Comprehensive Study Notes on Othello

Othello: Character Analysis and Critical Perspectives

Othello's Nature and Characteristics

• A.C. Bradley: Views Othello as "a man of mystery, exoticism and intense feeling," also describing him as "trustful, open, passionate, but self controlled: so noble."
• Cinthio: Depicts Othello as someone who "concealed the malice he bore in his heart, in such a way that he showed himself outwardly like another Hector or Achilles."

Othello's Downfall

• Kenneth Muir: Argues that "Othello’s fatal flaw was his credulity."
• Wilson Knight: Believes Othello's downfall is "composed very largely of ignorance of self as well as ignorance of her [Desdemona]."
• F.R. Leavis: Claims Othello is responsible for his own downfall, suggesting the play isn't a tragedy because of this.

Othello's Isolation

• Richard Lees: Notes that "Othello’s isolation is emphasised casually and continually."
• Helen Gardner: Describes him as "a stranger, a man of alien race."
• Callaghan: Argues that Othello was considered a white man to the Jacobean audience.

Othello's Final Speech

• Ania Loomba: Interprets Othello's final speech as him becoming "simultaneously the Christian and the Infidel, the Venetian and the Turk, the keeper of the state and its opponent."
• Hadfield: States, "The theme of tragedy is concentrated in the final speech and action."

Iago: Interpretations and Motives

• Wilson Knight: Sees Iago as "a kind of Mephistopheles" (a demon in German folklore).
• Booth: Suggests "Iago should appear to be what all but the audience believe he is."
• Coleridge: Describes Iago's actions as "motive-hunting of motiveless malignity."
• R.A. Flakes: Posits Iago isn't driven by jealousy but by a "much more general stance of simple hatred for what is good."
• Graham Bradshaw: Calls Iago "Shakespeare’s most extraordinary example of a 'surrogate dramatist'."
• Kott: Refers to Iago as a "diabolical stage manager."
• Honigmann: States Iago enjoys a "godlike sense of power."
• Lytton Stachey: Examines Iago's motive.
• Tolstoy: Compares Shakespeare's and Cinthio's versions of Iago's motive, noting Shakespeare provides "many motives, all vague," while Cinthio offers "one simple and clear motive, Iago’s passionate love for Desdemona."
• Bate: Suggests "sexual jealousy is an afterthought" for Iago.
• Draper: Defines Iago as an "opportunist".
• McCloskey: Says "evil had nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the evil character of Iago".
• Ryan: Calls Iago "Pathologically normal" and describes his malignity as a mirror image of Venetian norms.
• Auden: Depicts Iago as a "practical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind".

Desdemona: Perspectives on Her Character

• W.H. Auden: States, "It is Othello’s adventures… which captivate her, rather than Othello as a person."
• A.C. Bradley: Describes her as "Helplessly passive."
• Lisa Jardine: Sees her as becoming "a stereotype of female passivity" and a "patient Griselda" exhibiting "exemplary passivity in adversity."
• French: Argues "Desdemona accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males and is self-denying in the extreme when she dies" and that "All women are destroyed by Iago."
• Jarvis: Characterizes her death as "A whore’s death for all her innocences."
• Neeley: Suggests "the focus of Othello is love, which drives Desdemona but is tempered by her wit and realism."
• Emma Smith: Calls Desdemona "the ultimate tragic figure in the play" that has “no true confidant”.
• Deats: Describes how "Othello perceives Desdemona's unfaithfulness as a defacement of his private property."
• Miller: Explains that "She loses her identity and becomes merely a possession of her husband in the patriarchal marriage".
• Gonzalez: Claims "Desdemona is the standard of relative incorruptibility against which all the others are measured" because she never uses language of darkness and is not corrupted.
• Holmer: States Othello is a “tragedy of perception”.

Cassio: Interpretations of His Role

• A.C. Bradley: States, "we trust him to never pervert the truth for the sake of some doctrine or purpose of his own."
• V. Walker: Suggests "Cassio in the end seems to represent the better man, the higher sophisticate."
• William Empson: Notes, "[Iago] regards the virtues of Cassio as part of his superficial and over- rewarded charm of manner."
• Johnson: Claims, "Cassio is brave, benevolent and honest."
• Ridley: States, "He is a pivotal figure with great importance to the movement of the plot."
• Veronika Walker: Says, "A beautiful written foil to the General."

Emilia: Analysis and Significance

• Neeley: Describes her as a "prey to the dominant ideology of wifely virtue" and combines "sharp tongue with warm affection."
• Abrahams: Argues that she "accepts her role in society, but does not identify with it."
• Simpson: Asserts, "She dies in the service of the truth" and "Emilia underscores Desdemona’s lack of knowledge in the world."
• Thomas: States, "She is dramatically, and symbolically, the play’s fulcrum" with "moral beauty," and, in stealing the handkerchief, is the catalyst for the play’s crisis.
• Ward: Refers to "Emilia’s role as the backbone of the tragedy."
• Bayley: Characterizes her as the "mouthpiece of repressed femininity."
• Ward: Argues that she "Becomes a hero by the end of the play."
• Honingham: Says "Fear of Iago explains Emilia’s attitude as Shakespeare’s tragedy unfolds" and describes her as "Iago’s most underrated but constant victim is his wife”.
• Thomas: Argues "Emilia is the foil for Desdemona and corrects Desdemona’s occasional naivete".
• Miller: States "As Desdemona loses identity, Emilia gains it".
• Deats: Observes, "As Desdemona moves from articulateness to silence, Emilia progresses to brazen speech".

Roderigo: Character and Function

• Honigmann: Believes Roderigo "activates poisonous impulses in Iago" and his "over-mastering, self-destructive desire for Desdemona mirrors Othello’s."
• Jamieson: Says he is "easily led by the evil Iago."
• Ridley: States "Roderigo is Iago’s dupe, his fool."
• Barker: Believes his "main dramatic function seems to be what little comic relief there is in the play."
• Thomas: Notes "He goes to the devil with his eyes open, yet blindly."

Bianca: Perspectives on Her Role

• Simpson: States "Bianca is, like Othello and Cassio, and outsider."
• Wiltenberg: Believes she "underscores the theme of jealousy" and "shatters the pleasant illusion that sexual relations will conform to the norm of female subordination and faithfulness."
• Mazzola: Sees her as "an emblem of a larger world."
• Bastin: Calls her a "picture of female freedom."
• Adamson: Describes her as a "mute, peripheral figure… none of her thirty-four lines directly impact the plot."
• Newman: Claims she is "no more a strumpet than Emilia or Desdemona".
• John McRae: Calls Bianca the most realistic of the three women.
• Mazzola: Claims that she is linked to prostitution and needlework and introduced to Shakespeare’s audience as coming from outside and interrupting.
• Mazzola: States "Grasping his inability to keep her quiet, Iago can only pretend to control Bianca by ordering her to talk".

Prejudice and Race

• Newman: Argues, "Iago’s manipulation of Othello depends on the moor’s own prejudices against his blackness."
• Singh: Suggests, "As an outsider, he is forced to construct for himself a white, and therefore inauthentic, identity."
• Briggs: Notes, "Blackness was associated with the devil, evil doing, and death".
• Loomba: Claims, "Women and blacks exist as other".
• Ryan: Believes, "He is primed to believe it by the warped view of women and female sexuality that he shares not only with Iago, but with other men" and that "Othello unconsciously shares the white perception of his blackness."
• Mangan: Highlights the play's exploration of race.
• Hunter: Explains, "The word ‘Moor’ was very vague ethnographically, and it very often seems to have meant little more than ‘black-skinned outsider’ ."

Love and Possession

• Newman: Argues, "Desdemona is punished for her desire… because it threatens a white male hegemony in which women cannot be the desiring subjects."
• Phillips: Claims, "Othello’s love of Desdemona is the love of possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war."
• Wayne: Calls Handkerchief - “emblem of Desdemona’s body” and “mastery of her body”.
• Bodkin: Believes, "Desdemona, as she appears in relation to Othello, is not so much individual woman as the Divinity of Love."
• Bates: Suggests love has a civilising power, the vehicle of which is language.

Jealousy

• A.C. Bradley: States, "Othello’s jealousy stems from his noble yet overt trusting nature" and that Othello is “Shakespeare’s most romantic hero”.
• Ryan: Says Jealousy in Othello "reveals the fragility of patriarchal relationships and the dangers of male possessiveness".
• Bloom: Argues jealousy is "Less about external circumstances and more about internal weakness and fear."
• O’Toole: Believes jealousy "reveals the fragility of identity and the ease with which it can be unravelled."
• Greer: Claims, "It is Othello’s jealousy, not Iago’s hatred, that is the real tragedy".
• Serkis: States, "Iago is the very voice of jealousy itself" and says, “He is not the devil. He’s you or me being jealous and not being able to control our feelings”.
• Tyan: Suggests, "Othello is the most easily jealous man that anybody’s ever written about."
• Pushkin: Argues, "Othello was not jealous, he was trusting."
• Jardine: Believes Othello murdered Desdemona “for adultery, not out of jealousy”.
• Freud: Develops a theory of delusional jealousy.
• Fernie: Argues, "The soul of Othello’s jealousy is shame" and "Shame spreads like a disease through the play".
• Dugger: Notes intimate homosocial bonds becoming homosexual bonds cause Iago’s jealousy from a desire for Othello, and that the wedding scene is exemplified as they kneel together and vow, “I am for you”.

Reputation and Honor

• Stallybrass: States, "Honor is a gendered concept" and "A man’s honour was inseparable from his wife’s behavior".
• Cox: Argues, "Men wished to marry virgins. This made reputation an essential commodity in society".
• Woodbridge: Notes, "Misogynists libel women; slanderers blacken one woman’s reputation”.
• Lever: States "In Jacobean tragedy, it is not primarily the conduct of the individual, but of the society which assails him, that stands condemned."

Women and Society

• Coleridge: Says, "The perfection of women is to be characterless", and that “The image of D and E’s bodies on bed shows how a great lady and ordinary gentlewoman are equally defenceless as wives, yet retain their dignity in death”.
• Cox: Notes, "Female characters divide into virgins and saints or whores and devils", and that all three women die for daring to break silence. He later states, "Passive" and “weak”.
• Neely: Argues Each woman is so “measured in response o her husband’s malignancy” that she “fails to prevent her own destruction at her husband’s hands” and that "Friendship is established in the willow scene".
• French: Argues, "Othello is a masculine play, rejecting female sexuality".
• Lapide: Calls women "excellent ornaments".
• Tennerhouse: States that Women who challenge the patriarchy “demand their own deaths”.
• Eales: Highlights how women were viewed as “morally, intellectually and physically weaker”.
• Grennan: Argues there is “the theme of female abuser at the heart of the play”.
• Panek: Claims that in Jacobean times it was a Husband’s duty to punish female adultery “Link to Heywood - “A woman killed with kindness”.
• Vanita: Argues that violence against women kept private and not intervened against staging of bed - in older productions, in corner under sheet, in more recent, lighting dimmed – however violence against men however is public and action is taken immediately

Language and Communication

• Rymer: States, "Desdemona was won by hearing Othello talk" and "This was sufficient enough to make the blacks moor white". Describes Othello as “A bloody farce without salt or savour” and the play as a “tragedy of a handkerchief” (mocking - not sophisticated enough to be a tragedy).
• Shaw: Argues That Language is used to "manipulate and control others for their own evil purposes", and that "Iago’s contamination of linguistic matter ultimately destroys the ordered control of normal behaviour patterns, personal or social".
• Karim-Cooper: Views Othello as a “fantasy of a black man ”.
• Bubb: Describes language and how “Othello is too stupid to be considered a tragic hero” and that “Othello is a play of broken dichotomies”.
• Gonzalez: Argues "Iago pollutes language itself. He twists words into carriers of suspicion, jealousy and deceit", and that "He doesn’t just lie - he infects the way people use and understand words" and that “all of Iago’s religious language is of a similarly blasphemous or demeaning nature”.
• Gonzalez: Suggests Desdemona is “figuratively a warrior in the secular sense since her tongue is her only sword… used defensively against Othello and offensively on behalf of Othello”.

Tragedy and Genre

• Emma Smith: Notes, "Othello has the semantics of a tragedy and the syntax of a comedy”.
• Berry: Argues Othello is “the most rootless of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes”- an outside, enhances the tragedy, and that Othello experiences ‘double consciousness’ of the assimilated European and the Moor - “He is either assimilated into Europe or expelled from humanity”.
• Wain: Suggests the play has a “comitragic” structure which heightens the final tragedy.
• Gordon Watts: Argues that “These periodic inversions of emotional expectation temper the ultimate tragedy and thus make the comic scenes of Othello integral parts of the structure” however he also states that “There is very little comedy in this play”.
• Seaman: Calls Othello’s tragedy a version of Adam’s fall. States Othello has a “double nature”, the “rational vs animal”.
• Miur: Argues Othello’s fatal flaw was his credulity, or hamartia.
• Vitkus: States, "The tragedy of Othello is a drama of conversion" and that “Othello, like the culture that produced it, exhibits a conflation of various tropes of conversion - transformations from Christian to Turk, from virgin to whore, from good to evil, from gracious virtue to black damnation” and that “Iago leads Othello into this ‘religious conversion’ - they kneel together in prayer and Othello makes a “sacred vow” to “heaven” which is really a deal with the Devil, who will possess him eternally”.

Other

• Queen Elizabeth I: described herself as having “body of a weal and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king”.
• Greenblatt: notes "We are never permitted to see Othello and Desdemona alone and at ease together in bed; the marriage, it seems, is never consummated, and this absence resonates throughout the play" and that "Othello’s identity depends on the constant performance of a story”. Explains Othello and Desdemona don’t consummate due to an interruption by the military world and Othello’s racial insecurity
• Cowhig: Claims Othello is “An alien in white society”.
• Smith: Suggests the audience is complicit through their interaction with Iago
• Istel: Notes that in Verdi’s adaptation the first act was cut which he believes was necessary to set up the tragedy and the characters’ natures + why they’re susceptible to the downfall they face, and that Shakespeare was obliged to make three scenes out of one, in pursuance of his aim to present his characters true to life, and clearly to motivate everything - past, present and future. He also argues that “We see Othello alone with Desdemona only as her torturer and murderer”.
• Whalen: Notes the cuts made in the Quarto edition reduces D and E to one dimensional characters - “Desdemona as the patient Griselda and Emilia as the shallow, saucy maid” because the Willow scene was cut,
• Newman: states "Possession of a woman's handkerchief was considered adultery”.
• Malik: Claims Othello is “He is not a little Venetian islander, but a cosmopolitan Moor" and that “he appears to us upright, honourable and straightforward" however that “Venice might be the city of art, learning and martial power, but it is a city forged by conquest and colonialism, a city of ghettos and exclusion, a place of superstition and xenophobia” and that “Honest” Iago is a product of Venice’s wars, its politics and its morality”.
• Gordon: Claims "The clown is Iago” because they both use musical, animal and sexual imagery/ language and twist/ corrupt the meaning of words – however “whereas one is comical, the other is tragic”.