Lisa's Reviews > Othello

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on."

This famous quote made my 14-year-old son, reading Othello for the first time (it was his first Shakespeare ever), come into my room to complain. He was deeply frustrated with the sweet tongue of the evil Iago, speaking in one way and acting in another, spreading fake news and rumours while pretending to be supportive and unselfish.

"Iago is even worse than Uriah Heep", he said, referring to a controversy we had about David Copperfield some time ago. "I begin to believe that being 'umble is the most treacherous thing in the world, hiding evil purposes!"

I of course had to go back and reread Othello in a haste to be able to answer properly, and I realised that my son has a point. The truly honest people are not humble, and do not claim to be. They show their strengths, weaknesses and intentions clearly, and play with open cards, only to lose to the characters they consider most 'onest, for being so very 'umble.

It was interesting for me to see that my son reads Othello not so much as a passionate drama based on jealousy, but rather as a political post-truth play, with the most wicked players on stage winning.

Shakespeare certainly put both jealousy and politics into the plot, and young people who begin their path towards political understanding of the world now, post-2016, feel more strongly about the lying, the manipulation, the slander than about the unreasonable reaction to the suspicion of faithlessness.

For me, reading Shakespeare with more pleasure now than ever, it is proof that his voice is universal and timeless, and that he speaks to yet another generation of readers, just like Dickens.

Unfortunately, we can't write our villains into prisons in the end like Dickens and Shakespeare!