Transcript Lecture 11 OTHELLO THE MOOR OF VENICE

OTHELLO THE MOOR OF VENICE
Critical focus and
Overview of Act 5
Scene 2
Death toll; In memoriam
RODERIGO,
R.I.P.
EMILIA, R.I.P.
BRABANTIO, R.I.P.
DESDEMONA, R.I.P.
OTHELLO, R.I.P.
All these R.I.P. awards served by
Alive still — IAGO
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All thanks to, or no thanks to
none other, than—
IAGO, the Destroyer
End of Days; Journey’s End
In Act 5, Scene 1, we witness a hubbub of
stabbing and shouting;
A second Brawl Scene that parallels yet
ironically contrasts with
the Brawl Scene of Act 2 Scene 3;
 Darkness broken by moving lights
 Confused and rapid action
 Agitated questioning and discussion
Act 5, Scene 2
What does the audience see?
Setting:
A Bedchamber in the Castle
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Desdemona in bed, asleep
Purposes of Act 5, Scene 2
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To present the MURDER (Sacrifice)
of Desdemona
To present the unmasking of IAGO
To tie up of loose ends of the plot
To recapture for the audience some of
Othello’s former dignity and nobility;
To present the audience with a last look at
the characters of Desdemona and Emilia
And this final scene, what do we see?
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We see a silent stage; a troubled stillness
and darkness
except for the pale shape of Desdemona’s
bed
There is a hushed instant of waiting before
Othello enters;
Othello’s eyes staring white in the light of his
candle, his black face glistening
One of the finest closing scenes in
Shakespearean Tragic Drama
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Othello looks at the sleeping Desdemona
Moved by her innocent beauty;
 Troubled by what he sees
because of the shocking contrast between
her heavenly appearance and
her sinful soul;

How might Othello speak his opening
lines at this moment in the play?
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul –
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars –
It is the cause,
 And an instant later:
Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men,
Put out the light, and then put out the light—
Dramatic effects
Othello reflects a mind torn by conflicting
feelings in his opening speech (p229)
 Her beauty:
thou cunning’st pattern of excelling
nature
and her
balmy breath
 Momentarily shakes his resolution to kill her
The ‘cause’?

Desdemona’s imagined sexual infidelity
How will the audience hear these lines?
 These lines are surely intended to be spoken
slowly…
 with a strange, heavy emphasis, and
 with the diction voiced to show the pitch of
madness to which he has been brought
Other drama Critics / drama Directors?
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Othello’s opening speech should be
delivered with poignancy
This speech is oratorically magnificent
(Think of Othello’s other speeches)
Othello enters Desdemona’s bed-chamber
in boundless sorrow
though he is still intent on killing her;
Stage Directions: We note he even bends
over to kiss her;
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And at the end of his opening speech,
just before Desdemona awakes,
as Othello stands looking down at her:
This sorrow’s heavenly;
It strikes where it doth love.
p229
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From these lines it seems Othello has
managed to move beyond the agony of
personal jealousy
His mind has found relief from its torment in
taking on a sense of almost God-like
responsibility.
That his shame is no longer his alone, but
the burden of all mankind
This is his megalomania
 Born of Othello’s earlier pride in himself
 in which the personality has no conception of
actual or possible error
 but acts with a calm conviction arising from
complete justification
 He has recovered some of his former
composure
Othello:
Pious Priest or Sacred Monster?
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Othello now speaks as a man on
a divine mission
He exonerates himself from all crime
One acting not from selfish bitterness
But on behalf of justice and all mankind
Desdemona is to be sacrificed,
not murdered;
Sacred Monster? (Cont)
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It is to be a calculated sacrifice to justice
It is the cause.
The act of sacrifice pulls at his heartstrings
and doth almost persuade / Justice
herself to break her sword
He is proud of his own restraint and his own
cool command: yet I’ll not shed her blood /
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow
Dramatic Effect: Internal conflict
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Othello is torn between his still powerful love
for his wife, Desdemona, and the terrible
conviction that she must be PUNISHED!!!
And the struggle within himself makes him
weep cruel tears
Reflective Question:
Has he then appointed himself
judge, jury, witness and executioner?

He is not about to commit a crime of passion
or a vengeful murder
And I will kill thee,
And love thee after.
5.2.18-19
In this Soliloquy, we note

No references to strumpets and whores
Or to any degrading images of beasts
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No reference to revenge;
At least not in the ordinary sense;
Speaks at first with deadly quiet,
patience to his wife
DESDEMONA:
 Will you come to bed, my lord?
OTHELLO:
 Have you prayed tonight, Desdemon?
Cont
OTHELLO:
If you bethink yourself of any crime
Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,
Solicit for it straight.
DESDEMONA:
Alack, my lord, what may you mean by that?
OTHELLO:
Well, do it, and be brief; I will walk by:
I would not kill thy unprepared spirit;
No—heaven forfend!—I would not kill thy
soul.
DESDEMONA: Talk you of killing?
OTHELLO: Ay, I do.
DESDEMONA:
And yet I fear you: for you’re fatal then
When your eyes roll so. Why I should fear
I know not,
Since guiltiness I know not; but yet I feel
fear.
OTHELLO:
Think on thy sins.
Note change in rhythms of dialogue
From lines 66 to 90 we can see:
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Othello’s gradual disintegration
is mirrored in his style of speech –
at first swiftly authoritative,
then broken (rhythmic movement);
full of barbaric extremism
Othello’s barbaric extremism
No, his mouth is stopped.
Had all his hairs being lives, my great
revenge / Had stomach for them all.
Out, strumpet! Weep’st thou for him to my
face?
Down, strumpet!
Being done, there is no pause
Then Desdemona’s pathetic request
for time to pray—
DESDEMONA: But while I say one prayer!
OTHELLO: It is too late.
DESDEMONA: O, Lord, Lord, Lord!
Note then, Stage Directions—
[He SMOTHERS her]
OTHELLO:
I, that am cruel, am yet merciful:
I would not have thee linger in thy pain.
Some Critical, Reflective Questions
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When Othello enters Desdemona’s chamber,
does the burning light symbolize her virtue?
Or perhaps her life?
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Is he trying to justify his intention to kill her?
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Is the reason he gives to save her from her
own dishonour convincing, credible?
Further questions; and
Echoes of Act 2 Scene 3?
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Is Othello so lacking in self-knowledge that
he cannot see reason?
We note he cannot help weeping at fate, but
this does not soften his heart, or affect his
resolve to kill her. So what are we to think?
Have we seen this attitude before in his
peremptory dismissal of Cassio in Act 2,
Scene 3?
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Is his argument that sorrow is from heaven
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a suggestion that God punishes those He
loves
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and that Othello’s pain in killing Desdemona
is a sign of the justice of his cause?
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Is Othello being sanctimonious in his advice
to Desdemona to ask God to forgive her
sins?
Is he being self-righteous in his claim that he
would not try to kill her soul?
Yet, as you would have surely noticed
 later he does not allow her time for a single
prayer
Re- Is Othello lacking in reason?
Put out the light, and then put out the
light
 We recall Desdemona was the light of his life
 Also light can refer to enlightenment
as in the torchlight of reason
 Symbolical of the light of reason?
Othello does not use his reason; ironical?
 No genuine proof of Desdemona’s misdeed
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The Othello Inquisition
Note the form and choice of his words (diction):
 be think yourself of any crime…
 take heed of perjury
 confess thee freely
 For to deny each article with oath …thou
art to die
 O perjured woman He has confess’d
Characterizing the nature of his diction
His interrogation takes the form of a legal
process in which
 Othello is judge,
 Othello is counsel for the prosecution, and
 Othello is jury, all at once;
The language is that of a courtroom
 with overtones of the confessional
The unmasking of IAGO
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OTHELLO endeavours to justify his killing of
Desdemona to Emilia, saying that he
proceeded “upon just grounds”
Othello even suggests that Emilia ask her
husband about these “just grounds”
This at once arouses Emilia’s suspicions
Confronts her husband in front of OTHELLO
Demands that he “disprove a villain”
Emilia:
He says thou told’st him that his wife is false,
 Iago equivocates at first then acknowledges
that he did.
 However she only becomes fully convinced
when she hears Othello mention the
handkerchief
Emilia now understands
the whole evil plot
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In spite of Iago’s threatening approach to her
with a drawn sword Emilia unmasks his part
“that handkerchief thou speak’st on,
I found by fortune, and did give my husband;
For often with a solemn earnestness,
More than indeed belong’d to such a trifle,
He begg’d me steal it.”
Multiple Ironies
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Recalling Desdemona’s repeated pleas to
Othello to send for Cassio to testify…
is not listened to
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Othello is unwilling to make himself listen to
the woman who has sacrificed so much for
him
But is ever ready to listen and accept the
deceits from Iago, the man dead set on
destroying him
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Iago; famous last words
OTHELLO: [to Cassio] Will you, I pray, demand
That demi-devil // Why he hath thus ensnar’d
my soul and body
IAGO:
Demand me nothing, what you know, you
know,
From this time forth I never will speak word
We note Iago’s cool malignity
We note at final curtain time
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A very unrepentant, remorseless Iago
still very much alive
The enigma of Iago
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When all has been said about Iago’s
motivation, and psychology
There remains something in Shakespeare’s
dramatic presentation of Iago
That defies rational explanation
The play gives no fully, satisfactory answer to
Othello’s baffled request
beyond a baffling response
Critical issues
re- Othello’s final speech
This speech has long been the subject of
divided responses
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and hostile comments and reviews
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among critics and scholars of the play
The famous critic, T.S. Eliot,
suggested
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That Othello, in his final speech,
is trying to escape reality
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That Othello is trying to cheer himself up;
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And has ceased to think about Desdemona
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That he is now only thinking of himself
For the critic, F.R. Leavis
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Though Othello’s final speech begins
with quiet authority,
it ends in self-dramatization
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That Othello is no tragic hero;
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Given that he has learned nothing from his
misfortune and downfall;
And that he would rather rant, than think;
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When Othello learns the truth; and
comes to know what he has lost—
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[It may be argued]
Othello recovers much of his former nobility
and dignity
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The Othello who sends his final message to
the Venetian Senate
is much like the man who faced the same
senate body at the beginning
with his impressive rhetorical justification of
his marriage
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In considering Othello’s final speech;
a technical tour de force?
In twenty lines, Othello presents a summary of
the tragic action;
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Given, not when the action of the play
has been completed
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But while its outcome is still awaited
Past and Present
When Othello’s account reaches the present
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Othello acts out what he describes as
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The story of the turbaned Turk whom he
once slew in the ancient city of Aleppo
Which seems to take us back into his past
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A very sensational climax
As Othello re-enacts
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His past image, and present actuality merge
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And Othello dies in his double role
of killer, and killed
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Both as the enemy and champion of his love
For the critic, Stephen Greenblatt,
Shakespeare’s plays
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Suggest that the choices people make
in love and life are almost entirely
inexplicable and irrational;
Express Shakespeare’s deepest perception
of human existence;
His preference for things untidy, damaged,
unresolved; his skepticism;
And his refusal of easy consolations;