This is one of four Exploring Shakespearean Tragedy synopses, each of which collects from the original publication the full argument leading to establishment of the thought-feeling dynamis of one of the four Great Tragedies—in this case Othello-–into a single narrative. 

Othello

 from Ch.3, Other Forms of Action

At a similar level of generalization, Othello has almost no sense of Alternate Universe. Everyone seems involved, and that is rather important in the play because Iago seems bent on orchestrating everyone’s involvement.

At the same time, as orchestrator, Iago minimizes Opponents by turning them into Victims. Brabantio is at odds with the marriage of his daughter and the Moor, but that is minimized if still fatal to Brabantio. That leaves Victims and Self as Victim for emphatic Counter forms for Othello. This pair suggests an interesting essay considering to what extent Othello is a Victim and to what extent a victim of his own character flaw or flaws, considering whether Desdemona can be seen as victimizing herself in her enthusiasm for Cassio’s reputation, and even considering whether Iago has truly been victimized in anything other than his own fiendish character. The fine distinctions make for fine criticism, but here the need for fine distinction rather proves the case for emphasized analytic Counter forms.

For the nonce, we can feel we are close to think of Othello as relying for Counters both of Victim and of Self as Victim.

For our purposes, we don’t particularly need to consider a combination of Counters.  Social Alternate Universe is clearly the most distinctively emphasized Counter characteristic of Hamlet, Victim most in Lear, Self as Victim most consistently central in Othello, and Opponents most classically obvious in Macbeth from the Weird Sisters, to MacDuff, Malcolm and Donalbane, Edward the Confessor, and the Siwards.

For our argument ultimately leading to dynamis, we can here ignore the synthetic combination of Counter emphases,  but for the record, in addition to Macbeth moving toward Pathetic Tension, we have Othello encouraging Pathos and Inner Tension, King Lear encouraging Pathos, Inner Tension, and Distance, and Hamlet encouraging Distance and Pathos, though the Pathos is largely limited to specific moments like the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia. 

from Ch.4, Special Language

We have just seen that texture, the synthetic combination of two rhetorical emphases, can be contrastively identified for Shakespeare’s tragedies within the normal application of our theory. As we turn to Othello, we should anticipate that we will be able to identify a different texture from that of Macbeth if it exists.

Othello’s rhetoric shifts markedly after the first act and only resumes its basic flight in late Act IV.  But before Act I is finished, we have a remarkable demonstration of Othello’s special rhetorical power.  For our purposes here, we can confine our analysis to the first act.  However, for those interested in the fuller mechanics of tragedic special language in Othello, we provide a more complete analysis in Appendix A.

And, from sensitive criticism over centuries, such a difference almost certainly does exist. Along with King Lear, Othello has claims to being the most poetic of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Its poetic qualities dominate our sense of the play as a whole even years after we have first experienced the play as script or performance.  As such, Othello becomes one of the critical test cases for a quadrilateral sense of Shakespeare’s Special Language, not as “elevated” language as traditionally conceived, but as a palette of Aptness, Assessment, Eloquence, and Elegance.

In Othello, the ordinary language is, of course, still overwhelmingly poetic language, with very little interruption by prose anywhere in the play.  That ordinary poetry leans quite strongly on Apt expression and on Elegant expression.  When we consider that Othello is the story of a high-ranking general of Venice, his military assignment, and his extraordinary aristocratic love affair with Desdemona, these tendencies in the ordinary language of the play should not be surprising.  Men of power and privilege in the state will necessarily need to deal with reality for which the “hitting the nail on the head” quality of Aptness will be of special importance just in moving action forward.  Men and women of power and privilege in the state will also be used to formal training in expression. Formal training in language normally starts with being able to say what we mean (closely related to Aptness) but progressing to saying what we mean in carefully chosen words that are commensurate with the importance of affairs discussed.  Diplomats need to learn Elegance. Carefully chosen words—and often (like lawyerly talk) rather lean, even terse expression so that no unworthy word intrudes—make language Elegant.

Superficially, this seems to suggest that there isn’t anything new to say about Othello’s special language. But to make this leap is to refuse to take the difference between ordinary and special language seriously. Othello’s predominant special language character, as we shall see, is established by Othello himself against a contrasting running tenor of speech and even against the impressive counter pattern of Iago’s rhetoric and of the meteoric flashes of rhetorical and poetic brilliance distributed throughout the cast.

 In Othello, there are a total of just over 3300 lines.   In a thorough review, we counted only 192 lines —less than 6% of the total—as special language. In 192 lines, we found a total of thirty special language passages.  Of our thirty select special language passages, 6 are long speeches of Othello himself, totaling 116 lines, better than 60% of the special language. 

Othello is indeed centered in Othello’s personal language. His special-language speeches average almost 20 lines per speech (some of the speeches are actually longer, but we have selected somewhat shorter selections to avoid material which is clearly more like the running speech of the play).  Thus, the play is dominated not only by Othello’s special language but also by special language in grand speeches.

The other 24 passages total about 76 lines.  And of these, five by Othello or Iago account for 32 lines and range from 5 to 8 lines apiece.  Thus, there are 19 passages with a total of 44 lines, an average of only slightly more than 2 lines per passage.  These 19 very short special-language passages constitute an entirely separate class of special language running through the play, a class of very short, pithy high moments of language that can almost be described as meteoritic rhetorical shooting stars that punctuate the drama. 

These meteoritic lines are often Iago’s or Othello’s, but they are shared with Desdemona and Cassio as well as with minor characters, such as Emilia, Roderigo, the Duke of Venice, and the 1^st Senator.  These widely-spaced, short rhetorical flourishes, especially because they range widely among minor characters, justify the sense that the play as a whole is poetically powerful.

Let’s remind ourselves of these meteoritic high points and their rhetorical character:

The Duke calling for stronger arguments:

“To vouch this is no proof

Without more wider and more overt test

Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods

Of modern seeming do prefer against him.” (108-111)—Assessment with Elegance

The 1^st Senator describing Turkish strategy:

"Tis a pageant

To keep us in false gaze." (1.3.21-22)—Apt but much more Assessing and even Elegant

Brabantio:

"For my particular grief

 Is of so flood-gate and o’erbearing in nature

 That it engluts and swallows other sorrows

 And it is still itself." 1,2,55-59—Apt and Eloquent

 

Iago and Othello share some of these rhetorical flashes in Act 1, Scene 2:

Othello at line 60, “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.”

And at line 84, “Were it my cue to fight, I would have known it/ Without a prompter.”   Both primarily Apt but also Elegant

Iago To Cassio about Othello marrying Desdemona,

 “Faith, he tonight hath boarded a land carrack.

 If it prove lawful prize, he’s made forever.”— Assessing and poetically Apt, especially in joining “land” to carrack, a rich sea-trading vessel.

While these rhetorical flourishes from even very minor characters set a tone of high poetry, they also serve as lead acts for the great speeches of Othello. The cadenced flashes lead to this set speech of Othello, certainly special-language itself, but here only preparatory to a much higher rhetorical achievement

“I fetch my life and being

From men of royal siege, and my demerits

May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune

As this that I have reached.  For know, Iago,

But that I love the gentle Desdemona,

I would not my unhoused free condition

Put into circumscription and confine

For the sea’s worth.” (1, 2, 21 ff.)—primarily Eloquent:

 

Note that “sea’s worth,” “circumscription and confine,” “unhoused free condition” have very limited precise meaning about them but great poetic power of Eloquence, beautiful words to emotive effect.

 

Thus, in Act I, we have many rhetorical flourishes, often by minor characters typically Apt or Assessing but matched by lyrically Eloquent lines of Othello and Apt Assessments of Iago.  And as nowhere else in Shakespeare or literature, all these are cadenced and working with an even more powerful and Eloquent speech of Othello to prepare us for one of the immortal speeches of dramatic literature.  Characteristic of Othello in his great speeches, it starts in scene thre, softly, much more as straight narrative than as special language:

“Her father loved me, oft invited me,

Still questioned me the story of my life….” (130-131)

 

It is almost 20 lines into the speech with  

“She’d come again, and with a greedy ear

 Devour up my discourse.” (151-152) 

 

And almost another ten at

“My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.

She swore in faith, ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing strange,

‘Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondrous pitiful.” (160-163)

 

And quickening a little to

“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

 And I loved her that she did pity them.” (169-170)

 

What is remarkable throughout is the extraordinarily common language.  We don’t find much metaphor as we did in the Duke’s “thin habits and poor likelihoods.”  And yet the speech is overwhelmingly powerful as cadenced poetry. By the time it is concluded, we feel that we know both the soul of Othello and the character of his and Desdemona’s shared love.  And that shared love is soft, known in the most realistic particulars and in the seeming inconsequence of particular reactions, caressed in its cadences of beloved memory.

The Duke immediately certifies as much: “I think this tale would win my daughter too” (174).

 Othello’s underlying Aptness and Elegance provides a foundation for the soaring passages which impress us as the play itself.  Iago’s and Desdemona’s and other characters’ passages emphasize Aptness and Assessment (Forceful language) providing stark contrast to Othello’s soft Eloquence. Aptness and Eloquence, then, have contrastive centers in Othello, which is most pointed in contrasting Othello as the center of Eloquence, Iago the center of Aptness.  Much as they are contrasted and related to the fundamental struggle for dominance in Othello’s soul, together, Eloquence and Aptness are the touchstones of tragedic special language in Othello throughout.  And by our quadrilateral analysis as already explicated, that makes the special language tone of the play Enchanting.

We can remember that this Enchanting texture needs to assert itself against a lesser but impressive Forceful, (Apt and Assessing,) texture, particularly Iago’s diabolically Forceful texture.

Once we arrive at this rhetorical conclusion, we can easily remember that thematically enchantment runs throughout the play: Brabantio accused Othello of enchanting his daughter, the handkerchief was enchanted, Othello was enchanted by Iago, Desdemona was enchanted by Othello.  Everyone lived in an enchanted time when all the Venetians were saved and all of the Turks were drowned.

Even more importantly, we were enchanted.  We were enchanted by the supreme inter-racial love affair between an aging general and a little-above-adolescent, which despite every character’s opinion on stage, we accepted as totally natural.

from Ch. 5, Tragedic Spirit

The Spirit of Fire is the emblem of Othello, not Macbeth. Love burns brightly in Othello, but the fire of love is replaced through Iago’s kindling by a fire of jealousy. That second fire burns through every restraint, eating visibly inward from outside Othello, charring his judgment, creating a heat far beyond the heat of love itself. If there was a fire in Othello and Desdemona’s love, the love itself was not fire, but rather something entirely impervious to fire though deformed by the heat of the fire of jealousy.

The fire of jealousy burns itself out, not before taking Desdemona’s life, which in love she freely allows to be suffocated (suffocation as one of two basic ways a fire is extinguished) in Othello’s hands. And once the fire is burnt out, it is equally obvious that everything burnable has been consumed or left in charred ruins. 

 In the final scenes, Othello is not antagonistic to those who must report this state of affairs to Venice. He of everyone is most aware of the total destruction around him accomplished by the now-defunct fire. What is left is only for Othello to pull down the charred remnant which is his own life.

Yet with everything pulled down, the final impression is not of what was destroyed by the fire of his jealousy but of something imperishable that remains. That has been demonstrated in the kiss Othello gives Desdemona even in killing her. And in Othello’s final speech, beginning with, “And say that in Aleppo  once . . . .” we have perhaps the world’s most poetically distant yet poignant assertion that Othello’s love preceded its specific embodiment in Desdemona and that it remains as the summational reality to be conveyed back to the Senate in Venice.

from Ch. 7, Tragedic Dynamis

Othello and King Lear are the two “wrung out” Great Tragedies, actions that eventually exhaust their protagonists and make us feel that exhaustion alongside them. The similarity is real—and the reality creates some bridge between these Shakespearean tragedies and the consistently “wrung-out” tragedies of the Greek Golden Age. There are, however, also important differences between Othello and Lear which still remain within the overall Shakespearean tragedic dynamis. These differences allow the plays to be emblems of separate dynamic variations based in technical emphases of the scripts.

In previous chapters, we have determined that Othello emphasizes Self as Victim in Form, Eloquence in rhetoric, and Fire in Spirit. (Lear’s being on a wheel of fire is one of those aspects of similarity between the plays).

Toward Thought within Dynamis: The world of Othello is a world of Incompatibilities, incongruities that must find a way to work together and can’t possibly work together. Think of Incompatibility as a pair of gloves, one of which is a lady’s silk glove and the other of which is a blacksmith’s gauntlet. One can try to work with the two as a pair, but, in fact, as a pair it can’t accomplish anything that either one was designed to accomplish. In Othello, Othello is a great soldier and an abject lover, an old man and a bridegroom. Desdemona is the absolutely loyal and enthralled maiden and the much too enthusiastic advocate for a man other than her husband. Iago is the trusted third-in-command and the jealous military failure. Cassio is the highly competent deputy commander and the man who can’t hold his first pint of beer or know when to say and mean no. All of these are Incompatibilities, and all of them are deadly or near deadly to self and to others.

The Form Self as Victim is an appropriate vehicle for thought about Incompatibilities because the Incompatibilities in Othello are typically within the self and create a warring rather than cooperative potential within the self. Othello is normally thought of as the Self as Victim, but the point is equally true of Desdemona, Iago, and Cassio as we have just discussed them.

The special language of Eloquence is an appropriate vehicle for thought about Incompatibilities because Incompatibilities are constantly struggling not to be opposed to each other but to work with each other. Both sides of the Incompatibility may be of good will. Both sides know what they can do well. But neither side can persuade its opposite to cooperate when such cooperation simply isn’t in the other’s abilities. Frustration alone leads to Eloquence in seeking a solution, seeking cooperation, seeking to persuade or bargain. The language becomes more beautiful with the greater effort, but it doesn’t get deeper than a search for fittingness which is already doomed to failure. The best example of the principle is the long scenes near the end of the play between Othello and Desdemona, each still in love with the other, but finally only capable of high Eloquence.  The sense of utter inability to work together begins no later than 4. 3. 155 when Desdemona gives up all hope of herself finding a way through with Othello:

                          “O God, 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. . . .”

And pure inadequate Eloquence thereafter if only in being said to the wrong person.

Fire is an appropriate vehicle for thought about Incompatibilities because the very act of trying to work beyond the Incompatibility creates heat but not light, burns any fuel that may come in contact with it but finally can’t burn away that which is not burnable, which in Othello is the loving Incompatibility itself. Everything else around is susceptible to becoming smoldering ruins. There is a non-tragic solution: keep the fire closely contained and away from all burnable things. Iago is the incendiary who does just the reverse, continually stoking the fire.

In these senses, Self as Victim, Eloquence, and Fire all point us toward the sense of Incompatibility as its own variant form of Shakespearean tragedy.

Adding Feeling to Thought: Moving over to the feeling side of dynamis, Self as Victim in Form creates Intensity. There is no destruction so clearly destructive as destruction of self. Eloquence creates immediate feeling (and quite likely intense feeling). The Spirit of Fire, almost redundantly, is ardent in feeling. All these feelings are elevated in Intensity. The combination we call Excruciating, suggesting the extreme of extended suffering.

As a thought-feeling, then, the dynamic of Othello, its particular variant power over us is strongly centered in techniques that point toward Excruciating Incompatibility. This should be one of the easiest of the dynamics to apprehend, and to apprehend very soon after the end of performance. 

If we have been entering a dark room of criticism, it is instructive to consider putting the dynamic of Othello on Macbeth. Imagine the assertion that Macbeth has the power over us of Excruciating Incompatibility. If we’ve seen and appreciated Othello in such terms, the terms just don’t make much sense of Macbeth as a poesis. In which case, evidently, some light is coming into the discussion of variations on Shakespearean tragedic dynamis.

We have already posited a short definition of the Shakespearean tragedic dynamis in general:

A cautionary admiration of man’s natural glory, encompassed by tragic processes of nature: poison, fire, rot, and cancerous growth.

Now we can customize that dynamic for any one of the Great Tragedies in particular.

For Othello:

A cautionary admiration of man’s natural glory, encompassed by the tragic processes of nature, particularly the intensely ardent processes of Fire, with an emphasis on Excruciating Incompatibility.