1
CRITICALLY EXAMINATION OF THE TEXT
In terms of Characterization, Themes and Dramatic Effects
The whole Act 1 is devoted to exposition. This is necessary for the foundation of the character and situation on which the action is to be built. Three of its scenes take place in Venice which introduces all the main characters, except Cassio and Emilia. Though the act is expository, it is full of excitement. Othello is a drama of modern life, when it first appeared it was a drama almost of contemporary life. The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama to ourselves is more immediate than it can be in Hamlet or Lear.
The play Othello begins with a development of conspiracy whereas Hamlet starts with the supernatural appearance of the ghost on a cold, misty night outside Elsinore Castle which indicates that something is wrong in Denmark. The ghost serves to enlarge the shadow King Hamlet casts across Denmark, indicating that something about his death has upset the balance of nature. Lear begins with distribution of his kingdom.
Scene 1 is pitched into the middle of a conversation. The speaker is evidently aggrieved at some sort of betrayal of trust, apparently concerned with money. Iago and Roderigo are introduced in scene 1 who act as a chorus and are conversing with each other. Through their conversation, they are foreshadowing the characteristics of various characters, which arouse curiosity among the readers before their entrance. In their conversation, they mention “he”, “thicklips” and “the moor.” It creates suspense and excitement. The dramatist has created a strong curiosity to meet him. Iago is clever and he is only after Roderigo's money. He is only using him for the sake money. He's assuring Roderigo by taking oaths: “Sblood!”, “Abhor me”, “Despise me”. This is perhaps natural in a professional soldier, but it also serves to indicate the assertive nature of the man and Roderigo needs most of all in assurance.
Iago through his cunningness knows his value, “I know my price”, and the relation between Iago and the unnamed 'him' is that of officer, “his Moorship's ancient”. He is not bounded to love the Moor with any justice because he was more eligible for the post of lieutenant as compared with Cassio. This scene of injured merit is as important an element in Iago's character as it is in that of Milton's satan. He criticizes Cassio that he is hen pecked and has no experience about battles. He only has “bookish theory” and a “counter-caster”. There is a sardonic humor in his lines. This shows Iago as a representative of the traditional virtues of loyalty and devoted professionalism, undeservedly neglected due to the corruption of the times.
The feeling of confidence, energy and dry wit are the key elements in Iago's personality, as well as the subtle blend of button holding intimacy and no-nonsense manliness with which he flatters Roderigo. The tone and implications of his speech become darker and more menacing, “I follow him to serve my turn upon him.” There is a reason that why one who professes to be such a cunning villain should be so candid in revealing his own nature. This is due to a dramatic convention which Shakespeare inherited from the medieval, the self-defining villain who takes the audience into his confidence as Richard III does in his opening soliloquy. The other and more important reason is that Iago, for all his self-confidence and apparent self-sufficiency, needs and audience.
Roderigo is such a fool that Iago can safely tell him the truth or part of it. Iago is confidently telling him that “I'm not what I am,” sounds like he is a producer or director who coaches people. Indeed, Roderigo is the only one of the characters to whom Iago does speak frankly, confident that he will not be believed. Roderigo is plainly a very poor judge to appreciate the virtuosity of his villainy. Iago captivates us with his charm and energy and almost traps us into endorsing his deviousness and treachery like Richard III and Edmund in King Lear.
The sudden disruption of Brabantio's peace prefigures many similar scenes of violent interruptions. Iago awoke Branbantio by calling, “Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!” indirectly to Othello, shows dramatic effect. The story of Othello and Desdemona's marriage is told in a deliberately violent and obscenely animalistic, “an old black ram/ is tupping white ewe.” Iago is enjoying and having pleasure by uttering violent beastly words, “your daughter covered with a Barbary horse” and “making the beast with two backs.” The recurrent use of sexual imagery becomes motif. There is also a disease imagery used in the line, “plague him with flies.” The animal imagery, particularly recalls the language Lear himself used in cursing Goneril in Act 1, scene 4. References to wolves and their nails, To Lear she is a “detested kite”, her ingratitude inflicts pain “sharper than a serpent’s tooth”, but Lear still believes that Regan will “with her nails …flay [Goneril’s] wolvish visage.”
The marriage is taken place at night and unnatural things happen at night in Shakespeare's plays. Two races came together which shows the togetherness of experience with innocence and psychological disturbance. The theme of racial tension is introduced in the crudest possible way linked to the imagery of bestial population through Iago's way of looking at the human world.
At one hand Iago uses sick language but at the other hand Roderigo, who is gullible, shows politeness in his language while talking to Brabantio. In Roderigo's speech, “Sir, Sir, Sir,” he's carefully using the words because he's talking with the senator of Venice at the middle of the night as an uninvited guest. But Iago who is hidden in the darkness has other motives in disclosing his presence to Brabantio. On their behavior, Brabantio angrily said, “this is Venice: / My house is not a grange.” A grange is an isolated farm house and Brabantio contrasts with the “Venice”. Venice was the greatest commercial republic in Europe, a city built on water and on the wealth that came by water. To Branbantio it is inconceivable that robbery and violence could occur in the heart of such a center of refinement and civil order.
Brabantio is a conventional father and Roderigo has been an unwelcome suitor to the old man's daughter, “my daughter is not for thee.” There lies irony in this statement because a worst white is better than the best black man according to Brabantio, since the time he came to know about the marriage of his daughter with the moor. At that very moment, Barbantio had apparently had a dream prophesying such a disaster when he found Desdemona not in her chamber. Dream itself is a supernatural element. There is a theme of betrayal when he said, “she deceives me.” Then he addressed the audience by the word “Fathers,” which creates dramatic effect, and gives a lesson of never to judge the mind of daughters by their actions. He wished “Is there not charms” for protection of the young maidens and Roderigo would have married her.
In scene I, if we are not given any hints of Iago’s real nature and purpose, we would almost certainly consider his opening words to Othello those of an honest, loyal, courageous and an impulsive man more used to practical action than elaborate argument. “Though I have slain men in war / I find it a burden on my conscious to kill my treachery / I fall short of wickedness….ribs”. Iago belongs to those servants who appear to be honest but actually are hypocrites. His courageous challenge to Roderigo cunningly enhances the image of the honest, rave and loyal soldier. Thus Iago is a good pretender. “Tis better as it is”, this half-line Othello speaks in reply to his protestation is eloquent in its brevity. It seems to come from a man who wastes no words but who can make each word resonate with a sense of fixed purpose. Othello has a very clear public image of him but is less sure in more intimate sphere of domestic life.
In Othello’s next speech we hear for the first time in its full scope that rich and ample mode of utterances which are unmistakably Othello’s throughout the play until it is contaminated by treachery and mistrust. “But that I love the gentle Desdemona,/ I would not my unhoused free condition/ Put into circumscription and confine.” A Shakespearean critic has called this ‘the Othello music’ but it properly belongs not to the play but to Othello himself. The most immediate sign of the Othello music is a certain expansiveness of rhythm, a measured and steady fullness of speech which is felt as much in the many open vowel sounds as in the unfaltering control of syntax. The imagery of sea with which Othello is particularly associated is traditionally symbolic of power, mystery, richness and strangeness. While talking about Desdemona with Iago, “Gentle Desdemona” shows his expression of love and politeness with Desdemona that sounds very poetic.
Watching on stage the entry of officers with torches, we assume to see Brabantio and his search party, especially as Iago makes the same mistake. Once again Othello’s response – “Not I: I must be found” is one we shall discover to be typical, literally a world away from the bestial lecherousness with which Iago attempted to link him in the earlier scene. In speech, appearance and demeanor, Othello literally towers above those around him, as he does around those in the second party which arrives very shortly. The two search parties represent on stage the mingling of the public political action caused by the Turkish threat of Cyprus with the domestic and private crisis of Othello’s marriage which gives this strategy its distinctive atmosphere.
Cassio’s ignorance of Othello’s wedding is somewhat strange, but he may simply wish not to let Iago see how much he knows for fear of betraying Othello’s confidence. The suspense is increased by the arrival of Brabantio’s party just when Othello is ready to leave. There is an immediate and striking contrast between the way Brabantio addresses Othello,“Down with him, thief!” It shows that he is using Iago’s words. Brabantio repeats charge of witch craft against Othello. He claims that Othello has enchanted her daughter. Brabantio makes the assumption that as Othello is black he must be a devil, “Damn’d as thou art”. Thus the public and private themes are interwoven both in speech and dramatic action.
Iago has a great talent for spotting the weakness of others-easy enough to do if one is resolved to see anything other than the narrowest self regard as weakness and an even greater talent for thinking on his feet. In this too, he resembles Richard Ш. One of the fascinations of Iago as the dramatic character is the insight that he gives us into the workings of his mind in motion; we see his plans in the process of solidifying into action.It is noteworthy that he avows his hate not only before he gives us any reason for it ,but as if feelings and its cause were unrelated ; the alleged reason is introduced not, as we might have expected ,by “because” but by “and”. He frankly declares, “I hate the moor”.
The contrast between surface manner and inner manner is pronounced. “Honest Iago” conceals beneath his exterior of the plain soldier and blunt, a diabolism which is so intense as to defy rational explanation. He is an ant life spirit that seeks the destruction of everybody outside the self for his “sport and profit”. He is the antithesis of Desdemona. Desdemona has love and concern for others while Iago has hatred and concern for self at the other. She thinks the best of everyone; he thinks the worst, usually turning to animal imagery to express his low opinion of human nature: “your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs”.
Brabantio feels that the marriage between Othello and Desdemona is outrageous, because he feels that being the father; he should have the right to break up their marriage as she is bound to him “for life and education…” He is the “lord of duty”. Brabantio sees his daughter as more like “property” than his own child; he feels he has the right to own her until he proposes a dowry to perhaps, a successful, white noble. His stereotypical, 16th century view of women shows us an example where women are portrayed as being incapable of making their own decisions.
Yet if we analyze this scene through looking at the character of Desdemona, it is evident that Desdemona is in fact a pure hearted, free thinker who is not afraid to speak out. She in fact, opposes her father and freely admits her love with Othello, assuring him he did not use any magic or witchcraft to gain her love – ““My noble father, you are the lord of duty, I am hitherto your daughter: but here's my husband…I challenge that I may profess Due to the Moor, my lord.”.
BRABANTIO. Where most you owe obedience?
DESDEMONA. …I do perceive here a divided duty… (1.3.195, 197)
As Lear loved Cordelia, he was disappointed when she told him “I love u according to my duty”. In the same way Brabantio felt disappointed when the daughter stood in favor of her husband against her father.
There is a focus on the magnificent speeches of Othello and Desdemona as they declare their love and explain it. These lovers are surrounded and guarded by the assembled, ranked governs of Venice who controls passions of the Senator, Brabantio that otherwise would have led to a bloody brawl and bring justice out of what otherwise would have riot. The meeting reverts to affairs of state. The Duke tells Othello of the Turkish expedition and asks him to undertake the defense of Cyprus. He is informed that the Turks are employing decoy technique to confuse and trick the Christians in order to invade their dominion and destroy them. Othello decides to undertake journey from Venice to Cyprus which has “symbolic geography”. His passage from Venice to Cyprus is from civilization to barbarism, from Christianity to Heathenism and from collective life to the life of solitary individual. It is a psychic voyage of his soul where he comes face to face with the forces of love and hate. He stands between Desdemona, a life force and Iago, an anti life force, has to choose one or the other sow the seeds of tragedy are seen from the 1st act of the play.
THREE CRITICS
Rhymer is of the objection that the behavior of Iago is not true to life because it is not “soldierly”. This objection derives from his neo-classical position. The Renaissance derived most of it critical theories of literature from Aristotle’s Poetics, and there it found the doctrine of generality. The difference between the poet and the historian, Aristotle says “does not lie in the fact that they express themselves in verse or prose… but in the fact that the historian speaks of what has happened, the poet of the thing that can happen”. Some Renaissance critics took over this idea in the restrictive form that all soldiers in literature must be soldierly; all kings must be kingly, all women womanly, all senators wise. Hence to him Iago is a ‘close, dissembling, false insinuating rascal instead of an open hearted, frank, plain-dealing soldier, a character constantly worn by them for some thousands of years in the world”. This is not true because Shakespears stories do require kings, but he thinks only on men. Men are of all categories good and evil, no matter whether it is a conspicuous person or a commoner. He wanted to show that evil emotions and jealous tendency even exists in kings and princes which as a consequence affects the fate of the king as well as the state to a great extent. The former was therefore inclined to show a usurper like Iago and a murderer not only odious, but also despicable. There are petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter satisfied with the figure neglects the drapery.
According to Kenneth Muir, “ The secret of Iago is not a motiveless malignity, nor evil for evils sake, nor a professional envy, but a pathological jealousy of his wife, a suspicion of every man with whom she is acquainted, a jealous love of Desdemona which makes him take a vicarious pleasure in other men’s actual or prospective enjoyment of her at the same time as it arouses his hatred of the successful moor and it may even be suggested, a dog-in- the manager attitude that cannot bear to think of Desdemona happy with any man, and especially with a coloured man, a man he hates”. We disagree with the statement because in the very first scene of the play we come across Iago venting upon his frustration because of Othello’s appointing someone else as his standard bearer.
I am no worth no worse a place
I have already chosen my officer.
And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician. (1.1.10,16-18)
Thus this shows professional envy. He is an embodiment of evil and does evil for evils sake. He is not in love with Desdemona as said by Kenneth but assumes that his wife has had sexual relations with Othello. He wants to take revenge by accusing Desdemona of adulteration and wants Othello to undergo the same agony as himself. His plots are revealed in this dialogue “I am not what I am”.