[In the following essay, Doebler examines Othello's last moments within the tradition of the art of dying well, with particular reference to popular iconography and devotional books. The critic asserts that by framing the Moor's precipitous death within this tradition, Shakespeare intensified the audience's sympathy for the despairing hero.]

The second scene of the last act of Othello invokes the ars moriendi tradition, a popular tradition of comfort for the dying which stands in ironic contrast to Othello's own violent and despairing death. The most familiar prop in the iconography of Renaissance death is the bed, and the bed is the dominant presentational image in this scene, a bed that should probably be both well downstage and as massive as possible while still capable of being rolled forward. In many of the woodcuts that accompany the ars moriendi tracts and in the sixteenth-century paintings of deathbed scenes, the bed is inclined to be massive and rectilinear, in contrast to the curvilinear voluptuous couch hung with tent-like draperies which appears in representations of amorous scenes.¹ Supporting this dominant icon of the deathbed is a network of verbal images: especially those associated with angels and devils, the contestants for a dying man's soul.² There is no great elaboration; the details are commonplaces; but by 1604,³ the projected date of the play's first performance, such a long and popular Christian tradition as the ars moriendi needed only to be hinted at.

The Judaeo-Christian view of life as a trial or a series of temptations is familiar to Medieval and Renaissance scholars. The patterns of temptation and fall, or temptation and victory, appear throughout the history of literature. The great archetypes are, of course, Biblical; the pattern for tragedy to the Renaissance mind was the narrative of Adam and Eve falling to the devil in the Garden; the tragi-comic pattern, however, was exemplified by Job and Christ, both of whom came to ultimate victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil. Some scholars have seen Othello as a type of Adam in his fall through uxoriousness to the temptations of Iago in the main body of the play, but no one has seen Act V, sc. ii, as a parallel temptation and fall underlined by the allusions to the ars moriendi tradition.⁴ Shakespeare, by the use of this tradition, intensifies the tragic fall of Othello. As he has lived and fallen earlier to temptation, embodied in Iago, so he dies, confronted by his own sins as they seem to be embodied in Iago, falling into the sin of despair and taking his own life. The most explicit allusion to the tradition is made by Gratiano and reminds the audience of the deathbed struggle between good and evil, in which the stakes are very high:

                                        Did he [Brabantio] live now,
This sight would make him do a desperate turne:
          Yea, curse his better Angell from his side,
          And fall to Reprobance.

(V.ii.258-261)

By the time Gratiano speaks these lines we are conscious that Othello is facing his own struggle with the temptation to despair, suicide, and probable damnation. Critics have found it impossible to believe that Othello is both damned and heroic. On the one hand, those who see his damnation seem to lose sight of the heroic proportion of his struggle and the very human glory of his ending. On the other hand, those who respond to Shakespeare's dramatic portrayal of the struggle try to minimize the theological implications of his suicide. Somewhere in between are the scholars who discuss the play as something of an allegory of fortunate fall; they see many theological allusions to damnation in the language of the play, but at the same time they find in the final scene a structure of redemption, often built upon Desdemona as a Christ-figure and upon Othello's sincere repentance of her murder.⁵

All three positions seem to me to ignore at some point the actual text of the play as it would be apprehended by a Shakespearean audience. In his professional knowledge of the theater and of the need to communicate immediately to an audience Shakespeare often speaks explicitly. When he is using allusions to suggest a dimension other than that of the particular, he frequently gives his summary clue. In Othello, perhaps his most carefully wrought play, Gratiano, horrified at the murder of Desdemona, brings explicitly into the context the long ars moriendi tradition in his comment on what would have been Brabantio's response to the scene.

The explicit reference to the ars tradition operates dramatically in two ways. It throws into relief the contrast between the tragic suffering of Othello in Act V and the ordinary suffering of one who dies well. By juxtaposing the ideal of dying with something very near its opposite, Shakespeare suggests Othello's damnation. At the same time, however, by showing the heroic intensity of the struggle, and the suffering that results from the recognition of his guilt, against the conventional background of the ars, Shakespeare evokes great dramatic sympathy for the human Othello. Perhaps paradoxically (but not necessarily so) Othello's probable damnation is supported by the references to the ars tradition at the same time that he becomes more dramatically sympathetic in the quality of his suffering.

In order to appreciate fully what the allusion contributes dramatically, one should know something of the ars moriendi tradition. The first work on the theme of dying well which was more than a chapter in a theological treatise was printed in 1450 as a block-book, one which included eleven illustrations and accompanying texts, all printed from wood-blocks. The purpose of the book was to instruct either the religious or layman on the art of dying well when no priest was present. There were two early versions of the text, both widely imitated and reprinted in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially in England, France, and Germany. The conventions of the tradition were expressed again and again in both Catholic and Protestant devotional books in the seventeenth century. Although the instruction had its source on the continent, it apparently came into England about 1490 with Caxton's translation of the Tractatus de arte vivendi et moriendi.⁶

At the heart of the ars tradition is the actual deathbed scene, viewed as a climactic struggle between the forces of evil and the forces of good for the possession of the dying one's soul. In the oldest, simplest, and most iconographic terms, as it is seen in the woodcuts, for example, or in early medieval drama such as The Castle of Perseverance, this struggle takes place between one's Good Angel and one's Bad Angel (or the Devil). The struggle between the two angels centers on five temptations and five inspirations, and the instruction attempts to aid the dying one to overcome the Devil and to die peacefully, with his soul being received out of his mouth and into heaven by the Good Angel.⁷ Sections other than the temptations were usually included, of course, and sometimes in the seventeenth century the central struggle disappeared so that the instruction consisted of comforts alone.⁸ Many popular devotional writers, however, such as Cardinal Bellarmine and the Protestant preacher Christopher Sutton have written ars books which show an expansion of the original treatment, but also contain the instruction against temptation.⁹ Often the first section of an ars book was an extensive treatise on accepting death as the gateway to life and preparing for it; also, there were usually instructions for those attending the sick: questions to be asked, prayers to be said.

In spite of the dramatic sympathy which arises from the recognition by the audience that Othello has not fallen through his own malice but rather, like Adam in the Garden, he has been tempted by the devil through uxoriousness, the audience could hardly fail to see the manner of his dying against the long and popular tradition of the ars moriendi, that by 1604 was deeply ingrained in the English attitude towards death. The counsel of the ars against impatience in the face of suffering or against despair that might lead to suicide could hardly have failed to present a contrast to Othello in his last moments. According to conventional Renaissance theology, Othello dies badly; like Faustus, he does not follow the accumulated wisdom of Christian theology; and, as Roland Frye has said in his Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine, there was nearly universal agreement in the sixteenth century that damnation resulted from suicide committed willfully, consciously, and successfully.¹⁰ Shakespeare reminds his audience of this contrast between the ideal death and that of Othello by commonplaces, a technique suggesting that by this time Shakespeare had only to refer to traditional images and themes to bring before the mind's eye of the audience the ordered and optimistic ideal for dying that had come to it through block-books and popular iconography, not to mention the vast quantity of pious treatises that were sold in London every day.¹¹

The constant injunction to carry the thought of death always in one's mind and ever to be preparing for it could hardly have failed to produce a sensitivity to the subject. By far the greater number of the religious devotional books in the ars tradition began with a section on the necessity for accepting death joyfully and preparing one's self for it. As part of this preparation, many writers gave copious advice on how to die to the world. Christopher Sutton's Disce Mori. Learne to Dye (1600) reminds us that an essential part of preparation is self-knowledge:

Well, the perfection of our knowledge is to know God and ourselves: ourselves we best know when we acknowledge our mortal being … by our dying to the world, Christ is said to come and live in us, and by our dying in the world, we are said to go to live with Christ.¹²

One of the methods used by the devotional writers to encourage meditation on and preparation for death was a warning against just such sudden death as we find in Othello. This warning arose out of the recognition that men desire a leisurely death in order to prepare their souls; even so sophisticated a preacher as Richard Hooker said that the virtuous desire the leisurely death in old age, both for their own joy and for the example that they can give to those around them:

… because the nearer we draw unto God, the more we are oftentimes enlightened with the shining beams of his glorious presence as being then almost in sight, a leisurable departure may in that case bring forth for the good of such as are present that which shall cause them for ever after from the bottom of their hearts to pray, “O let us die the death of the righteous, and let our last end be like theirs.”¹³

Probably the suddenness and violence of the deaths in the last act of Othello were in themselves enough to arouse horror in an audience warned against being caught unprepared. At the same time, however, that devotional writers warned men to be on guard against sudden death and indeed to aim for a leisurely dying they also warned them not to judge the future of the dying one, presumably because one could not know whether or not the Moriens might have time for repentance between apparent dying and the actual going out of the soul. Erasmus, with characteristic pithiness, says: “For it may be, that he, which for treason, is hanged, drawen, and quartered, passeth into the company of aungelles, where as an nother, the whiche dyeng in a gray friers cote, and relygiously buried, departeth downe into hell.”¹⁴

Although even the sophisticated desired a leisurely death, the tradition allowed for a “good” sudden death under one essential condition: that of a good life. Clearly, this is the traditional justification for Desdemona's good death, and, in less ideal terms, for that of Emilia. Neither has time for the traditional preparation, and yet the audience would have seen Desdemona's death in perfect charity as ideal, and Emilia's in heroic truthtelling as something close to ideal.

Clearly, the instructions for deathbed behavior were aimed more surely at those who had doubts about having lived well and therefore envisioned a last epic struggle with the Devil. The tradition was designed to be comforting, especially for those who needed the assurance of a ritual. In fact, the great set of eleven illustrations that accompany the ars block-books narrates what I have already called a “tragi-comedy,” the final scene of which illustrates the happy dying of the sick man, with the vanquished demons uttering execrations as the soul flies off into heavenly bliss. In the other ten illustrations, which comprise the struggle between good and evil, the five temptations of the Devil are those against faith, to despair, to impatience, to vainglory, and to avarice. Alternating with these are the five inspirations of the Good Angel: to faith, against despair, to patience, against vainglory, and against avarice. Central to all of them is the figure of the Moriens on his deathbed. All the representations are crowded with figures; in the temptations the dominant ones are naturally demonic, while in the inspirations the Good Angel takes an important place, as do figures of God, Christ, the Virgin, and the Saints. The effect of the series is not, however, to frighten the reader with the mightiness of the struggle, but rather to reassure him that with the aid of his Good Angel he will be able to overcome the Devil. The Good Angel suggests aids against the Devil in some of the inspirations, in which one sees the vestige of a smile on the face of the Moriens; particularly essential is the patterning of one's death on the Passion of Christ and the remembering of his mercy. The literal expression of this counsel is to fix one's eyes on the figure of Christ on the cross. In the “Inspiration of the Good Angel against Despair,” in the “Inspiration against Avarice,” and in the final scene of the dying well, the figure of Christ on the cross is prominent.¹⁵ In “The Craft to know Well to Die,” the following advice is given:

Item [there] ought to be presented to the sick person the image of the crucifix, which alway should be among the sick people, and also the image of our Blessed Lady, and of other saints which the sick man hath most loved and honoured in his life.¹⁶

Erasmus even goes to the length of suggesting that the crucifix be laid against the eyes of the sick man.¹⁷

Certainly, compared to the danse macabre and even the memento mori which stemmed from that, the ars tradition had a particularly kind and encouraging tone. The writers of the artes moriendi for the most part shunned images of damnation and hellfire and sought to encourage the dying one through the difficult spiritual time of the last illness lest his bodily weakness cause him to fall prey to the Devil's temptations, especially the sin against faith and the sin of despair, both of which might lead to suicide.¹⁸ Almost all the authors of these numerous books on the art of dying (which became during the Renaissance a category of the courtesy books) attempted to give very practical instructions. In vivid contrast to the optimistic tone of this instruction, the end of Othello is filled with passion, murder, recrimination, a barrage of temptations for Othello, which he is unable to overcome except in dramatic terms. Anyone familiar with the medieval exempla of good Christians facing their deaths (a tradition which reached at least as far into the seventeenth century as Walton's description of Donne's death) would recognize in Othello's ending a near-antithesis of the ideal. But certainly the ironic contrast is the point. Shakespeare is using the order and tradition to underline the tragedy.

Lest one think that the conventions of the ars had lost their force by the beginning of the seventeenth century, one should remember that the publication of devotional literature was increasing in the early seventeenth century with the Counter-Reformation. Approximately half the books published in England since the beginning of printing had had religious titles, not to mention the many others without religious titles which nevertheless expressed an essentially religious point of view.¹⁹ Clearly the literate Elizabethan was more theologically sensitive than scholars have realized until recently. More directly, there was a great quantity of writing on the specific theme of the preparation for death; both in books of popular devotion such as those of Perkins, Becon, and Sutton, and in the more intellectual books of meditation that came into England with the continental books influenced by the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.²⁰ To this quantitative argument should be added common knowledge about seventeenth century life: the plague, the very high rate of mortality in childbirth and of contagious disease, and the certainty by parents that a high percentage of their children would not live to make old bones.

The popularity of the theme of preparation for death had led, of course, to several levels of writing on the subject: the old ars tradition, with the focus on the struggle, symbolic and visual; the more intellectualized books of meditation; and pious treatises that tended to focus more on practical instructions for setting one's property in order than upon the great spiritual crisis. Shakespeare, with characteristic sense of artistic potential, chose to use the old tradition with its focus on the central deathbed struggle, a tradition which was still very much alive, especially in the popular superstitions of the day. Although one cannot speculate very far about his reasons for choosing this particular strain of the tradition, they no doubt had something to do with the visual or iconic qualities which make it especially appealing for the stage.

This visual quality in the ars suggests Shakespeare's presentational use of the tradition. Inevitably, one recalls the woodcuts mentioned above, which had appeared first with the block-books but had been reproduced and imitated elsewhere up through the sixteenth century. The excellence of the representations suggests that they would have imprinted themselves on the imagination of all who saw them, and the quantity of their reproduction supports that suggestion. There is evidence that originally many considered them central to the ars and merely accompanied by a text of explanation and instruction. At least we know from the closing lines of the introduction of one of the early block-books that the author intended the words and pictures to work together to teach a man how to die.²¹ Since these books were not designed primarily for the clergy but, rather, predominantly for the uneducated layman, one may deduce the primary importance of the illustrations.

For these reasons, one may speculate that the visual dominance of the bed in Act V was for Shakespeare's audience pervasively suggestive of the deathbed scene in the ars. Also in visual terms, the gathering of the central characters about the bed as the scene progresses, first with the entrance of Emilia, after Desdemona's almost-death, then with the entrance of Montano, Gratiano, and Iago after 1. 207, with the final entrance of Lodovico, Cassio, Montano, and Officers, suggests the visually crowded woodcuts, in which the Moriens is surrounded by friends and foes of a supernatural or symbolic nature as well as by members of his family.

In addition to its suggestion by the bed, the art of dying informs the structure of the scene. Scene ii is divided into two major parallel sections, the first of which is the murder and “good” death of Desdemona and the second the discovery by Othello of his monstrous mistake and his consequent suicide, or theologically “bad” death. In the first section, even a contemporary audience agreed that Desdemona's death was extremely affecting.²² This is true, not only because of her innocence and loveliness but because in exemplifying the ideal of Christian forgiveness, she brings into the context of the play a great body of emotional associations with a good death. During the first part of the scene, before he is overcome by jealousy and rage, Othello behaves as just avenger. Still softened by his first sight of Desdemona asleep and the kiss with which he has wakened her, he himself remembers the advice of the ars tradition that the soul should not depart out of the world unprepared; he admonishes her to think on any crime that she has not as yet confessed because he would not kill her “unprepared Spirit,” her soul (V.ii.37-38). A few lines later he utters the conventional phrase: “Thinke on thy sinnes” (V.ii.49). When, however, Desdemona does not confess, he advises her not to commit the sin of perjury, as she is on her deathbed (V.ii.63-64). The verbal identification of the bed with the deathbed is, of course, a further support for the visual icon of the bed in the scene. The seeming peace, however, of the scene, with its echoes of traditional phrases and kindly advice, is merely a thin overlay for the increasing tension as Othello grows increasingly angry at what he believes to be Desdemona's dishonesty. As the scene builds, Othello shifts his role from that of fatherly adviser or confessor to that of the accusing Bad Angel of the ars series, too overcome by his own passion at the end to allow her even one prayer. Othello, however, retains the sympathy of the audience by his attempt to keep Desdemona from suffering at the end when she seems slow to die.

The second part of the scene begins with Emilia's entrance and the discovery which almost immediately turns her into an accuser. The first section of the scene, Desdemona's good death, is linked with the second by her poignant and momentary waking, which critics have long seen as an emblem of perfect Christian forgiveness and a final attempt at reconciliation. Asked by Emilia who has committed the murder, she replies: “No body: I my selfe, farewell: / Commend me to my kinde Lord: oh farewell,” (V.ii.155-156). Ironically Othello remarks: “She's like a Liar gone to burning hell” (V.ii.161). He sees her as having damned herself by lying on her deathbed. Only as the scene progresses would the audience in its recognition of the dramatic necessity of Othello's death begin to see Othello take the place of Desdemona as the Moriens. During the earlier part of the scene one remains still conscious of Othello as demonic in his murder of Desdemona; this is underlined in one sense by Emilia's line: “Oh the more Angell she, and you the black/er [sic] Divell” (V.ii.163-164). The veriest commonplace of commonplaces,²³ the opposition nevertheless may suggest the further implication that Desdemona as Good Angel has sought to save Othello by one inspiration and that in killing her, he has played the role of Bad Angel against himself. His shift to Moriens becomes stronger when Gratiano makes the ars moriendi tradition explicit about a hundred lines later in his reference to Brabantio, already cited:

                                        Did he live now,
This sight would make him do a desperate turne:
Yea, curse his better Angell from his side,
And fall to Reprobance

(V.ii.258-261)

Gratiano is glad that Brabantio is dead because the sight of Desdemona murdered would have brought him to despair, a state which would cause him to curse his Good Angel from his side and fall into reprobance, or reprobation, defined by the OED as “a state of rejection by God,” and thus he would be ordained to eternal misery.²⁴ Here the text makes explicit for the audience one of the strongest warnings of the ars tradition, the avoidance of despair and suicide.

Gratiano's speech is extremely important in several ways. First it makes clear that Shakespeare is thinking of the ars tradition and therefore not using the references to angels and devils in a loose metaphorical way. Secondly, through implied analogy it helps to shift the focus of the audience to Othello as the dying one, even though he has not yet begun to die physically. Thirdly, and perhaps this overlaps with the second effect, the speech sums up symbolically what Othello has done and foreshadows the tragedy of what he will do. He has by killing her cursed Desdemona, his Good Angel, from his side, and the full revelation of his sin in doing so eventually leads him to the despair which ends in the suicide seen by Renaissance theology as resulting in damnation. Suicide itself is of course not mentioned explicitly in Gratiano's speech, but the connection between despair and suicide was very close by Shakespeare's time.²⁵ For this reason in the ars tradition there was almost an inordinate emphasis on this temptation and the means of overcoming it. In some measure this explains the increasing emphasis in devotional literature on the comforts for the dying. In the little manual attributed to Luther, for example, the whole notion of the great struggle has disappeared, and the book is wholly composed of comforting Bible verses, meditations, and prayers.²⁶

That Iago parallels the Devil of the ars is suggested in a number of places, both before and during Act V. The association is most obviously prepared for by Iago's lines early in the play:

                                        Divinitie of hell,
When divels will the blackest sinnes put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shewes,
As I do now

(II.ii.381-384)

Critics have long recognized the quality of Iago's character as diabolic in its love of evil and deception. Othello's own superstitious response to the depth of deception which Iago has practiced upon him is an explicit suggestion in Act V itself: “I look down towards his feet; but that's a Fable / If that thou bee'st a Divell, I cannot kill thee” (V.ii.350-351). One should not press it too far, but one can hardly help remembering that Othello finally only wounds him. The association between Iago and the Devil is underlined a few lines after the reference to his cloven hoof by Othello's calling him demi-devil and asking him why he has ensnared his soul and body (V.ii.368-369). In terms of the deathbed scene of the ars Iago becomes for Othello the cause and embodiment of the sins of faithlessness and jealousy that have led him to murder and despair.²⁷ The discovery of Iago's perfidy is the means by which Othello confronts his own sins. One remembers the temptation to despair in the woodcuts which shows the Moriens surrounded by six devils pointing to the sins of his past; one of the six carries a scroll which bears the inscription: “Ecce peccata tua,” or “Behold thy sins.” The others point to various representations of those he has sinned against by fornication, avarice, and murder.²⁸

The tragic force of the revelation of his own sins finds Othello without any of the supports that are recommended by the ars tradition. The leisurely deathbed with its time for meditation and repentance is impossible. Desdemona, after one attempt at inspiration, is dead. There are no friends about Othello to encourage him by mentioning the thief on the cross or other examples of sinful men who died saved. Indeed, before her death, Emilia lashes out with fury to judge his guilt. Even as the truth is revealed and Iago shown to be the villain, there is among those present pity for Othello's rashness, but no real comfort for his grief and no mention of Christ's mercy. Because the devilish Iago remains largely inarticulate through the scene, one feels that Othello's despair stems primarily from his own confrontation of his sins.

Othello's despair seems inevitable in these circumstances. It becomes obvious in several speeches and, of course, in the suicide itself. Othello remarks after he wounds Iago but does not kill him: “I am not sorry neither, Il'd have thee live: / For in my sense, 'tis happiness to die” (V.ii.355-356). These lines are ironic in terms of the ars tradition in which one well-prepared should be happy to die. The irony is given its despairing cast, however, by Othello's previous speech:

Heere is my journies end, heere is my butt
And verie Sea-marke of my utmost Saile.
Do you go backe dismaid? 'Tis a lost feare:
Man but a Rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires. Where should Othello go?
Now: how dost thou looke now? Oh ill-Starr'd wench,
Pale as thy Smocke: when we shall meete at compt,
This looke of thine will hurle my Soule from Heaven,
And Fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my Girle?
Even like thy Chastity. O cursed, cursed Slave!
Whip me ye Divels,
From the possession of this Heavenly sight:
Blow me about in windes, roast me in Sulphure,
Wash me in steepe-downe gulfes of Liquid fire.
Oh Desdemon! dead Desdemon: dead. Oh, oh!

(V.ii.330-344)

Not only does Othello see himself cast out from heaven, as his earlier lines foreshadowed: “O, I were damn'd beneath all depth in hell: / But that I did proceed upon just grounds / To this extremity” (V.ii.171-173), but he also desires to be cast away from the vision of Desdemona's innocence. At the “compt,” the Last Judgment, the sight of Desdemona will hurl him to hell. In spite of his use of what was at one time presumably purgatorial imagery of winds and fiery gulfs, the overall suggestion is that of hell.²⁹

It is only a short step from the sense that Othello's sin is unforgiveable to suicide. One is reminded of the figure of the demon in the woodcut temptation against faith; the demon has his right hand upon the shoulder of the Moriens and his scroll reads: “Interfecias te ipsum,” or “Kill thyself.” But before he commits suicide, Othello makes his dying speech, his final justification and one that dramatically redeems him. One must say with Mr. Siegel that all the imagery of the play and certainly that of the final scene suggest Othello's damnation. This is not to say, however, that he cannot remain humanly sympathetic, or more accurately, tragically heroic.³⁰ The dignity of his final speech surely projects the image of a man who was potentially a great hero and thereby a great loss in his tragic fall. That the suicide is conventionally unacceptable is suggested by the comments of Lodovico and Gratiano:

LOD.
Oh bloody period
GRAT.
All that is spoke, is marr'd

(V.ii.431-432)

That the dramatic dimension, the human dimension, takes emotional precedence in the play, however, is shown in Cassio's comment, which comes in the last and most emphatic position: “This did I feare, but thought he had no weapon: / For he was great of heart” (V.ii.435-436). Dramatically, one's tragic sympathy remains with Othello and the strong indication that he is damned only intensifies the tragic loss of potentiality.

Pointing out these theological commonplaces of Renaissance thought should not imply that Shakespeare's audience would be preoccupied with eschatological considerations while it viewed the last act of Othello. The play is not an allegory, and one must agree with Roland Frye that Shakespeare is primarily concerned with the now, the ethical present.³¹ Shakespeare's audience was no doubt immediately involved in the murder of Desdemona, the discovery by Othello of Iago's diabolical scheme, and the recognition of Othello's own guilt that leads him to suicide. At the same time, however, remembering what scholars have learned from Panofsky and Wind about the Renaissance ability to move back and forth readily between the particular and the universal, one can hardly doubt that the audience was from the beginning aware of universal implications, one of which was that Othello was playing the climactic scene of his life in the scene of his dying. The great bell of the contemptus mundi tradition had already rung so insistently across the ages that men knew the scallop shell of the pilgrim as the emblem of life. Erasmus had sounded the subordination of this life to the next in the most conventional phrasing:

We be wayfarynge men in this worlde, not inhabytants, we be as straungers in Innes (or to speke it better) in bouthes or tentes, we lyve not in our countrey. This holle lyfe is nothing but a rennynge to deathe, and that very shorte, but death is the gate of everlastynge lyfe.³²

It is difficult to define precisely the effect of the allusions to the ars moriendi in the final scene of Othello. Clearly the scene is not an allegory of dying badly. The suggestions are neither frequent nor elaborate. It seems to me consistent with Shakespeare's artistry, however, that he deepen the emotional response of his audience to a particular image of life by suggesting analogues from experience and history. In this case the introduction of the ideal for dying well sharpens and universalizes the emotional response of the audience to the “tragic loading of the bed.”

Notes

1. See L. J. Ross, “The Use of a ‘Fit-Up’ Booth in Othello,” Shakespeare Quarterly, XII, no. 4 (Autumn, 1961), 359-370, for an interesting discussion of the staging of Othello. Although I am not entirely convinced that a booth was used, I should agree that it seems highly unlikely that the bed was originally in the inner stage. In the sixteenth century the four-poster was the bed par excellence with a paneled tester on four posts—the most important piece of furniture in the private rooms of the house and as a valuable inheritance passed on from one generation to another. See The Tudor Period: 1599-1603, eds. Ralph Edwards and L. G. G. Ramsey (London, 1956), p. 37. For the iconographic distinction between the “family” bed, the childbirth bed or the deathbed, and the bed of luxury, see Gabriel Chappuys, Figures de la Bible (Lyon, 1582). In this illustrated Bible there is only one bed of luxury, curved and voluptuous, belonging to Potiphar's wife, while there are numerous representations of the massive, rectilinear deathbeds, or, upon occasion, beds of birth.

2. These images belong both to the early medieval drama of the Psychomachia and to the non-dramatic and visual tradition of the ars. I should contend, however, that the popularity and pervasiveness of the ars instruction would make associations with the tradition more immediate to the Shakespearean audience.

3. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, III (Oxford, 1923), 487. All references to the play will be from the following edition: William Shakespeare, “Othello,” The Variorum, ed. Horace Howard Furness (Philadelphia, 1886).

4. R. N. Hallstead, “Idolatrous Love,” accepted for future publication by The Shakespeare Quarterly. Hallstead argues strongly that Othello's jealousy arises from idolatrous love, but he sees the suicide as the final act of penance.

5. Paul N. Siegel, “The Damnation of Othello,” PMLA, LXVIII (December, 1953), 1068-1079. Cf. Kenneth O. Myrick, “The Theme of Damnation in Shakespearean Tragedy,” Studies in Philology, XXXVIII (April, 1941), 221-245, who does not see Othello as damned. An example of the third point of view may be seen in Irving Ribner, Patterns in Shakespearian Tragedy (New York, 1960).

6. See Sister Mary Catharine O'Connor, The Art of Dying Well (New York, 1942), for the history of the ars tradition. Though I have read many of the books within the tradition at the University of Wisconsin Library, at the Newberry Library, and at the Folger Shakespeare Library, I am indebted to Sister Mary Catharine for her historical survey. I am also grateful to Miss Helen C. White, English Devotional Literature, 1600-1640 (Madison, 1931), for much of my understanding of popular devotion in England.

7. The Ars Moriendi (Editio Princeps, circa 1450), Facs. ed., ed. W. Harry Rylands (London, 1881). The book contains twelve leaves without signatures with illustrations scattered throughout. Dr. William Thomas has described one of the stained glass windows at the great church at Malvern as representing this one of the ars scenes in the fifteenth century. In the top part of the window a monk was kneeling with demons behind him, and in the lower part a man lay on his deathbed with demons trying to seize his soul as it issued from his mouth in the shape of a child, while the Good Angel tried to protect it. G. McN. Rushforth, Medieval Christian Imagery (Oxford, 1937), p. 307.

8. See Launcelot Andrews, The Private Devotions and Manual for the Sick (London, 1839). No translator is given.

9. Robert Bellarmine, The Art of Dying Well, tr. C. E. of the Society of Jesus, sec. ed. (n. p., 1622); one illustration of the hold on the popular imagination of the ars tradition is suggested by the practice of recording the deaths of the great or popular men of the day; this little book contains an account of Bellarmine's sickness, death, and burial in Rome. See also Christopher Sutton, Disce Mori. Learne to Dye, eds. Edward H. Dewar and Charles Daman (London, 1858).

10. Roland Mushat Frye, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine (Princeton, 1963), p. 25. In Thomas Becon, “The Sicke Mannes Salve,” Works, ed. Rev. John Ayre, IV (Cambridge, 1844), 165, we see the traditional use of Cain as an illustration of one who fell into desperation, believing his sin was too great to be forgiven, and was damned. For full discussion of Dr. Faustus in relation to the ars and the question of despair, see Beach Langston, “Marlowe's Faustus and the Ars Moriendi Tradition,” A Tribute to George Coffin Taylor (Richmond, 1952), pp. 148-167.

11. Louis B. Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1935), p. 235.

12. Christopher Sutton, Disce Mori, p. 6. This little book was published first in 1600. Sutton's family was in high favor with Queen Elizabeth. See also King Lear, ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore, 1958), I.i.292-293: “… yet he hath ever but / slenderly known himself.”

13. Richard Hooker, “The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,” Works, ed. the Rev. John Keble, 7th ed., rev. by the Very Rev. R. W. Church, and the Rev. F. Paget (Oxford, 1888), I, Bk. V, ch. xlvi, pp. 195-197.

14. Desiderius Erasmus, Preparation to Deathe, no tr. (n. p., 1534), sig. D2v.

15. The Ars Moriendi, Rylands.

16. Frances M. M. Comper, ed., “The Craft to know Well to Die,” The book of the Craft of Dying (London, 1917), pp. 77-78. Réau also notes in Iconographie de L'Art Chretien (Paris, 1957), II, p. 2, p. 657, the continuing popularity of the injunction to model one's death on that of Christ: he mentions the thirty-nine stamps attributed to Romeyn de Hooghe which illustrate the death of the Franciscan David de la Vigne. Each scene in the process of dying is paralleled by an episode from the Passion of Christ.

17. Erasmus, Preparation, sig. F3v. The text of this work also appears in Latin in a book by Erasmus and George Aemylius, Imagines mortis (Cologne, 1555), in which the text accompanies some of the plates of the danse macabre.

18. By the end of the sixteenth century the temptations against faith and to despair seem to have merged in the popular mind. The point is often made in the devotional literature that despair indicates a lack of faith in the mercy of God. For excellent discussions of despair, see Susan Snyder, “The Left Hand of God: Despair in Medieval and Renaissance Tradition,” Studies in the Renaissance, XII (1965), 18-59; and Kathrine Koller, “Art, rhetoric, and holy dying in the ‘Faerie queene’ with special reference to the Despair canto,” Studies in Philology, LXI (April, 1964), 128-139. Since Miss Koller is the leading scholar in the United States on the ars moriendi tradition, this article summarizes a wealth of background materials. In the original ars woodcuts, however, it is the temptation against faith which shows the demon with the scroll advising the Moriens to kill himself; lower in the picture is the representation of a man about to cut his throat. One wonders how closely the knife might be associated with suicide; Sir Trevisan in the Faerie Queene has a rope around his neck, but the Red Crosse knight almost takes his life with a dagger.

    Lewis Bayley, in the extremely popular devotional book, The Practice of Pietie, 12th ed. (London, 1620), pp. 649-717, has a meditation against despair, but no separate one against loss of faith.

19. Frye, Shakespeare and Christian Doctrine, p. 63.

20. One has only to note the frequency of editions of popular devotional books to see evidence of this quantity. See for the discussion of the art of meditation and its influence Louis Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven, 1954).

21. Sister Mary Catharine O'Connor, The Art of Dying, p. 44.

22. We even have a Latin letter given in an article by Geoffrey Tillotson, in “Othello and the Alchemist at Oxford in 1610,” The Times Literary Supplement (July 20, 1933), p. 494, which describes the way in which the audience was moved, especially by Desdemona's death scene: “cum in lecto decumbens spectantium misericordiam ipso vultu imploraret.”

23. In “The Lamentation of the Creature,” Miss Comper's modern printing of one of the ars texts in the Book of the Craft of Dying, p. 139, we may see a characteristic use of the opposition:

    The Complaint of the Dying Creature to the Good Angel

    O my GOOD ANGEL, to whom our Lord took me to keep, where be thee now? Me thinketh ye should be here, and answer for me; for the dread of death distroubleth me, so that I cannot answer for myself. Here is my bad angel and is one of my chief accursers, with regions of fiends with him. I have no creature to answer for me. Alas it is an heavy case!

24. The Oxford English Dictionary, VIII (reprinted 1961), p. 488. The dictionary gives as one of its illustrations the following quotation from Sir Thomas More, “Confutation of Tindale,” Works, p. 815: “To fall in Despicions upon Gods elecion, … and eternall sentence of reprobation.” Apparently the term was used often in opposition to election.

25. Traditional advice against suicide is given by the popular preacher, Christopher Sutton, in Disce Mori, in a section entitled: “An admonition for all such as find themselves troubled with evil motions, to commit faithless and fearful attempts against themselves.” In the third paragraph of the section Sutton makes explicit the connection between despair and suicide:

    Abridge the time we may not, we must not, for all the disgraces, and injuries, and obloquies, the crosses and losses this world can lay upon us: fie upon that discontentment that should make any cowardly to run away, or distrustfully to give over his standing, before he be called by the general of the field: fie upon that despair that should make any cast away themselves, and forget they have souls to save

    (p. 252).

26. Martin Luther, Every Dayes Sacrifice (London, 1607).

27. In Bayley's The Practice of Pietie, 12th ed. (London, 1620), p. 694, the strategy of the devil is commented upon:

    It is found by continuall experience, that neere the time of death, (when the Children of God are weakest) then Sathan makes the greatest flourish of his strength: and assailes them with his strongest temptations. … And therefore he will now bestirre himselfe as much as he can, and labour to set before their eyes all the grosse sins which ever they committed, and the Judgements of God which are due unto them: thereby to drive them if hee can, to despaire; which is a grievouser sinne then all the sinnes that they committed, or he can accuse them of.

28. The Ars Moriendi, ed. Rylands, sig. B3v. Cf. also Hieronimus Bosch, “The Death of the Miser.” The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

29. John E. Hankins, “The Pains of the Afterworld: Fire, Wind, and Ice in Milton and Shakespeare,” PMLA, LXXI (June, 1956), 482-495. This article, on the basis of some sound background materials, distinguishes between purgatorial and hell imagery, but my own reading indicates that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries sometimes the distinction is not made.

30. Siegel, “The Damnation of Othello,” 1068-1079. Ribner in Patterns in Shakespearian Tragedy is, I think, recognizing this dramatic redemption in his argument that though Othello dies expecting damnation, Desdemona as a symbol of mercy has prepared the audience for his salvation. This argument, although I see the critical problem of the final dignity of Othello that it seeks to answer, does not, I think, take cognizance of the strength of Renaissance theological opinion on suicide.

31. Frye, Shakespeare and the Christian Doctrine, p. 63.

32. Erasmus, Preparation to Deathe, sig. A4v.