SOURCE: Sadowski, Piotr. “Othello.” In Dynamism of Character in Shakespeare's Mature Tragedies, pp. 164-82. Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 2003.

[In the following excerpt, Sadowski applies psychological theory to the actions of Othello and finds him to be a “static personality” who requires accepted rules to guide his life. Sadowski notes that Othello, like most static figures, demands that his sense of justice be satisfied, and realizes this through Desdemona's murder.]

The main tragic protagonists in Othello and King Lear are static characters of heroic proportions who experience a profound mental crisis caused by a disintegration of values and norms, which before the crisis ensure the stability and balance of their characters and behavior. As I noted earlier in relation to other static if less heroic characters such as Laertes, Horatio, or Ophelia, static people are generally well adapted to particular circumstances of life, as long as they can follow the rules that they have accepted as guidelines for their behavior. These rules are of course subject to cultural and historical change, but what is unchangeable in the behavior of static people is their usually uncritical, unquestioning, and often rigid adherence to whatever rules and norms are laid down for them in a particular sociocultural context. Thus for old Hamlet the moral guidelines are provided by the concepts of marshal honor, fair play, respect for treaties, marital fidelity, and kin loyalty as defined by the medieval heroic society. The life of Laertes too remains unproblematic as long as external circumstances allow him to follow his conventional rules: obedience to his father and to the king, brotherly love, and family honor. As I also discussed in the previous chapter, Ophelia can live a quiet if unexciting life adapted to the conventional role of a daughter in a noble household, as long as she has a brother and a father to lean on, and as long as the stability of her life is not upset by volatile and unpredictable people such as Hamlet. Horatio too can maintain his mental equipoise and his uninvolved and distanced intellectual vantage point of a scholar, chronicler, and the prince's confidant, as long as the world of Elsinore, for all its corruption and political crises, continues to exist.

Largely unproblematic and even dull in the normal, routine run of life, static characters nonetheless become psychologically interesting in times of crisis, that is, when the external situation changes to such a degree as to unable a static person to follow the rules and norms that normally ensure mental balance and stability. Once the external pillar supporting the inner balance is removed, the personality structure based on this balance collapses, leaving the mind in a state of profound shock. Old Hamlet even after death remains so upset by the sacrilege of marital infidelity and fratricide that he returns from beyond the grave to settle his scores with this world, using his son for the purpose. Laertes is so outraged by the apparently undeserved killing of his father that he obliterates in his mind all other norms and moral values, as long as he can settle his account with his father's killer and fulfill the conventional role of the avenger. Even the usually unmoved and stoic Horatio has his moment of existential crisis prompted by the destruction of the world of Elsinore, when he contemplates committing suicide. After a sudden and tragic disappearance of the father figure and in the absence of the supportive brother, the mind of Ophelia goes even beyond the point of temporary crisis and disintegrates completely, never to regain balance of any kind. Only the static Gertrude does not appear to experience any major crisis (beyond the momentary breakdown in the closet scene), but only because she is too weak to confront and handle the terrible truth that Hamlet is trying to convey to her: the repression of the fatal knowledge keeps Gertrude's mind in a state of self-deluding balance to the very end.

There is also to be observed another regularity in the behavior of static characters in a situation of crisis. After the violent and stormy mental shake-up following a drastic change in external circumstances, the mind finally regains its equilibrium by adapting to a new set of norms and values. Static character requires above all inner balance, that is, agreement between the believed rules and the situation in which these rules are respected. Once a static person perceives (as in King Lear) or becomes persuaded (as in Othello) that the sacred rules he or she abides by are belied by external evidence, the situation becomes unacceptable and intolerable, so that the only way to regain mental balance is either to accept with honesty and humility the new situation or to embrace a new set of values. The former possibility is realized by Lear, who after a tempestuous mental crisis finally accepts the reality of his daughters' ingratitude and his own mistake about them, becoming also reconciled with the initially rejected Cordelia. Shortly before he dies Lear regains mental balance based on a new set of principles: he no longer sees himself as a proud and all-powerful king but as a humble and weak old man. The second possibility in turn is realized by Othello, who after a period of profound crisis caused by Iago's skilful manipulation finally calms down and regains mental equipoise, having accepted as truth the image of his wife as a whore. In act 5 the formerly “mad” Othello is chillingly calm, self-possessed, and—typical for statics—obsessed with justice. In times of crisis static characters can only experience a complete psychological U-turn, a full reversal of attitude and behavior, rather than a partial adjustment. This is why static people are good material for religious and political conversions: after a temporary crisis of faith they embrace the new conviction with the same uncritical zeal as that which characterized their former faith, now violently rejected.

OTHELLO

Critics have often stressed the essentially static and heroic quality of Othello's character in the sense defined above. For Bradley the Moor from the early part of the play is “grave, self-controlled … at once simple and stately in bearing and in speech, a great man naturally modest but fully conscious of his worth, proud of his services to the State, unawed by dignitaries and unelated by honors, secure … against all dangers from without and all rebellion from within.”¹ There is an aura of conventionality about Othello, also a static trait, and for example G. Wilson Knight finds the character a “very much the typical middle-aged bachelor entering matrimony late in life.”² Jan Kott too considers the figure in the context of typical feudal heroics found in knightly epic and romance, seen especially in Othello's royal blood and the heroic stereotypes inherited from Roman rhetoric, fairy tales, and legends.³ Nicholas Grene also emphasizes the static quality of the values represented by Othello: for the critic the play “expects us to share belief in a heroic order of harmony, integrity, stability,” where even Othello's vision of war is “a ceremonialized stasis,” consonant both with the character's “serene and heroic strength” and with his role of “the order-figure re-imposing peace.”⁴

Othello is introduced in the play by Iago (1.1), whose description of the general is slanted by hatred, primarily motivated by being passed over for promotion by Othello (1.1.6-8). But for all their resentfulness and bitterness Iago's remarks reflect, however distortedly, Othello's real heroic and charismatic qualities: for example, Iago speaks scornfully of the general's “own pride and purposes,” of his “bombast circumstance [circumlocution]” and “epithets of war” (1.1.11-13). When Othello appears in person for the first time he is accompanied by Iago, whose hatred of his master has already been impressed on us in the preceding scene, both in Iago's diatribes before Roderigo and even more forcefully in the grossly offensive racial slurs shouted at night before Brabantio's house (1.1.110-12, 115). In this context Iago's sudden change of tone before Othello and his hypocritical talk of conscience and absence of iniquity in himself (1.2.2-3) establish Iago firmly as a scheming and resentful endodynamic figure. Othello for his part appears totally unsuspecting of his ensign's insincerity, takes Iago's words at face value, and treats him practically as a confidant, his trust betraying a straightforward, even gullible static disposition from the start.

But here we encounter an interesting and important dramatic incongruity, in that Othello's and Iago's dynamisms of character appear to disagree with the roles assigned to them in the play. Normally, that is, in real life, positions of command (as in the army) require at least an endostatic disposition, involving as it does a pragmatic attitude toward life and the ability to act efficiently in new, unexpected situations. Endostatism also entails a certain degree of opportunism, a readiness to cut corners and bend the rules, which clearly do not square with Othello's admirable integrity, principled stance, and chivalry. As a static person, especially of heroic proportions, a person like Othello could be realistically expected to perform spectacular individual deeds of martial valor (as is indeed attested in Othello's own story of his romantic adventures, 1.3.129-70), but a person of static character is psychologically unsuited for positions of command and government. Still, military authority is clearly the main role of Shakespeare's black general and the main reason why the Moor is reckoned with at all by the Venetian oligarchy: they cannot afford to do without his services as an able and tried military commander. There is no doubt that Othello's military reputation is well deserved (2.1.35-36), as is confirmed even by the resentful Iago (1.1.145-51), and the general himself rests confident in the fact that his services to Venice will “out-tongue” (1.2.18-19) before the duke the complaints of Brabantio, whose daughter Othello secretly married.

Interestingly, however, the only time in the play when Othello has a chance to display his military skills, during the sea battle with the Turks, the victory is won not by Othello's generalship but spectacularly by the elements. The sea storm (2.1.1-6) may have its importance as a poetic anticipation of the “storm” wrought in Othello's mind by Iago in Cyprus, but it also helps to emphasize how dependent the general is on chance and circumstance rather than on his own military skill and command. The text makes it clear that the Turkish fleet is defeated by “the wind-shaken surge” (2.1.13) and by “the desperate tempest” (2.1.21), and not by the “warlike” and “valiant” Moor, who is himself lost at sea (2.1.28) and is the last to arrive in Cyprus, having first raised serious fears for his safety in Cassio and other Venetians (2.1.32-34, 44-46, 89-93). Othello's high rank and respect in the eyes of the Venetian oligarchy may also have been aided by the Moor's royal lineage (1.2.21-22), so that notwithstanding the apparent discrepancy between his position as general and his static character, for dramatic reasons it was necessary to create a picture of an honorable, principled, dignified but gullible man as the victim of Iago's intrigue. An endostatic Othello would simply have been too cautious and too guarded to be so easily led. Psychological realism is thus artistically bent by Shakespeare to achieve a dramatic effect of the tragic fall of a heroic, charismatic man whose honesty, nobility, and trusting nature are unscrupulously exploited. In Iago in turn Shakespeare created an incongruous alignment of an endodynamic character with a socially inferior and subordinate role: given his innate disposition a person such as Iago can only feel satisfied in positions of command and leadership (traits he is surreptitiously displaying throughout the play), but he is deeply frustrated, resentful, and embittered in auxiliary and dependent positions, where his organizational talents cannot be fully realized.

The two incongruities are thus responsible for a peculiar and paradoxical relationship between Othello and Iago: the socially superior general is inferior to his subordinate in respect of dynamism of character, and despite his stateliness, dignity, and commanding position Othello is psychologically dependent on his ensign. From the first time the two characters appear together it is obvious that the trusting Othello is totally unaware and unsuspecting of Iago's insincerity, and of being manipulated by him into a potentially compromising and damaging confrontation with Brabantio and the duke on account of Desdemona.⁵ Iago's “friendly” advice to Othello about how to deal with the Venetian Council (1.2.11-17) also betrays a patronizing and contemptuous attitude toward the Moor and exploits the latter's sense of insecurity as a foreigner of inferior race, less familiar with Venetian power relations than the insider Iago. However, Iago's malicious plan to compromise the general before the Council miscarries on this occasion, both because the honorable Moor is prepared to face the music, confident in his military reputation, noble lineage, and the honest love he bears Desdemona (1.2.30-32), and because the new and urgent matter of the state (the Turkish threat) that requires Othello's services will overshadow Brabantio's more private suit against the Moor. Iago may fail to harm Othello this time round, but his attitude and intention with regard to the Moor are clear to the audience: the endodynamic ensign, deeply frustrated with his subordinate role, will not rest until he brings the static, and in Iago's view, naive, and foolish general to ruin in order to advance his own career.

Othello's static honesty and truthfulness are admirably displayed in his readiness to answer openly any charges related to his secret marriage, and he even welcomes the inevitable public confrontation as a way of restoring balance between his private and public lives, disturbed by the elopement with Desdemona: “I must be found. / My parts, my title and my perfect soul / Shall manifest me rightly” (1.2.30-32). A responsible man, he knows that he will not allow his married life to get in the way of his public duties, an argument that no doubt will carry some weight before the Senate requiring Othello as a soldier: “But that I love the gentle Desdemona / I would not my unhoused free condition / Put into circumscription and confine / For the sea's worth” (1.2.25-28). After he patiently and tactfully withstands the racial insults of the outraged Brabantio, now his father-in-law, Othello offers a calm, composed, and dignified self-defense before the Senate, confident both in his innocence of any dishonorable action and in Venetian justice (1.3.118-21). Given Othello's static and honest character, we must also accept that his confession before the Senate is frank and truthful (1.3.124-26), “a round unvarnished tale” (1.3.91), and that his narrative is not “unreliable as evidence” because of the Moor's alleged “ulterior purpose” in editing his past, as the critic E. A. J. Honigmann and others have suggested.⁶ Still less is Othello's story full of “bragging and fantastical lies” (2.1.221), according to Iago's envious and hateful account. Even Othello's impression that Desdemona's father “loved” him must be accepted as genuine, and although Brabantio certainly did not envisage the Moor as his prospective son-in-law, the straightforward Othello may be forgiven for overinterpreting the civility and friendliness shown by a Venetian senator to an exotic visitor. Nor is Othello's life story an example of “narrative self-fashioning,” and even the Moor's selective insistence on moments of danger and survival rather than on victories betokens true modesty and self-effacement of someone given neither to boastful and vainglorious (exostatic) exaggerations, nor to purposeful and opportunistic (endostatic) distortions of facts.⁷ If Othello's story does sound romantic and exotic, it is by the very nature of his experience than by the alleged “self-fashioning” habit of the teller: the cannibals and the “men whose heads / Do grow beneath their shoulders” (1.3.145-46) mentioned by Othello sound fantastic only to today's audience, but were believed as actually existing in Elizabethan times.⁸

Despite its initial secrecy Othello's marriage with Desdemona, however shocking to Brabantio and in all likelihood also to the other senators (diplomatically silent as they are about it), appears to be a matter of propriety, emotional maturity, and mutual respect—exactly what can be expected between two static partners. Neither the Moor nor his white wife appear to be drawn to each other by sensuality and passion alone, the point often overstated by critics, as that would indicate a more dynamic disposition.⁹ Rather, their relationship appears to be mature, sober, balanced, and responsible, more psychological than physical. Desdemona's feelings for the Moor did not spring from a sudden, youthful infatuation but matured by degrees, motivated by pity for Othello's dangers and suffering rather than by any physical attraction (1.3.157, 160-62, 168). Othello for his part was moved by Desdemona's kindness rather than excited by her physical attractiveness (1.3.169), and he reciprocated her feelings only when invited by her (1.3.164-67). Once married, the responsible Othello will not allow his private life to interfere with his official duties, and he is even prepared to leave his wife in Venice for the duration of the Turkish expedition (1.3.237-40), the fateful idea to accompany him on the campaign being Desdemona's alone (1.3.260). Othello then allays the Senate's understandable concerns by openly disclaiming any desire to “please the palate of [his] appetite, / Nor to comply with heat,” the young affects in him being defunct at his mature age (1.3.263-65). With his private and public duties strictly separated, the “serious and great business” of the war will not be neglected with Desdemona by Othello's side (1.3.267-69).

But Othello's static honesty, frankness, and trusting disposition, coupled both with his responsible position as a military commander and with his sense of insecurity as an outsider in Venice, leave him potentially vulnerable. In fact, the weakness coming from the incongruity between his character and his social role is only waiting to be exploited by the envy of some clever opportunist—exactly what happens in the play. Othello's blindness to Iago's unabashed and contemptuous, patronizing attitude is obvious from the start, as is the general's dependence on his ensign in a practical sense. As observed by critics, the aging Moor appears to suffer from failing eyesight and on a number of occasions has to rely on Iago's eyes.¹⁰ It is Iago who helps Othello recognize the approaching Cassio and other officers (1.2.28-30), and when Brabantio arrives to arrest Othello, Iago is the first to notice the danger (1.2.55). Othello's impaired vision in an obvious way increases his psychological dependence on Iago, later adding extra sting into taunts such as “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see” (1.3.293), and “Look to your wife, observe her well with Cassio” (3.3.200). Eye symbolism culminates in Othello's ironic insistence on the ocular proof of his wife's infidelity (“Make me to see't,” 3.3.366), as if to emphasize that Othello can only see—that is, understand—what Iago wants him to see.

As all people tend to judge others according to the criteria defined by their particular dynamism of character, so the static Othello applies his standards of honesty and plain dealing to everyone else, with ultimately disastrous consequences. More precisely, static people give others an advance credit of trust until someone visibly betrays that trust through dishonest actions. In other words, static people treat other people as if they too had static characters. Iago is perfectly right when he says that “the Moor is of a free and open nature / That thinks men honest that but seem to be so” (1.3.398-99), although in the mouth of the endodynamic villain the remark is not a compliment but a contemptuous acknowledgment of Othello's naïveté and foolishness. It is clear that Othello trusts his ensign completely (“A man he is of honesty and trust,” 1.3.285), which only shows how cleverly and for how long Iago was able to hide his true character before the general.¹¹ Othello extends the same unconditional trust toward his wife, and it is clear that the stability and integrity of his mind depend entirely on this trust (“My life upon her faith,” 1.3.295, and “when I love thee not / Chaos is come again,” 3.3.91-92).

As a static man of principles Othello reacts with outrage and righteous anger whenever a principle he personally abides by is broken or violated, and he demands justice, that is, appropriate reparation from those responsible for breaking the rule. When Othello finds his officers guilty of causing an unseemly drunken brawl, his reaction is first of all emotional, “My blood begins my safer guides to rule / And passion, having my best judgement collied, / Assays to lead the way” (2.3.201-3), before he reacts in a more formal way by demoting Cassio in an apparent act of justice. However, the main principle whose alleged violation causes not just righteous anger but a profound mental crisis and a “radical and irreversible metamorphosis” of Othello's personality is the wife's fidelity to her husband.¹² It is the particular nature of this principle coupled with Othello's static character that accounts for the murderous intensity of his crisis. Feminist critics have tried to explain Othello's reaction to Desdemona's supposed infidelity in terms of his “repressed sexual feelings” and a “rejection of sexuality,” which in him take the displaced form of murder, and also in terms of the Moor's “neurotic misogyny,” springing from his “contempt for maternal femininity”—all sentiments allegedly characteristic of men in a traditional patriarchal society.¹³ There is no doubt that Venice in Shakespeare's play is a decisively patriarchal place (vide the Senate scene) that legitimizes woman's subordinate position to man (cf. 1.3.180-89), including the “sacred” duty of sexual fidelity to the husband and the husband's equally “sacred” right to jealousy and severe punishment for the wife's infidelity. Feminist critics usually ascribe this unfair relationship between the sexes to widespread male conspiracy against women, organized through unjust and oppressive patriarchal institutions such as marriage. However, the fact that male sexual jealousy is so widespread and historically persistent suggests also a strong genetic motivation underlying this anti-feminine prejudice. As argued by the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, male sexual jealousy is found in all cultures because the emotions of jealousy, in concert with other emotions and pressures on the woman, increases the probability that man would be the biological father of his wife's child. As a man can never be certain of paternity, because fertilization happens out of sight inside the woman's body, a cuckold risks both having his wife's reproductive efforts tied up by a rival and investing with his energy and resources in another man's genes. Genetic interests explain therefore why in considering long-term partners men tend to subscribe to the infamous madonna-whore dichotomy, which divides the female sex into loose women, who may be dismissed as easy conquests, and coy women, who are valued as potential wives.¹⁴ This mentality is often called a symptom of misogyny, but it is not a patriarchal myth; rather, from an evolutionary point of view the sentiment is “real” in the sense that it has always been adaptive for men to be jealous of their wives.¹⁵

Women too feel jealousy, but for different reasons: as the woman is always certain of maternity, and as her partner's adultery does not diminish his capacity to inseminate her, she may risk little by way of biological investment if her husband engages in extramarital sex. As the anthropologist Donald Symons observes, women are adapted to learn to discriminate between threatening and nonthreatening adultery in men, and especially in polygamous marriages it has not been adaptive for women to be sexually jealous of their husbands.¹⁶ For the wife, her husband's love child is first of all another woman's problem, unless the adultery is followed by the man's social investment in the love child, in which case the wife's and the legitimate child's security and well-being may be threatened. The wide difference in genetic interests and parental investments between the sexes thus explains the evolutionary trend whereby the woman is, on average, disinclined toward marital infidelity and more tolerant toward her husband's infidelity, while a man is generally more inclined toward extramarital relations and more jealous about his wife. This evolutionary mechanism lies at the root of the infamous “double standard,” in which female adultery is condemned while male adultery is tolerated, but not because of the alleged patriarchal conspiracy against women, but because sexual intercourse exposes men and women to very different risks and different reproductive costs and opportunities.

At the same time it must be emphasized that while evolution can explain the origin of the double standard and the reasons for the universality and persistence of sexual jealousy in men, genes and biology do not provide an excuse for the injustices arising from legitimizing these innate trends in social institutions, customs, and law. In fact, men's attitude toward women is as much a function of the genetic motivations described above as of cultural norms, which may either endorse or mitigate a particular innate behavioral tendency. It is therefore ultimately up to culture to decide whether male adultery is to be praised as an expression of healthy machismo or condemned as a breach of marital loyalty, and whether sexual jealousy is man's “sacred” right and a justification for harassing women or an urge to be controlled as unworthy of man's respect for himself and his partner. In the latter case it is a man's duty to exercise his volition to suppress his natural tendency toward adultery and jealousy in the name of decency, marital equality, and partnership, but it is clear that a cultural norm condemning male infidelity and antifeminine prejudice will not eliminate many a man's innate tendency toward promiscuity and sexual jealousy. In a traditional patriarchal society such as Renaissance Venice, and even more so in Othello's original Muslim background, the existing cultural norms strongly condemn the wife's infidelity and excuse the husband from any drastic measures he might undertake to punish the unfaithful wife. The effect of a strong cultural norm is thus compounded with a strong genetic disposition in men, creating as a result a behavioral pattern, dramatized in Othello and in The Winter's Tale, involving a husband's powerful negative emotions toward the alleged adulteress and his murderous aggression sanctioned by severe law and custom. In other words, because of the intensity of the underlying innate motivation, the murderous passion that often accompanies sexual jealousy is easily provoked in a traditional society in otherwise decent and noble men such as Othello or Leontes, whose negative emotions are not mitigated but actually enhanced by social sanction.

Othello's jealousy appears to be even easier to provoke than usual because of the presence of additional factors: his race, advanced age, lack of urban sophistication, status as an outsider, and apparent inexperience in the private, intimate sphere (it is his first marriage), which all contribute to Othello's sense of insecurity and undermine his confidence as a man. What the white and urbane Venetians thought of the dark Oriental races is more than sufficiently illustrated by Iago's uninhibited slurs and insults directed at the Moor behind his back: his talk of “an old black ram” (1.1.87), “a Barbary horse” (1.1.110), and of Othello as the devil (1.1.90), all in the context of the supposed lasciviousness and animalism of non-European races. The shocked and outraged father of Desdemona does not even try to hide his racial prejudice, shouting to Othello's face what other Venetian senators and noblemen most certainly shared but diplomatically kept to themselves: accusation of sorcery and treachery, physical repulsion, and disdain (1.2.62-81, 1.3.61-65). Othello swallows these racial insults without responding to them (1.2.81-85), as he no doubt did on similar previous occasions, but the confrontation with Brabantio only shows that despite his aristocratic lineage the Moor is keenly aware of his inferior status in Venice (“Haply for I am black,” 3.3.267). Iago later plays on the general's inner insecurity by reminding him that Desdemona had rejected many suitors “Of her own clime, complexion and degree” (3.3.234), implying that Othello, “an extravagant and wheeling stranger / Of here and everywhere,” 1.1.134-35), does not satisfy these important racial and social criteria. If Othello's advanced age is not necessarily a handicap for a husband in a patriarchal society, it does nonetheless become a cause of concern (“for I am declined / Into the vale of years,” 3.3.269-70) once Othello realizes that his “defunct” affects and lower sexual appetite (1.3.263-65) may not satisfy his young wife, allegedly insatiable in her lust (3.3.272-74).¹⁷ Othello's lack of refinement and sophistication (“Rude am I in my speech,” 1.3.82, also 3.3.267-69) and his inexperience with Venetian women, reputed for their sexual licentiousness (4.2.91), in due course deepen Othello's inferiority complex (“mine own weak merits,” 3.3.190) and are exploited to deadly effect by the “knowing” Iago.¹⁸ The sole principle supporting the stability and integrity of Othello's personality, his trust in Desdemona's fidelity, is thus dangerously threatened by the highly emotive and explosive nature of male sexual jealousy in general, as well as by a number of circumstances in Othello's life, character, and status that weaken his self-confidence and make him vulnerable to Iago's manipulation. The seeds of Othello's crisis and of the subsequent tragedy are therefore present in potentia in Othello's life and mind following his marriage with Desdemona, so that all a determined person such as Iago has to do is to set fire to the powder keg. As observed by J. I. M. Stewart, “the mind that undoes [Othello] is not Iago's but his own; the main datum is not Iago's diabolic intellect but Othello's readiness to respond.”¹⁹ Bernard McElroy also notes perceptively that Iago does not even have to convince Othello of Desdemona's infidelity, because the Moor already has a predisposition to believe it. Iago only gives the Moor a few suggestive nudges in that direction and lets Othello convince himself.²⁰

The change of location from civilized and safe Venice to the less secure frontier of the civilized world that is Cyprus provides a fitting context for the transformation of Othello from a dignified man of admirable self-control and civility to a pitiful ruin of his former self, at the mercy of murderous passions: in the words of the critic John Holloway the Renaissance Complete Man becomes a complete monster.²¹ As an immediate consequence the arrival in Cyprus contributes another factor to Othello's sense of insecurity: he is now completely in charge, under the pressure of duty and responsibility to maintain order and safety in the Venetian garrison, the only man to control violence and defend civilization—the Moor Othello, himself of savage origins and a converted Christian.²² The arrival in Cyprus has also a private dimension of a delicate nature: Othello's marriage appears not to have been consummated until now, which explains why the general gives up the pleasure of celebrating the victory over the Turks with his officers, repairing to his private quarters with Desdemona instead (2.3.8-11). Both his present public duties and his intimate life put therefore extra pressure on the already insecure and vulnerable Othello, eager to please his Venetian superiors and satisfy his young wife.

But the irony of Othello's government in Cyprus is that he is, in fact, no longer in control of the situation. The peace and intimacy of his bedchamber are disrupted by the brawl provoked by Iago, and without realizing it Othello restores order on Iago's terms: he demotes the innocent Cassio and promotes the actual perpetrator, Iago, to be his right hand and trusted adjutant (2.3.251-52). Nominally in charge, Othello has become a puppet in Iago's hands, as has everyone else for that matter. As a frustrated endodynamic, Iago will not rest until he exploits all available opportunities of self-advancement, which in his present situation means continuing to compromise Cassio to eventually take his place, as he wanted from the beginning (1.1.7-10). Luck holds for Iago, because the disgraced Cassio, now without access to his general, has asked Emilia, Iago's wife and Desdemona's chamberwoman, to speak with her lady so that she can plead with Othello to restore his lieutenant. Dramatically Cassio's move brings both Emilia and Desdemona directly into the plot, but psychologically it provides Iago with a perfect opportunity to compromise Cassio even more, by suggesting to Othello that Cassio is having an affair with Desdemona. By another stroke of Iago's good luck Othello notices his wife speaking with Cassio, who, embarrassed to see the approaching general (“I am very ill at ease,” 3.3.32), quickly departs, laying an ideal ground for Iago's promptly following insinuations. Despite Othello's defective vision (“Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?” 3.3.37), the first “ocular proof” of something improper going on has been supplied and immediately exploited by Iago's innuendo about Cassio stealing away “so guilty-like” (3.3.39). The next perfectly timed chance event playing straight into Iago's hands is Desdemona's rather too insistent and importunate suit on behalf of Cassio (3.3.41-89), visibly irritating to Othello, who—interestingly—begins to feel ambivalent and doubtful about his wife even before Iago's unfolds fully his insinuations: “Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee! and when I love thee not / Chaos is come again” (3.3.90-92).

Iago strikes while the iron is hot by continuing his suggestions about Cassio and Desdemona, and within about 170 lines of a single scene (3.3.93-261) he practically convinces Othello that his wife is indeed unfaithful to him. Iago also succeeds in winning even more trust from the general, who now becomes psychologically totally dependent on his ensign (“I am bound to thee for ever,” 3.3.217). The speed and ease with which Othello is won over by Iago only confirm the Moor's lack of confidence, insecurity, and vulnerability discussed earlier. Iago's understatements do not in fact tell Othello anything definite but succeed in bringing to the surface of his consciousness already existing but hitherto repressed doubts and anxieties. Othello is the first to suspect Cassio's dishonesty (3.3.103-5), before this possibility is half-confirmed after teasing delay by Iago in his warning against the green-eyed monster of jealousy (3.3.167-68). Far from planting any ideas in Othello's mind Iago only releases them from his unconscious: “By heaven, thou echo'st me / As if there were some monster in thy thought / Too hideous to be shown” (3.3.109-11). However hideous the monster in his and Iago's minds, Othello cannot wait to hear the “horrible conceit” shut up in Iago's, or rather, in his own mind (3.3.117-18), insisting to be told what he both fears and masochistically desires to know: “I prithee speak to me, as to thy thinkings, / As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts / The worst of words” (3.3.134-36).

Othello's insistence on hearing the “truth” is a function of his static character here: his unbending honesty will not permit any doubt or uncertainty about the important principles he believes in, and his moral inflexibility, similarly to Laertes's, will not tolerate any compromise. If he loves Desdemona, his happiness is infinite, and his “soul hath her content so absolute / That not another comfort like to this / Succeeds in unknown fate” (2.1.189-91), but if he does not love his wife, then literally “Chaos is come again” (3.3.92). For static people there is no middle ground between two opposite and in their view mutually exclusive possibilities, and so Desdemona can only be either a chaste wife or a whore. Nor will Othello tolerate in himself any doubt or uncertainty in the matter, the static inflexibility of his character allowing only for a clear and unequivocal interpretation one way or the other. That is why in a brief moment of sanity he demands a definite proof of Desdemona's infidelity to support Iago's “exsufflicate and blown surmises” (3.3.185): “I'll see before I doubt, when I doubt, prove, / And on the proof there is no more but this: / Away at once with love or jealousy!” (3.3.193-95). The motivation toward sexual jealousy may be strong in Othello for reasons discussed earlier, but as an honest man he will only believe and act in a fair and just way, upon objective evidence, not upon his whims or fantasies. And the same applies to Othello's attitude toward Iago: until proven otherwise by objective evidence, Iago will remain to him a “fellow of exceeding honesty” (3.3.262) to the end.

For some time, from the moment of noticing Cassio parting from Desdemona with a look of shame on his face (3.3.34) to the moment of seeing Desdemona's handkerchief handled between Cassio and Bianca in a compromising context (4.1.156), Othello experiences a profound and painful mental crisis, in which his personality is being literally flipped over and turned inside out (“the seamy side without,” 4.2.148), eventually to regain a psychological balance of sorts in act 5 based on a new set of convictions about his wife and his whole life. The change of attitude in Othello is so complete that critics often speak of “two Othellos,” one a man of essential nobility and the servant of Venice, and the other a monster debased by “a barbaric crazed fury of physical jealousy.”²³ J. I. M. Stewart speaks of Othello as a noble, free, and open character on the one hand, and of “an obtuse and brutal egotist” on the other, and for E. A. J. Honigmann Othello changes more completely than other tragic heroes, so that “we must not confuse his earlier and later self.”²⁴ Terence Hawkes states simply that “metaphorically, the play chronicles the transformation of one man into another,” while Bernard McElroy offers the following description of the dramatic collapse of Othello's world:

When the tension between value systems is so taut in the mind of the hero the precipitating factor may be quite unequal to the cataclysmic effects produced. Doubt of one thing implies doubt of another, and then another and another, until the entire structure of the hero's subjective world comes down in ruins like a building from which one small but crucial stone has been removed.²⁵

However drastic the change of Othello's outlook upon his wife, upon women in general, and upon himself and his life, if his metamorphosis is to be psychologically credible it must be accounted for in terms of a mental crisis within the same personality, and not as a transformation of one personality into another. Despite the radical change of attitude and the temporary disturbance of his mental equilibrium, Othello remains essentially a static person to the last, except that after the crisis his mental equilibrium is founded on the opposite principle: what was only an unconscious possibility, the view that Desdemona is fickle and unchaste, has now established itself as a “fact” in Othello's consciousness, while his earlier unshaken belief in Desdemona's honesty has become repressed in his unconscious as falsehood. Tragically wrong as he is after this psychological U-turn, in act 5 Othello nonetheless regains his earlier static calm, self-possession, and self-control, able to act again in the name of justice, however false and perverted.

Othello's static integrity, an otherwise admirable quality and a source of his great satisfaction and happiness in ordinary circumstances, that is, when the perceived reality agrees with the held convictions, becomes for the Moor a source of acute suffering once doubt creeps in. His uncompromising character will not allow doubt to be ignored or dismissed without challenge, nor will it allow Othello to continue living pretending that nothing has happened: “to be once in doubt / Is once to be resolved” (3.3.182-83), that is, determined on a course of action that will free him from doubt. Uncertainty means intense mental pain for someone who will not tolerate self-delusion, which is why the devilishly intelligent Iago not only causes Othello's suffering but aggravates it further by making the Moor fully aware of his present misery:

O beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger,
But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes yet doubts, suspects yet strongly loves!

(3.3.167-72)

But Iago also knows that he cannot keep Othello in doubt indefinitely: he can only deepen the Moor's anxiety up to a point. As a realist Othello demands a proof, “a living reason” (3.3.412), of his wife's infidelity, vacillation and uncertainty being intolerable for his static temperament: “I think my wife be honest, and think she is not, / I think that thou [Iago] art just, and think thou art not. / I'll have some proof” (3.3.386-88). For a time Iago continues twisting the knife in the wound by reminding Othello of the ill repute of Venetian women, who “do let God see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands,” and whose “best conscience / Is not to leav't undone, but keep't unknown” (3.3.205-7). Iago also quotes Desdemona's “deception” of her father in marrying Othello (3.3.203) as a precedent of her present alleged deception of her husband: “She that so young could give out such a seeming / To seel her father's eyes up” (3.212-13). Iago even goes so far as to tactlessly remind Othello of his inferior race (3.3.234) and to grossly insult Desdemona before her husband for her supposed “will most rank, / Foul disproportion,” and “thoughts unnatural” (3.3.236-37), as evidenced by her inexplicable choice of the Moor before other, more acceptable suitors. Othello's lack of response to this slander sadly shows the extent to which he is now won over by Iago's version of events: “This honest creature doubtless / Sees and knows more—much more—than he unfolds” (3.3.246-247).

Before the demanded “proof” of Desdemona's disloyalty is finally supplied and Othello recovers his balance, the painful disturbance of his mental equilibrium leads to a complete reversal of the psychological perspective, where appearance takes the place of reality and truth becomes substituted by falsehood. Thus the honest and innocent Desdemona is branded as a virtue-pretending whore (3.4.38-44), while the insincere and ill-willed Iago is praised for his alleged honesty and good intention. In Othello's topsy-turvy but nonetheless static view, true honesty is penalized while hypocrisy and deceit are rewarded. This psychological U-turn is so complete that by the time the “ocular proof” of the handkerchief is provided, it is practically no longer needed: “trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (3.3.325-27). Without even waiting for any material evidence Othello accepts as proof of his wife's infidelity Iago's preposterous ad hoc fabrication of Cassio's dream about Desdemona (3.3.416-28), and he is too upset to notice blatant inconsistencies and logical leaps in Iago's arguments (vide the latter's unsubstantiated reference to “other proofs,” 3.3.443). Nor are any material proofs needed at this stage: Cassio and Desdemona are subsequently condemned to death solely on the strength of Othello's unshaken belief in their alleged guilt (3.3.475-81).

Together with the altered moral perspective, other consequences of this psychological turnover gradually rise before Othello. With his marriage and private happiness apparently over, affection gives way to hate: “Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne / To tyrannous hate” (3.3.451-52), a reversal emphasized metaphorically by the replacement of heavenly imagery by references to hell: “All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven: / 'Tis gone! / Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell” (3.3.448-50). Gone too are the pride and joy of Othello's military life, as evidenced in his powerful “farewell” speech (3.3.351-60) ending with a crushing realization of the end of his public life: “Othello's occupation's gone” (3.3.360). The Moor's earlier admirable self-possession and dignity also yield before undignified loss of temper and of self-control, his “waked wrath” (3.3.366) indicating the mental chaos he inwardly feared all along (3.3.91-92). The structure of Othello's static personality is shaken to its foundations and is irreversibly collapsing, and nothing short of unrelenting and bloody “justice” will allay the storm and restore order in Othello's upset mind: “my bloody thoughts with violent pace / Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love / Till that a capable and wide revenge / Swallow them up” (3.3.460-63).

The disintegration of Othello's former psychic constitution culminates in an epileptic fit (4.1.43), after which Othello's temper begins to settle down and his static personality is beginning to reconstitute itself on a new set of convictions: that Desdemona is a whore, that his lieutenant Cassio is disloyal, and that his ancient Iago is brave, honest, and just (5.1.31). The reversal of attitudes is complete, but Othello's new perception of reality still has to be aligned with his static sense of justice: the evildoers must be punished and the honest must be rewarded. Accordingly, Iago is promoted to be Othello's lieutenant (3.3.481) and is ordered to kill Cassio (3.3.475-76), while Desdemona is sentenced to death, because “the justice of it pleases” (4.1.206). In Othello's eyes therefore the killing of Desdemona is not murder but execution, carried out “to save the moral order, to restore love and faith.”²⁶ Jan Kott and other critics have aptly captured the static character of Othello, who “kills Desdemona to be able to forgive her, so that the accounts be settled and the world returned to its equilibrium.”²⁷ Terence Hawkes too stresses that while Iago murders Roderigo and Emilia, Othello executes Desdemona: “he does so on the basis of rational ‘proof’ by whose profane calculation the act seems both necessary and just.”²⁸ Similarly, for Irving Ribner Othello's vengeance on Desdemona is converted into “a lawful justice, his hatred into duty,” in which Othello sees himself as “the instrument of justice executing his duty in a solemn ritual.”²⁹ As Nicholas Grene also observes, Othello the general administers justice in the summary fashion of the court martial acting as the agent of divine retribution, associating himself with the icon of justice holding her sword.³⁰ In a word, critics appear to be unanimous in viewing Othello's actions in terms of general justice and moral laws, however perverted in his mind, a view consistent with Othello's statism of character and the resulting insistence on balance in social relations, on the observance of accepted norms and conventions, and on righteousness and retribution.

With justice still to be served, Othello's regained mental equilibrium acquires a sinister quality. He may appear “gentler than he did” (4.3.9), but his calm betokens a grim determination to “strangle [Desdemona] in her bed—/ even the bed she hath contaminated” (4.1.204-5), as is no doubt implied in his command to his wife to go to her bed and dismiss her attendant (4.3.5-7). In the final scene Othello is no longer a husband mad with jealousy but, in his perverse imagination, the judge, the executor of God's will, solemn and dignified, about to perform a ceremonial act of sacrificial justice. The “cause” that provides the reason for Othello's punitive action has a judicial ring about it and emphasizes a public, no longer private, nature of the case: Desdemona must die for the general good, “else she'll betray more men” (5.2.6).³¹ With the last remnants of his intimate feelings suppressed after smelling Desdemona's breath for the last time (5.2.15-19), Othello proceeds in a formal and official manner as the judge appointed to establish the defendant's guilt (5.2.46-51), as the priest administering the last rites and absolution (5.2.25-28, 53-57), and as the executioner-sacrificer carrying out the court's verdict.

The convention of dramatic tragedy requires that this grotesque travesty of justice and religion be exposed too late, after Desdemona's innocent death. And when the truth is finally revealed by Emilia's spirited testimony (5.2.223-24), Othello experiences another psychological turnover, this time instantaneous, as he instinctively runs at Iago, now the “precious villain” (5.2.233), to execute true justice on the spot and correct his own tragic mistake. What is also immediately clear to the law-abiding Othello is that the gross injustice that he has unwittingly committed must be amended by nothing short of an equal retribution in the form of his own execution: “why should honour outlive honesty” (5.2.243), with “honour” referring to his own static adherence to law and justice, and “honesty” to Desdemona's uncompromising loyalty. Othello now stoically resigns himself to the inevitable (“Who can control his fate?” 5.2.263) and completes his role as the judge-priest-executioner by admitting his guilt, sentencing himself, doing his last soul reckoning, and taking his own life. There is also an element of public penance to satisfy Othello's static need of expiation, when he openly admits his responsibility before the Venetian noblemen Lodovico and Montano, but not without balancing his guilt with honorable motives: “An honourable murderer, if you will, / For nought I did hate, but all in honour” (5.2.291-92). To settle all scores with this world Othello admits consenting to Cassio's death and now asks the lieutenant's pardon (5.2.294-97). He is also formally stripped of his office and responsibility (5.2.329), but again not before his demotion is balanced with a reminder of the service done by Othello to the state (5.2.337). Preoccupied with justice to the end, the departing Othello insists on a fair report of himself after his death, one that will balance his merits with his faults:

Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. 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.

(5.2.340-44)

His last words return to his dead wife whom he owes most in this life, and with whom he must now settle his accounts by paying with his own life for hers. The tragic themes of love and death that unite Othello and Desdemona resonate in the Moor's final rhyming couplet, whose chiastic construction balances “kiss” and “kill,” love and death, in an epitaph that aptly captures the particular nature of Othello's static character:

I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this,
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

(5.2.356-57)

Notes

1. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 179.

2. Knight, Wheel of Fire, 109.

3. Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1964; reprint, London: Routledge, 1991), 88-89.

4. Grene, Shakespeare's Tragic Imagination, 92-93.

5. Of course the honorable Othello himself would soon have openly disclosed the fact of having secretly married Desdemona, but Iago had precipitated the disclosure by using Roderigo to prejudice and inflame Brabantio against the Moor (1.1.118-35).

6. E. A. J. Honigmann, Introduction to Othello, by William Shakespeare, 23-24.

7. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press [1984]), chapter 6.

8. Cf. Sebastian Munster, Cosmographia (1572), in Honigmann, Introduction to Othello, 6.

9. Cf. Jan Kott calls Desdemona “the most sensuous” of all Shakespeare's female characters, and while she does remain faithful to Othello for the critic she “must have something of the slut in her. Not in actu but in potentia” (Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, 94).

10. Cf. Honigmann, Introduction to Othello, 17-19.

11. Othello calls Iago “honest” about fifteen times in the play.

12. Grene, Shakespeare's Tragic Imagination, 108.

13. Garber, Coming of Age in Shakespeare, 136, 139; Joel Fineman, “Fratricide and Cuckoldry: Shakespeare's Doubles,” in Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays, ed. Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélia Kahn (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 102. Coppélia Kahn, Man's Estate: Male Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), 121.

14. Pinker, How the Mind Works, 480-82.

15. Donald Symons, The Evolution of Human Sexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 307.

16. Ibid., 312.

17. In the absence of any definite textual indication Honigmann tentatively places Othello between forty and fifty, that is, nearer to Brabantio than to Desdemona in age (Introduction to Othello, 17).

18. In Shakespeare's time Venice was regarded as the pleasure capital of Europe, especially in its sexual tolerance. Its courtesans were widely celebrated, and—according to Sir Henry Wotton, English ambassador to Venice in the last years of the sixteenth century—they were indistinguishable from gentlewomen in clothes and manners (Honigmann, Introduction to Othello, 9-10).

19. Stewart, Character and Motive in Shakespeare, 105.

20. McElroy, Shakespeare's Mature Tragedies, 115.

21. John Holloway, The Story of the Night: Studies in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 47.

22. Kernan, “Othello: An Introduction,” 76-78.

23. M. R. Ridley, Introduction to Othello, by William Shakespeare, Arden Shakespeare (1958; reprint, London, New York: Routledge, 1993), llx.

24. Stewart, Character and Motive, 105; Honigmann, Introduction to Othello, 19.

25. Hawkes, Shakespeare and the Reason, 116; McElroy, Shakespeare's Mature Tragedies, 79.

26. Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, 98.

27. Ibid.

28. Hawkes, Shakespeare and the Reason, 119.

29. Ribner, Patterns in Shakespearian Tragedy, 108; Stirling, Unity in Shakespearian Tragedy, 127, 132.

30. Grene, Shakespeare's Tragic Imagination, 120.

31. According to Brents Stirling the word cause derives from common law, where it connoted a legal process or a matter put before the court for decision (Stirling, Unity, 133).

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