othello the moor of venice with contemporary criticism william shakespeare

It is Iago whom everyone onstage condemns at the play’s conclusion: in the space of the last 130 lines or so, various appalled characters call him viper, devil, wretch, pernicious caitiff, Spartan dog, and (repeatedly) slave and villain. It is he who plots to poison Othello’s happiness, and to bring down Cassio as well by getting him first stripped of his military position and then suspected by the Moor as Desdemona’s lover. The most obvious and immediate answer is Iago. Neither separately nor in conjunction can they offer anything like “the whole truth.” What goes so quickly and terribly wrong with the marriage of Othello and Desdemona? In what follows, I suggest various approaches to this question some overlap, some point in opposing directions. Even allowing for the conventional economy and foreshortening of drama, this is a precipitous breakdown of love and trust. Indeed, when we next see Othello kissing his wife ( 5.2.18, 21), it is as a nostalgic gesture before he executes her as an unfaithful wife. Discords arise between them that cannot be resolved with kisses. On this high note of joy, with the forces against their happiness destroyed or rendered powerless, the married life of Desdemona and Othello begins.īut less than two days later, the marriage is utterly destroyed and with it Othello and Desdemona themselves. These lovers, a dark-skinned Moorish general and a white Venetian lady, have triumphed over daunting obstacles: racial difference and the attendant cultural taboos, disparities of culture and of age, the angry opposition of Desdemona’s father, Brabantio, urged on by Othello’s malicious subordinate, Iago, the threat of the attacking Turkish fleet, and finally the raging storm that scattered the Turks and might well have swamped the Venetian ships as well.

In a film, the background music would swell at this point. The meeting is rapturous, almost beyond words:Īnd this, and this, the greatest discords be Early in Act 2 of Othello, the newly married Othello and Desdemona are reunited in Cyprus, having survived a storm at sea that threatened their separate ships.

Othello the moor of venice with contemporary criticism william shakespeare