Waitaki Boys’ Shakespeare Studies:

Othello 2011

Analysis Lesson 4 (III,iii)1. How does Iago use Cassio’s embarassment to his

advantage?2. Do you think Desdemona says too much about

Cassio (or labours the point) in this scene? What seems to be Shakespeare’s dramatic purpose here?

3. Why does Iago advise Othello not to reinstate Cassio immediately?

4. Iago claims that a ‘good name in man and woman…is the immediate jewel of their souls’. Is this contradicting what he said to Cassio in his speech on reputation (II,iii) 241-51? Explain the irony here.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, allegedly on

April 23, 1564.Shakespeare attended the free grammar school in Stratford, which at the time had a reputation to rival that of Eton.

Shakespeare's knowledge of Latin and Classical Greek would tend to support this theory.

Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582. William was 18 at the time, and Anne was 26—and pregnant.

For the seven years following the birth of his twins, William Shakespeare disappears from all records, finally turning up again in London some time in 1592. This period, known as the "Lost Years," has sparked as much controversy about Shakespeare's life as any period.

It is estimated that Shakespeare arrived in London around 1588 and began to establish himself as an actor and playwright.

By 1594, he was not only acting and writing for the Lord Chamberlain's Men (called the King's Men after the ascension of James I in 1603), but was a managing partner in the operation as well.

Never before had a playwright enjoyed sufficient acclaim to see his works published and sold as popular literature in the midst of his career

Through the 1590s Shakespeare wrote a number of poems and many of his most popular plays including Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet.

The first decade of the 1600s was his most productive period, when he wrote most of his greatest plays, including Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear.

William Shakespeare wrote his will in 1611, bequeathing his properties to his daughter Susanna (married in 1607 to Dr. John Hall). To his surviving daughter Judith, he left £300, and to his wife Anne left "my second best bed.“

Even in death, he leaves a final piece of verse as his epitaph:

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeareTo dig the dust enclosed here.Blessed be the man that spares these stones,And cursed be he that moves my bones.

Setting: Venice & Cyprus

Opening act = Venice – a city in Northern Italy consisting of a number of islands in a lagoon (streets are made up of canals

Venice = a republic governed by the people rather than a monarch. In reality a rich aristocratic class held power and elected a Duke (often for life).

The final four acts of Othello are set in Cyprus, an island located in the Eastern Mediterranean, off the coast of Syria.

The island is associated with romantic love. In classical mythology the goddess Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) firstcame ashore on Cyprus, after being bornout of the sea-foam. Aphrodite was the goddess of beauty, love and sexual desire and for this reason, Cyprus is often called the Island of Love.

What’s Iago’s problemWhat are Iago’s motivations for seeking

revenge on Othello?For losing his place to Michael CassioHe thinks that Othello has been sleeping with

his wifeJealousy that Othello has been elevated to

General and he is a lowly ‘Ensign’.

In theory, there are but two classes of people: Nobles and Commoners. In practice, there are a huge number or gradations of both classes. These gradations are thought of as parts of a Great Chain of Being, which extends from God down to the lowest forms of life, and even to the trees and stones of the earth. This Great Chain, first described by St. Thomas Aquinas, is what holds the world together. The Great Chain is as follows:

"The Courtier disdaineth the citizen;The citizen the countryman;the shoemaker the cobbler.But unfortunate is the man who does not have anyone he can look down upon."~ Tomas Nash, 1593

GodAngelsKings/QueensArchbishopsDukes/DuchessesBishopsMarquises/MarchionessesEarls/CountessesViscounts/ViscountessesBarons/BaronessesAbbots/DeaconsKnights/Local OfficialsLadies-in-WaitingPriests/MonksSquiresPagesMessengersMerchants/ShopkeepersTradesmenYeomen FarmersSoldiers/Town WatchHousehold ServantsTennant FarmersShephards/HerdersBeggarsActorsThieves/PiratesGypsiesAnimalsBirdsWormsPlantsRocks

Social Hierarchies: The Great Chain of Being

Analysis Lesson One: Contrast of black & whiteOthello’s skin colour is referred throughout:

‘black, sooty, dark, coal black’Though present in Elizabethan society the

presence of a black man conjured up two responses:

(1) images of exotic strangeness of something ‘unknown and dangerous something fundamentally ‘other’

(2) Iago plays upon the entrenched cultural prejudice = the association of the colour black with moral darkness ‘evil, unnatural, monstrous, devilish

Of course Shakespeare plays with the irony that the character in possession of ‘moral darkness’ is a white Venetian (Iago)

Imagery of DarknessMuch of the play is set at night (as you notice in

the opening scene) and the physical darkness suitably parallels the moral darkness that dominates the story

Analysis Lesson Two:Thinking about conflict& antithesis‘The essence of drama is conflict’. – George

Bernard Shaw Othello is a creation of sustained

oppositions 1. Othello contains the historical conflict

between ‘Christian’ city-state Venice and the ‘barbarian’ Ottoman Empire (Turks).

2.Othello’s ‘conquest’ of Desdemona – many have pointed out the parallels between the Turkish seizure of Cyprus and Othello’s ‘conquest’ of Barbantio’s ‘property’: his daughter.

3. Iago’s infiltration of Othello’s mind Structurally, conflict progresses from external wars

to domestic disputes to an intensely private battleground in Othello’s mind, psychologically invaded by the villainous Iago.

Shakespeare presents a host of binary oppositions to draw our attention to the persistent notion of conflict within the play. Note the many potent examples of antithesis: black & white; night & day; male & female; man & beast; good & evil; love & jealousy; reality & illusion

Analysis Lesson Three: Iago’s ‘Divinity of Hell’ speech.Iago invokes ‘hell’ and the Devilor devils

(demons) throughout the the play. In the soliloquy in (I,iii) Iago claims to employ ‘divinity of hell’ that is the theology (or Thinking) of hell.

Many critics have noted that Iago embodies similar qualities to the Devil in the Medieval Mystery plays and the character of Vice in Morality plays. Vice was thought to be a messenger of the Devil sent to tempt Everyman (a character rep’ the common man) to do evil.

Like Iago, Vice would stage manage his victim’s downfall, while posing as their friend and commenting on the action throughout the play, as Iago does in his soliloquies and asides. Also like Iago, Vice lacked a clear motive but seemed to throughly enjoy his work.

Saint Augustine presented sin as a parody or perversion of God’s good gifts. Lust he considered a perversion of love – wastefulness a distortion of generosity. This serves as a good framework for understanding Iago’s character. He dismisses love as a ‘sect’ of lust, and transforms the idea of Othello’s love into something bestial: ‘making the beast with two backs’. He is guided by his own self-interest and despises people who do not keep ‘their hearts attending on themselves’.

Iago sees human beings merely as calculating animals and leaves no place for the higher motives of generosity and self-sacrifice. It is Iago’s in ability to recognise these qualities in others that leads to his undoing.