OTHELLO

An analysis of the play by William Shakespeare

The following essay on Shakespeare's Othelo was originally published in Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. William
Hazlitt. London: C.H. Reynell, 1817.

It has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity. That is, it
substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere selfishness. It gives us a high and permanent
interest, beyond ourselves, in humanity as such. It raises the great, the remote, and the
possible to an equality with the real, the little and the near. It makes man a partaker with
his kind. It subdues and softens the stubbornness of his will. It teaches him that there are
and have been others like himself, by showing him as in a glass what they have felt,
thought, and done. It opens the chambers of the human heart. It leaves nothing
indifferent to us that can affect our common nature. It excites our sensibility by exhibiting
the passions wound up to the utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the temptation
of circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in ourselves by pointing to the greater
extent of sufferings and of crimes to which they have led others. Tragedy creates a
balance of the affections. It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists of life. It is the
refiner of the species; a discipline of humanity. The habitual study of poetry and works of
imagination is one chief part of a well-grounded education. A taste for liberal art is
necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and
mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves
the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.--
OTHELLO furnishes an illustration of these remarks. It excites our sympathy in an
extraordinary degree. The moral it conveys has a closer application to the concerns of
human life than that of any other of Shakespeare's plays. 'It comes directly home to the
bosoms and business of men.' The pathos in LEAR is indeed more dreadful and
overpowering: but it is less natural, and less of every day's occurrence. We have not the
same degree of sympathy with the passions described in MACBETH. The interest in
HAMLET is more remote and reflex. That of OTHELLO is at once equally profound and
affecting.

The picturesque contrasts of character in this play are almost as remarkable as the depth
of the passion. The Moor Othello, the gentle Desdemona, the villain Iago, the good-
natured Cassio, the fool Roderigo, present a range and variety of character as striking
and palpable as that produced by the opposition of costume in a picture. Their
distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind's eye, so that even when we are not
thinking of their actions or sentiments, the idea of their persons is still as present to us as
ever. These characters and the images they stamp upon the mind are the farthest
asunder possible, the distance between them is immense: yet the compass of knowledge
and invention which the poet has shown in embodying these extreme creations of his
genius is only greater than the truth and felicity with which he has identified each
character with itself, or blended their different qualities together in the same story. What
a contrast the character of Othello forms to that of Iago: at the same time, the force of
conception with which these two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still more
intense by the complete consistency with which the traits of each character are brought
out in a state of the highest finishing. The making one black and the other white, the one
unprincipled, the other unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common
purposes of effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter of character.
Shakespeare has laboured the finer shades of difference in both with as much care and
skill as if he had had to depend on the execution alone for the success of his design. On
the other hand, Desdemona and Aemilia are not meant to be opposed with anything like
strong contrast to each other. Both are, to outward appearance, characters of common
life, not more distinguished than women usually are, by difference of rank and situation.
The difference of their thoughts and sentiments is, however, laid as open, their minds are
separated from each other by signs as plain and as little to be mistaken as the
complexions of their husbands.
The movement of the passion in OTHELLO is exceedingly different from that of
MACBETH. In MACBETH there is a violent struggle between opposite feelings, between
ambition and the stings of conscience, almost from first to last: in Othello, the doubtful
conflict between contrary passions, though dreadful, continues only for a short time, and
the chief interest is excited by the alternate ascendancy of different passions, the entire
and unforeseen change from the fondest love and most unbounded confidence to the
tortures of jealousy and the madness of hatred. The revenge of Othello, after it has once
taken thorough possession of his mind, never quits it, but grows stronger and stronger at
every moment of its delay. The nature of the Moor is noble, confiding, tender, and
generous; but his blood is of the most inflammable kind; and being once roused by a
sense of his wrongs, he is stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity till he has
given a loose to all the dictates of his rage and his despair. It is in working his noble
nature up to this extremity through rapid but gradual transitions, in raising passion to its
height from the smallest beginnings and in spite of all obstacles, in painting the expiring
conflict between love and hatred, tenderness and resentment, jealousy and remorse, in
unfolding the strength and the weaknesses of our nature, in uniting sublimity of thought
with the anguish of the keenest woe, in putting in motion the various impulses that
agitate this our mortal being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep and
sustained passion, impetuous but majestic, that 'flows on to the Propontic, and knows no
ebb', that Shakespeare has shown the mastery of his genius and of his power over the
human heart. The third act of Othello is his masterpiece, not of knowledge or passion
separately, but of the two combined, of the knowledge of character with the expression of
passion, of consummate art in the keeping up of appearances with the profound workings
of nature, and the convulsive movements of uncontrollable agony, of the power of
inflicting torture and of suffering it. Not only is the tumult of passion heaved up from the
very bottom of the soul, but even the slightest undulation of feeling is seen on the
surface, as it arises from the impulses of imagination or the different probabilities
maliciously suggested by Iago. The progressive preparation for the catastrophe is
wonderfully managed from the Moor's first gallant recital of the story of his love, of 'the
spells and witchcraft he had used', from his unlooked-for and romantic success, the fond
satisfaction with which he dotes on his own happiness, the unreserved tenderness of
Desdemona and her innocent importunities in favour of Cassio, irritating the suspicions
instilled into her husband's mind by the perfidy of lago, and rankling there to poison, till
he loses all command of himself, and his rage can only be appeased by blood. She is
introduced, just before lago begins to put his scheme in practice, pleading for Cassio with
all the thoughtless gaiety of friendship and winning confidence in the love of Othello.

What! Michael Cassio?

That came a wooing with you, and so many a time,
When I have spoke of you dispraisingly,
Hath ta'en your part, to have so much to do
To bring him in?--Why this is not a boon:
'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,
Or feed on nourishing meats, or keep you warm;
Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit
To your person. Nay, when I have a suit,
Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,
It shall be full of poise, and fearful to be granted.

Othello's confidence, at first only staggered by broken hints and insinuations, recovers
itself at sight of Desdemona; and he exclaims

If she be false, O then Heav'n mocks itself:

I'll not believe it.

But presently after, on brooding over his suspicions by himself, and yielding to his
apprehensions of the worst, his smothered jealousy breaks out into open fury, and he
returns to demand satisfaction of Iago like a wild beast stung with the envenomed shaft
of the hunters. 'Look where he comes', &c. In this state of exasperation and violence,
after the first paroxysms of his grief and tenderness have had their vent in that
passionate apostrophe, 'I felt not Cassio's kisses on her lips,' Iago by false aspersions, and
by presenting the most revolting images to his mind, [See the passage beginning, 'It is
impossible you should see this, Were they as prime as goats,' .] easily turns the storm of
Passion from himself against Desdemona, and works him up into a trembling agony of
doubt and fear, in which he abandons all his love and hopes in a breath.

Now do I see'tis true. Look here, Iago,

All my fond love thus do I blow to Heav'n. Tis gone.
Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell;
Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne
To tyrannous hate! Swell, bosom, with thy fraught;
For'tis of aspicks' tongues.

From this time, his raging thoughts 'never look back, ne'er ebb to humble love' till his
revenge is sure of its object, the painful regrets and involuntary recollections of past
circumstances which cross his mind amidst the dim trances of passion, aggravating the
sense of his wrongs, but not shaking his purpose. Once indeed, where Iago shows him
Cassio with the handkerchief in his hand, and making sport (as he thinks) of his
misfortunes, the intolerable bitterness of his feelings, the extreme sense of shame, makes
him fall to praising her accomplishments and relapse into a momentary fit of weakness,
'Yet, oh, the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it!' This returning fondness, however, only serves,
as it is managed by Iago, to whet his revenge, and set his heart more against her. In his
conversations with Desdemona, the persuasion of her guilt and the immediate proofs of
her duplicity seem to irritate his resentment and aversion to her; but in the scene
immediately preceding her death, the recollection of his love returns upon him in all its
tenderness and force; and after her death, he all at once forgets his wrongs in the sudden
and irreparable sense of his loss:

My wife! My wife! What wife? I have no wife.

Oh insupportable! Oh heavy hour!

This happens before he is assured of her innocence; but afterwards his remorse is as
dreadful as his revenge has been, and yields only to fixed and death like despair. His
farewell speech, before he kills himself, in which he conveys his reasons to the senate for
the murder of his wife, is equal to the first speech in which he gave them an account of
his courtship of her, and 'his whole course of love'. Such an ending was alone worthy of
such a commencement.

If anything could add to the force of our sympathy with Othello, or compassion for his
fate, it would be the frankness and generosity of his nature, which so little deserve it.
When Iago first begins to practise upon his unsuspecting friendship, he answers:

--Tis not to make me jealous,

To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays, and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are most virtuous.
Nor from my own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt,
For she had eyes and chose me.

This character is beautifully (and with affecting simplicity) confirmed by what Desdemona
herself says of him to Aemilia after she has lost the handkerchief, the first pledge of his
love to her:

Believe me, I had rather have lost my purse

Full of cruzadoes. And but my noble Moor
Is true of mind, and made of no such baseness,
As jealous creatures are, it were enough
To put him to ill thinking.

Aemilia. Is he not jealous?

Desdemona. Who he? I think the sun where he was

born drew all such humours from him.

In a short speech of Aemilia's there occurs one of those side-intimations of the

fluctuations of passion which we seldom meet with but in Shakespeare. After Othello has
resolved upon the death of his wife, and bids her dismiss her attendant for the night, she
answers:

I will, my Lord.

Aemilia. How goes it now? HE LOOKS GENTLER THAN HE DID.

Shakespeare has here put into half a line what some authors would have spun out into
ten set speeches.

The character of Desdemona herself is inimitable both in itself, and as it contrasts with
Othello's groundless jealousy, and with the foul conspiracy of which she is the innocent
victim. Her beauty and external graces are only indirectly glanced at; we see 'her visage
in her mind'; her character everywhere predominates over her person:

A maiden never bold:

Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion
Blushed at itself.

There is one fine compliment paid to her by Cassio, who exclaims triumphantly when she
comes ashore at Cyprus after the storm:

Tempests themselves, high seas, and howling winds,

As having sense of beauty, do omit
Their mortal natures, letting safe go by
The divine Desdemona.

In general, as is the case with most of Shakespeare's females, we lose sight of her
personal charms in her attachment and devotedness to her husband. 'She is subdued
even to the very quality of her lord'; and to Othello's 'honours and his valiant parts her
soul and fortunes consecrates'. The lady protests so much herself, and she is as good as
her word. The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are united in the
same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her resolutions, the pertinacity of her
affections, may be said to arise out of the gentleness of her nature. They imply an
unreserved reliance on the purity of her own intentions, an entire surrender of her fears
to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the
commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and headstrong (though even
that may perhaps be consistently accounted for from her inability to resist a rising
inclination [Footnote: Iago. Ay, too gentle. Othello. Nay, that's certain.]) her whole
character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her
romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition;
and instead of following Othello to the wars, she would gladly have 'remained at home a
moth of peace', if her husband could have stayed with her. Her resignation and angelic
sweetness of temper do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and
tries to account for Othello's estrangement from her are exquisitely beautiful. After he
has struck her, and called her names, she says:
--Alas, Iago,
What shall I do to win my lord again?
Good friend, go to him; for by this light of heaven,
I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel;
If e'er my will did trespass 'gainst his love,
Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed,
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense
Delighted them on any other form-
Or that I do not, and ever did
And ever will, though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me. Unkindness may do much,
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love.

Iago. I pray you be content:'tis but his humour.

The business of the state does him offence.

Desdemona. If'twere no other!--

The scene which follows with Aemilia and the song of the Willow are equally beautiful,
and show the author's extreme power of varying the expression of passion, in all its
moods and in all circumstances;

Aemilia. Would you had never seen him.

Desdemona. So would not I: my love doth so approve him,

That even his stubbornness, his checks, his frowns,
Have grace and favour in them.

Not the unjust suspicions of Othello, not Iago's treachery, place Desdemona in a more
amiable or interesting light than the casual conversation (half earnest, half jest) between
her and Aemilia on the common behaviour of women to their husbands. This dialogue
takes place just before the last fatal scene. If Othello had overheard it, it would have
prevented the whole catastrophe; but then it would have spoiled the play.

The character of Iago is one of the supererogations of Shakespeare's genius. Some

persons, more nice than wise, have thought this whole character unnatural, because his
villainy is WITHOUT A SUFFICIENT MOTIVE. Shakespeare, who was as good a
philosopher as he was a poet, thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which
is another name for the love of mischief, is natural to man. He would know this as well or
better than if it had been demonstrated to him by a logical diagram, merely from seeing
children paddle in the dirt or kill flies for sport. Iago in fact belongs to a class of
characters common to Shakespeare and at the same time peculiar to him; whose heads
are as acute and active as their hearts are hard and callous. Iago is, to be sure, an
extreme instance of the kind; that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity, with an
almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a decided preference of
the latter, because it falls more readily in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest
to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own
fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage; and is
himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion--an insatiable craving after action of the
most difficult and dangerous kind. 'Our ancient' is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie
that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis; who thinks a fatal
experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the
heart of a flea in a microscope; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his
ingenuity, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. His gaiety, such as it is, arises
from the success of his treachery; his ease from the torture he has inflicted on others. He
is an amateur of tragedy in real life; and instead of employing his invention on imaginary
characters, or long-forgotten incidents, he takes the bolder and more desperate course of
getting up his plot at home, casts the principal parts among his nearest friends and
connexions, and rehearses it in downright earnest, with steady nerves and unabated
resolution. We will just give an illustration or two.

One of his most characteristic speeches is that immediately after the marriage of Othello.

Roderigo. What a full fortune does the thick lips owe,

If he can carry her thus!

Iago. Call up her father:

Rouse him [Othello], make after him, poison his delight,
Proclaim him in the streets, incense her kinsmen,
And tho' he in a fertile climate dwell,
Plague him with flies: Tho' that his joy be joy,
Yet throw such changes of vexation on it,
As it may lose some colour.

In the next passage, his imagination runs riot in the mischief he is plotting, and breaks
out into the wildness and impetuosity of real enthusiasm.

Roderigo. Here is her father's house: I'll call aloud.

Iago. Do, with like timorous accent and dire yell,

As when, by night and negligence, the fire
Is spied in populous cities.

One of his most favourite topics, on which he is rich indeed, and in descanting on which
his spleen serves him for a Muse, is the disproportionate match between Desdemona and
the Moor. This is a clue to the character of the lady which he is by no means ready to part
with. It is brought forward in the first scene, and he recurs to it, when in answer to his
insinuations against Desdemona, Roderigo says:

I cannot believe that in her--she's full of most blest conditions.

Iago. Bless'd fig's end. The wine she drinks is made of grapes. If she had been blest, she
would never have married the Moor.

And again with still more spirit and fatal effect afterwards, when he turns this very
suggestion arising in Othello's own breast to her prejudice.

Othello. And yet how nature erring from itself--

Iago. Aye, there's the point;--as to be bold with you,

Not to affect many proposed matches
Of her own clime, complexion, and degree.

This is probing to the quick. Iago here turns the character of poor Desdemona, as it were,
inside out. It is certain that nothing but the genius of Shakespeare could have preserved
the entire interest and delicacy of the part, and have even drawn an additional elegance
and dignity from the peculiar circumstances in which she is placed. The habitual
licentiousness of Iago's conversation is not to be traced to the pleasure he takes in gross
or lascivious images, but to his desire of finding out the worst side of everything, and of
proving himself an over-match for appearances. He has none of 'the milk of human
kindness' in his composition. His imagination rejects everything that has not a strong
infusion of the most unpalatable ingredients; his mind digests only poisons. Virtue or
goodness or whatever has the least 'relish of salvation in it' is, to his depraved appetite,
sickly and insipid: and he even resents the good opinion entertained of his own integrity,
as if it were an affront cast on the masculine sense and spirit of his character. Thus at the
meeting between Othello and Desdemona, he exclaims, 'Oh, you are well tuned now: but
I'll set down the pegs that make this music, AS HONEST AS I AM--his character of
bonhommie not sitting at all easily upon him. In the scenes where he tries to work Othello
to his purpose, he is proportionably guarded, insidious, dark, and deliberate. We believe
nothing ever came up to the profound dissimulation and dexterous artifice of the well-
known dialogue in the third act, where he first enters upon the execution of his design.

Iago. My noble lord.

Othello. What dost thou say, Iago?

Iago. Did Michael Cassio,

When you woo'd my lady, know of your love?

Othello. He did from first to last.

Why dost thou ask?

Iago. But for a satisfaction of my thought,

No further harm.

Othello. Why of thy thought, Iago?

Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with it.

Othello. O yes, and went between us very oft--

Iago. Indeed!

Othello. Indeed? Ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught of that?

Is he not honest?

Iago. Honest, my lord?

Othello. Honest? Ay, honest.

Iago. My lord, for aught I know.

Othello. What do'st thou think?

Iago. Think, my lord!

Othello. Think, my lord! Alas, thou echo'st me,

As if there was some monster in thy thought
Too hideous to be shown.

The stops and breaks, the deep workings of treachery under the mask of love and
honesty, the anxious watchfulness, the cool earnestness, and if we may so say, the
PASSION of hypocrisy marked in every line, receive their last finishing in that
inconceivable burst of pretended indignation at Othello's doubts of his sincerity.

O grace! O Heaven forgive me!

Are you a man? Have you a soul or sense?
God be wi' you; take mine office. O wretched fool,
That lov'st to make thine honesty a vice!
Oh monstrous world! take note, take note, O world!
To be direct and honest, is not safe.
I thank you for this profit, and from hence
I'll love no friend, since love breeds such offence.

If Iago is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at
work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of
his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into a swoon, is perfectly diabolical.

Iago. How is it. General? Have you not hurt your head?

Othello. Dost thou mock me?

Iago. I mock you not, by Heaven.

The part indeed would hardly be tolerated, even as a foil to the virtue and generosity of
the other characters in the play, But for its indefatigable industry and inexhaustible
resources, Which divert the attention of the spectator (as well as his own) from the end
he has in view to the means by which it must be accomplished.--Edmund the Bastard in
Lear is something of the same character, placed in less prominent circumstances. Zanga
is a vulgar caricature of it.