's power comes precisely from his mobilizing both his strange earnest and also his capacity in the service of the state because what is his rank what is his his role what's his job his general I mean they need him they need him more than they do not have a general who is not a stranger they do not have a Venetian General indeed do they have a Venetian Army as far as we can see who is his lieutenant Cassio where is Cassio come from from Florence quite different from Venice what what it what are venice's attributes in this period or as you can extrapolate it from the play merchants yes okay so it's on the water it's a crossroads they are merchants it's the mercantile culture it's a cosmopolitan culture it's a place where people come and go but it's very much a place of exchange and it's very much a place of of change as a result so that the and in this play as in what is Shakespeare's other Venice play Merchant of Venice also has a black figure the the icy good Duke of Marco no Prince of Morocco and also the same question about women and money women and worth women exchanged for other women and and so forth in the exchange among men that so Venice has its own particularity and we learn something about about Venice at the beginning of the play in this question of Venice's enemy this event than Venice is war who is Venice at war with with the Turks ok and the Turks are making for Cyprus is one of my favorite moments in the play is the moment in which somebody comes in and says the Turks are headed for roads and the answer is this cannot be by no si of reason roads is a tougher enemy and less desired than Cyprus so it must be for Cyprus that they are headed and so indeed no new messenger comes and says no no that was a feint there there are their ships have turned around and now they're headed frankly for that is you know openly for Cyprus so this this and tis a pageant to keep us in false gaze that's what they have to say about the fact that the Turks seems we go into roads and then they turn around and they go back to Cyprus and this this notion of the whole play as a pageant to keep us in false gaze as a set of plays within the play instead of spectacles to have us looking in the wrong direction or gathering the wrong information we're coming to the wrong conclusion for me that happens in scene after scene after scene it's so many of these scenes are set up as plays within the play with onstage spectators watching something happen watching but not being able to hear what what scene might one think of in that connection yes Cassio and Othello to talk about Desdemona but he's really talking to Cassie air about Bianca exactly exactly so so by this time about two thirds way through the play Yago has has got a fellow to think that Cassio is making the running with with with Desdemona that he's been having an affair with her that he is much more elegant more beautiful he's åkerlund darling and so forth and it was logical that somehow she might be interested in Cassio but but a fellow wants the ocular proof he wants to see and then is this wonderful scene in which which Iago says you know would you behold her would you the supervisor behold her topped would you actually want to watch then having sex together so you get you get as you do in that opening scene with the old black RAM topping the white you it's that same thing topping word this vivid image of what is not happening this vivid image of the sex between Cassio and Desdemona that is not taking place and so what he sets up is a little fall scene in which a fellow like pearl is watching with crest with you with Ulysses a little scene between Diomede and Cressida a fellow is watching a scene among Yago or between Iago and Cassio in which you're quite right Yago sets it up so that there it's clear that they're talking about a woman but we can tell that it's about Bianca who is Bianca she's a courtesan she's a prostitute she's as she's in love with Cassio she's the one to whom he gives the handkerchief to take out the work and her name means white so here we have a play in which the has the name that means white and in which black a fellow is the figure of outraged virtue or of steadfastness or or of whatever you think he is because we're going to come and talk a little bit more about what you think about a fellow but but in this scene precisely they fellow his position so he can see but he cannot hear and we can't hear everything that's being said the word Bianca when it's whispered and so he interprets he misinterprets what he sees as two men joking about coarsely about a woman whom he thinks is his wife who he thinks is Desdemona and scene after scene in this play gets set up in that way so that there is a pageant to keep us in false gaze there's a spectacle that we see and don't fully or enabled to misinterpret and the very first scene is exactly such a scene the scene in which Yago first gets Roderigo on his side and then stages this outcry underneath the doors of Brabantio spaulos in Venice why is Rodrigo a good Confederate for Yaga he's certainly gullible what is he what's his interest though he desires Desdemona he's in love with her he has not succeeded with her and what is Yahoo promised him yes and have her in the most most physical way that she may not love him but but y'all going to work it out so that they have sex or that at least we can get rid of this because to Rodrigo a Venetian again the stranger Othello is the worst possible rival here because nominally unworthy why not pick Roderigo and what why does why is y'all go once y'all go have such strong feelings about a fellow anyone wait okay I let's get the the microphones working here yes he gives us a lot of reasons okay one of them is that Cassio has been chosen over him to be a sellers lieutenant yes that that Cassio has been preferred to him and what what what attributes does Cassio have that Iago resents he's a mathematician exaggerated arithmetician is what connect says wasn't it is he just educated I mean is easy for suggesting a book soldier he's a desk soldier we would say he's not a fighter he's not somebody who's who has earned his place on the battlefield he is a tactician he's a theoretician he's an intellectual he's also a Florentine and what are the attributes of Florence that you can deduce from this play is elegant okay so but name me a famous Florentine of this period sorry the Medici absolutely absolutely but let's not forget Machiavelli either that that Florence is a place of policy and also a place of wealth and of art and Yago himself this is where the word class may come in in certain productions that you may have seen of his play twentieth-century productions 21st century productions the the yago figure is a kind of working-class soldier if you've seen the Laurence Fishburne film with Kenneth Branagh in the place of Yago he it's a he's a plain speaking rough-hewn underclass figure the same is true of the Frank Finlay figure in the of the the Olivier a fellow that the intent is made to make a distinction of of class as well as of net nation among these figures so today so this is so jealousy Cassio is and and the idea that his proper place has been given to Cassio is one motive that he speaks what are his other supposed motives please I go believes that a fellow had it with his wife yes he it is said that he has left into my seat notice all these again what kind of figure is that I mean what's it's an animal figure exactly it's make the horseman home getting into the horse or whatever it is but but it's it's it's the and and I fear Cassio with my nightcap to he says that that the sexual jealousy is another that he makes that somehow Othello has had had an affair with Emilia how many of you believe that if Ellis had an affair with Emilia no evidence in the play about this any other other things that Yago suggests about yes one point he says I just hate yes almost yes I hate the more I pay more exactly there there are these moments when he says what he says you know I am NOT what I am and I hate the more it says it twice in that opening scene I hate the more it's it's as if the reasons are either spoken for himself were spoken for us Coleridge very famously once upon a time said about Yago that he had motiveless malignity that his evil was unmotivated or that it exceeded any particular motive that he was and you know incarnate figure of evil some people have written about this play with a fella with Yago in in a in the figure of what fellow almost calls him at the end of the play a devil or a demi devil but the this phrase motiveless malignity had has has had a lot of success people who also pushed against you and say no no no in fact he has motives it's he's not merely an allegorical figure of evil it's not just about the intrinsic evil that lurks in the hearts of men but in fact this is highly particular figure nonetheless his I hate the moor is so to speak the top line in the bottom line here does he also love them or when does he say that he says it all the time I don't remember exactly where but he says it and Othello says it to him that's what I was so struck by everybody saying how much they love everybody right well that's of course love any suggestion has a lot of different valence is here to but but this is very much a play about triangles and quadrangles and so forth and of course it culminates in that at that moment in the middle of the play when a fellow thinks that he's learned the truth about Desdemona and they kneeled together on the stage and they and at this moment and for me this is a crucial crucial moment in the play Othello says to Yago because of course he said to him now art thou my lieutenant and Yago says to him in reply remember I am your own wine guy owned forever so that's the moment I mean it seems to me always like a kind of marriage ceremony in which the two rivals have been gotten rid of but two figures who a fellow chooses over Yago at the beginning of the play are the lieutenant Cassio and the beloved Desdemona and in that one one with his cleverness of young goes strategy is that he gets the two of them to knock each other out of the game so that he is left as the one person honest honest honest Iago whom Othello can trust and against which these former loves become become distrust 'add and hated yes motives mean does it really make any difference because I mean he almost seems to enjoy just being the schemer setting these things up beautifully so as you say people feud I mean he's the puppeteer that's that sort of pulls everything together and and whether he he has the motives or not really makes no difference because I mean he almost becomes a characters a lot of characters in the world like that who just love to play with other people and and are very good schemers well exactly I think I think that that cannot be underestimated I think you're quite right that we see him at the beginning of the play end of Act one I have it it is engendered hell a night must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light so he now it's a fellow giving it's our Yago giving birth again you have the kind of cross gender moment but he enjoys making chaos happen and he's very good at it remember we looked at the duke in measure for measure as a kind of playwright figure as a figure who stood behind the sidelines in his his friars hood and tempted angelo in this case to become not the angel about the devil to turn himself inside out and so forth here too you have a figure who is stances he's never there if you if you look to see all these crisis points shouting under the window the fight in in Cyprus he's and he's never there he and sometimes he will say I have to leave now I'll be back just like the friar he makes people attack one another and he stands aside and then you know honest the yago who looks dead with grieving he becomes the figure to whom a fella will appeal but the pleasure of creating chaos as you say of creating hatred of breaking things or of making plays is very great for him and when he is finally discomforted at the end of the play what happens to younger at the very very end yes he goes silent yeah and that's oh so this this great wordsmith this great writer of scripts telling telling Rodrigo to shout under the window to setting all these things up from this time forth I never will speak word he goes silent it's a kind of living death and it's a kind of withdrawal into I no longer is he though the play has taken over from him so to speak and when they say to him it when when the Venetian ambassador say to him at the end of the of the play look at them on the monstrous loading of this bed he is vai work that's that we can take that word work to me not only what you have done but almost work in the sense of work of art that they did the this this spectacle of the dead a fellow in the dead Desdemona is what Yago the playwright has produced and the end to which the response is the object poisons sight let it be hid and I would turn away from this spectacle if we do but the the trajectory from all this language and writing these scripts for other people to silence here to a kind of living death this is the ultimate discomfiture of the of the schemer I think that's right yes I mean the place one of the big themes of sexual jealousy but nobody's having sex I mean I'm a fellow in Desdemona don't have sex or the analyst I do why they're talking about they're not having sex it's about is about deferral it's about me I think the one of the things in the sexual consummation between a fellow and Desdemona is constantly being interrupted it's put up your bright swords for the dew will rust them is before they when they come to him at the Sagittarii at the beginning of the play Sagittarius is the archer again know the shot has not taken place yet unsanitary is a kind of famous name for ian's of this period but everything in Shakespeare and as a kind of signification then they go to Cyprus and he they go on separate ships and and oh my fair warrior and he greets her and they go off to bed and again Yago creates a great outcry in the streets look but my gentle love be now waked up or says a fellow and when the Duke sends him off to war in the middle of the night which is his wedding night he says this the flinty and steel couch of door of war has for a soldier is his thrice driven bed of doubt that that so he's always substituting war for love it's the opposite I mean the great the great kind of mythological background here is the relationship of Mars and Venus the where where the great conquest of Mars by Venus is and you see this in Renaissance paintings is where the god Mars the God of War is taught to take off his armor and becomes himself defeated by the loves of Venus and the wonderful paintings in which the putti little little cherubs are playing with the armor which is now disarmed but in fact the sexual consummation is constantly deferred here that's one of the reasons they talk about it so much and why it figures so much in the action to continue with your point that men put work before love even though he can't stop thinking about love he's so obsessed with it right he never does it well so let's talk a little bit about the courtship of Othello and Desdemona in this regard because I remember that we get some accounts of this courtship because just to remind you of where we are in the in the play after all this shouting under bhavanti OHS window where Brabantio comes to Bronk pantyhose again as the father comes out and says what why like talk you me of what my house is not a Grange but what's the line before that Robert yes thank you my talk to me you you me of robbing this my house is not a Grange with this remember the Grange we had the Mariana and the moded Grange in measure for measure here to we're city people we're civilized people with you know nothing bad can happen here but in all this animal imagery all this farmyard imagery has invaded his dream his imagination and then these shouts in the street and then it all turns out to be true and he cannot bear it he can in fact what happens to provancha toward the end of the play he dies we told it's good thing your father didn't live to see this because he this would have broken his heart which was already broken but the but but Brabantio then wants to bring this case before the Duke or it's called the Duke of Venice here the Doge a the Duke of Venice who happens to be up sitting in the council chamber in the middle of the night because of the threat of the Turks so we have immediately and again this is very very characteristic of Shakespeare the Marshall and the domestic juxtaposed to one another that you have war outside and war inside and notice that not only do they never have sex they never have war that that no really that there no sooner do they all sail to Cyprus then it turns out there's been a huge storm that's wiped out the ships of the Turks and they'll although what the survivors have all gone home there's no war there they all in Cyprus for most of the play for no reason whatever because the ostensible threat the threat from outside the threat of the Turks has been vanquished not by them but by nature or whatever right by the sea leaving you know again revealing what what always there the instability of the relationships among them so here we might ask structurally speaking because we've talked about this a little bit why move the action to Cyprus what's the relationship of Venice to Cyprus say it's again I'm sorry it's like the opposite of Venice Venice is the city and culture and everything and Cyprus is wilderness kind of like where anything can happen right uh is it really the opposite I know rocks down me of robbing my house is not a Grange no exactly basically they've they worried that Cyprus inside them they when they make this transition like any other green world or middle world in Shakespeare what the comedies that go from the city to the forest of art or the city to the Athenian wood and Midsummer Night's Dream or whatever it is you you expose what's already there so they've already got Cyprus and so I'll them I'm sure I talked in my chapter about the the fact that Cyprus is also the name of Venus actually this is the Greek one of Greek names for Venus so they're going from Venice to Venus they're going from the city to the wild place which we've already seen to be imprinted upon them in the supposedly civilized place of this and they actually never get back to Venice that the whole tragedy takes place in Cyprus but the the ostensible thing is the love and war things never happen in this play in exactly the form that you think they're going to instead they they go underground they resurface in different places and this is as true of love as it is of war so who who is at war with one another actually in this play certainly Othello's it's his insecurity as part of the struggle inside of him aha okay so so that a fellow who who initially presents himself as as a imperturbable notice the mechanic they come to his is in in the middle of the night I put up your right swords you arrest them he he's a fighter who's not going to fight notice again the beginning of the play in the end of the play we had this business about the swords and whether you going to use them or not that in the in the in the death scene at the end they say don't worry we've taken a sword away from him and turns out he's got another sword in his chamber that that this the business of whether or not this hero actually is going to fight is also I mean since this is of all Shakespeare's martial heroes this is the one who fights least compared to Mark Antony compared to anybody in Julius Caesar to compare to anybody in the English history plays this hero doesn't fight he absolutely does not and you're quite right that his struggle is within himself what we call technically a psycho Makia a struggle of the soul torn between and this is where we come back to all these these these dyads that he him sees himself through the eyes that other people see him I want to talk about the about the the courtship of of Brabantio of Desdemona and Othello in Brabantio is how Steve how much time of a god I have time okay all right good the so so what do we know about about that what's the scene before I tell you but ask you what you know what what how is the the courtship scene described to us because this is another one of these famous Shakespearean onion scenes yes thank you um it said that his that her father asked him to tell the stories of what he was like for him to grow up and she overhears it just at their table listening and so she hears what he was like and the adventures he went on and that he was a slave and all these things and she kind of becomes intrigued by all of these stories right who tells us that I fell I fell it I fell it right so yeah we don't see it a modern film might show us this scene sort of in in black and white or something like this is a kind of pass scene but we don't see it we only get it through a fellow's eyes so my first question to you is what is the fellow doing in Rodrigo's house sorry in Brabantio house he was invited so so all of this horror at the idea that a fellow could be having sex with his daughter that his daughter could fall in love with with a fellow Rabbani his own relationship to a fellow he is a very affected one at the beginning of the play this is the hero this is the general this is the social lion invited to the house and sitting around with the other guys to talk more stories and a fellow is invited we're told to tell his own history which as you say is the story of fantastical adventurous the what kinds of adventures does he have where does he go what kinds of places has he been he's been in courts he's been sent cannibals exactly men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders deserts okay so this is this is the landscape of romance and I want you to remember that word because we're going to come later in the semester to plays that are often called Shakespearean romances places that happen in exotic locations that involve shipwrecks and discoveries and so forth but this is this is a again not for Shakespeare's own time these are the kinds of stories that people would tell when they went off on explorations and if you look at maps done in the period you would often find images of cannibals or animus ons or some other not us kind of strangers in the margins or in the water off there here's where civilization isn't over there are the cannibals here's where civilization is and over there the Amazons these other types of people mark again the US from the not us so that these stories are good stories these are goods like a like Odysseus like like or Scheherazade these are these are seductive stories of adventures of which this guy sitting in your living room is the hero and the fellow says she loved me for the dangers I had past and I loved her that she did pity them that she was empathetic and good listener and so forth this only is the witchcraft I have used because it was the claim of Raavan teo is that it's what's me with witchcraft nothing else could make this one fall in love with a black man than witchcraft and so he is the first of many moments in which language in witchcraft are equated here this only is the witchcraft I have used and then it turns out in fact that this isn't at all why Desdemona fell in love with him it wasn't that she pitied him I saw a fellow's village in his mind I saw what an interesting complicated person he was it's not that I pitied or was empathetic or had was like the audience of a tragedy full of pity and fear wasn't that I was merely hero wising him but rather that I had a much more equal kind of relationship to him but for a fellow this is hero worship and for a fellow he needs to be the hero in order to be the person she loves so his notion of why she loves him as as testified to by him is already something that ought to show us that there are some dangers involved because it it has to do with his his wholeness as a spectacle with with a kind of what ba King would call the classic body the body that of the of the male hero that cannot be penetrated or entered that is perfect and closed and in fact he turns out to be open and attackable that he has vulnerabilities that he has weaknesses that he has has self-doubt as he said and it's that that he can't that he thinks that she can't love that he thinks that she can't love his what we call call complexity humanity interior he has to be an outside in order for her to love him he has to be a seamless surface without self-doubt and without interior dialogue he has to be a hero of a romance rather than a figure with any kind of inter reality what is what is that little scene show you or tell us about about gender in Venice the the scene of the courtship as it's described to us what is Desdemona supposedly doing as she's listening to this account she's doing housework of some kind yes it mean it's I imagine her dusting but I'm sure this is extremely no on historical but but ever the household affairs would draw her than out for all I know she's ordering food or she's I but commanding the the gondolas to go back and forth she's running the house anyway she whatever she's doing it's the domestic and she's drawn away from the domestic and she is the figure of the domestic when she says to him supporting Cassio's like wearing her gloves are keeping warm she is the voice of the domestic to a certain extent domestic again meaning house but but the the idea is that the household Affairs would draw her away and then she come back and with a greedy ear devour up all our discourse that she was hungry to hear and this greedy ear again the ear as it open as an orifice her hunger he imagines her as a desiring subject he imagines her as somebody who has desires and that her desire is for his narrative for his story for the story of a fellow as a hero and so so we have this picture of now where is mrs. Brabantio no Dame Rabanne teo whatever she might be you know cherish open play at all there's a very brief mention of her as you know no longer with us but you know this is this characteristic Shakespearean structure in which you have one parent one child very often it's a father and daughter or a mother and a son here we'll see other examples of this as well so that again the relationship between Provan tio and Desdemona is over determined that he is protective of her he is possessive of her he doesn't want her to give her away to his friend a fellow to his equal a fellow to the figure who was his houseguest and who was his honored guest until the courtship made him rethink his figure and turn inside out all of his language of heroism then this is the stranger business again that you can be both the hero stranger and also the the dejected or objected stranger precisely the thing that attracts Brabantio to a fellow this same you know not like Brabantio has been everyplace has you know has all these stories to tell is also what makes makes him distrust him when he comes to be the suitor to his daughter so this is this this is the background against which the events in Cyprus take place what about this notion of wit in witchcraft who who mobilizes witchcraft in the play Yago okay say it say why he's the one that um has seems to have the powers to poison people he says it weren't learning a flight to eat to Rodrigo he says I noticed we work by which and not by witchcraft and which depends on dilatory time and this is this this Iago has playmaker again you have to wait till things happen I have a tease engendered Helen night let's bring these mods to this monstrous birth to the world's light but in fact it is it wasn't no but exactly but I mean black and white are completely mean all the all the the stereotypical cultural significations of black belong to white here and all the stereotypical cultural significance for white belong to black this is a play about the about how black and white is how you can never see the world but therefore it is important in fact that there are these racial markers and just to go back to the the topic that I began with these these these earnest attempts to make the play colorblind I think we're really attempts to to disempower the play of exactly and you know again they were well-intentioned but they're actually attempts to suggest something about the humanity of a fellow as if to associate him with with with racial identity was not to engage that same question we're going to stop now and come back in ten minutes and start again thank you back by your opening comment that there was a critical school that said this was not about race but so I was interested in what in fact is the best argument for that and whether this is whether there are two plays here B two schools of thought because if it were truly about race the Doge and the leadership would not have so affirmative Lee adopted a fellow as leader and dismissed these this upset contemporary important person and they just toss him away when he comes in and says I have this major problem sorry what is this when he goes to the council he goes to the Doge - at the beginning when when bronchiole goes to the father goes to the Doge he's just passed off passed away well no no quiet not quiet so the let me say two things to begin with one is that a 20th 21st century notion of race and race problems is actually pretty different from how the 16th or 17th century might have fought about race or racial difference the word races that we in this context is that really this is a modern word use of the word race where if you find race as a word in Shakespeare's plays it's going to mean heritage it's going to mean family actually it's not going to mean color what the language okay well then color is it not a but-but-but - to this point I was just again talking in the in the break to somebody about why it is now now again we talked about public private that the the the Duke as he's called has the council chamber in session because there's a problem of state the problem of the Turks Brabantio says to him I have a private private matter I need to bring before you and the Duke says okay we'll talk about that first but at the but the reason that he sets aside the private matter is why is it I mean who is it who convinces the Duke the that it's not witchcraft that's being used here does Desdemona says that she made the choice to be with a fellow and that she wants to go with him the Rabanne teo says because I read provancha says you know mistress again a very strange thing to call your wife your daughter mistress I do you see here who witnessed this assembly do you owe your duty and she says I do perceive here a divided duty I'm I'm indebted to you you're my father but as much duty as your my mother paid to you that's where the mother comes in my mother paid in choosing you Oh or her father so I owe to the to the to the more my lord to the more my lord so that the again she calls him by the race nation nationality name and she calls him that in the same phrase as my lord and earlier than this when we get this whole sorry at this moment we get the narrative of the courtship that we've talked about the housewife Marineros and so forth the Duke says to Brabantio I think this tale would win my daughter - in other words this exciting story that is is the story of the hero a fellow is so seductive that it seems to me perfectly reasonable not like witchcraft that she would fall in love with you so he actually takes evidence he takes evidence about the courtship enix evidence from Desdemona testifying herself and it's at that moment when she says I you know the more is my lord I am married to him I choose him and as we were saying this is this is this is a kind of move about this the the notion in the Bible that the woman is supposed to cleave the leap the father includes the husband but the woman doesn't usually get to say that it's the two men who get to say that here's my daughter and as she's going to cleave to you but it's the outspokenness of Desdemona which is again her heroic admirable moment here which comes back to haunt a fellow later on when she becomes outspoken on behalf of Cassio when she begins to behave not like an obedient wife or an obedient daughter but like his speaking subject so I think that when the Duke but I want to come back to you and see what you think about this when the Duke decides that he can now go back to affairs of state into the question of the Turks and indeed to the necessity of sending this very same Afellay whom we may say he needs and therefore has to to take the side of anyway but when he decides to go back to the issue of the Turks is because he feels that this domestic dispute in terms of his evidence has been resolved that it's rape and it's not witchcraft it's marriage freely chosen by Desdemona I took that line by Desdemona to be it's the same line that appears in Lear at the beginning and I thought well it's I took it is not determinative of this knot as it important wait it's accepted in Lear he says I choose you daddy well I choose you to the extent I owe to my far to my father but my husband to the extent that I owe to my husband great but but if this were truly color based or prejudice based whether you're using the answer color yeah in our work the world at least a fellow would not be of such rank would not be accorded such respect it would be a very different response if it were truly a prejudiced Society in terms of the reflection of the coarseness of the language the language it I'm not sure understand we've got the whole Clarence Thomas story on the pages of the paper we've got Colin Powell we have I mean we have a hero general who is is a african-american and he's not treated any differently as far as I can tell he's not treated like the african-american general but rather like a graduate of West Point but our society may not be this language is very coarse at the beginning about color the play yeah it is much coarser than discourse in our environment now as public people don't it's its language out of the 19th yes yes yes okay so I don't think you can compare if I'm getting tangled up in this but if that language was indicative of the ratio or the color attitudes or prejudicial attitudes of the society then Colin Powell or a fellow would not be accorded such respect in other words isn't and maybe it's your difference between public and private but there is public respect and maybe it doesn't and I'm trying to deal with this question it's not about race there is public respect for a fellow which is quite different from the private discourse of what we're hearing in there well this is this is this is complicated but but I mean I remember that that that his achievements in the public world which is the world of men I think about Joe Lewis or Jackie Robinson or is different from the question of interracial sex in marriage here and different from the question of a father's property in a daughter which is another and that that bad issue surely we can we can hope to think is an issue that that plays better in the 17th century than it does in the 20th or 21st century but it's precisely this slippage between the supposedly public in the put supposedly project it's precisely the the inconsistency with which because this is the inconsistency that comes home to haunt Othello that he sees himself in both of these things he sees himself as the here would like to see himself as the hero he has actually done all these things that he's boasting about he is the general he is the honored person he is the person he is the peacemaker he's all these things he's also suddenly the person that she used of witchcraft and he's also the person who will not give himself permission to be a neurotic subject for whom the notion of himself as a neurotic subject runs against it is all the fears that the society is pushing back against him he has to be more civilized than the civilized he has to be more Venetian than the Venetian whether we say that he has to be more white than the white or whether just he has to be more inside than the insiders he holds himself to a set of standards and a set of abstinence --is when he says for example I want her to go with me to to Cyprus he says this isn't because of sex this isn't the the these effects in me defunct I I'm so old that that or I'm so mature that it's not the heat of sexual passion but rather something else something having to do with a larger view of marriage or of companionship that makes me want her to go with me we may say he protests too much that he he wants very much to present himself as as the non-animal as precisely the opposite of all those shouted voices at the beginning as precisely the opposite of the kind of figure that he then briefly performs himself as being when he has his fit and he shouts about noses ears and lips and so forth he we could say he's culturally repressed whatever we want to say he does not want to give for whatever reason because he's old because he's he's a more because he's not a Venetian because his why whatever reason they might be he does not want to give any hint of himself as a passionate private person and so they it's quite right to say that the war comes within himself I think it's true that the that race color issues inside outside issues helped to make him the way he is but he is subject to those repressions and and the and his worst enemy is himself and what we said that to that that he's the one who doesn't love himself in quite this way yes sir that the race issue is somewhat subtle because he's not a member of a large class of people in Venice yeah he is an exotic he is right an exotic who has come in with a high skill level at a very very important job that's essential to the Venetian society and one of but one of the things about race is that people who are much lower say for example in class then he is such as I go and the Roderigo might feel that how you know how dare he be better than then he is the mayor and so that therefore the race issue comes out not directly as when he is a guest but when he in some way threatens some economic or propriety advantage that any of those characters have such as Brabantio interest in his daughter such as Iago's interest in his his advancement or Rodrigo's interest in gaining the hand of Desdemona yeah no I think that's right I think that that that this is a is the opposite of value added its value taken away so to speak that that that when it become when he he becomes a threat of some kind or a competition or or threatens to displace something or other then suddenly they remember that he's black and that that he that this this becomes a reason why but behind it is a whole cultural history behind it is the history of the handkerchief and right behind it is the history of this the adventures that he's had and so forth it's not as if he is a third generation black civil a citizen of Venice and I say this because there are black people living in in London at this time this is not he for this play is not performed in a society that never saw a black man there are free blacks living in London at this time and it's there is Ben Jonson has a whole mask for a court mask called the mask of blackness which is a in which there's a anti-mask of black black women blackened women with black paint on their skins who turn into the mask of into Queens that there's this that blackness is very much a topic that people are engaging right now and you're quite right using it for their own purposes let's come back though if we can't do whatever it whatever it is that seems to be producing self-doubt in a fellow whether it's what we some reasons other than his race and his locate his his country of origin yes back here right behind you no sorry his age he they don't specify I don't think it's specified but he is it's implied that he's quite a bit older than Desdemona somewhat somewhat decline into the veil of years is what he says now now for me let me draw an analogy for a second they in some of Shakespeare's comedies there's a blonde woman in a dark woman or a tall woman in a short woman and very often directors exaggerate these difference you have very blonde and very dark or you have very tall and very shorted as in Hermia and Helena Indian summer Night's Dream in this play too it's easy to sort of take these people at their own words and say yeah he must be sixty and you know Yago is really thirty and right but but in fact my guess would be that the age differences here are exaggerated by the speakers that these are again that we're dealing with with a culture of self-doubt and of difference making where what's more painful for the audience is not to see this old guy married to a young girl suffering because he's old but in fact to see somebody who sees himself as somehow over the hill and who becomes more that way because he sees himself that way doesn't mean he isn't older than y'all go certainly he's had lots of adventures and he must have had them during some months and years but but it's I it's the the everything he says about himself is is is a self deprecation in a way it's either a self exaggeration or self-deprecation and so rude am I in my speech again nobody less rude in their speech than yonkos he said the dirty language at the beginning of the play is the is Brabantio is rodrigo is so forth if nobody speaks with the eloquent sand and beautiful periods of a fellow which is why his breakdown is a breakdown in a language when he loses the capacity to hold a whole sentence together when he has his pitch is whether what kind of fit it is and people have said it's an epileptic fit people have said it's a kind of but there isn't there I should say in Renaissance physiology of this time that kind of fit is sometimes compared to orgasm so that people have said that this is a kind of a sexual breakdown whatever it is but but when he has his his goes into the trance it what what leads him in that direction is a kind of loss of language not the aberration of language that we saw in in Iago not from chance from this time forth I never will speak word but in fact the breakdown of life of the capacity to make language into a kind of order into a kind of story and and it's from that breakdown that we we see Yago beginning to take the you know real control of the second half of a plan yes Sarge it into the microphone please sorry easy like most characters in most characters like him in Shakespearean sense of there's always a split that's going to come out eventually that what they look like in the surface is really a veneer and that somewhere beneath that there's there's some weakness I suppose we call it there which for Yago is able to exploit tremendously but I mean it because there's some people said Cassio sort of the perfect he wouldn't have had these self doubts he at least well what's Cassio's Achilles heel so to speak what is Cassio's other side you can't hold his written no we I mean because you see him you see this this perfect brilliant intellectual no first of all you see him be being rather like the this phrase that Yahoo uses and that then the fellow uses for DES noted a super subtle Venetian it's very very you know this notion and that's the Machiavelli in Venetian that's the idea of the person who's who think you can trust but you really can't with with Cassio he's a kind of super subtle Florentine he's he's too courtly with the girls at the beginning and so forth but then you see that he's got this other side which comes out when he drinks and everybody knows that he's a bad drinker but again his language breaks now for god that was an excellent song that was a better song than the other one and so forth and and you see him completely lose if he becomes quarrelsome he becomes irrational so that he too has this other side that again somehow Yago knows all these things and can exploit them sometimes I mean just the when we are when when the idea is you know that that that Shakespeare somehow understands the human person in some complicated way what we actually get is the structure of an inside and an outside in precisely the way you're describing but it's not always about weakness and it could for example Henry the fifth the Prince Hal looks like he's dissolute and then he comes to this front of a stage and explains to the audience how much that this is the kind of plot and so forth and he will turn into the great hero Henry the fifth and and even in that play will have his moments of self-doubt and then his moments of leadership and so forth and that a conversation with yourself or Richard the third another example any of these characters who are so-called Machiavelli's of which Yago is one a character who is takes pleasure out of discomforting other people manipulating people and so forth does yong-go have a weakness Iago have an interior that is available for attack or critique what are you doing for the microphone sorry I'm really curious about Iago's suspicion about a cell or about having an affair was right Amelia yeah and he also he also at another point the play thinks that Cassio may have had an affair with his wife and there's as you say said earlier there's no evidence fried and see any evidence for this at all and yet we know where does this come from and these are things he says in in a soliloquy when he's alone in the stage so these are things he's really thinking okay so that is usually and probably what however think how disturbing it is for us if the convention of the Salone which takes us into the confidence of the single speaker is actually also containing laws that are manipulating us this may be Yago making up stories to himself you're quite right nobody's there for some of these conversations but it may I mean one of the one of the famous things about this play is that there's that there's this one story there's not a seconds you can't ever take your eyes off what's happening to a fellow in Desdemona and Cassio and Bianca and so forth and the famously there been moments in the history of the production of the play in which somebody stood up in the audience and wanted to shout to a fellow don't trust him he's lying to you you know she's faithful and so forth because in most Shakespearean plays of this con there's somebody on the stage who says that for you will see that in King Lear we'll see it in Macbeth we'll see it in lots of plays in which some deception is happening and the audience gets some kind of relief I'll call it kind of tragic relief if you like because there's somebody in the on the stage who understands out in this case knows but that Yago is also practicing upon us that that the very convention of the soliloquy which seems to be the detail tells us the proof might itself also here being broken back there yes but his wife Amelia has very pragmatic views on adultery and said that she wouldn't be unfaithful to her husband for cloth or gifts but that if it would bring him the world she would do it in the world it's a large place for a small sin so he has some some reason to to be suspicious of her if those are her expressed well again it depends upon how we understand how we play that scene it's a little little scene toward the end of the play I already go ahead write us on the wall ready we can see the wedding sheets are about to be laid on the bed the wedding sheets are going to become the winding sheets and so forth and it's but this is Girl Talk he's this is Desdemona and Emilia chatting away yes do you want to talk to this question okay please um she does say that she would she would commit adultery to get the world for her husband wouldn't that imply that if she had slept with a fellow that she would try to influence him to promote yah go to his lieutenant what does everybody believed that when Amelia says the world's a great thing it's a small price for it's a great price for a small vice so everybody believed that we're actually getting the truth about Amelia's morals here and that she actually the occasion presented itself where she could sleep with somebody who would be of benefit to her husband that she could do so is this is this manifest in this that's what she says but in what spirit does she say it microphones please yes you see it in The Canterbury Tales where the wife says you know like I'll sleep with you if if you you know get the rocks out on the private - yeah yeah so it saves my husband but she's saying it just to make a point that you know that'll never happen well she would but she would do that for her husband that's the extent she would go to right right yeah I think it also refers to Isabella in measure for measure the same kind of question was asked of her and she didn't and she wouldn't do it for the world RR for her brother but in this case Amelia says well the worlds are small this is nice this is very nice analogy okay and in both case I think that Isabella he is a figure of principle and we may say a blind principle in a way that she you know that she's extremely definitive about this and the fact that the brother is going to die is second more than our brother is our chastity and so forth this is you're quite right this is the inverse of that but it's all in it's not is it in the case of Isabella Angelo is actually there saying here's the key meet me at night let's do it in the case of Amelia it's a conversation between women in in which I think it is also prominent one could perfectly well say this is her philosophy of living and and Gettle it's the opposite of the idealizing Desdemona the one entire perfect chrysolite the alabaster woman that this is the real ordinary woman yes please but it strikes me that amelia is really the only one who speaks in terms that are other than absolutes Desdemona would never do it a fella would never believe the jealousy but she's the only one who sees shadings of behavior and sees possibilities that aren't strictly black or white well no I think that's right and she is also turns out to be the figure of I mean when when the question of the handkerchief comes up at the end and when the question of the sexual jealousy and a fellow says but your husband told me and your husband she's my husband my husband my husband she picks up this word over and over again and she cannot believe it because she can suddenly see everything that has taken place so so let me just be clear about what I'm trying to say about this scene between the two women I don't think that it is I think it is perfectly possible to play the scene in which Desdemona is saying I'd never do it and Emilia is saying your fool the world is a complicated place you have to make compromises you might want to do it you should but it's also possible to imagine it as a kind of tease between the two of them in which Emilia is poking fun at and trying to cheer up the extremely melancholy Desdemona it's possible to deliver that line it's a great price for a small advice as a kind of joke as well as as a as a credo and I'm not saying that it's the one way or the other way I'm saying it is a line that actually can be played in a variety of different ways I would not myself take it automatically as a sign of Amelia's own moral values but rather as as her as a certain kind of sophisticated and as you say practical look at the world but it may not reflect her own sexual intentions or presented with the Isabella situation it might not be that she would function in quite that way yes but Desdemona's question to her is I think Emile is also attacking her naivete because what she says is are the women who would do this are the woman who would cheat on their husbands because she can't imagine it right great and the it's interesting because we had the relatively pragmatic Desdemona at the beginning of the play choosing between the father and the husband we've had the the I saw a fellow's visit in his mind that doesn't seem to be a kind of narrowness or naivete but but in this scenario this is why the continuity of Shakespearean characters is sometimes complicated because innocent area she needs to be the figure of purity she has become in a way this figure of a who cannot believe that there's that he could think this of her because it's not what she believes about him microphones microphone any of you anyway I didn't care you got big again um in that scene I keep thinking about this dichotomy between love and sex and it seems that when Emilia is saying is I love my husband I love my husband so much I would do that and their sense to always be this you know again this antagonism almost between the two between Levinson X and that that is how I read the scene between the two of them well let's also put into the mix here materiality because we are we're talking about the you know the trafficking women were talking about and this is a case in which the woman this this is the woman becomes commercial the woman herself I mean rather than that rather than being traded between men for sex that she could become the agent of deploying her own sex for commercial gain to the husband so this is if we could associate this to go back to measure for measure with mistress overdone and the you know what it means to be a madam what it means to that that there's a sense in which she is here controlling the commercially the potential commercial attea roan sex over own sexuality around sexual availability in for the benefit of the husband here person who yes sex and love yes yeah what exactly does it mean it's wonderfully ironic in Oaxaca is certainly the most most naive woman and the least tawdry woman in the in the play despite the fact that she's a courtesan and they treat her that way she's in love she's in love with Cassio and his behavior toward her is surely one of the less attractive than his drinking in terms of how one might want to re-evaluate Cassio somebody please okay Larry then mill every person's inlet nose person well I just thought we'd moved on but back to the subject of the conversation between um Iago's wife and um Amelia inducible oh no Amelia Desdemona huh Amelia in that moment I thought was more showing her loyalty to Yago and then sort of explaining why she steals the handkerchief later and that sort of thing so I didn't think of it at all as her take on having sex with other men I thought of it completely as her take on how loyal she was to her husband and that she would do anything for him mm-hmm good okay good well kind of two comments and just relevant to that I think I think it's very human I've been in conversations when I have said oh I would never do that or I would do that it's only when you're faced with the decision that you know what you will do it's easy to pass it off because you're trying to make somebody feel better or so I sort of think the girl talk thing is important and the other thing I want to ask though is that it seems to me cash oh is is intent it is was it the intent to make him weak I mean I think pleading his case before this before Desdemona a man would go to the source wouldn't he well if he were the man didn't why doesn't he he said why is why he doesn't why doesn't TAS you go do a to e to a fella oh I guess I don't know well he it's in the play when he he this issue is addressed wondering all the way through so I missed why does Desdemona become agent for cassia drags a minute is amin sets it up for him and he's gullible he's not he I mean he's made a big mistake by getting drunk and misbehaving in and sort of loss of honor so he is susceptible to the suggestion and he's I mean I suppose you could say he's Florentine and and Machiavellian so you know that makes it even more susceptible well whether his party Machiavelli or not is quite right that Yaga is behaving in a Machiavellian way innocent this is another one of his little plays within the play he season you know he's the guy who has set up the whole drunken Cassio business he got Roderigo and Cassio in this structure he then moves on to Cassio and he says I'll tell you what you can do go to Desdemona and she'll plead your case she'll help you out with this the I was so mortified I you know it's I really am NOT myself I well so that the idea here is that though that that the wife would assist with it this is becomes again a private matter rather than a public matter that goes through the female side here and indeed when she goes to plead with with young with a fellow when she says it's as if I would ask you to put your gloves on or stay warm or whatever it is it's conceived of in the domestic world here the the you could say that Cassio has been unmanned whatever that would mean by his drunkenness he feels that way he feels that he has lost control that he has revealed himself to be not the person he is supposed to be and that from that loss onward I mean we could also see then he is boasting seen with Yago visa vie Bianca as a restoration of his you know parade of maleness of his his that that that he has control over something and is something he has control over is this woman who loves him this woman whom he has no interest in marrying and is very explicit about the way he's going to use her and he's going to use her not only sexually but to do this taking out of the work they what the the the handkerchief with with its rotary is going to be copied here by Bianca that she becomes another kind of housewife for Cassio but but it's true that she is that that this is an unusual route but it's one that's prepared for in the play Yago does it for him yes sir wait wait wait another reason that des daemon becomes an agent for Cassio is that she feels a certain loyalty to him he was sort of a fellow's best man in in the ordering process right butBut exactly notice how this is his plan he went between them often that did did did Yago wants to know from Othello did Cassio know about your interest in Desdemona yes yes it went between us very very oft indeed says Iago indeed says Othello by heaven now echo asked me and so forth and this Yago as ecco is a big figure here but the idea that I mean think about Donny's and in prose from Cressida again that the intermediary becomes the object of love becomes the transferential object becomes the the figure who actually keeps the lovers apart rather than bringing them together that they this going between them takes on a double meaning and also suggests an opportunity for Cassio under the guise of corking Desdemona for a fellow to do some courting of his own but the the idea here that Cassio is the go-between for a fellow it's only a step to thinking that maybe he was actually courting for himself and that's a pattern that you see in several other Shakespeare plays as well let's can we talk a little bit about the the death scene I know everything to look at these passages or not but let's let's let's talk a little bit about the about the scene at the end because it among the things that contains some of the most magnificent poetry is play what somebody described to me what happens at the end of the play what is it happen in bed a fella doesn't want to do anything to Desdemona that would leave a scar or a mark or cause her to bleed so he Oh first of all he thinks that it's justice to UM kill her in their marriage bed which is supposedly she sell it selling it well Iago plants the seed in his extensions Franco we're in the bed even the bed she has contaminated he says her right out yes yes says Yago a SISO fellow the justice of the it pleases so the idea of the scenario again is Janos and there's some confusion in the text exactly what the notices she's going to be strangled is she going to be bad what you know what what what's the method of death going to be so that the plot should wind up in bed again remember again what we said earlier about the deferral of consummation about the the omnipresence of sexual desire here among many of these figures circulating around many of these figures as something that is always in the air and never clearly settled and here finally you're going to see them in bed remember opening scene they're just outside the inn maybe they've been in bed or about to go to bed but you don't see them the scene in Cyprus with the Bell that he comes and he says look that my genital of the now right rised up or raised up raised up so you never see them in bed so this is this is the this vaccine this is this is the and this is also the scene the very scene but how different that was predicted in the opening shouting under Brabantio now even now now very now an old black RAM is tupping you're white you so this this animal imagery here is the image of people having sex in bed and you only get in everybody else's account until the very end of the play when you suddenly get the bed yes there's also the comment about wishing their sheets happiness in the beginning happiness their sheet happiness to their sheets right and now here are the sheets exactly who's whose line is that remember it was Cassio actually Cassio Cassio Iago were talking and Cassio is trying to get get this heard yells was trying to get Cassio to say something salacious about a fellow in Desdemona and Cassio either because he's well-bred or because he's cautious avoids the trap you know well you know the wine she drinks is made of grapes yeah the yago does everything he can to get Cassio to kind of talk dirty with him about these people and he keeps avoiding it and finally Cassio says happiness to their sheets and this prince closes the conversation in which yong-go history and yoga with various people including with Desdemona and Emilia is capable of kind of coarse language we cannot get Cassio in this moment to speak about still the sheets are there absolutely and as many critics have recently talked about in as I'm sure I talked about in my chapter 2 there is a connection between the handkerchief also made of white linen and the sheets that you know it's white but it's got red stains on it and and the this this idea of virginity of consummation of the wedding sheets showing because again the showing of the sheets is this idea that that the woman was a virgin that your why do you care about that because your children will be your own children rather than somebody else's children and again this image at the very beginning of the play shouted out at bran Tio's window about you'll have your nephews nay to you your Genet surger Mons and so forth it that your your descendants are going to be animals because your your daughter is having sex with an animal this this the opposite of what we see at the very end but this this this is the scene is it the scene that you've not seen and not seen and not seen and now you see it and instead of seeing sex you see death so so and and what what's a fellow's behavior like in this scene when he comes in with it with a with the torch put out the light and then put out the light remember this this this famous speech what's he doing the line the end of this towards the end of this longer speech and I will kill thee and love the after yes yeah yeah again is that he can only idealize her once he gets rid of the real her which is actually not the real her but has become the real fantaz Matic her he wants to get back to this idealization I'll kill me and love thee after I because we have so little time left I'd like us to look not alas any of the passages on your sheets but on your sheets there you go but rather at a fellow's speech to the assembled group in in Act five scene two about line 336 please soft you will word or two before you go can you join me there I have done the state some service and they know it no more of that now look at the public private here again I pray you in your letters now who's he talking to here I pray you in your letters yes but especially the Venetian ambassadors who are also Desdemona's relations what when you shall these unlucky deeds relate and what is unlucky mean well that's what they refer to but why they called unlucky just bad luck and I mean it's a deep sense of I mean this is not not yes go ahead please stars to be ill-fated yeah exactly has a has a resonance about it that is more than just bad bad look speak of me as I am now here I want you to remember yah goes I am not what I am and this whole question the question that we've been talking about about whether a theatrical character when he speaks to you directly shows you himself or something honest about himself Yago I am NOT what I am here speak of me as I am not so easy to know what that is nothing extenuate what does that mean extenuate what are extenuating circumstances excuses right nor set down aught in malice so don't don't make me look too good or too bad remember the the motiveless malignity of yoga then must you speak of one that loved not wisely but too well of one not easily jealous but being wrought perplexed in the extreme of one whose hand like the base Indian threw a pearl away richer than all his trod a one whose subdued I shall be it unused to the melting mood drop tears as fast as the arabian trees their medicine able gum set you down this and save his odds than in aleppo once where a malignant and a turban Turk beat a Venetian and traduced the state I took him by the throat I took by the throat the circumcised dog and smote him thus what's happening at this moment he's killing himself but why tell this story about the the this the the malignant and turbaned Turk yeah well he's identifying himself both with the enemy and with the hero ah speak of him me as I am ah your Venetian hero kill the turbaned Turk whom I am NOT and again it's a mistake to think of a fellow as a Muslim he's not and but and but but the division here he is here enacted and and resolved by this self-slaughter that that that you have the two of ellos so to speak here present in his own mind and it's at how does he resolve it it's by killing the the other one and kill the other one he also has to kill the one who speaks set you down this and say beside that in aleppo once I took you by the throat the circumcised dog and smote him thus latigo oh bloody period meaning end here all that is spoke is marred I kissed the ere I killed thee no way but this killing myself to die upon a kiss so here here you have finally the love match here you have finally the consummation remember that the early modern Renaissance pun on the word die which means to have a sexual climax as well as to come to a mortal end much of the love poetry of the period the poetry of John Donne for example talks about wanting to die with his beloved in bed and and here what's meant is to have sex so this is that die pun that we see in Romeo and Juliet - brought to a certain kind of literalization or what is sometimes called unmet afore in this figure of the little death and the big death of the of the sexual death as contrasted to the the final death of mortality here becomes both of them become perform at once and the this this bed in which they never did find the time to make love becomes the place in which they make death together here so that the the end comes here with a return to the to the deferred beginning Mel are you are you you are you okay okay the who's left who's left at the end of the play who's on stage cassia okay and who else Graziano what Vico yaga yaga look on the tragic loading of this bed this is by work the object poisons site let it be hid the whole play has been the work of Yaga in this way and the tragic loading of the bed here is the I mean this is this is the where we talked about Cassio bringing them together going between them here is yo go as infernal matchmaker bringing them together in in the other death rather than in the little death the object poisoned sight let it be hid the end the end so the final gesture here this is again a gesture that we see very often at the end of these Shakespearean plays is the the instruction to retell the story myself will straight aboard into the state this heavy act with heavy heart relate again we're on couplet ends both the scene and in this case the play but the invitation once again is that the state that is us I mean those survivors and the ordinary people are going to hear this story and and and in in the relating of it they're telling of it is going to be a relation of a different kind that might in fact be a replaying of the play so that the question of who who is the victor here is very unclear what do you think what's what what is anything resolved there's anything redeemed here at the end of the play anything I mean in a it's a total tragedy that's it's I mean it's hard to I mean it because sometimes you kind of talk about learning from a tragedy do the people on the stage learn anything at all back there yeah um I would as to learning from it I would say no but the one person who might have might come out a little bit better is Cassio because if because he um you know the string of tragic events basically precluded another string of tragic events that would have led to his death well in fact a meaning purely material terms he said he winds up as a governor of Cyprus and he succeeds to the position of a fellow but this all looks like very very secondary to this to the domestic come into the middle of the play so one of the things that people say about this place it's a domestic tragedy it's a tragedy about about private life it's red tragedy about love it's a love tragedy here but it's love tragedy that is enabled and disabled by notions of oneself in various public arenas including the martial world but also this world this complicated world that we were talking about about how race or color or other nests is valued and devalued and discussed and how you take people at how you take yourself I should say at other people's evaluation that's one of the things that functions very powerfully in this play that any sense of self that almost any character has here except perhaps Desdemona am i that word am i that thing you know that mound that word that he said almost everybody else gets their sense of self from another person or from another discourse out there we're going from here to King Lear is that right many of these same themes will return in that play in which we'll see again the father and the daughter and we'll see again the public and the private and we'll see again the impossibility of full knowledge of somebody that you love so next time and I just wanted to mention quickly we tried to be really explicit in the paper topics but inevitably there will be questions please don't hesitate be in touch with your particular TF with any ideas or concerns or questions you might have about those

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Length: 109min 30sec (6570 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 18 2015