Dolors's Reviews > Othello

“The trust, the office I do hold of you
Not only take away, but let your sentence
Even fall upon my life.” Act I, Scene 3.

This is the Othello the reader meets at the beginning of this tragedy. The Renaissance ideal, an archetypal hero, sure of himself, valiant and honorable, in complete self-control when falsely accused of forcing fair Desdemona, the daughter of a nobleman, to marry him. When confronted by the Duke, his defense plea shines with splendid poetry, calm dignity and the voice of reason, charming everybody who listens to his refined soliloquy.
But Othello is also a black African, known as The Moor, a General in the Venetian Army and a Christian. He is the epitome of many stereotypical paradoxes that coexist in him that somehow anticipate disaster, for there are evil forces that lure the gullible man to give way to the savage instincts of his double nature.
Ironically, Othello’s word is taken at face value in Act I, no sentence is imposed on him and his life is spared but his vows become darkly prophetic when he doesn’t grant innocent Desdemona the same just treatment in the brutal Act V.

“O perjured woman! Thou dost stone my heart,
And mak’st me call what I intend to do
A murder, which I thought a sacrifice.” Act V, Scene 2.

This is the other Othello, the barbarous beast that possesses the man and transforms him into a “civil monster”, into his opposite image, the good Christian “turning Turk”, the “forked-animal”, who blinded by rage and jealousy, kills his wife Desdemona believing she has been unfaithful to him with lieutenant Cassio.
At the root of such violent development, there is the malignant Iago, the most villain of villains whose whole “raison d’être” is wickedness. Never a character was so duplicitous in his machinations, his “direct and honest” glib moralizing so overtly treacherous and his misanthropy so sublimely revealed in the perpetual flow of verbal splendor that blooms in his lines, where there is place for rhymed oaths, sexual puns and degrading animal imagery.

“To show the love and duty that I bear you
With franker spirit. Therefore, as I am bound,
Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof.
Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio.” Act III, Scene 3.

“Love and duty” are at odds and radically confronted in this strangely powerful yet moving tragedy. One can locate them between father and daughter, husband and wife, General and official. But as it’s usual in Shakespeare’s plays, the dramaturge’s main intention remains elusive, for beyond the Christian myth of the temptation scene and the ploys of the devil that influenced centuries of sermons, legends and fables, beyond the crime of passion, there is a pattern of interacting opposites; black vs white, Christian vs Pagan, civilized vs dehumanized, honest vs two-faced; that denotes a superb psychological realism, which echoes with racial prejudice and the inequality in gender relations.

Making virtuous use of symbols, an allegoric storm that separates Othello and Desdemona at sea anticipating Iago’s “foul ad violent” designs, or the macabre incantation of Emilia’s summoning of the General “My Lord, my lord!” when she enters the bedchamber where Desdemona has just pleaded for her life screaming “O Lord, Lord, Lord!” before being mercilessly smothered to death, Shakespeare’s language mesmerizes with stylistic brilliance, intricate syntax and inner rhythms. It is this sumptuous style, which oscillates between majestic control and wild rage, that reflects Othello’s double nature and his tormented love for noble-hearted Desdemona, giving imaginative veracity to the action that won’t fail to moisten the eyes of the most detached of audiences when the fallen hero consumed by “pure grief” seals his own fate with anguished lines that will pierce through the heart of anyone whose love has topped extremity, enough to temporally madden the most lucid of minds. Words never felt more unjust and sublime than in Shakespeare's tragedies:

“Cold, cold, my girl,
Even like thy chastity.
O cursed, cursed slave! Whip me, ye devils,
From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds! Roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulf of liquid fire!
O Desdemon! Dead Desdemon! Dead! O! O!”