SOURCE: Washington, Edward. “‘At the Door of Truth’: The Hollowness of Signs in Othello.” In Othello: New Essays by Black Writers, edited by Mythili Kaul, pp. 167-87. Washington D.C.: Howard University Press, 1997.

[In the following essay, Washington locates Othello's personal flaw in his tragic “dependence on image at the expense of truth, reality, and hope” and details the process of his downfall within the context of race.]

Even in this time of diverse, sophisticated, and politically progressive critical methodologies, Kenneth Burke's formalist statements (144, 149) remain a valuable guide for critics of Othello who wish to avoid the dubious conclusions that ensue from ill-premised racist ideology. In the first detailed account of racism's influence on Othello scholarship, Martin Orkin exposes and denounces the long tradition of racist discourse that pervades even the highest echelons of Othello criticism. Several scholars have since taken up the issue of race in Othello seemingly in response to Orkin's implicit challenge to critics to construct unbiased (that is, reliable if not precisely “objective”) evaluations of the drama's racial dimensions. Although most of these more recent essays strive to establish critical positions that eschew hasty racial prejudgments, no reading of the play has yet emerged that fully sets forth the semantic complexity of Othello's blackness.¹ There are two reasons for this. First, Othello scholarship has relied too heavily on historical and anthropological methodologies to explain the significance of Othello's blackness and has neglected available alternative meanings of blackness within the play.² Second, critics tend to evaluate Othello's motivations and actions from the delimiting (or delimited) gaze of the dominant white Venetian society, thereby precluding an unsentimentalized view of “the action as a whole” from Othello's perspective—that is, from the perspective of an “all sufficient” (IV.i.261) black figure ascribed a culturally marginal position by white “others.” In the effort to address these two critical deficiencies, and to supply the interpretive lacuna regarding racial blackness in Othello, this essay will explore the relationship between the play's racial signifiers and the transmutations of convention in the text. More important, given the ways in which the authority of Shakespeare—and by extension that of his critics—continues to shape normative cultural values, this essay will also seek to determine the degree to which Shakespeare's Othello reconfigures, rather than confirms, conventional cultural stereotypes of blacks.

The difficulty in defining Othello's blackness as either a conventional or unconventional literary sign (or trope) is illustrated by the sharply varying opinions of critics who question its moral and aesthetic value. Thus, whereas Eldred Jones, Gwyn Williams, and Martin Orkin see Othello as admirable (that is, finally unstereotypical and unconventional) because of his intrinsic but tragically vulnerable honor and nobility, others such as Lemuel Johnson and Anthony Barthelemy see Othello's blackness as an artfully devised ironic mask, a black patina of virtue and nobility that obscures the more conventional meaning of the sign. And although cultural materialist Ania Loomba believes that Othello's “barbarity” is an “ideological construct” rather than a quality “natural” to blacks, she warns against glossing the faults in Othello that do in fact uphold insidious racial stereotypes. This variety of critical opinion leaves unresolved the question of whether blackness in Othello is good or evil, literal or symbolic, conventional or unconventional, stereotypical or typically human. As Elliot Tokson laments:

Arguments have been raised both for and against the view of Othello as a noble Moor … and the problem of that nobility—or barbarism—unavoidably has turned attention to the question of Shakespeare's racial tolerance or bigotry. Some critics believe that Shakespeare was uninterested in the racial aspects of the tragic situation altogether while others hold that Shakespeare was so deeply concerned with Othello's blackness that to miss that theme is to miss the heart of the play. … Whether Shakespeare's imagination probed more deeply than any other writer of this period into the possibilities of the black man, or whether he basically followed the stereotyped pattern on which he traced the outline of Othello's character, or whether he combined popular notions with original perspective are gritty questions that one could more fruitfully pursue were there available some suitable materials with which Othello could be compared.

(xi)

Tokson's frustration with the inconclusiveness of meaning inherent in Othello's blackness is, however, exactly the point: that is, the ambiguous mixture of virtues and deficiencies in Othello is what makes him both more mimetically “human,” and tragically complex. This is not to suggest (as many have) that Othello's blackness is simply incidental (or coincidental) to the “larger” meanings in the play. On the contrary, although Othello's blackness is not a one-dimensional emblematic signifier, it does represent an essential element in his dramatic characterization—like Richard III's deformity, Shylock's “Jewishness,” Falstaff's rotundity, or Lear's age. That is, blackness in Othello's character provides the rationale for why he thinks and acts the way he does in the given dramatic context.

I

Bernard Spivack, Mark Rose, and Howard Felperin (among others) draw attention to a metaphorical relationship that exists between the play's dramatic realities regarding race and the play's dramatization of blackness as an unconventional Shakespearean literary emblem. They see Othello as a struggle between two traditional literary genres—(chivalric) romance and morality drama—each vying with the other for ascendancy in the play.³ To the extent that Othello knows his “cues” and can play his part “without a prompter” (I.iii.82-83), he would have us see the play as a romance: more particularly, I would argue, as his version of the romantic fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.” In this tale, Othello plays the part of the black prince, once thought to be beastly, but whose true beauty is revealed through the love of the fair woman whom he marries. Iago, on the other hand, in his role as playwright or stage director, prefers to have us see the play as a morality drama, with himself in the role of Chief Vice. Through deceit and innuendo, Iago seeks to destroy Othello's romance by turning the virtue of the would-be fairy tale into the pitch of tragedy. Taken together, Iago's lies and innuendos make up a false story, a parallel second plot that constitutes a morality drama test for the Beauty and Beast of Othello's plot. As the author of this false second story, Iago strongly resembles the dark tempter Archimago in Spenser's Faerie Queene. Like Archimago, Iago deceives his victim into believing that his love has been unfaithful to him. Like Archimago, Iago also achieves his goal by deluding his victim with falsehoods so realistic that the false seems truer than the true. Like the Redcrosse Knight, once Othello is taken in by these potent lies, he loses faith in real love.⁴

In the balance of the struggle between Iago and Othello hangs not only the play's tragic outcome but also the fate of the image that Othello has carefully built up of himself. That is, depending on the outcome of the struggle, Othello's reputation as an “all-sufficient” black soldier will be either furthered or destroyed. Similarly, on the level of metadrama, Othello's (or Shakespeare's) poetic image of unconventional black beauty either will be confirmed through romance or, should Iago prevail, will revert (as many critics argue it does) to stereotypical definitions of beastly blackness.

II

In spite of Othello's relatively secure situation in Venice, his role in the drama is circumscribed (more than has been generally recognized) by the social realities of race-centered marginalization, or racism. This racism is not always overt (Othello is held in high regard by many); rather it is most often a latent and muted hatred of blackness that surfaces suddenly with vituperative and sometimes destructive force, with or without the necessity of demonstrably “Moorish” behavior by Othello. For example, throughout the play, Emilia either implies or states outright that Othello is unfit for Desdemona because of his blackness; Roderigo glosses over his own unsuitability for Desdemona by denigrating Othello as “the thick lips” or the “gross … lascivious Moor” (I.i.66, 126). Iago of course claims to hate the Moor for particular and perhaps for general reasons, and it is significant that he (and Roderigo) incite the ire of Brabantio, the “good” (that is, white) citizen and cheated father, by resorting to racebaiting.

Brabantio himself reflects most sharply the quite real and unpredictable nature of antiblackness in Venice, dangerous even to a black figure as well-situated as Othello. Having once been the charitable host to Othello, Brabantio suddenly becomes not simply a wounded father who has lost his daughter to an “unlawful” suitor but a racist demagogue who would brand Othello a conjuring black witch, to be imprisoned (and burned at the stake, we might imagine, should the accusations be sustained). Thus, although Othello has found some acceptance in Venice, his blackness is nevertheless susceptible to the dangers of white racism that erupt when he transgresses Venetian definitions of racial acceptability.

Although recent critics have begun to acknowledge the role of racism in the play, few have pursued in much depth the degree to which the play shows Othello himself to be keenly aware of forces that stand ready to reject his blackness at the least provocation. It is unlikely that Othello could have achieved the success he has over a period of years without being cognizant of the latent (and overt) racism in society. Despite the fair number of critics who maintain that Othello's tragedy results from his being an outsider in Venice, one wonders how Othello could have not only survived but thrived here, without having understood a good deal about this society's dangerous racial waters. I would suggest that Othello has survived Venice's latent racism by cultivating a reputation and respect strong enough to hold back the tide of antiblackness. The bedrock of this reputation is, of course, military prowess, but Othello is no mere brute soldier. He has the charisma of a commander, and he emphasizes the ceremonial aspects, the pomp and circumstance of the position he holds. But more than this, Othello has established himself socially in Venice: he is well liked, much respected, and welcomed into the homes of Venetian aristocrats like Brabantio. He inspires so much respect in fact that he is able to defuse, without much effort, the racial protest against a marriage that few dominant groups would allow to an outsider. (Even the Jewess Jessica in The Merchant of Venice must turn Christian in order to marry Lorenzo.)

Othello achieves this acceptance by his politic behavior. We see it in his conduct of military affairs: in the selection of the highly regarded Cassio as his lieutenant; in the way he halts the impending clash on the streets of Venice; in the “full liberty” he grants his men after the defeat of the Turks (and before they begin their new duties in Cyprus). We also see it in Othello's judicious handling of Cassio's drunken brawling on the island: Othello demotes Cassio, not because he believes him unworthy but rather to “make … an example” (II.iii.242) of him to the other soldiers. (As Iago says, the demotion is “a punishment more in policy than in malice” [II.iii.265-66]). We see it again in his timely reminders to Venice of how much it has benefited from his military service. Othello's politic abilities are not limited to war matters, however; in social situations, too, he uses his intelligence and his grandiloquence (G. Wilson Knight's “Othello music”) in a manner that serves to distance him from conventional white notions of blacks as barbarians and beasts.⁵ More than being simply articulate and sonorous, Othello is a consummate storyteller whose tales impress not only Desdemona but even the Duke, who observes that Othello's story “would win [his] daughter too” (I.iii.171). Othello's wondrous stories invariably draw attention to his stellar accomplishments—but in addition to presenting images of all sufficiency, they are infused with a pathos that gains him generous sympathy and tolerance from the Venetians.

There are times also when Othello goes to great lengths to efface himself, ingratiate himself, and evoke pity. Many critics have argued that Othello's excessive deference to the Venetians denotes a callow disavowal of his identity as a black outsider, and that this naivete about his “place” as a black in Venice explains why he is so easily duped by the lies of a “true” Venetian like Iago. This view of Othello leads Anthony Barthelemy to conclude that Othello, as a Shakespearean black character, “never possesses the power or desire to subvert civic and natural order” (161).

To this charge of co-optation or “Uncle Tomism” in Othello, I would respond that Othello uses ingratiation, purposely, to smooth his way in a racist Venice. His intent is to achieve success and humanization for his blackness in moderate fashion. Othello's mode of achieving change differentiates him from Aaron, who would avoid racial conflict by leaving Rome to return “home”; from the “dark lady,” who seemingly never appears in public with her white lover; and from Caliban, who attempts to raise violent revolt against his oppressors. Most simply, the choice between militancy or moderation in the need for change is endemic to all political contexts in which weaker forces struggle against those with more power. (In black-white race relations, the best example of this conflict is the militancy of Malcolm X and the moderation of Martin Luther King, Jr.) Hence, Othello has not forgotten that he is black, nor does he forget his cultural heritage or his history of enslavement. Rather he has taken a moderate course as he seeks to achieve personal success through the politic “humanization” of his blackness in Venice.

In a broader sense, Othello's deference to forces that have power over him is part of a larger issue of decorum and “place” in the play. That is, all the characters are very much concerned with their status in social hierarchies—whether in terms of public influence, like Brabantio; military rank, like Iago and Cassio; the proper place of fathers, daughters, wives, and “men”; or the proper “place” of a black in white Venice. Like Othello, the other characters are concerned with either maintaining their achieved “place” by any means they can or trying to improve their given status through some form of deference or ingratiation to those who have power to grant them what they seek. In one way or another, everyone has to be politic.

Thus, when Othello tells the Duke, “Rude am I in my speech … / And therefore little shall I grace my cause / In speaking for myself” (I.iii.81-89), we realize that this is far from true. And when Othello claims that “little of this great world can I speak / More than pertains to feats of broils and battles” (I.iii.86-87), we sense, likewise, that he exaggerates the extent to which his life has been “a flinty and steel couch of war” (I.iii.230). And after the bold fait accompli of his elopement with Desdemona, Othello is again politic—in deferring to the Duke's judgement, and by downplaying his sexual desires—thus refashioning the stereotype of blacks as lascivious beasts, which Iago and Roderigo have invoked to incite Brabantio (that is, the black ram tupping a white ewe). As Othello says:

And heaven defend your good souls that you think
I will your serious and great business scant,
For she is with me; … no, when light-wing'd toys,
And feather'd Cupid, foils with wanton dullness
My speculative and active instruments,
That my disports corrupt and taint my business,
Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,
And all indign and base adversities
Make head against my estimation!

(I.iii.266-74)

Although several critics have argued that these statements reveal the central patriarchal flaw in Othello's “love” for Desdemona, it seems to me that they are the finishing touches Othello gives to a muted image of black sexuality, an image that attempts to assuage conventional white fears of black lasciviousness.

This politic behavior determines, in part, Othello's unlikely marriage. Because Othello asks himself why he ever married (III.iii.246), we might presume that he had some reason for not marrying earlier. The most likely explanation for his extended bachelorhood is that the soldier's life has not allowed “skillets” to interfere with “service”; but it is interesting to speculate on the circumstances (beyond love) that lead him to marry this particular woman at this particular time, especially given the potential racial dangers of such a marriage.

After world travel, exploits, and wars, Othello has seemingly found a place for himself in Venice, even before his marriage to Desdemona. He is the Venetians' chief military officer; he speaks their language and is a Christian; he seems well connected socially and has loyal supporters; he has “fortunes” that revert to Venetian legal “relatives” on his death. Thus, despite his blackness, Othello is more integrated into the dominant community than are other Shakespearean black characters, and he is less socially isolated than Venice's own Shylock. Yet, although the cornerstone of black Othello's acceptance in Venice is his military indispensability, it is also true that this indispensability is subject to time. Being “no god” (III.iv.146), the strength of his mighty arm will decline as he ages—and Othello is already “getting older” at the start of the play. Thus, when we meet Othello, he is a man at the apex of his career and at a point in life where it would be plausible for him to be more open to the prospect of settling down. In this context, marriage to an admired and well-placed Venetian woman might bestow on him an ideal image of social (and human) sufficiency that would protect his blackness in Venice in his declining years.⁶ This is not to suggest that Othello calculatingly directs his life toward this end, nor to doubt that he “loves the gentle Desdemona” (I.ii.25) as he says he does. Rather, the dramatic givens of the play—racism, Othello's age, and later, the correlation Othello sees between a successful marriage and a successful military “occupation”—simply emphasize the further advantages of his marriage to Desdemona at present.⁷ As in “Beauty and the Beast,” she will be the beautiful wife who will help to reveal the full humanity in Othello's blackness.

In the light of the discussion thus far, it is not surprising that Othello's concern for his image, especially in the context of his marriage, becomes the vulnerable spot that Iago attacks when he selects the marriage as the vehicle through which he will destroy the Moor.

III

The beginning of Act II presents an Othello who has defended himself in a judicious and politic manner against each racist charge leveled against him, an Othello at the high point of his powers. His facile victory over the Turks only further confirms the security of his place in Venice. At this point, Othello's romance seems “well-shipped” (II.i.47).

But Iago perseveres in his Vice-like effort to discredit the Moor and to transform this blithe romance into a dark morality drama. In seeking to turn Othello's unconventional virtue into conventional pitch, he applies jealousy, a potent morality drama temptation that might cause anyone to miss a step. The jealousy that Iago grafts on Othello is, however, simply the catalyst that brings to the fore a more prominent vulnerability in Othello—a vulnerability of which not even Iago is fully aware and one that Othello can least defend himself against (as seems indicated by his swift, easy, and complete collapse): his fear of the loss of his image of “all in all” sufficiency in Venice. Thus, while the thought of Desdemona's unfaithfulness touches a raw nerve in Othello, it also raises the specter of a dashed opportunity (at a key point in his career) to preserve and even enhance the possibility of a safe and viable life in Venice—a city whose acceptance of blackness would seem to be contingent on his maintaining a flawless image of all-sufficiency.⁸ Thus when Iago mounts his assault, the Moor loses rational control of a situation that, earlier in his life, he might have been able to control; or had Iago's evil not been quite so pernicious,⁹ one he might have been able to ward off (as he does Brabantio's less potent challenge earlier on).

After what appear to have been years devoted to promoting an image of ideal blackness that allows him to claim his due and protect his place in Venice, Othello has, in fact, begun to reason and act on images of truth as if they were truth itself. His storytelling, for example, shows him using vivid and effective images of his past to win hearts and minds in Venice. These imagistic tales are essentially true but sound suspiciously similar to those titillatingly imagistic (but apocryphal) travel book stories so popular at the time. Even Othello's beautiful language is sprinkled with high-sounding neologisms (provulgate, exsuffligate) whose actual meaning and application are vague. Significantly, the things he cherishes most about his life as a soldier involve the outward trappings of war, the images of war rather than actual fighting:

Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars
That makes ambition virtue; O farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife;
The royal banner and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!

(III.iii.355-60)

Ironically, there is a vast discrepancy between the image and the reality—between Othello's gestures and the fact that there is little or no concrete action to back them up. Othello helps to keep the peace in Venice (“Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust'em” [I.ii.58-59]), but no fighting actually occurs. In the ensuing sea battle with the Turks, strangely, a storm sinks the enemy ships, and Othello receives accolades without having fired a shot. Othello's scapegoating of Cassio on Cyprus saves him from having to “lift [his] arm” (II.iii.199) to quell further quarrels among his men.

The same dearth of substantive action prevails in situations occurring after Iago's lies about Desdemona have begun. For instance, the Moor's menacing threats against Iago in Act III and Emilia in Act V fall flat, as Iago slithers to safety and Emilia proclaims, “Thou hast not half the power to do me harm as I have to be hurt” (V.ii.163-64). Othello invokes black vengeance against Cassio but shuffles the job off onto Iago, and in the end, he sees the murder attempt fail. He is disarmed by Montano, and his final avenging lunge at Iago is ineffective. The only person he is physically violent with is Desdemona—and as Lodovico says, violence against a woman is not valorous. Othello does manage to take his own life—but this represents less an act of warlike power than the supreme gesture of powerlessness.¹⁰

The same empty gestures mark Othello's sexual power in the play. That is, despite all the talk about sexuality in Othello, there is little of it in the relationship between Othello and Desdemona. Although I disagree with those who suggest that Othello and Desdemona never consummate their marriage, the dramatic action of the play is orchestrated in a way that suggests that the couple's private time together suffers constant interruption. And after Iago's lies, sexual relations between the two seem simply unlikely. Also, although little reason exists to doubt that Othello loves Desdemona, many have noted how Othello often speaks of her in idealized Petrarchan terms—revealing his sense of her as a wonderful “image” of womanhood rather than as a real woman to love. Thus, for Othello, Desdemona appears a “rose,” a “perfect chrysolite,” a “pearl” with skin as “white as snow” and as “smooth as alabaster”; his “soul's joy” to whom he would “deny nothing.”

Given this tendency to objectify Desdemona as an “image” of beauty, and the way in which the play obscures real sexuality between them, Othello's reactions to Desdemona in the bedchamber scene just prior to her murder not only raise questions concerning his sexual power but also accentuate what lies at the heart of Othello's susceptibility to Iago's evil: his general propensity to treat abstract images as concrete realities. When Othello contemplates the sleeping Desdemona, with genuine ardor he murmurs words of Petrarchan praise and love. Then, when she wakens and invites him to bed, offering him, it seems, an opportunity to give his romance story a happy ending after all, the prospect of an enlivened and desirous Desdemona (as opposed to an alabaster figure) disorients Othello, and he draws back from the prospect of love made concrete and actual. Although it is easy enough to see Othello's withdrawal as the steeling of his resolve to carry out the execution, it also seems clear that it is not within the scope of his capabilities to move beyond an imagined view of love to its concrete reality. At the very end of the play, we do find Othello and Desdemona lying together on the bed; but the lifeless bodies only underscore the lost potential for real love—and even this final image of unity is disrupted by the presence of Emilia lying beside them.

IV

Othello's too-strong dependence on gestures and images—his taking them for truth—is the Achilles heel Iago exploits. Such gestures include the false images of Cassio's nonexistent dream, the misrepresenting dumb show of Cassio's cuckolding brag, and generally speaking, all circumstantial signs “which lead … to the door of truth” (III.iii.412-13). This dependence on image prevents Othello from seeing that the white antagonism he would defend himself against has undergone a change for the better—perhaps due to his own influence. That is, even with its dangers, Othello's Venice is not the antiblack and antilife “wilderness of tigers” that Aaron contends with in Titus's Rome; even the Venetians in The Merchant of Venice are more superciliously intolerant of cultural others, among them Moroccan princes and rich Jews, than is the case in Othello. In fact, given Renaissance England's and Renaissance drama's image of Italian cities as hotbeds of intrigue and sin, all in all, Othello's Venice seems remarkably civilized. This is not to suggest that Venetian society is ideal; however, in key ways, it is more tolerant and accepting of Othello than he realizes. Othello's inability to perceive this, however, makes it impossible for him to read the signs of hope that exist for him in Venice—positive signs that would allow him to resist the fearful images of lost love, lost marriage and lost occupation, painted by Iago.

The leaders of the State indicate this change and hope. They ferret out the truth and have a clear sense of justice—traits that bode well for a black man wary of racist stereotypes, assumptions, and prejudgments by whites. The best examples of the State's pursuit of truth occur during the War Room scene in Act I. The Duke and several other leaders receive a flurry of confusing and conflicting reports about the strength and strategy of the enemy Turks. Obviously, these false reports foreshadow the seemingly true falsehoods that Iago will unleash on Othello during the course of the play. Through patience and good judgment, however, the Venetian leaders uncover the truth about the Turks, seeing through the false report of Angelo, one who, like Iago, should be “honest” but is not. Later, the State, through the Duke, challenges and dismisses Brabantio's accusations against Othello as “thin habits and poor likelihoods” (I.iii.108) and finally adjudges Othello a suitable husband for Desdemona. Further, no leader in the State denigrates Othello; and even when the truth of Othello's crime is known, Lodovico responds more in sorrow than in anger.

Corroborating and extending the idea that these Venetians are more unconventionally accepting of Othello's blackness than he realizes are the suggestions that Othello is not the only “outsider” in Venice, a remarkably healthy political and religious state whose power and success derive from cultural heterogeneity rather than from narrow ethnocentrism. This sense of Venice as an expansive, inclusive, and fluid society comes to us in part from the many references to people, places, and things that originate outside the city's ethnic and geographical boundaries but that, nevertheless, seem integral to Venetian life and perspective. The characters, for example, allude to crusadoes, carracks, guineas, coloquintidas, and Spanish swords; they have some knowledge of monkeys, baboons, aspics, crocodiles, locusts, and Barbary horses; they have been to or know about Aleppo, Rhodes, Cyprus, Egypt, Mauritania (and Moors). Cited also are the Pontic, the Propontic, and the Hellespont, as well as England, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Rome, Sparta, and Verona. Venetian men are said to be partial to “foreign laps” (IV.iii.88), and the Venetian women would proverbially “walk barefoot to Palestine” (IV.iii.38-39) to find a good husband. All of these references connote a sense of cultural and geographic expansiveness. Then too, there is the well-known passage in which Emilia speaks to Desdemona at length about what she would do to gain “all the world”: the “huge thing” of “great price” that she would risk “purgatory for” if she could have it for her labor (IV.iii.65-75). Even here, Emilia's reference serves as the culminating epiphany to over thirty allusions to the “world” in this play—from Brabantio who wants to be judged by “the world” (I.ii.72) if his accusation of Othello is false, to Iago's desire to bring his monstrous evil “to the world's light” (I.iii.402), to the Clown who would “catechize the world” (III.iv.13) to find Cassio.

Admittedly, other Shakespearean plays allude to places outside of the immediate dramatic setting. In Othello, however, the Venetians are construed to be the leaders of a group of Christian “others” who join together to oppose, not non-Venetians, but rather nonbelievers—in this case the infidel Turks: Florentines, like Cassio; Greeks, like Marcus Luccicios; Cypriots, who are old friends; black Moors “of here and everywhere” (I.i.137) like Othello. In fact, as Venice's field general, it is Othello's “occupation” to unite Florentines, Greeks, Cypriots, and Venetians alike under the Christian banner of the Venetian State and to serve the State in places like Aleppo, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Mauritania.

This general acceptance of heterogeneity and of the Other is particularized in Desdemona. She is the center of moral rightness and truth in the play,¹¹ and it follows that her views on blackness provide the best instruction regarding its meaning in the play. At the beginning of the drama, we are told that Desdemona's love for Othello derives from having seen “his visage in his mind” (I.iii.252), thereby rendering Othello's racial blackness a moot issue in her affections for him. In Act III, after Desdemona discovers that she has misplaced the handkerchief, Emilia asks her if the Moor is jealous. Desdemona replies, “Who, he? I think the sun where he was born / Drew all such humours from him” (III.iv.26-27). Here, not only does Desdemona reject the conventional stereotype of black jealousy, but her speculation that Africa's hot climate is actually beneficial opposes the standard Renaissance view of Africa as the “foul furnace”¹² that turned Africans into hellish black devils. Futhermore, in a play that so earnestly questions whether the “best” women in a society ought not to marry their own kind, it is significant that, even after she has been called a “whore” and struck in public, Desdemona asserts that Othello's “[u]nkindness may do much, / And his unkindness may defeat my life, / But never taint my love” (IV.ii.161-63). When Desdemona affirms her love for Othello despite his behavior, the figurative sense of “unkind” as “unnatural” and thus “racially different” is heard as well, and Desdemona vows that—no matter what Othello has done, or why—she will not capitulate to the temptation to scapegoat his racial Otherness.

The idea of Othello's Venice as a heterogeneous state (and therefore more accepting of Othello than he realizes) is nevertheless confused by the racism and ethnocentrism that Iago advances in order to create a larger “place” or status for himself at the expense of an outsider. Moreover, although Roderigo, Brabantio, and (to a lesser degree) Emilia also foster racial divisiveness, these Venetians are as much under Iago's spell as Othello or Cassio.¹³ It is Iago who sabotages the friendship, camaraderie, and love that has developed around, or in spite of, difference. He helps to poison the friendship between Brabantio and Othello and between Othello and Cassio; he tries to divide Cassio and Montano, the respective lieutenants of the newly combined Venetian and Cypriot forces. Most important, he poisons the love between Othello and Desdemona, in part by emphasizing their differences:

Not to affect many proposed matches,
Of her own clime, complexion and degree,
Whereto we see in all things nature tends;
Fie, we may smell in such a will most rank,
Foul disproportion; thoughts unnatural.
.....I may fear
Her will, recoiling to her better judgment,
May fall to match you with her country forms,
And happily repent.

(III.iii.233-37; 239-42)

In general then, Iago seeks to turn fathers against daughters, husbands against wives, men against women, whites against blacks, and ultimately a heterogeneous Venetian society against itself.

Despite Iago's antiblackness, the play itself intentionally undercuts blackness as a signifier of evil by investing the white characters (even the more likable ones) with traits that are dark and sinister: Brabantio is exposed as a hypocrite and a racist; Roderigo is a fortune-hunter, a racist, and a would-be murderer; Emilia's loyalty and egalitarianism are diametrically counterposed by her slavishness, her deceit, and her bigotry; the suave Cassio has a nasty temper and a coarse side to his view of women. Even Desdemona seems to sway in the wrong direction when she attempts to redress Othello's demotion of Cassio. And Iago, of course, epitomizes the play's conversion of white to black as he plays the part of a Renaissance white devil. But the character who best exemplifies how the play transmutes the conventional meanings of black and white in Othello is Bianca.

Giving the name Bianca (that is, white in Italian) to a relatively substantial character in a play with a major black character is highly suggestive. As the character signifying whiteness, Bianca should, according to convention, be an ideal Petrarchan woman—which she is not. Yet, confusingly, a further reversal in Bianca's unconventionally “evil” whiteness occurs when she is said to be a whore in order to obtain the essentials of “bread and clothes” (IV.i.95). Also, in a play so obsessed with fidelity, Bianca loves but one man (although her profession gives her license to “love” many [IV.i.97]), and like Desdemona with Othello, she remains devoted to Cassio despite his ill-treatment of her.

But Bianca's most positive aspect is her implied rejection of Iago's hypocrisy and falsehood. At the end of Act IV, she rebels against Iago's and Emilia's efforts to bewhore her and to implicate her falsely in the wounding of Cassio. Even more significant is Bianca's earlier refusal to make a copy of Desdemona's stolen handkerchief: in refusing to fall in line with Iago's surreptitious effort to create a second (morality drama) story of infidelity with the handkerchief, she refuses to fabricate a false signifier of Othello's and Desdemona's romance. Moreover, in declining to “take out the work” (that is, destroy through replication) of the true love token (IV.i.153), Bianca is the first to reject outright Iago's evil designs. Her defiance signals a major turning point in the play, the point where other manipulated characters begin to throw off Iago's influence, thus bringing his plot to light.

The point here is that the conventional forms of antiblackness in this play occur almost exclusively in the context of Iago's fabrications about Othello and Desdemona. The racist sentiments in the play are uttered either by Iago or by characters over whom he has gained power through an exploitation of their frailties. As such, Iago spins an Archimago-like illusion of racial intolerance that distorts a truer (though certainly not perfect) reality of Venice that Othello does not discern.

V

Despite any sympathy we might have for Othello's need to foster an ideal black image in Venice, and despite our awareness of Iago's potent malignity, Othello remains culpable. Although his culpability ensues neither from his emblematic blackness nor (up to a point) from his “human” susceptibility to error and sin, Othello may be held accountable for his failure to read and understand the unconventional signs of hope in Venice that could have allowed him to see through Iago's false images.

In a sense, the question of Othello's culpability ought to be resolved when he realizes that he has foolishly killed a faithful wife, and seeing his error, embarks on what appears to be a reconciling course of tragic resolution. With good tragic form, Othello confesses his mistakes and then takes his own life in order to atone for his tragic folly. Thus, although Othello fails in his attempt to remake “Beauty and the Beast,” he does manage to rework his part to fit that of the hero in a tragic romance (“I will kill thee, / And love thee after” [V.ii.18-19]). After all, to die by one's own hand while in the arms of one's slain lover is the stuff of tragic romance in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra. The point, however, is that although Othello realizes that he has mistakenly killed a faithful wife, and that a scheming ensign has gulled him, he never recognizes how his own too-strong dependence on images has contributed to the crime he has committed. This lack of recognition reveals his inability, even at the end, to see the whole truth. Thus, Othello's noble reconciliation at the end of the play is more ambiguous than it initially appears, and there is much in Othello's last words and deed to suggest that the image of blackness in this play is not redeemed.

For example, something seems awry in Othello's perception of reality when he describes Montano, the soldier who has disarmed him, as a “puny whipster” (V.ii.245). He understates the soldierly abilities of Montano and overstates his own capabilities. Some lines later, he seems to come to terms with his actual powerlessness when he admits that his threat against Gratiano is but a “vain boast” (V.ii.265). Yet it is disquieting that Othello should define his lost power as his inability to “control … fate” (V.ii.266), since he is at least partly to blame in the death of Desdemona. Othello cannot have fully come to terms with his own failings if he can refer to the Desdemona he has murdered as an “ill-starr'd wench” (V.ii.273). Just a few lines further, Othello asserts that Desdemona's faultless spirit “will hurl [his] soul from heaven, / And fiends will snatch at it” (V.ii.275-76); but despite his genuine anguish, he again misses the point when he fails to acknowledge not only Desdemona's commitment to their conjugal love but also the forgiveness and redemption she offers when she assumes responsibility for his crime.

The most telling instances of ambiguity concerning Othello's redeemed vision occur in his very last speech. Although the tone of Othello's once again noble words is lofty, the words themselves raise many questions about the clarity of Othello's vision and his motivations at the end. That is, although Othello claims to be heart-stricken over the senseless loss of the woman he loves, he begins his final speech with, “Soft you, a word or two … / I have done the state some service, and they know't” (V.ii.339-40). We have seen how Othello has used this ploy, understandably but manipulatively, to defend his ideal black image from racist attacks; but here, Othello's reinvocation of an earlier politic defensiveness seems uncontritely self-serving and unredeemingly out of place, not only in the light of his contrition but also in the light of his culpability in Desdemona's death.

Shortly thereafter Othello almost literally spells out how his part in recent events should be represented, in writing, to the Venetian State. As he has done in the past, Othello idealizes the image of himself that he would have Venice remember. When he tells Lodovico to “speak of my deeds as they are; nothing extenuate” (V.ii.343), he should mean, “Don't spare the awful truth”—but he probably does not. Further, in instructing Lodovico not to “set down aught in malice” (V.ii.344), Othello seems to say, “Don't tone down anything about me (for I am great of heart), but also, don't say anything that suggests that you don't approve of me.” Othello thus asks us to keep our image of him not only grand but also uncritical—for his errors are but the consequence of “unlucky deeds” (V.ii.342). He goes on to fashion his future storied image of himself as “one that lov'd not wisely, but too well: / Of one not easily jealous” (V.ii.345-46). But is he completely truthful when he claims to have loved Desdemona “too well”? Did he love her so well that he judged her guilty on evidence that even Iago called circumstantial? Did he love her too well when he denied her the right to prove herself innocent? Can we ever accept his view that in killing Desdemona quickly he has somehow been “merciful” (V.ii.88)? And can we accept, without question or qualification, his assertion that he is not easily jealous in the absence of all resistance on his part against the lies of Iago? To raise such questions is to deny neither Othello's love for Desdemona nor the pernicious evil of Iago, but rather to gauge the degree to which Othello fully sees, understands, admits to, and mends the weaknesses within himself that have allowed Iago to bring forth the hideous scene that lies before him.

In short, the other characters in Othello come to terms with the truth, confess their disastrous errors, and go on to gain either real or symbolic salvation. Although Othello appears to undergo a similar process, his continued posturing prompts us to question whether he has recognized how his dependence on image has contributed to the tragic events—and in turn, to wonder if in fact he redeems himself with his dramatic self-sacrifice. In questioning the soundness of Othello's tragic resolution, we must also question whether he has seen the avenues of hope before him that might have saved his wife, his life, and his soul in Venice. That is, has Othello understood that Desdemona accepted him, loved him, and then saved him with her forgiveness? Does Othello (despite his error) see the possibility of redemptive vindication at the hands of a clear-sighted, just, and tolerant white Venetian state? And, in the context of the play as a morality drama, has Othello faith enough to believe that he will receive grace despite his earthy trials and sins?

VI

The last half of Othello's last speech is an imagistic travelogue of his sojourns culminating in his story of the slaughtered infidel. Othello then transposes the image of the slain infidel into a metaphorical image that represents his own faithlessness and penitent suicide. Putting a knife to his own throat is Othello's last grand gesture. Yet Gratiano startles us with his deflating observation that Othello's ostensibly noble and redeeming act mars “all that's spoke” (V.ii.358).

In the context of morality drama, Othello's suicide (especially with the signs of change and hope in Venice) denotes his capitulation to the last and most subtle deception of Vice—despair—the hopelessness that blinds one to the grace of God. Hence, at the end of the play, we find Othello to be in much the same predicament as Spenser's Redcrosse as he nears the end of his trials. Like Othello, the image-bound Redcrosse struggles with his fiend in an effort to come to terms with his lack of faith in a faithful woman. Having seen his errors, Redcrosse, like Othello, would redress his sins by doing away with himself at knifepoint:

[The fiend] to [Redcrosse] raught a dagger sharpe and keene,
And gave it him in hand: his hand did quake,
And tremble like a leafe of Aspin greene,
And troubled bloud through his pale face was scene
To come, and goe with tydings from the hart,
As it a running messenger had beene.
At last resolved to worke his finall smart
He lifted up his hand, that backe againe did start.

(I.ix.51)

But unlike Othello, in the end, Redcrosse remains open to the truth of Una's love and forgiveness and God's grace—and pulls back from the pit to gain his salvation:

“Come, come away, fraile, feeble, fleshly wight,
Ne let vaine words bewitch thy manly hart,
Ne divelish thoughts dismay thy constant spright.
In heavenly mercies hast thou not a part?
Why shouldst thou then despeire, that chosen art?
Where justice growes, there grows eke greater grace,
The which doth quench the brond of hellish smart,
And accurst hand-writing doth deface.
Arise, Sir knight arise, and leave this cursed place.”
.....So up he rose, and thence amounted streight.

(I.ix.53; 54)

The trials of Redcrosse reflect the trials of morality drama protagonists generally; and to the degree that Othello is a play that incorporates the form and substance of morality drama, Othello's attempt to redeem himself through an otherwise noble suicide inadvertently leads him directly into the clutches of a hellish Vice. Thus, in the metadramatic struggle between genres, morality drama bests romance; for as Lodovico observes to Iago as the curtain is closed on the tragic bed, “[T]his is thy work” (V.ii.365).

My argument is that Othello's dependence on image at the expense of truth, reality, and hope (what the play calls “matter”) is the “cause” of his downfall. More specifically, in the context of race, Othello continues to view his salvation in terms of his ability to build and live up to an ideal image—as valiant soldier, as fairy-tale husband, as the hero of a tragic romance—in order to redeem the integrity of his black humanity from denigration at the hands of conventionally hostile white “critics” (II.i.119) like Iago (or even those cited by Orkin). In this context of black survival, Othello's aims are fatal but not ignoble; consequently, his fall is more dramatically tragic than stereotypically evil—especially because the black image he strives to protect has found some measure of acceptance in Venice.

Notes

1. See Neill, Loomba, Newman, Braxton, Dollimore, Berry, Cantor, and Bartels. These critics, however, almost invariably discuss the issue of race in Othello in conjunction with a “related” subject, such as colonialism, Renaissance ideologies of gender, sexual mores of the audience, and psychosocial functions of perversion. In Othello criticism, the introduction of such “larger” issues tends to obfuscate rather than reveal fully the complexities of racial blackness in the play. In this regard, Loomba, Berry, and Bartels are more focused, and many areas of agreement exist between their arguments and my own.

2. Leah Marcus has outlined the essential problem of historical analyses of Shakespeare as follows: “What we call Shakespeare is somehow mysteriously different, impervious to history at the level of specific factual data, the day to day chronicling of events” (xi). See also Graham Holderness.

3. Spivack examines the play in relation to morality drama allegory; Rose presents a convincing case for his view of Othello as a chivalric romance; and more broadly, Felperin asserts that several literary forms (morality drama and romance inclusive) are showcased in Othello—varied forms that ensue from the tendency of most of the characters to present, and represent, themselves in an array of conventional literary roles. Most recently, Paul Cantor has described the play as a “generic … displacement … [of] martial epic … into Italian bedroom comedy” (297).

4. Rose cites this analogy (295).

5. The idea that Othello's way with words, his “music,” is related to issues of race in the play would seem to be confirmed by New York Times editor Brent Staples, in his essay “Black Men in Public Space.” In this essay, Staples discusses the problems of “image” encountered by people of color in U.S. cities today. He says: “Over the years, I learned to smother the rage I felt at so often being taken for a criminal. Not to do so would surely have led to madness. I now take precautions to make myself less threatening. [For example] I whistle melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers. Even steely New Yorkers hunching toward nighttime destinations seem to relax, and occasionally they even join in the tune. Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn't be warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.” Staples's frequently anthologized essay first appeared in Ms. magazine, September 1986.

6. Othello is not enfeebled; however, we may note that the play encourages us to accept the idea of aging as a motif of some consequence. We know that Othello contemplates his own “declin[e] / Into the vale of years” (III.iii.270) as a possible reason for Desdemona's ostensible unfaithfulness. More to the point is Iago's suggestion that no matter how faithful a man's service to the state, “when he's old” he is sure to be unceremoniously “cashier'd” (I.i.48).

7. Felperin sums up this line of argument succinctly: “As the living symbol of high Venetian culture, Desdemona is not simply a wife to Othello but the legitimating agent of his acculturation” (78). Peter Stallybrass states more simply: “Desdemona is the active agent of Othello's legitimization” (272).

8. It should be underscored again that, although Othello's preoccupation with image makes him more vulnerable to Iago's lies, this vulnerability should not be construed as an attribute of “blackness” that confirms him to be a stereotypical racial emblem. Like other somewhat less than ideal qualities in Othello, the Moor's anxious concern to be seen as all-sufficient derives largely from his desire to achieve his deserved place in Venice: to defend himself against a race-based antiblackness that would deny him his just rewards.

9. The play encourages us to equate Othello's vulnerability to Iago's lies with Cassio's susceptibility to wine. Hence, like Cassio, Othello is imbued with a poisonous force powerful enough to swiftly and completely bring about the destruction of his better self and give rein to his weaknesses and fallibilities.

10. The absence of concrete military power in Othello might be seen to further confirm his need to look ahead to a time when he would no longer be able to sustain his ideal soldier's image: a good marriage would be a hedge against any resulting loss of place in Venice.

11. Despite Desdemona's Christian intention to mend evil with good, and her Christ-like sacrifice at the end, many critics have found fault with her as the voice of right reason in the play. Some have judged her to be a weak white foil who exists only for the purpose of dramatizing the black deeds of men; others have seen her as a beautiful, but naive and wayward romantic who wanders into dark and forbidden waters; still others have claimed that her Christ-like forgiveness of Othello is so ideal that it unfits her as a true sounding board for meaning in a mature Shakespearean tragedy. Notwithstanding these criticisms, Desdemona is the beacon of moral rightness in Othello, and her viability in this role is sustained in part by the fact that she is not the stock good angel of a morality drama or fairy-tale romance. That is, Desdemona is as prone to error and flaw as any character in the play; but, to a greater degree than all other characters, she has the ability to adapt and grow, and ultimately, through love and faith, to find out truth.

12. See Chapter 1 of E. Jones and pages 433-42 of Bartels for fuller treatments of sixteenth-century England's view of Africa.

13. In addition to hoodwinking both Othello and Cassio, Iago exploits Roderigo's desire for Desdemona and her “full fortune,” Brabantio's paternal possessiveness, and Emilia's love for him.

Works Cited

Bartels, Emily C. “Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and Renaissance Refashionings of Race,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 41 (1990), 433-54.

Berry, Edward. “Othello's Alienation,” Studies in English Literature, 30 (1990), 315-33.

Braxton, Phyllis, “The Moor and the Metaphor,” South Atlantic Review, 55 (1990), 1-17.

Cantor, Paul A. “Othello: The Erring Barbarian among the Supersubtle Venetians,” Southwest Review, 75 (1990), 296-319.

Dollimore, Jonathan. “The Cultural Politics of Perversion: Augustine, Shakespeare, Freud, Foucault,” Genders, 8 (1990), 1-16.

Felperin, Howard. Shakespearean Representation, Princeton, Princeton UP, 1977.

Holderness, Graham. Shakespeare's Histories, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1985.

Jones, Eldred. Othello's Countrymen: The African in English Renaissance Drama, London, Oxford UP, 1965.

Loomba, Ania. Gender, Race and Renaissance Drama, Manchester, Manchester UP, 1989.

Marcus, Leah. Puzzling Shakespeare, Berkeley, U of California P, 1988.

Neill, Michael. “Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, and the Hideous in Othello,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 40 (1989), 383-412.

Newman, Karen. “Femininity and the Monstrous in Othello,” Shakespeare Reproduced, ed. Jean Howard & Marion O'Connor, New York, Methuen, 1987.

Rose, Mark. “Othello's Occupation: Shakespeare and the Romance of Chivalry,” English Literary Renaissance, 15 (1985), 293-311.

Spivack, Bernard. Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil, New York, Columbia UP, 1958.

Stallybrass, Peter. “Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed,” Othello: Critical Essays, ed. Susan Snyder, New York, Garland, 1988.