Shakespeare’s
Othello has come under great scrutiny
in the last several decades for its portrayal of race. Many scholars and
critics maintain that discussions of racism in the play cannot be framed in the
usual terms, as racial distinctions were conceptualized differently in
Shakespeare’s day, but whether the prejudice against Othello is based in anti-Blackness,
islamophobia, nationalism, or something else entirely, it is clear that he
faces deep suspicion and even hatred for who he is and where he comes from. What’s
more, the great tragedy of the play is how Iago turns that prejudice into a
self-fulfilling prophecy, manipulating Othello into filling the exact role in
which society has wrongly cast him.
One of the central
questions in this play is just why Iago undertakes to destroy Othello. “I hate
the Moor,” he says at the end of Act One, but his explanations for that hatred
are distinctly lacking (1.3.429). He tells Roderigo in the first scene that he resents
being passed over for promotion, lamenting that “preferment goes by letter and
affection/And not by old gradation,” (1.1.38-39). This seems a reasonable
explanation at first, and yet Iago does not stick to this story. In the same
soliloquy at the end of Act One quoted above, he insists, “I hate the Moor,/And
it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/’Has done my office,” (1.3.429-431).
This too would seem just cause for hatred, were it not for the fact that we see
no indication anywhere in the play that Othello is guilty of the act, nor even
that anyone suspects him of it. Other characters repeatedly remark on Othello’s
virtue and honor. He is repeatedly called “valiant” or “noble” by other characters,
both those close to him like Desdemona and those who know him only professionally,
such as the Duke and Montano (1.3.288) (1.3.56) (2.3.144). Even Iago admits in the
scene immediately after accusing Othello that he “is of a constant, loving,
noble nature,” (2.1.311). Why, then, all the hatred and accusations?
The answer
to that question likely lies in the same place as the explanation for why he chooses
these particular excuses for it: prejudice. Iago tells Roderigo he resents being
passed over because Roderigo himself has been passed over, not for promotion
but for Desdemona’s hand. It is not Iago who resents Othello for denying him
what he sees as his due, but Roderigo. Iago plays on this resentment—and particularly
the bitterness at being usurped by one he sees as below his station—by casting
Cassio as wholly undeserving of promotion. Iago rails against Cassio, saying,
“And I, of
whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes,
at Cyprus, and on other grounds
Christened
and heathen, must be beleed and calmed
By debitor
and creditor. This countercaster,
He, in good
time, must his lieutenant be,
And I, God
bless the mark, his Moorship’s ancient,” (1.1.29-35).
Here, he casts the status difference not in terms of race,
but experience. Thus, the speech not only aligns Iago with Roderigo, it also
subtly casts Roderigo’s case as more legitimate than it is. If Roderigo is Iago
in this analogy, then he is the seasoned and blooded warrior to Othello’s
inexperienced accountant, rather than simply the man who thinks he deserved to
get the girl. It allows Roderigo to pretend that his outrage is based in
genuine injustice, rather than what it is really based in: misogyny and xenophobia.
In refusing to accept Desdemona’s choice of husband, he demonstrates that he
does not respect her, viewing her instead as a prize he has been denied, thus
showing his own misogyny. Similarly, when he speaks of Othello, his language is
violent and often laden with racialized language. He refers to him as “the
thick-lips,” a description blatantly aimed at Othello’s Blackness (1.1.72). Importantly,
Roderigo is not alone in this rhetoric. Othello is called a Moor sixty times
throughout the course of the play, over half of them by Iago. The villain seems
fixated on the hero’s race, and this helps to explain why he levels the accusations
against Othello that he does. With Roderigo, he plays on the hated image of a
Moor—a figure who is at once a foreigner, a Black man, and a Christian convert—risen
above his station to usurp his betters. With the audience, and later with
Brabantio, he plays on the historic fear of Black men’s sexuality. In short,
Iago hates the Moor because he is a
Moor.
This hyper
fixation on Othello’s sexuality is a vital thread in unraveling this tragedy.
In the first scene, Iago rouses Brabantio to fury with the jab,
“Even now,
now, very now, an old black ram
Is tupping
your white ewe. Arise, arise!
Awake the
snorting citizens with the bell,
Or else the
devil will make a grandsire of you,” (1.1.91-100).
The language here is blatantly dehumanizing, to both Othello
and Desdemona. Sheep are particularly unintelligent animals, making the
comparison already less than flattering, but it is also both gendered and
racialized. Ewes are precious largely for their ability to produce more sheep,
thus enriching the shepherd. The implication, then, is that Desdemona is property
about to lose her value by being improperly bred. Othello fares even worse in
this metaphor. Not only is he compared to a ram—known for their voracious
sexual appetites—he is compared to a black ram. This is obviously a reference
to his skin color, but it also casts him as a particularly undesirable kind of ram.
Black sheep’s wool was less valuable since it was impossible to dye. Thus, this
passage casts the match between Desdemona and Othello as undesirable not only
because of Othello’s status, but because of the undesirability of any potential
offspring. The lambs born from a black and a white sheep may themselves be black.
In effect, the blackness of the ram may sully the whiteness of the ewe. This is
then doubled down upon by calling Othello “the devil” and threatening that he
may make Brabantio a grandfather. This is a very real threat to the nobleman, as
Desdemona is his only child, and so her son would be his heir. He has a vested
interest in ensuring that she produces the right kind of heir, and Iago makes it clear that Othello poses great
threat to that.
It is
important to note here that Othello himself gives no indication that he falls into
the stereotypes ascribed to him. Though as a Moor he is expected to be course,
uneducated, and rough-mannered, he is in fact eloquent and honorable. Indeed,
his speeched in Act One Scene Three are among the longest and most eloquent in
the play. They cast him as a humble man and a wise one, though he claims to be
the opposite. “Little shall I grace my cause/In speaking for myself,” he says,
and yet it is difficult to come out of the scene without admiration for
Othello, not only for his articulate, thoughtful nature, but for the obvious
devotion and deference he shows his young wife. If Roderigo is a misogynist who
sees her as nothing but property, then the Othello seen in this first act is
perhaps the only man in the play who takes Desdemona’s agency seriously.
It is,
perhaps, that very belief in Desdemona’s ability to make her own choices that
lets Iago turn Othello into the man who fulfills Brabantio’s fears of his
baseness and sexual aggression. Othello, as Iago points out several times,
believes the best of people. He also knows first-hand how persuasive and
unwilling to be controlled Desdemona is. After all, few Venetian young ladies
would woo and elope with a Moorish general they know their father would not
approve of. It is these very virtues that Iago turns against him. Though
Othello’s loyalty and trust means it takes a great deal to convince him of
Cassio’s betrayal, it also means that he never suspects Iago of lying, making
him all the more credulous when presented with supposed evidence. Ironically,
Brabantio himself plants the idea in Othello’s head that her willfulness might
lead to his misery as well as his happiness. “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast
eyes to see./She has deceived her father, and may thee,” (1.3.333-334). Iago
plays on this fear, using it as a wedge to drive between Othello and Desdemona.
He pretends to believe in her virtue as much as Othello does, all the while
dropping metaphorical breadcrumbs for Othello to follow, making it seem as if
the Moor arrived at the conclusion on his own. In effect, he turns Othello into
his puppet, then makes him act out the very violent urges that are so abhorrent
to him. Even the most horrid part of the murder is Iago’s idea: “Strangle her
in her bed,/even the bed she hath contaminated,” (4.1.228-229). This scene of a
woman murdered by her husband’s bare hands in their bed as punishment for
imagined sexual betrayal has undeniable connotations of rape. Though Desdemona’s
murder appears at first like the ultimate proof that the evil was in Othello
all along, and that he truly is the violent, jealous, and sexually aggressive
man Iago cast him as, Othello is not truly responsible for the act. Iago is. He
has manipulated a good man into killing a good woman in such a way that it
appears to validate Iago’s—and, to a great extent, society’s—prejudice against him.
This, then, is the play’s ultimate
tragedy. Not that Othello falls, but that he does so in such a way that he
appears to have been less than honorable all along. Even the hero himself falls
victim to this thinking. His final lines beg the onlookers to
“say
besides, that in Aleppo once,
Where a
malignant and a turbaned Turk
Beat a Venetian
and traduced the state,
I took by
the throat the circumciséd dog,
and smote him,
thus,” (5.2.413-417).
In effect, Othello tells both onlookers and audience that he
sees his fall not as the mistake of a good man, but as the victory of some dark,
inner nature inherently linked to his identity as a Moor over the civilized,
Venetian general he had tried to become. Iago’s prejudice and hatred destroy
not only Othello’s life and reputation, but his own self-image. They make him
into the monster Iago wanted him to be, to his own eyes and those of the world
around him.
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