her needle, an admirable musician. O, she will sing the

savageness out of a bear. Of so high and plenteous wit and

invention¹⁹⁸!IAGO She’s the worse for all this.OTHELLO O, a thousand, a thousand times! And then, of so²⁰⁰

gentle a condition!IAGO Ay, too gentle²⁰².OTHELLO Nay, that’s certain. But yet the pity of it, Iago! O,

Iago, the pity of it, Iago!IAGO If you are so fond over her iniquity, give her patent²⁰⁵

to offend, for if it touch²⁰⁶ not you, it comes near nobody.OTHELLO I will chop her into messes²⁰⁷. Cuckold me?IAGO O, ’tis foul in her.OTHELLO With mine officer?IAGO That’s fouler.OTHELLO Get me some poison, Iago, this night: I’ll not

expostulate²¹² with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my

mind again: this night, Iago.IAGO Do it not with poison: strangle her in her bed, even

the bed she hath contaminated.OTHELLO Good, good: the justice of it pleases. Very good.IAGO And for Cassio, let me be his undertaker²¹⁷: you shall

hear more by midnight.Enter Lodovico, Desdemona and AttendantsOTHELLO Excellent good.A trumpet within

What trumpet is that same?IAGO I warrant something from Venice.

’Tis Lodovico: this comes from the duke.

See, your wife’s with him.LODOVICO Save you, worthy general!OTHELLO With all my heart, sir.LODOVICO The duke and the senators of VeniceGives a letter

greet you.OTHELLO I kiss the instrument of their pleasures²²⁷.Opens letter

and reads

DESDEMONA And what’s the news, good cousin²²⁸

Lodovico?IAGO I am very glad to see you, signior.

Welcome to Cyprus.LODOVICO I thank you. How does Lieutenant Cassio?IAGO Lives, sir.DESDEMONA Cousin, there’s fall’n between him and my lord

An unkind breach²³⁴: but you shall make all well.OTHELLO Are you sure of that?DESDEMONA My lord?Reads

OTHELLO ‘This fail you not to do, as you will—’LODOVICO He did not call: he’s busy in the paper.

Is there division ’twixt my lord and Cassio?DESDEMONA A most unhappy one: I would do much

T’atone²⁴¹ them, for the love I bear to Cassio.OTHELLO Fire and brimstone!DESDEMONA My lord?OTHELLO Are you wise²⁴⁴?DESDEMONA What? Is he angry?LODOVICO Maybe th’letter moved him,

For, as I think, they do command him home,

Deputing Cassio in his government.DESDEMONA Trust me, I am glad on’t²⁴⁹.OTHELLO Indeed?DESDEMONA My lord?OTHELLO I am glad to see you mad²⁵².DESDEMONA Why, sweet Othello?OTHELLO Devil!Strikes her

DESDEMONA I have not deserved this.LODOVICO My lord, this would not be believed in Venice,

Though I should swear I saw’t. ’Tis very much²⁵⁷:

Make her amends, she weeps.OTHELLO O devil, devil!

If that the earth could teem²⁶⁰ with woman’s tears,

Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile²⁶¹.—

Out of my sight!DESDEMONA I will not stay to offend you.Starts to leave

LODOVICO Truly, an obedient lady:

I do beseech your lordship, call her back.OTHELLO Mistress!DESDEMONA My lord?Returns

OTHELLO What would you with her, sir?LODOVICO Who, I, my lord?OTHELLO Ay, you did wish that I would make her turn:

Sir, she can turn²⁷¹, and turn, and yet go on

And turn again: and she can weep, sir, weep:

And she’s obedient²⁷³, as you say, obedient:

Very obedient.— Proceed you in your tears.—

Concerning this, sir, — O well-painted passion²⁷⁵! —

I am commanded home.— Get you away:

I’ll send for you anon.— Sir, I obey the mandate,

And will return to Venice.— Hence, avaunt![Exit Desdemona]

Cassio shall have my place²⁷⁹. And, sir, tonight

I do entreat that we may sup together:

You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus.— Goats and monkeys²⁸¹!Exit

LODOVICO Is this the noble Moor whom our full²⁸² senate

Call all in all sufficient²⁸³? Is this the nature

Whom passion could not shake? Whose solid virtue

The shot of accident nor dart of chance

Could neither graze nor pierce?IAGO He is much changed.LODOVICO Are his wits safe? Is he not light of brain?IAGO He’s that he is: I may not breathe my censure²⁸⁹

What he might be: if what he might he is not,²⁹⁰

I would to heaven he were!LODOVICO What, strike his wife?IAGO Faith, that was not so well²⁹³, yet would I knew

That stroke would prove the worst!LODOVICO Is it his use²⁹⁵?

Or did the letters work upon his blood

And new-create his fault?IAGO Alas, alas!

It is not honesty in me to speak

What I have seen and known. You shall observe him,

And his own courses will denote³⁰¹ him so

That I may save my speech: do but go after,

And mark how he continues.LODOVICO I am sorry that I am deceived in him.Exeunt

Act 4 Scene 2running scene 9

Location: Cyprus (within the citadel)

Enter Othello and EmiliaOTHELLO You have seen nothing then?EMILIA Nor ever heard, nor ever did suspect.OTHELLO Yes, you have seen Cassio and she together.EMILIA But then I saw no harm, and then I heard

Each syllable that breath made up between them.OTHELLO What, did they never whisper?EMILIA Never, my lord.OTHELLO Nor send you out o’th’way?EMILIA Never.OTHELLO To fetch her fan, her gloves, her mask, nor nothing?EMILIA Never, my lord.OTHELLO That’s strange.EMILIA I durst¹³, my lord, to wager she is honest,

Lay down my soul at stake¹⁴: if you think other,

Remove your thought, it doth abuse your bosom:

If any wretch have put this in your head,

Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse¹⁷!

For if she be not honest, chaste and true,

There’s no man happy: the purest of their wives

Is foul as slander.OTHELLO Bid her come hither: go.Exit Emilia

She says enough, yet she’s a simple bawd²²

That cannot say as much. This²³ is a subtle whore,

A closet lock and key of villainous secrets²⁴:

And yet she’ll kneel and pray, I have seen her do’t.

Enter Desdemona and EmiliaDESDEMONA My lord, what is your will?OTHELLO Pray you, chuck, come hither.DESDEMONA What is your pleasure?OTHELLO Let me see your eyes: look in my face.DESDEMONA What horrible fancy’s this?OTHELLO Some of your function³¹, mistress:To Emilia

Leave procreants³² alone and shut the door:

Cough or cry ‘Hem’ if anybody come.

Your mystery³⁴, your mystery: nay, dispatch.Exit Emilia

DESDEMONA Upon my knee, what doth your speechKneels

import?

I understand a fury in your words.OTHELLO Why, what art thou?DESDEMONA Your wife, my lord, your true and loyal wife.OTHELLO Come, swear it, damn thyself

Lest, being like one of heaven⁴⁰, the devils themselves

Should fear to seize thee: therefore be double damned:

Swear thou art honest.DESDEMONA Heaven doth truly know it.OTHELLO Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.DESDEMONA To whom, my lord? With whom? How am I false?OTHELLO Ah Desdemon! Away, away, away!Weeps

DESDEMONA Alas the heavy⁴⁷ day! Why do you weep?

Am I the motive of these tears, my lord?

If haply⁴⁹ you my father do suspect

An instrument of this your calling back,

Lay not your blame on me: if you have lost him,

I have lost him too.OTHELLO Had it pleased heaven

To try me with affliction, had they rained

All kind of sores⁵⁵ and shames on my bare head,

Steeped⁵⁶ me in poverty to the very lips,

Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,

I should have found in some place of my soul

A drop of patience: but, alas, to make me

The fixèd figure⁶⁰ for the time of scorn

To point his slow and moving finger⁶¹ at!

Yet could I bear that too, well, very well,

But there where I have garnered⁶³ up my heart,

Where either I must live, or bear no life,

The fountain⁶⁵ from the which my current runs

Or else dries up: to be discarded thence!

Or keep it as a cistern⁶⁷ for foul toads

To knot and gender⁶⁸ in! Turn thy complexion there,

Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubin⁶⁹:

Ay, here look grim⁷⁰ as hell!DESDEMONA I hope my noble lord esteems me honest⁷¹.OTHELLO O, ay, as summer flies are in the shambles⁷²,

That quicken even with blowing⁷³. O, thou weed,

Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet

That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst never been born!DESDEMONA Alas, what ignorant⁷⁶ sin have I committed?OTHELLO Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,

Made to write ‘whore’ upon? What committed⁷⁸?

Committed? O, thou public commoner⁷⁹,

I should make very forges of my cheeks,

That would to cinders burn up modesty,

Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed?

Heaven stops⁸³ the nose at it and the moon winks,

The bawdy wind that kisses all it meets

Is hushed within the hollow mine⁸⁵ of earth

And will not hear’t. What committed?DESDEMONA By heaven, you do me wrong.OTHELLO Are not you a strumpet⁸⁸?DESDEMONA No, as I am a Christian:

If to preserve this vessel⁹⁰ for my lord

From any other foul unlawful touch

Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.OTHELLO What, not a whore?DESDEMONA No, as I shall be saved.OTHELLO Is’t possible?DESDEMONA O, heaven forgive us!OTHELLO I cry you mercy⁹⁷, then:

I took you for that cunning whore of Venice

That married with Othello.— You, mistress,Calls

Enter Emilia That have the office opposite¹⁰⁰ to Saint Peter

And keeps the gate of hell¹⁰¹! You, you, ay, you!

We have done our course¹⁰²: there’s money for your pains.

I pray you turn the key and keep our counsel¹⁰³.Exit

Gives money

EMILIA Alas, what does this gentleman conceive¹⁰⁴?

How do you, madam? How do you, my good lady?DESDEMONA Faith, half asleep¹⁰⁶.EMILIA Good madam, what’s the matter with my lord?DESDEMONA With who?EMILIA Why, with my lord, madam.DESDEMONA Who is thy lord?EMILIA He that is yours, sweet lady.DESDEMONA I have none. Do not talk to me, Emilia:

I cannot weep, nor answers have I none

But what should go by water¹¹⁴. Prithee, tonight

Lay on my bed my wedding sheets: remember,

And call thy husband hither.EMILIA Here’s a change indeed!Exit

DESDEMONA ’Tis meet¹¹⁸ I should be used so, very meet.

How have I been behaved, that he might stick

The small’st opinion on my least misuse¹¹⁹?

Enter Iago and EmiliaIAGO What is your pleasure, madam?

How is’t with you?DESDEMONA I cannot tell. Those that do teach young babes

Do it with gentle means and easy tasks:

He might have chid me so, for, in good faith,

I am a child to chiding¹²⁶.IAGO What’s the matter, lady?EMILIA Alas, Iago, my lord hath so bewhored her¹²⁸,

Thrown such despite¹²⁹ and heavy terms upon her,

That true hearts cannot bear it.DESDEMONA Am I that name, Iago?IAGO What name, fair lady?DESDEMONA Such as she said my lord did say I was.EMILIA He called her whore: a beggar in his drink

Could not have laid such terms upon his callet¹³⁵.IAGO Why did he so?DESDEMONA I do not know: I am sure I am none such.Weeps

IAGO Do not weep, do not weep. Alas the day!EMILIA Hath she forsook¹³⁹ so many noble matches?

Her father? And her country? And her friends?

To be called whore? Would it not make one weep?DESDEMONA It is my wretched fortune.IAGO Beshrew¹⁴³ him for’t!

How comes this trick¹⁴⁴ upon him?DESDEMONA Nay, heaven doth know.EMILIA I will be hanged if some eternal villain,

Some busy and insinuating rogue,

Some cogging¹⁴⁸, cozening slave, to get some office,

Have not devised this slander: I will be hanged else.IAGO Fie, there is no such man: it is impossible.DESDEMONA If any such there be, heaven pardon him!EMILIA A halter¹⁵² pardon him! And hell gnaw his bones!

Why should he call her whore? Who keeps her company?

What place? What time? What form¹⁵⁴? What likelihood?

The Moor’s abused by some most villainous knave,

Some base notorious knave, some scurvy¹⁵⁶ fellow.

O heavens, that such companions¹⁵⁷ thou’dst unfold,

And put in every honest hand a whip

To lash the rascals naked through the world

Even from the east to th’west!IAGO Speak within door¹⁶¹.EMILIA O, fie upon them! Some such squire¹⁶² he was

That turned your wit the seamy side without¹⁶³

And made you to suspect me with the Moor.IAGO You are a fool: go to.DESDEMONA 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:Kneels

If e’er my will did trespass gainst his love,

Either in discourse¹⁷¹ of thought or actual deed,

Or that¹⁷² mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense

Delighted them, or any other form,

Or that I do not yet¹⁷⁴, and ever did,

And ever will — though he do shake me off

To beggarly divorcement — love him dearly,

Comfort forswear¹⁷⁷ me! Unkindness may do much,

And his unkindness may defeat my life,

But never taint my love. I cannot say ‘whore’:

It does abhor¹⁸⁰ me now I speak the word:

To do the act that might the addition¹⁸¹ earn

Not the world’s mass of vanity¹⁸² could make me.IAGO I pray you be content: ’tis but his humour¹⁸³.

The business of the state does him offence.DESDEMONA If ’twere no other—IAGO It is but so, I warrant.Trumpets within

Hark, how these instruments summon to supper!

The messengers of Venice stays¹⁸⁸ the meat:

Go in, and weep not: all things shall be well.Exeunt Desdemona and Emilia

Enter Rodorigo How now, Rodorigo?RODORIGO I do not find that thou deal’st justly with me.IAGO What in the contrary?RODORIGO Every day thou daff’st me¹⁹³ with some device, Iago,

and rather, as it seems to me now, keep’st from me all

conveniency¹⁹⁵ than suppliest me with the least advantage of

hope. I will indeed no longer endure it, nor am I yet

persuaded to put up¹⁹⁷ in peace what already I have foolishly

suffered.IAGO Will you hear me, Rodorigo?RODORIGO I have heard too much, and your words and

performances are no kin together.IAGO You charge me most unjustly.RODORIGO With naught but truth: I have wasted myself out

of my means. The jewels you have had from me to

deliver Desdemona would half have corrupted a votarist²⁰⁵:

you have told me she hath received them and returned

me expectations and comforts²⁰⁷ of sudden respect and

acquaintance²⁰⁸, but I find none.IAGO Well, go to²¹⁰, very well.RODORIGO ‘Very well’! ‘Go to’! I cannot go to, man, nor ’tis not

very well: nay, I think it is scurvy, and begin to find myself

fopped²¹² in it.IAGO Very well.RODORIGO I tell you ’tis not very well. I will make myself

known to Desdemona: if she will return me my jewels, I will

give over my suit and repent my unlawful solicitation: if not,

assure yourself I will seek satisfaction²¹⁷ of you.IAGO You have said²¹⁸ now.RODORIGO Ay, and said nothing but what I protest intendment²¹⁹

of doing.IAGO Why, now I see there’s mettle²²¹ in thee, and even from

this instant do build on thee a better opinion than ever

before. Give me thy hand, Rodorigo: thou hast taken against

me a most just exception²²⁴, but yet I protest I have dealt most

directly²²⁵ in thy affair.RODORIGO It hath not appeared.IAGO I grant indeed it hath not appeared, and your

suspicion is not without wit and judgement. But, Rodorigo, if

thou hast that in thee indeed which I have greater reason to

believe now than ever — I mean purpose, courage and

valour — this night show it: if thou the next night following

enjoy not Desdemona, take me from this world with

treachery and devise engines²³³ for my life.RODORIGO Well, what is it? Is it within reason and compass²³⁴?IAGO Sir, there is especial commission come from Venice

to depute Cassio in Othello’s place.RODORIGO Is that true? Why then Othello and Desdemona

return again to Venice.IAGO O, no. He goes into Mauritania²³⁹ and taketh away

with him the fair Desdemona, unless his abode be lingered²⁴⁰

here by some accident, wherein none can be so determinate²⁴¹

as the removing of Cassio.RODORIGO How do you mean, removing him?IAGO Why, by making him uncapable of Othello’s place:

knocking out his brains.RODORIGO And that you would have me to do?IAGO Ay, if you dare do yourself a profit and a right. He

sups tonight with a harlotry²⁴⁸, and thither will I go to him. He

knows not yet of his honourable fortune: if you will watch

his going thence — which I will fashion to fall out²⁵⁰ between

twelve and one — you may take him at your pleasure. I will

be near to second²⁵² your attempt, and he shall fall between us.

Come, stand not amazed²⁵³ at it, but go along with me: I will

show you such a necessity in his death that you shall think

yourself bound to put it on him. It is now high²⁵⁵ suppertime,

and the night grows to waste²⁵⁶RODORIGO I will hear further reason for this.IAGO And you shall be satisfied.Exeunt

Act 4 Scene 3running scene 9 continues

Enter Othello, Lodovico, Desdemona, Emilia and AttendantsLODOVICO I do beseech you, sir, trouble yourself no further.OTHELLO O, pardon me: ’twill do me good to walk.LODOVICO Madam, goodnight. I humbly thank your ladyship.DESDEMONA Your honour is most welcome.OTHELLO Will you walk, sir?— O, Desdemona!DESDEMONA My lord?Exeunt [Othello, Lodovico and Attendants]

OTHELLO Get you to bed on th’instant, I will be returned

forthwith. Dismiss your attendant there: look’t be done.DESDEMONA I will, my lord.EMILIA How goes it now? He looks gentler than he did.DESDEMONA He says he will return incontinent¹¹,

And hath commanded me to go to bed,

And bid me to dismiss you.EMILIA Dismiss me?DESDEMONA It was his bidding: therefore, good Emilia,

Give me my nightly wearing¹⁶, and adieu.

We must not now displease him.EMILIA I would you had never seen him.DESDEMONA So would not I: my love doth so approve¹⁹ him

That even his stubbornness²⁰, his checks, his frowns —

Prithee unpin me²¹ — have grace and favour.EMILIA I have laid those sheets you bade me on the bed.DESDEMONA All’s one²³.— Good father, how foolish are our

minds!—

If I do die before²⁴, prithee shroud me

In one of these same sheets.EMILIA Come, come, you talk²⁶.DESDEMONA My mother had a maid called Barbary²⁷:

She was in love, and he she loved proved mad²⁸

And did forsake her. She had a song of ‘willow²⁹’,

An old thing ’twas, but it expressed her fortune,

And she died singing it: that song tonight

Will not go from my mind: I have much to do

But to go hang my head all at one side

And sing it like poor Barbary. Prithee dispatch.EMILIA Shall I go fetch your nightgown?DESDEMONA No, unpin me here.

This Lodovico is a proper³⁷ man.EMILIA A very handsome man.DESDEMONA He speaks well.EMILIA I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to

Palestine for a touch of his nether⁴¹ lip.DESDEMONA The poor soul sat singing by a sycamore⁴² tree,Sings

Sing all a green willow:

Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,

Sing willow, willow, willow.

The fresh streams ran by her, and murmured her moans,

Sing willow, willow, willow:

Her salt tears fell from her, and softened the stones,

Sing willow—

Lay by these⁵⁰—To Emilia

Willow, willow—Sings

Prithee, hie thee⁵²: he’ll come anon— Sing all a green willow must be my garland.Sings

Let nobody blame him, his scorn I approve—

Nay, that’s not next.— Hark, who is’t that knocks?EMILIA It’s the wind.DESDEMONA I called my love false love, but what said he then?Sings

Sing willow, willow, willow:

If I court more women, you’ll couch⁵⁹ with more men!—

So, get thee gone, goodnight. Mine eyes do itch:

Doth that bode⁶¹ weeping?EMILIA ’Tis neither here nor there.DESDEMONA I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men!

Dost thou in conscience think — tell me, Emilia —

That there be women do abuse⁶⁵ their husbands

In such gross kind⁶⁶?EMILIA There be some such, no question.DESDEMONA Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?EMILIA Why, would not you?DESDEMONA No, by this heavenly light!EMILIA Nor I neither by this heavenly light:

I might do’t as well i’th’dark.DESDEMONA Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?EMILIA The world’s a huge thing: it is a great price⁷⁴

For a small vice.DESDEMONA In troth, I think thou wouldst not.EMILIA In troth, I think I should, and undo’t when I had

done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a joint-ring⁷⁸, nor

for measures of lawn⁷⁹, nor for gowns, petticoats, nor caps,

nor any petty exhibition⁸⁰: but for all the whole world, why,

who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a

monarch? I should venture⁸² purgatory for’t.DESDEMONA Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrong

For the whole world.EMILIA Why, the wrong is but a wrong i’th’world, and

having the world for your labour, ’tis a wrong in your own

world, and you might quickly make it right.DESDEMONA I do not think there is any such woman.EMILIA Yes, a dozen, and as many to th’vantage⁸⁹ as

Would store⁹⁰ the world they played for.

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults

If wives do fall⁹². Say that they slack their duties

And pour our treasures into foreign laps⁹³,

Or else break out in peevish⁹⁴ jealousies,

Throwing restraint upon us, or say they strike us,

Or scant⁹⁶ our former having in despite:

Why, we have galls⁹⁷, and though we have some grace,

Yet have we some revenge⁹⁸. Let husbands know

Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell

And have their palates both for sweet and sour,

As husbands have. What is it that they do

When they change¹⁰² us for others? Is it sport?

I think it is. And doth affection¹⁰³ breed it?

I think it doth. Is’t frailty that thus errs?

It is so too. And have not we affections?

Desires for sport? And frailty, as men have?

Then let them use¹⁰⁷ us well: else let them know,

The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.DESDEMONA Goodnight, goodnight: heaven me such uses¹⁰⁹ send

Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend¹¹⁰!Exeunt

Act 5 Scene 1running scene 10

Location: Cyprus (a street)

Enter Iago and RodorigoIAGO Here, stand behind this bulk¹: straight will he come.

Wear thy good rapier bare², and put it home.

Quick, quick, fear nothing; I’ll be at thy elbow.

It makes us or it mars⁴ us: think on that,

And fix most firm thy resolution.RODORIGO Be near at hand: I may miscarry⁶ in’t.IAGO Here, at thy hand: be bold, and take thy stand.Conceals himself

RODORIGO I have no great devotion to the deed,

And yet he hath given me satisfying reasons.

’Tis but a man gone. Forth, my sword: he dies.Draws

IAGO I have rubbed this young quat¹¹ almost to the sense,Aside

And he grows angry¹². Now, whether he kill Cassio

Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other,

Every way makes my gain. Live Rodorigo¹⁴,

He calls me to a restitution large

Of gold and jewels that I bobbed¹⁶ from him

As gifts¹⁷ to Desdemona:

It must not be. If Cassio do remain,

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly: and besides, the Moor

May unfold²¹ me to him: there stand I in much peril.

No, he must die. But so: I heard him coming.

Enter CassioRODORIGO I know his gait, ’tis he.— Villain, thou diest!Makes a

sword thrust

CASSIO That thrust had been mine enemy indeed,

But that my coat²⁵ is better than thou know’st:

I will make proof²⁶ of thine.Draws and wounds Rodorigo

RODORIGO O, I am slain!He falls; Iago comes forward and stabs Cassio on the leg

Exit Iago

CASSIO I am maimed for ever. Help, ho! Murder, murder!He falls

Enter OthelloOTHELLO The voice of Cassio: Iago keeps his word.RODORIGO O, villain that I am!OTHELLO It is even so.CASSIO O, help, ho! Light! A surgeon!OTHELLO ’Tis he. O brave³³ Iago, honest and just,

That hast such noble sense of thy friend’s wrong!

Thou teachest me.— Minion³⁵, your dear lies dead,

And your unblest³⁶ fate hies. Strumpet, I come:

For of³⁷ my heart those charms, thine eyes, are blotted,

Thy bed, lust-stained, shall with lust’s blood be spotted.Exit Othello

Enter Lodovico and GratianoCASSIO What, ho! No watch? No passage³⁹? Murder, murder!GRATIANO ’Tis some mischance: the voice is very direful⁴⁰.CASSIO O, help!LODOVICO Hark!RODORIGO O wretched villain!LODOVICO Two or three groan. ’Tis heavy⁴⁴ night;

These may be counterfeits: let’s think’t unsafe

To come in to⁴⁶ the cry without more help.RODORIGO Nobody come: then shall I bleed to death.

Enter IagoWith a light and weapons

LODOVICO Hark!GRATIANO Here’s one comes in his shirt⁴⁹, with light and

weapons.IAGO Who’s there? Whose noise is this that cries on

murder?LODOVICO We do not know.IAGO Do not you hear a cry?CASSIO Here, here! For heaven sake, help me!IAGO What’s the matter?GRATIANO This is Othello’s ancient, as I take it.To Lodovico

LODOVICO The same indeed: a very valiant fellow.To Gratiano

IAGO What are you here that cry so grievously?CASSIO Iago? O, I am spoiled⁵⁸, undone by villains!

Give me some help.IAGO O me, lieutenant! What villains have done this?CASSIO I think that one of them is hereabout,

And cannot make away.IAGO O treacherous villains!—To Lodovico and Gratiano

What are you there? Come in, and give some help.RODORIGO O, help me there!CASSIO That’s one of them.IAGO O murd’rous slave! O villain!Stabs Rodorigo

RODORIGO O damned Iago! O inhuman dog!IAGO Kill men i’th’dark!— Where be these bloody

thieves?—

How silent is this town!— Ho! Murder, murder!—

What may you be? Are you of good or evil?To Lodovico and Gratiano

LODOVICO As you shall prove⁷² us, praise us.IAGO Signior Lodovico?LODOVICO He, sir.IAGO I cry you mercy. Here’s Cassio hurt by villains.GRATIANO Cassio?IAGO How is’t, brother?To Cassio

CASSIO My leg is cut in two.IAGO Marry, heaven forbid!—

Light, gentlemen. I’ll bind it with my shirt.

Enter BiancaBIANCA What is the matter, ho? Who is’t that cried?IAGO Who is’t that cried?BIANCA O my dear Cassio! My sweet Cassio! O Cassio,

Cassio, Cassio!IAGO O notable strumpet! Cassio, may you suspect⁸⁵

Who they should be that have thus mangled you?CASSIO No.GRATIANO I am sorry to find you thus: I have been to seek you.IAGO Lend me a garter⁸⁹. So.— O, for a chair

To bear him easily hence!BIANCA Alas, he faints! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!IAGO Gentlemen all, I do suspect this trash⁹²

To be a party in this injury.—

Patience awhile, good Cassio.— Come, come;

Lend me a light.Shines light on Rodorigo

Know we this face or no?

Alas, my friend and my dear countryman

Rodorigo? No. Yes, sure: yes, ’tis Rodorigo.GRATIANO What, of Venice?IAGO Even he, sir: did you know him?GRATIANO Know him? Ay.IAGO Signior Gratiano? I cry your gentle pardon:

These bloody accidents¹⁰² must excuse my manners

That so neglected you.GRATIANO I am glad to see you.IAGO How do you, Cassio?— O, a chair, a chair!GRATIANO Rodorigo?IAGO He, he ’tis he.—

O, that’s well said¹⁰⁸: the chair!Attendants bring in a chair

Some good man bear him carefully from hence:

I’ll fetch the general’s surgeon.—

For¹¹¹ you, mistress,To Bianca

Save you your labour¹¹².— He that lies slain here, Cassio,

Was my dear friend: what malice was between you?CASSIO None in the world, nor do I know the man!IAGO What, look you pale?— O, bear him out o’th’air.To Bianca

Stay you, good gentlemen.— Look you pale, mistress?—Attendants bear off Cassio and Rodorigo

Do you perceive the gastness of her eye¹¹⁷?—

Nay, if you stare¹¹⁸, we shall hear more anon.—

Behold her well: I pray you look upon her:

Do you see, gentlemen? Nay, guiltiness will speak,

Though tongues were out of use.

[Enter Emilia]EMILIA Alas, what is the matter? What is the matter,

husband?IAGO Cassio hath here been set on in the dark

By Rodorigo and fellows that are scaped:

He’s almost slain, and Rodorigo quite dead.EMILIA Alas, good gentleman! Alas, good Cassio!IAGO This is the fruits of whoring. Prithee, Emilia,

Go know of Cassio where he supped tonight.—To Bianca

What, do you shake at that?BIANCA He supped at my house, but I therefore shake not.IAGO O, did he so? I charge you go with me.EMILIA O, fie upon thee, strumpet!BIANCA I am no strumpet, but of life as honest¹³³

As you that thus abuse me.EMILIA As I? Fie upon thee!IAGO Kind gentlemen, let’s go see poor Cassio dressed¹³⁶.—

Come, mistress, you must tell’s another tale.

Emilia, run you to the citadel

And tell my lord and lady what hath happed.—

Will you go on afore?— This is the nightAside

That either makes me or fordoes me quite¹⁴¹.Exeunt

Act 5 Scene 2running scene 11

Location: Cyprus (citadel/governor’s bedroom)

Enter Othello and Desdemona in her bedOthello with a light

OTHELLO It is the cause¹, it is the cause, my soul:

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars:

It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood,

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

And smooth as monumental alabaster⁵:

Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.

Put out the light⁷, and then put out the light.

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister⁸,

I can again thy former light restore,

Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,

Thou cunning’st pattern¹² of excelling nature,

I know not where is that Promethean¹³ heat

That can thy light relume¹⁴. When I have plucked thy rose,

I cannot give it vital¹⁵ growth again:

It needs must wither. I’ll smell thee on the tree.Kisses her

O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

Justice¹⁷ to break her sword! One more, one more.

Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee

And love thee after. One more, and that’s the last.Kisses her

So sweet was ne’er so fatal²⁰. I must weep,

But they are cruel tears: this sorrow’s heavenly,

It strikes²² where it doth love. She wakes.DESDEMONA Who’s there? Othello?OTHELLO Ay, Desdemona.DESDEMONA Will you come to bed, my lord?OTHELLO Have you prayed tonight, Desdemon?DESDEMONA Ay²⁷, my lord.OTHELLO If you bethink yourself of any crime

Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace,

Solicit³⁰ for it straight.DESDEMONA Alack, my lord, what may you mean by that?OTHELLO Well, do it, and be brief: I will walk by³².

I would not kill thy unpreparèd spirit,

No, heavens forfend³⁴! I would not kill thy soul.DESDEMONA Talk you of killing?OTHELLO Ay, I do.DESDEMONA Then heaven have mercy on me!OTHELLO Amen, with all my heart!DESDEMONA If you say³⁹, I hope you will not kill me.OTHELLO Hum!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 I fear.OTHELLO Think on thy sins.DESDEMONA They are loves I bear to you⁴⁵.OTHELLO Ay, and for that thou diest.DESDEMONA That death’s unnatural that kills for loving.

Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip?

Some bloody passion shakes your very frame:

These are portents, but yet I hope, I hope,

They do not point on me.OTHELLO Peace, and be still!DESDEMONA I will so. What’s the matter?OTHELLO That handkerchief which I so loved and gave thee

Thou gav’st to Cassio.DESDEMONA No, by my life and soul!

Send for the man and ask him.OTHELLO Sweet soul, take heed, take heed of perjury:

Thou art on thy death-bed.DESDEMONA Ay, but not yet to die.OTHELLO Presently⁶¹:

Therefore confess thee freely of thy sin,

For to deny each article⁶³ with oath

Cannot remove nor choke the strong conception⁶⁴

That I do groan withal⁶⁵. Thou art to die.DESDEMONA O, heaven have mercy on me!OTHELLO I say, amen.DESDEMONA And have you mercy too! I never did

Offend⁶⁹ you in my life, never loved Cassio

But with such general warranty⁷⁰ of heaven

As I might love: I never gave him token.OTHELLO By heaven, I saw my handkerchief in’s hand.

O perjured woman, thou dost stone⁷³ my heart,

And makes me call what I intend to do

A murder, which I thought a sacrifice:

I saw the handkerchief.DESDEMONA He found it then:

I never gave it him. Send for him hither,

Let him confess a truth.OTHELLO He hath confessed.DESDEMONA What, my lord?OTHELLO That he hath used⁸² thee.DESDEMONA How? Unlawfully?OTHELLO Ay.DESDEMONA He will not say so.OTHELLO No, his mouth is stopped:

Honest Iago hath ta’en order⁸⁷ for’t.DESDEMONA O, my fear interprets! What, is he dead?OTHELLO Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge

Had stomach⁹⁰ for them all.DESDEMONA Alas, he is betrayed and I undone!OTHELLO Out, strumpet! Weep’st thou for him to my face?DESDEMONA O, banish me, my lord, but kill me not!OTHELLO Down, strumpet!DESDEMONA Kill me tomorrow, let me live tonight!OTHELLO Nay, if you strive⁹⁶—DESDEMONA But half an hour!OTHELLO Being done⁹⁸, there is no pause.DESDEMONA But while I say one prayer!OTHELLO It is too late.Smothers her

Emilia at the doorEMILIA My lord, my lord! What, ho! My lord, my lord!Within

OTHELLO What noise is this? Not dead? Not yet quite dead?

I that am cruel am yet merciful:

I would not have thee linger in thy pain: so, so.EMILIA What, ho? My lord, my lord!Within

OTHELLO Who’s there?EMILIA O, good my lord, I would speak a word with you!Within

OTHELLO Yes.— ’Tis Emilia.— By and by¹⁰⁸.— She’s dead.

’Tis like¹⁰⁹ she comes to speak of Cassio’s death.—

The noise¹¹⁰ was high. Ha, no more moving?

Still as the grave. Shall she come in? Were’t good?—

I think she stirs again. No. What’s best to do?

If she come in, she’ll sure speak to my wife:

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

O insupportable! O heavy hour!

Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse

Of sun and moon, and that th’affrighted globe

Did yawn at alteration¹¹⁸.EMILIA I do beseech youWithin

That I may speak with you, O, good my lord!OTHELLO I had forgot thee.— O, come in, Emilia.—

Soft¹²², by and by: let me the curtains draw.—Draws the bed curtains and unlocks the door

Where art thou? What’s the matter with thee now?

Enter EmiliaEMILIA O, my good lord, yonder’s foul murders done!OTHELLO What? Now?EMILIA But now, my lord.OTHELLO It is the very error¹²⁷ of the moon:

She comes more nearer earth than she was wont¹²⁸,

And makes men mad.EMILIA Cassio, my lord, hath killed a young Venetian

Called Rodorigo.OTHELLO Rodorigo killed? And Cassio killed?EMILIA No, Cassio is not killed.OTHELLO Not Cassio killed? Then murder’s out of tune,

And sweet revenge grows harsh¹³⁵.DESDEMONA O, falsely¹³⁶, falsely murdered!EMILIA Alas! What cry is that?OTHELLO That? What?EMILIA Out, and alas!¹³⁹ That was my lady’s voice.

Help, help, ho, help! O lady, speak again!Opens the bed curtains

Sweet Desdemona! O sweet mistress, speak!DESDEMONA A guiltless death I die.EMILIA O, who hath done this deed?DESDEMONA Nobody: I myself. Farewell.

Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!Dies

OTHELLO Why, how should she be murdered?EMILIA Alas, who knows?OTHELLO You hear her say herself it was not I.EMILIA She said so: I must needs report the truth.OTHELLO She’s like a liar gone to burning hell:

’Twas I that killed her.EMILIA O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!OTHELLO She turned to folly¹⁵³, and she was a whore.EMILIA Thou dost belie¹⁵⁴ her, and thou art a devil.OTHELLO She was false as water.EMILIA Thou art rash as fire, to say

That she was false: O, she was heavenly true!OTHELLO Cassio did top¹⁵⁸ her: ask thy husband else.

O, I were damned beneath all depth in hell,

But¹⁶⁰ that I did proceed upon just grounds

To this extremity. Thy husband knew it all.EMILIA My husband?OTHELLO Thy husband.EMILIA That she was false to wedlock?OTHELLO Ay, with Cassio. Had she been true,

If heaven would make me such another world

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite¹⁶⁷,

I’d not have sold her for it.EMILIA My husband?OTHELLO Ay, ’twas he that told me on¹⁷⁰ her first:

An honest man he is, and hates the slime¹⁷¹

That sticks on filthy deeds¹⁷².EMILIA My husband?OTHELLO What needs this iterance¹⁷⁴, woman? I say thy husband.EMILIA O mistress, villainy hath made mocks with¹⁷⁵ love.

My husband say she was false?OTHELLO He, woman;

I say thy husband: dost understand the word?

My friend, thy husband: honest, honest Iago.EMILIA If he say so, may his pernicious¹⁸⁰ soul

Rot half a grain a day! He lies to th’heart:

She was too fond of her most filthy bargain¹⁸².OTHELLO Ha?EMILIA Do thy worst:

This deed of thine is no more worthy heaven

Than thou wast worthy her.OTHELLO Peace, you were best¹⁸⁷—EMILIA Thou hast not half that power to do me harm

As I have to be hurt¹⁸⁹. O gull, O dolt,

As ignorant as dirt! Thou hast done a deed —

I care not for thy sword — I’ll make thee known¹⁹¹,

Though I lost twenty lives.— Help, help, ho, help!

The Moor hath killed my mistress! Murder, murder!

Enter Montano, Gratiano and IagoMONTANO What is the matter? How now, general?EMILIA O, are you come, Iago? You have done well,

That men must lay their murders on your neck.GRATIANO What is the matter?EMILIA Disprove this villain, if thou be’st a man:To Iago

He says thou told’st him that his wife was false:

I know thou didst not, thou’rt not such a villain.

Speak, for my heart is full.IAGO I told him what I thought, and told no more

Than what he found himself was apt²⁰³ and true.EMILIA But did you ever tell him she was false?IAGO I did.EMILIA You told a lie, an odious, damnèd lie:

Upon my soul, a lie, a wicked lie.

She false with Cassio? Did you say with Cassio?IAGO With Cassio, mistress! Go to, charm²⁰⁹ your tongue.EMILIA I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak:

My mistress here lies murdered in her bed—ALL

O, heavens forfend!EMILIA And your reports have set the murder on.OTHELLO Nay, stare not, masters: it is true indeed.GRATIANO ’Tis a strange truth.MONTANO O, monstrous act!EMILIA Villainy, villainy, villainy!

I think upon’t, I think: I smell’t: O villainy!

I thought so then. I’ll kill myself for grief.

O villainy! Villainy!IAGO What, are you mad? I charge you get you home.EMILIA Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak:

’Tis proper I obey him, but not now.

Perchance, Iago, I will ne’er go home.OTHELLO O, O, O!He falls on the bed

EMILIA Nay, lay thee down and roar,

For thou hast killed the sweetest innocent

That e’er did lift up eye²²⁸.OTHELLO O, she was foul²²⁹!Rises

I scarce did know you, uncle²³⁰: there lies your niece,

Whose breath, indeed, these hands have newly stopped:

I know this act shows horrible and grim²³².GRATIANO Poor Desdemon! I am glad thy father’s dead:

Thy match was mortal²³⁴ to him, and pure grief

Shore his old thread²³⁵ in twain. Did he live now,

This sight would make him do a desperate turn²³⁶,

Yea, curse his better angel from his side,

And fall to reprobance²³⁸.OTHELLO ’Tis pitiful, but yet Iago knows

That she with Cassio hath the act of shame

A thousand times committed: Cassio confessed it,

And she did gratify his amorous works²⁴²

With that recognizance²⁴³ and pledge of love

Which I first gave her: I saw it in his hand:

It was a handkerchief, an antique²⁴⁵ token

My father gave my mother.EMILIA O heaven! O heavenly powers!IAGO Come, hold your peace.EMILIA ’Twill out, ’twill out. I peace²⁴⁹?

No, I will speak as liberal as the north²⁵⁰:

Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,

All, all, cry shame against me, yet I’ll speak.IAGO Be wise, and get you home.Iago threatens to stab EmiliaEMILIA I will not.GRATIANO Fie, your sword upon a woman?EMILIA O thou dull²⁵⁶ Moor! That handkerchief thou

speak’st of

I found by fortune and did give my husband,

For often, with a solemn earnestness —

More than indeed belonged²⁵⁹ to such a trifle —

He begged of me to steal’t.IAGO Villainous whore!EMILIA She give it Cassio? No, alas! I found it,

And I did give’t my husband.IAGO Filth²⁶⁴, thou liest!EMILIA By heaven, I do not, I do not, gentlemen.

O murd’rous coxcomb²⁶⁶! What should such a fool

Do with so good a wife?OTHELLO Are there no stones²⁶⁸ in heaven

But what serves for the thunder?— Precious²⁶⁹ villain!He runs at Iago but is disarmed; Iago stabs Emilia

GRATIANO The woman falls: sure, he hath killed his wife.[Exit Iago]

EMILIA Ay, ay! O, lay me by my mistress’ side.GRATIANO He’s gone, but his wife’s killed.MONTANO ’Tis a notorious²⁷³ villain. Take you this weapon

Which I have recovered²⁷⁴ from the Moor:

Come, guard the door without²⁷⁵: let him not pass,

But kill him rather. I’ll after that same villain,

For ’tis a damnèd slave.[Exeunt Montano and Gratiano]

OTHELLO I am not valiant neither,

But every puny whipster²⁷⁹ gets my sword:

But why should honour²⁸⁰ outlive honesty?

Let it go all.EMILIA What did thy song bode, lady?

Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan²⁸³,

And die in music²⁸³:— Willow, willow, willow—Sings

Moor, she was chaste: she loved thee, cruel Moor.

So come my soul to bliss, as I speak true,

So speaking as I think, alas, I die.Dies

OTHELLO I have another weapon in this chamber:

It was a sword of Spain, the ice-brook’s temper²⁸⁹:

O, here it is. Uncle, I must come forth.Finds sword

GRATIANO If thou attempt it, it will cost thee dear:Within

Thou hast no weapon, and perforce²⁹² must suffer.OTHELLO Look in upon me then and speak with me,

Or, naked²⁹⁴ as I am, I will assault thee.

[Enter Gratiano]GRATIANO What is the matter?OTHELLO Behold, I have a weapon:

A better never did itself sustain²⁹⁷

Upon a soldier’s thigh. I have seen the day

That, with this little arm and this good sword,

I have made my way through more impediments

Than twenty times your stop³⁰¹: but — O vain boast! —

Who can control his fate? ’Tis not so now.

Be not afraid, though you do see me weaponed:

Here³⁰⁴ is my journey’s end, here is my butt

And very sea-mark³⁰⁵ of my utmost sail.

Do you go back dismayed? ’Tis a lost³⁰⁶ fear:

Man but a rush³⁰⁷ against Othello’s breast

And he retires. Where should Othello go?

Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starred³⁰⁹ wench,

Pale as thy smock³¹⁰, when we shall meet at compt,

This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,

And fiends will snatch at it! Cold, cold, my girl?

Even like thy chastity. O cursèd, cursèd slave³¹³!

Whip me, ye devils,

From the possession of this heavenly sight,

Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur,

Wash me in steep-down³¹⁷ gulfs of liquid fire!

O Desdemon! Dead, Desdemon! Dead! O, O!

Enter Lodovico, Cassio [carried in a chair], Montano and Iago [prisoner] with OfficersLODOVICO Where is this rash and most unfortunate man?OTHELLO That’s he that was Othello: here I am.LODOVICO Where is that viper? Bring the villain forth.OTHELLO I look down towards his feet³²², but that’s a fable:

If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee.Wounds Iago

LODOVICO Wrench his sword from him.IAGO I bleed, sir, but not killed.OTHELLO I am not sorry neither: I’d have thee live,

For in my sense³²⁷ ’tis happiness to die.LODOVICO O thou Othello, thou was once so good,

Fall’n in the practice³²⁹ of a cursèd slave,

What shall be said to thee?OTHELLO Why, anything:

An honourable murderer, if you will,

For nought I did in hate, but all in honour.LODOVICO This wretch hath part confessed his villainy.

Did you and he consent in Cassio’s death?OTHELLO Ay.CASSIO Dear general, I never gave you cause.OTHELLO I do believe it, and I ask your pardon.

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil

Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?IAGO Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word.LODOVICO What? Not to pray?GRATIANO Torments³⁴⁴ will ope your lips.OTHELLO Well, thou dost best.LODOVICO Sir, you shall understand what hath befall’n —

Which, as I think, you know not. Here is a letter

Found in the pocket of the slain Rodorigo,

And here another: the one of them imports³⁴⁹

The death of Cassio to be undertook

By Rodorigo.OTHELLO O villain!CASSIO Most heathenish and most gross³⁵³!LODOVICO Now here’s another discontented³⁵⁴ paper

Found in his pocket too: and this, it seems,

Rodorigo meant t’have sent this damnèd villain,

But that belike³⁵⁷ Iago in the interim

Came in and satisfied him³⁵⁸.OTHELLO O thou pernicious caitiff³⁵⁹!—

How came you, Cassio, by that handkerchief

That was my wife’s?CASSIO I found it in my chamber,

And he himself confessed it but even now

That there he dropped it for a special purpose

Which wrought to his desire³⁶⁵.OTHELLO O fool, fool, fool!CASSIO There is besides in Rodorigo’s letter

How he upbraids Iago, that he made him

Brave³⁶⁹ me upon the watch, whereon it came

That I was cast³⁷⁰: and even but now he spake —

After long seeming dead — Iago hurt him,

Iago set him on.LODOVICO You must forsake this room and go with us:To Othello

Your power and your command is taken off,

And Cassio rules in Cyprus. For this slave,

If there be any cunning cruelty

That can torment him much and hold him long³⁷⁷,

It shall be his. You shall close³⁷⁸ prisoner rest

Till that the nature of your fault be known

To the Venetian state.— Come, bring away.OTHELLO Soft you; a word or two before you go.

I have done the state some service, and they know’t —

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am: nothing extenuate³⁸⁵,

Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well:

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought³⁸⁸,

Perplexed³⁸⁹ in the extreme: of one whose hand,

Like the base³⁹⁰ Judean, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe: of one whose subdued³⁹¹ eyes,

Albeit unusèd to the melting mood,

Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees³⁹³

Their medicinable³⁹⁴ gum. Set you down this,

And say besides, that in Aleppo³⁹⁵ once,

Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduced³⁹⁷ the state,

I took by th’throat the circumcisèd dog

And smote him, thus.Stabs himself

LODOVICO O bloody period⁴⁰⁰!GRATIANO All that is spoke is marred.OTHELLO I kissed thee ere I killed thee⁴⁰²: no way but this, Killing myself, to die⁴⁰³ upon a kiss.Kisses Desdemona

Dies

CASSIO This did I fear, but thought he had no weapon,

For he was great of heart.LODOVICO O Spartan dog⁴⁰⁶,To Iago

More fell⁴⁰⁷ than anguish, hunger, or the sea!

Look on the tragic loading of this bed:

This is thy work.— The object poisons sight,

Let it be hid. Gratiano, keep⁴¹⁰ the house,

And seize upon⁴¹¹ the fortunes of the Moor, For they succeed on⁴¹² you.— To you, lord governor,To Cassio

Remains the censure⁴¹³ of this hellish villain:

The time, the place, the torture: O, enforce it!

Myself will straight aboard, and to the state This heavy⁴¹⁶ act with heavy heart relate.Exeunt

TEXTUAL NOTESQ = First Quarto text of 1622Q2 = a correction introduced in the Second Quarto text of 1630F = First Folio text of 1623F2 = a correction introduced in the Second Folio text of 1632F3 = a correction introduced in the Third Folio text of 1663–64F4 = a correction introduced in the Fourth Folio text of 1685Ed = a correction introduced by a later editorSH = speech heading (i.e. speaker’s name)

List of parts based on “The Names of the Actors” at end of F text, with additional information provided in parenthesis

RODORIGO spelled thus in F (throughout). Q = Roderigo throughout EMILIA spelled Aemilia in F (throughout)

1.1.1 Never = F. Q = TVsh, neuer 4 But = F. Q = S’blood, but 25 toga’d = Q (toged). F = Tongued 29 Cyprus spelled Ciprus in F (and elsewhere) 33 bless = F. Q = God blesse 68 full = Q. F = fall thick-lips = Ed. F = Thicks-lips. Q = thicklips. 75 chances = F. Q = changes 90 Sir = F. Q = Zounds sir 91 soul: = Ed. F = soule 117 Sir = F. Q = Zouns Sir 121 jennets for germans spelled Gennets for Germaines in F 125 making = F. Q = now making 165 hell-pains = Ed. F = hell apines. Q = hells paines 168 sign. That = Ed. F = signe) that

1.2.41 haste-post-haste = Ed. F = haste, Post-haste 70 You, Rodorigo? Come = F (corrected). F (uncorrected) = You Rodorigo, Come 98 Whither = F2. F = Whether 103 I do = Q. F = do

1.3.24 gaze. When = Ed. F = gaze, when 58 nor = Q. F = hor 62 and = Q. F = snd 66 SH SENATORS ambiguously spelled Sen. in F 84 your = Q. F = yonr 100 tale = Q. F = u Tale 110 maimed spelled main’d in F imperfect = Ed. F = imperfect. 117 wrought upon = Q. F = wtought vp on 118 SH DUKE = Q. Not in F 119 overt = Q. F = ouer 122 SH FIRST SENATOR = Q. F = Sen. 136 till = Q. F = tell 152 slavery, of = Q. F = slauery. Of 154 antres spelled Antars in F 155 rocks, hills = F. Q = rocks and hils 157 other = Q. F = others 158 Anthropophagi spelled Antropophague in F 161 thence = Q. F = hence 169 intentively = Q. F = instinctiuely 173 kisses = F. Q = sighes 190 speak: = Ed. F = speake? 217 lovers. = F. Q = louers / Into your fauour 222 preserved = Q. F = presern’d 245 couch = Q. F = Coach 247 alacrity = Q. F = Alacartie 258 there reside = Q. F = therorecide 265 I love = F. Q = I did loue 291 against = Q. F = againsf 320 the = Q. F = the the 334 guinea-hen spelled Gynney Hen in F 341 thyme spelled Time in F 344 beam = Ed. F = braine. Q = Ballence 350 scion spelled Seyen in F 371 supersubtle = F. Q = a super subtle 393 a snipe = Q. F = Snpe 396 He = Q. F = She

2.1.2 SH FIRST GENTLEMAN = 1. Gent in F 9 mortise = Q. F = Morties. 10 SH SECOND GENTLEMAN = Q. F = 2 13 wind-shaked surge = F3. F = winde-shak’d-Surge mane spelled Maine in F 18 SH MONTANO = Ed. F = Men. 21 SH THIRD GENTLEMAN = Q. F = 3 27–8 in…Cassio = Ed. F = in: A Verennessa, Michael Cassio 42 th’aerial = Ed. F = th’Eriall 44 SH THIRD GENTLEMAN = Q. F = Gent. 47 Thanks, you = Ed. F = Thankes you, 54 hopes = Ed. F = hope’s 56,103 SH [VOICES] = Ed. F = Within 71 engineer spelled Ingeniuer in F 97 tell of = F. Q = tell me of 101 of sea = F. Q = of the sea 158 indeed, one = Ed. F = indeed? One authority spelled authorithy in F 180 gyve = F2. F = giue 185 courtesy spelled Curtsie in F 186 clyster-pipes = Q (Clisterpipes). F = Cluster-pipes 228 hither = Q. F = thither 237 prating? = Q. F = prating, 248 fortune = Q. F = Forune 249 does? = Q. F = do’s: 253 has = Q. F = he’s 269 mutabilities = F. Q = mutualities 279 haply spelled happely in F 298 accountant spelled accomptant in F 304 evened spelled eeuen’d in F for wife = Q. F = for wift 311 right = F. Q = ranke 312 night-cap = Q. F = Night-Cape

2.2.9 present = Q. F = presenr Bless = F. Q = Heauen blesse[Act 2 Scene 3] = Ed. Scene is continuous in F

2.3.26 stoup = Ed. F = stope 53 to put = Q. F = put to 71 Englishman = Q. F = Englishmen 85 Then = Q. F = And auld = Ed. F = awl’d. Q = owd 98 Forgive = F. Q = God forgiue 100 left = F. Q = left hand 103 SH GENTLEMEN = Q. F = Gent. 134 You = F. Q = Zouns, you 148 Sir Montano— Sir = Ed. F = Sir Montano: 151 lieutenant! = F. Q = Leiutenant, hold, 154 I bleed = F. Q = Zouns, I bleed 157 sense of place = Ed. F = place of sense 189 me — = Ed. F = me. 209 leagued = Ed. F = league 246 well, = F. Q = well now, 280 O, = F. Q = O God, 298 familiar = Q. F = famillar 306 denotement = Q. F = deuotement 313 stronger = Q. F = stonger 319 check me = F. Q = check me here 330 were’t to = Q. F = were to 360 Does’t = Ed. F = Dos’t 371 on: = Ed. F = on. Q = on, 372 the while = Ed. F = a while

3.1.8 tail spelled tale in F 29 SH CASSIO = Q. Not in F

3.2.6 We’ll = F3. F = Well

3.3.5 fellow. Do = Ed. F = Fellow, Do 71 In faith = F4. F = Infaith 73 example = Ed. F = example) 79 with = Q. F = wirh 82 much— = Ed. F = much. 105 you = Q. F = he 154 that all = Q. F = that: All free = F. Q = free to 158 Where no = Ed. F = Wherein. Q = But some 167 oft = Q. F = of 168 wisdom = F. Q = I intreate then 175 What = F. Q = Zouns. 183 I’ll = F. Q = By heauen, I’le 203 Is = F. Q = Is once 205 exsufflicate spelled exufflicate in F 208 dances = F. Q = dances well 278 put = F2. Not in F 289 learnèd = Ed. F = learn’d 290 human spelled humane in F (and elsewhere) 329 talk to = Q. F = talke too 384 Pioneers spelled Pyoners in F 406 lord— = Ed. F = Lord. 409 horror’s = Ed. F = Horrors 432 I see you = F. Q = I see sir, you 466 laid = F. Q = then layed 492 thy = Q. F = the 498 mind may = F. Q = mind perhaps may 501 Ne’er feels = Q2. F = Neu’r keepes

3.4.36 It hath felt = F. Q = It has yet felt 70 lose’t spelled loose’t in F 86 Bless = F. Q = Heauen blesse 92 I can, but = F. Q = I can sir, but 101 you— = Ed. F = you. 121 honour. I = Ed. F = honour, I 171 born spelled borne in F 174 hereabout = F3. F = heere about 184 lovers’ = Ed. F = Louers 193 friend: = Ed. F = Friend,

4.1.43 Lie…That’s = F. Q = lye with her, Zouns, that’s 84 list. = Q. F = List, 86 unsuiting = Q (corrected). F = resulting 112 conster = Q. F = conserue 114 you, lieutenant = F. Q = you now Leiutenant 118 power = Q. F = dowre 132 I marry = F. Q = I marry her 143 beckons = Q. F = becomes 146 and falls me = F. Q = by this hand she fals 170 I = F. Q = Faith I 220 I…Venice = F. Q = Something from Venice sure, 221 Lodovico: this comes = Ed. F = Lodouico, this, comes 223 Save you = F. Q = God saue the 263 an obedient = Q. F = obedient 300 denote = Q. F (corrected) = deonte. F (uncorrected) = deuote

4.2.34 nay = Ed. F = May 49 haply spelled happely in F (and elsewhere) 52 I = F. Q = Why I 70 Ay spelled I in F 173 form, = Ed. F = Forme. 193 daff’st spelled dafts in F 200 I = F. Q = Faith I 231 the = Q. F = rhe 234 within = Q. F = within,

4.3.19 I = Q. F = I, 21 favour = F. Q = fauour in them 24 before, = F. Q = before thee, 34 Barbary spelled Brabarie in F 42 singing = F (corrected). F (uncorrected) = sining 45 Sing…willow = Ed. F = Sing Willough, &c. (and elsewhere)

5.1.1 bulk = Q. F = Barke 46 in to = Ed. F = into 115 him out = Q. F = him

5.2.39 say = F. Q = say so 61 Presently = F. Q = Yes, presently 184 worst = Q. F = wotst 274 have = F. Q = haue here 347 not. Here = Ed. F = not) heere 361 wife’s = Q. F = wiues 390 Judean = F. Q, F2 = Indian

QUARTO PASSAGES THAT DO NOT APPEAR IN THE FOLIO

Following 1.3.367 (after “errors of her choice”): she must have change, she must.

Following 1.3.388:

RODORIGO What say you?

IAGO No more of drowning, do you hear?

RODORIGO I am changed:

Following 2.1.89: And bring all Cyprus comfort!

Following 3.1.25:

CASSIO Do, good my friend.

Following 3.1.48: To take the safest occasion by the front

Following 3.4.98:

DESDEMONA I pray, talk me of Cassio.

OTHELLO The handkerchief!

Following 4.2.185: And he does chide with you.

Following 5.2.100:

DESDEMONA O, lord, lord, lord!

SCENE-BY-SCENE ANALYSIS

ACT 1 SCENE 1Lines 1–84: The action begins in medias res, establishing the pace of the play. As Iago and Rodorigo hurry along, they reveal events prior to this point. The audience is initially excluded from some key information, however, establishing the themes of secrecy and misunderstanding: Rodorigo complains that, although he has been giving Iago money, Iago has not told him “of this,” although we are not told what “this” is. He claims that Iago said that he hated someone, referred to by both of them as “him,” and, later, “the Moor”; no one refers to Othello by name in the first scene: he is identified chiefly by his racial “otherness,” and “labeled” by pronouns or epithets, creating a negative sense of his identity (another theme) and establishing the power of language. The latter is particularly significant to Iago, who manipulates others through his linguistic skills, evident in his placation of the gullible Rodorigo and description of his hatred for Othello. Iago claims that he is bitter because Othello promoted Cassio to be his lieutenant and made Iago his ensign. Iago complains that he is an experienced soldier, while Cassio’s “soldiership” is “Mere prattle without practice,” creating tension between words and action. Rodorigo comments that if he were Iago he would not continue to follow Othello, but Iago explains that he is doing it so that he can get his revenge. He explains that he is only “trimmed in forms and visages of duty,” establishing the themes of deception and appearance versus reality. Iago declares his false nature: “I am not what I am,” a paradoxical statement that emphasizes the ambiguity of his identity. Despite this, Rodorigo continues to trust him, showing his lack of perception.They arrive at Brabantio’s house and Iago instructs Rodorigo to rouse the sleeping household, establishing that it is nighttime. This reinforces the sense of secrecy and introduces the recurring image of darkness, part of the structure of oppositions that run through the play, including dark/light, black/white, words/actions, good/evil, and male/female. Both men shout to wake Brabantio, but Iago’s language is more dramatic, alarmist, and effective.

Lines 85–195: Brabantio appears above, demanding to know “the reason of this terrible summons.” Rodorigo politely inquires whether all Brabantio’s family “is within,” but Iago takes over, warning Brabantio that “an old black ram / Is tupping [his] white ewe.” His sustained use of base sexual imagery further dehumanizes Othello and enrages Brabantio. Rodorigo identifies himself, but Iago remains anonymous, secretly manipulating events as both “actor” and “director.” Rodorigo has previously tried to court Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona, and Brabantio accuses him of coming full of “distempering draughts” to see her. With inflammatory interjections from Iago, Rodorigo explains to Brabantio that they have come to warn him that Desdemona has eloped with “a lascivious Moor.” Brabantio rouses his household and Iago leaves, explaining that he cannot appear to be against Othello. Brabantio confirms that Desdemona is missing. His disjointed speech reflects his distress and anger as he suggests that magic has been used on her. Rodorigo offers to take him to Othello and Desdemona.

ACT 1 SCENE 2Lines 1–64: Iago, feigning loyalty to Othello, expresses concern that Brabantio will try to force a divorce, but Othello assures him that he will “out-tongue” Brabantio’s complaints, emphasizing the theme of language. He assures Iago that he genuinely loves “the gentle Desdemona.” They see torches approaching and assume that Brabantio has come. Iago urges Othello to go indoors, but Othello is not afraid, reminding Iago of his “parts,” “title,” and “perfect soul,” introducing another opposition in the play, that of the physical versus the spiritual. It is not Brabantio, however, but Cassio and his officers, who have come to tell Othello that the Duke wishes to see him “haste-post-haste” on military business. Othello leaves briefly to “spend a word” in the house and Iago informs Cassio that Othello is married, again describing the event through coarse sexual innuendo. Brabantio and Rodorigo arrive.

Lines 65–117: Brabantio accuses Othello of being a “foul thief” who has “enchanted” Desdemona. He dehumanizes Othello, referring to him as “a thing,” and tries to arrest him as a “practiser” of illegal magic. Othello explains that the Duke has summoned him, and Brabantio decides that he will go as well, certain that the Duke will sympathize with his complaint against Othello.

ACT 1 SCENE 3Lines 1–134: The Duke and his senators discuss reports that the Turkish fleet is heading for Cyprus. A sailor brings news that they now appear to be traveling toward Rhodes, although a Senator suggests that “’tis a pageant, / To keep us in false gaze,” emphasizing the theme of deception. A Messenger reports that the Turkish fleet has united with reinforcements and that they are once again heading for Cyprus. Brabantio and Othello arrive, accompanied by Iago, Cassio, and Rodorigo. The Duke assumes that Brabantio is there to discuss the urgent military business, but Brabantio is concerned with his own worries, creating tension between political and personal concerns. He tells the Duke that his daughter has been “stolen” and “corrupted / By spells and medicines.” The Duke promises that whoever is involved in “this foul proceeding” will be punished.Brabantio names Othello. Othello admits that he has “ta’en away” Desdemona and married her, but insists that this is his only offense. He offers to explain, warning that he is “Rude” in his speech, being only a soldier, and can only tell “a round unvarnished tale,” but his claims that he is “little blessed with the soft phrase of peace” are belied by his careful and persuasive arguments. Brabantio maintains that Desdemona was “never bold” and of a “still” spirit, reinforcing the passivity evoked by Othello’s description of her as “gentle Desdemona” in the previous scene and emphasizing the play’s concern with the way identity can be created by others, through repeated use of words and phrases in association with a character. Othello sends for Desdemona so that she may speak for herself.

Lines 135–320: Othello describes how Brabantio used to invite him to his house and how he would tell Brabantio tales of “moving accidents by flood and field” and “hair-breadth scapes i’th’imminent deadly breach.” He tells them that Desdemona loved him “for the dangers” he had undergone and that, in turn, he loved her because “she did pity them.” He claims that his words are the only “witchcraft” that he has used, again emphasizing the power of language. The Duke urges Brabantio to make the best of the situation. Desdemona arrives, and Brabantio asks her, of all the assembled “noble company,” whom she owes the most obedience to. Desdemona answers that she has a “divided duty” between her father and husband, but points out that, like her mother before her, she must put her husband first. While this speech emphasizes that Desdemona is subject to male authority, it also shows that she is confident and articulate. Brabantio unhappily resigns himself and the Duke tries to encourage him, saying that “To mourn a mischief that is past and gone / Is the next way to draw new mischief on,” reminding us of Iago’s desire for revenge.The discussion turns to the military situation and the Duke tells Othello that he must go to Cyprus, suggesting that Desdemona return to Brabantio’s home. In a moving speech, Desdemona requests to be allowed to go with Othello. The Duke agrees and leaves with the senators and Brabantio. Othello assigns Iago to escort Desdemona to Cyprus, believing him to be a man “of honesty and trust,” a comment that shows Othello’s lack of perception and introduces the motif of honesty. Othello and Desdemona leave to prepare for his departure.

Lines 321–390: Rodorigo melodramatically claims that his life is “torment” now that he has lost Desdemona. Iago argues that it “cannot be long that Desdemona should continue her love to the Moor” and claims that Othello will soon tire of Desdemona because “These Moors are changeable in their wills,” reinforcing the popular opinion of Othello’s otherness (although it is uncertain whether Iago believes this, or is merely using the idea to his own ends). Constantly urging Rodorigo to “put money in thy purse,” he claims that he can destroy the “frail vow” between “an erring barbarian and supersubtle Venetian” and promises that Rodorigo will soon “enjoy” Desdemona. His references to money and sex show Iago’s preoccupation with the physical rather than spiritual aspects of human existence. He suggests that Rodorigo “cuckold” Othello. They arrange to meet the next day.

Lines 391–412: Alone, Iago reveals his contempt for Rodorigo, commenting: “Thus do I ever make my fool my purse.” He reiterates his hatred for Othello and reveals another possible motive: he believes that Othello has slept with his wife, Emilia, although he is not sure. He is willing to act on “mere suspicion,” however, suggesting that Iago’s desire to destroy Othello is based on something more complex and inherent than simple revenge. Iago outlines his plan to convince Othello that Cassio is having an affair with Desdemona and comments that Othello’s “free and open nature” makes him gullible.

ACT 2 SCENE 1Lines 1–187: In Cyprus, Montano and two gentlemen discuss the storm at sea, a metaphor for the turmoil that Iago is about to create. News arrives that the storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet and that Cassio has arrived, but that his ship was parted from Othello’s. Cassio arrives and starts to report when cries of “a sail!” are heard. He sends to find out if Othello has arrived and begins to tell Montano of Othello’s marriage, clearly showing his admiration for Desdemona,“a maid / that paragons description.” Iago enters with Desdemona, Rodorigo, and Emilia, and Cassio immediately kneels before Desdemona, chivalrously greeting her as “The riches of the ship.” Desdemona thanks him briefly, but is more concerned for the safety of her husband. As he describes how they were parted, another ship is sighted and Cassio sends once more for news. As they wait, everyone talks lightheartedly. Iago shows his quick wit but, even though the tone is light, his negative, perhaps aggressive, attitude toward women is revealed, particularly his own wife, whom he does not hesitate to criticize in public. Desdemona makes it clear that she is joining in out of politeness and demonstrates her own wit, but her chief concern is Othello. Cassio draws her apart and they talk, observed by Iago. He is pleased at the attention that Cassio pays to Desdemona: although Cassio is only being courteous, Iago reveals that “with as little a web as this” he will “ensnare as great a fly as Cassio.” The use of aside emphasizes the secrecy and deception of his character, and the change in language is also interesting as he shifts into prose. He is interrupted by the trumpet announcing Othello’s arrival.

Lines 188–290: Othello and Desdemona are reunited. Othello ironically sends “good Iago” (who is plotting aside how he will destroy their happiness) to oversee the disembarking of his ship. Alone with Rodorigo, Iago tells him directly that Desdemona is in love with Cassio. Again shifting into prose and using coarse sexual imagery, Iago argues that Desdemona is already tiring of “the Moor” and is looking for a younger “second choice” in Cassio. Rodorigo is skeptical at first, but Iago easily convinces him and reveals a plan to destroy Cassio. He tells Rodorigo to find Cassio when he is on watch that night and to “find some occasion to anger” him. He claims that Cassio is “rash” and will “strike at” Rodorigo, which will give Iago the weapon he needs against him.

Lines 291–317: Iago’s soliloquy reiterates his hatred for Othello and his suspicions that Othello has slept with Emilia. He declares that he will be revenged,“wife for wife.” He also suspects Cassio of sleeping with Emilia, suggesting a jealous and irrational side to his character. He intends to disturb Othello’s “peace and quiet / Even to madness.”

ACT 2 SCENE 2

The Herald announces a feast in celebration of Othello’s marriage.

ACT 2 SCENE 3Lines 1–152: Othello places Cassio in charge of “the guard” and leads Desdemona away to bed, observing that they have yet to consummate their marriage (a fact that undermines Iago’s repeated representations of their relationship as purely sexual). Iago suggests that they drink Othello’s health. Cassio is reluctant, explaining that he has “unhappy brains for drinking,” but Iago skillfully persuades him and sends Cassio to call in the gallants with the wine. Iago reveals his intention to ply Cassio with alcohol, making him “full of quarrel and offence.” He observes that Rodorigo and three other watchers are already very drunk, having been “flustered with flowing cups” by himself. Cassio returns, having been given a drink by Montano. Iago encourages him to have more, feigning cheery drunkenness on his own part. Cassio’s increasingly confused speech shows his growing inebriation, as do his repeated, comic denials that he is drunk. He leaves, and Iago observes to Montano that Cassio is a great soldier, but his “vice” of drinking is worrying. Rodorigo arrives, and Iago sends him after Cassio. There is a cry within and Rodorigo rushes back, pursued by an angry Cassio. Montano tries to stop Cassio and tells him that he is drunk. Cassio and Montano begin to fight, and Iago, still in control, sends Rodorigo to “cry a mutiny,” before beginning to call out for help.

Lines 153–252: Othello arrives and stops the fight, assisted by Iago who is now playing the role of his loyal follower. Othello asks “Honest Iago” who began the fight, but Iago claims he does not know. Cassio “cannot speak” and Montano claims that he was acting in self-defense. Frustrated, Othello claims that his “blood” begins to “rule” his reason, showing that he can be moved to anger. He demands to know from Iago “who began it.” Feigning reluctance and appearing to defend Cassio, Iago blames him. Othello ironically praises Iago’s “honesty and love” in defending Cassio and strips Cassio of his officership. Desdemona interrupts them, and Othello’s soldierly tone is contrasted with his loving reassurances to his “sweeting” as he leads her back indoors.

Lines 253–375: Iago feigns concern for Cassio, who is devastated at the loss of his “reputation.” Ironically reinforcing the distance between appearance and reality, Iago tells Cassio that “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition.” He suggests that Cassio appeal to Desdemona to intercede with Othello. Cassio agrees and leaves. Alone, Iago dwells on the subtlety of his plan, pleased that no one could actually say that he “play[s] the villain,” as the advice he has given Cassio is good. He adds, however, that “When devils will the blackest sins put on, / They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,” reinforcing the black/white and good/evil motifs, as well as the theme of deception. He intends to tell Othello that Desdemona is only pleading for Cassio because she desires him. Rodorigo returns, complaining that he still does not have Desdemona. Iago reassures him and sends him away. Iago decides to get Emilia to persuade Desdemona to plead for Cassio while he sets up Othello to find Cassio “Soliciting” Desdemona.

ACT 3 SCENE 1

Cassio instructs some musicians to play beneath Othello’s window. In comic contrast to the events of the previous scene, the Clown engages in a series of bawdy quibbles before Iago interrupts them. Cassio tells him that he has sent to ask Emilia if she can arrange “some access” to “virtuous Desdemona.” Iago offers to draw Othello out of the way so Cassio may speak more freely, and Cassio observes how “kind and honest” Iago is. Emilia brings the news that Desdemona has already spoken to Othello about Cassio. Cassio still wishes to speak to Desdemona, however, and Emilia agrees to help him.

ACT 3 SCENE 2

Othello instructs Iago to meet him later.

ACT 3 SCENE 3Lines 1–99: Desdemona reassures Cassio that she will speak to Othello. Emilia ironically comments that her husband is as grieved by the situation “As if the cause were his,” establishing her naïveté. Desdemona vows to “intermingle” everything Othello does with “Cassio’s suit” and Cassio leaves. As Othello and Iago approach, Iago suggests that Cassio looked “guilty-like” as he left. Desdemona greets them and says that she has been talking with “a suitor,” an unfortunately ambiguous word choice. She urges Othello to call Cassio back, but his replies to her entreaties are brief and distracted, suggesting that Iago has already begun to affect his perception. The women leave.

Lines 100–309: Iago continues to work on Othello, creating jealousy and doubt while appearing supportive and loyal. His techniques are clever and subtle: he never makes any direct statements and is always ambiguous, seeming to praise and deny where he is doing otherwise, and always answering Othello’s questions with ones of his own. He ironically warns Othello against “the green-eyed monster” of jealousy, but tells him to watch Desdemona when she is with Cassio. He reminds Othello that Desdemona is capable of deception: she deceived Brabantio to marry him. He begs Othello not to think any more about it, but suggests that if Desdemona pleads on Cassio’s behalf “With any strong or vehement importunity, / Much will be seen in that.” Othello, filled with pain and anger, gives his first soliloquy of the play (the audience has more access to the inner thoughts of the “villain” of the play than its eponymous “hero”). Even in so short a time, Iago has succeeded in making Othello doubt Desdemona’s fidelity. As Desdemona approaches, however, we see that he still loves her, and that he finds it hard to believe that she is false.

Lines 310–528: Desdemona perceives that Othello is “not well.” She offers him her handkerchief, but he pushes it away and she drops it. As they leave, Emilia picks up the handkerchief, observing that it was Othello’s first gift to Desdemona. She reveals that Iago has repeatedly asked her to steal it, although she does not know why. Iago enters and Emilia gives him the handkerchief, but he will not tell her why he wants it and sends her away. Alone, he reveals his intention to leave it in Cassio’s lodging. As he contemplates how he has already changed “the Moor” with his “poison,” Othello returns, muttering agitatedly. Iago feigns concern as Othello contemplates Desdemona’s supposed betrayal. He angrily demands that Iago prove that Desdemona is “a whore.” Iago feigns hurt, ironically observing that to be “direct and honest is not safe.” He asks Othello what proof he wants, using increasingly coarse sexual imagery to torture and anger him. Iago claims to have shared a room with Cassio recently and overheard him plotting with Desdemona in his sleep. Othello declares that he will “tear” Desdemona “all to pieces.” Iago tells Othello that he has seen Cassio “wipe his beard” with Desdemona’s handkerchief. The calm reason we associate with Othello seems to leave him as he calls for “blood, blood, blood!” and swears revenge. He kneels before Iago, emphasizing the shift in power between them. Iago swears allegiance to “wronged Othello” and agrees to kill Cassio.

ACT 3 SCENE 4Lines 1–104: Desdemona and Emilia search for Cassio’s lodgings, accompanied by the Clown, whose bantering creates a contrast with the violent emotions of the previous scene. Desdemona sends him to find Cassio. Emilia denies all knowledge of the lost handkerchief when Desdemona questions her, complicating her characterization with a potential shift from naïveté to deceit. Desdemona is worried that Othello will be put to “ill thinking” by the loss, but reassures herself that he is not a jealous man. Othello arrives and, in an aside that marks his withdrawal from their relationship, comments on how hard it is to “dissemble” as he tries to act normally. Desdemona, unaware, continues to petition for Cassio. Othello asks for her handkerchief and tells her its history: it was given to Othello’s mother by an Egyptian “charmer” who told her that “while she kept it” it would “subdue” Othello’s father “Entirely to her love.” If she lost it, however, Othello’s father “should hold her loathèd.” Othello warns Desdemona that to lose the handkerchief would mean “perdition” and, noting her distress, demands to see it. Desdemona denies that it is lost and returns to the subject of Cassio. Othello leaves abruptly.

Lines 105–177: Iago urges Cassio to “importune” Desdemona. He does, but a bewildered Desdemona tells him that she has incurred Othello’s “displeasure” and that “My lord is not my lord,” emphasizing the apparent change in Othello’s identity. Iago goes to find Othello. Desdemona convinces herself that Othello is troubled by state business, reasoning that she has never given him “cause” to be jealous. She tells Cassio to wait while she finds Othello.

Lines 178–217: When the women have gone, Cassio is approached by Bianca who flirts with him. He gives her Desdemona’s handkerchief and asks her to copy the embroidery. She jealously assumes that it is a “token” from another woman, but he denies this, saying that he does not know whose it is, he just found it in his chamber. He promises to see Bianca soon.

ACT 4 SCENE 1Lines 1–175: Iago continues to subtly increase Othello’s fury through his use of sexual innuendo as he tells Othello that Cassio has the handkerchief and implies that he has confessed to sleeping with Desdemona. Although still uncertain, Othello’s disjointed language shows the breakdown of his self-control. He falls down unconscious as Cassio arrives, and Iago claims that Othello has epilepsy, warning that he breaks into “savage madness” if woken from a fit, thus further undermining Othello’s reputation. He suggests that Cassio return later. Othello wakes and Iago tells him to hide and listen in while he speaks to Cassio. Othello withdraws and Iago reveals that he is actually going to speak to Cassio about Bianca, knowing that reference to Bianca’s love for him will make Cassio laugh. Cassio arrives and, briefly out of Othello’s hearing, Iago refers to Bianca, causing Cassio to laugh. Their bawdy conversation continues, observed by Othello, whose asides reveal he believes them to be speaking about Desdemona. Bianca arrives unexpectedly and angrily returns the handkerchief to Cassio, insisting that it must be “some minx’s token.” She and Cassio leave.

Lines 176–302: Othello is convinced and declares that he will kill Desdemona. Iago urges him to “strangle her in her bed” and promises that he will kill Cassio. Desdemona arrives, bringing Lodovico with news from Venice. Othello appears calm, but Lodovico inquires after Cassio and Desdemona tells him about the “unkind breach” between them, innocently commenting on her own “love” for Cassio. Othello loses control and strikes Desdemona, calling her a “devil.” Once Othello has left, Lodovico expresses shock and questions Othello’s reputation as the “noble Moor,” whose nature “passion could not shake,” showing that Iago is managing to destroy Othello publicly as well as personally.

ACT 4 SCENE 2Lines 1–189: Othello questions Emilia, who says that Desdemona is “honest, chaste and true” and insists that she cannot have been unfaithful. Othello sends her to fetch Desdemona, reflecting that he does not have to believe Emilia as she is “a simple bawd.” Emilia shows Desdemona in and Othello tells her to guard the door. Sensing Othello’s “fury,” Desdemona is confused, especially when he asks her to swear that she is “honest.” She begs to be told “what ignorant sin” she has committed, and Othello accuses her of being a “strumpet” and a “whore.” Amazed, Desdemona denies this, but Othello is unmoved and leaves. Emilia tries to comfort Desdemona, but she replies distractedly and asks her to fetch Iago. Iago feigns concern and pretends to comfort Desdemona, while Emilia insists ironically that “Some busy and insinuating rogue” must have “devised this slander.” Desdemona asks Iago to advise her and kneels before him as Othello did in Act 3 Scene 3, emphasizing his power over them both. Iago reassures her that Othello must be troubled by some “business of state” and sends her and Emilia in to supper.

Lines 190–258: Rodorigo arrives, accusing Iago of not dealing “justly” with him, accurately observing that Iago’s “words and performances are no kin together.” Despite this, Iago manages to talk him around, promising that he will “enjoy” Desdemona provided that he kills Cassio. He outlines a plan whereby the two of them will attack Cassio as he leaves Bianca’s that night. Rodorigo seems unconvinced, and Iago leads him away, promising to explain further.

ACT 4 SCENE 3

Presenting a united front in public, Othello and Desdemona say goodbye to their visitor, Lodovico. Othello offers to escort him out, and tells Desdemona to dismiss Emilia and get to bed “on th’ instant.” The following scene is a tender exchange between the two women as Emilia prepares Desdemona for bed. Emilia has put Desdemona’s wedding sheets on her bed at her request and Desdemona prophetically asks Emilia that, if she should die before her, she will shroud her in them. Desdemona sings the melancholy willow song that she learned from her mother’s maid, aptly named “Barbary,” who had been forsaken in love. The conversation turns to infidelity and Desdemona swears she would never be unfaithful to Othello, claiming she cannot understand why a woman would cheat on her husband. Showing a more pragmatic attitude, and perhaps advocating a more equal relationship between men and women, Emilia observes that many husbands are unfaithful and that the sexes are judged unequally.

ACT 5 SCENE 1

The setting of darkness means that the characters respond chiefly to what they hear, reflecting the role of rumor in the action of the wider play.Iago and Rodorigo wait for Cassio. Iago conceals himself as Cassio arrives, and Rodorigo strikes with his sword. His blow fails, but Cassio retaliates, seriously wounding Rodorigo. As he does so, Iago, unseen, stabs Cassio in the leg. Cassio cries out and is heard by Othello, who recognizes his voice and assumes that Iago has killed him as promised. Gloating, he leaves to find Desdemona, promising that her “lust-stained” bed “shall with lust’s blood be spotted.” Lodovico and Gratiano arrive and, hearing Cassio and Rodorigo’s cries, fear for their own safety. Iago enters with light and weapons, pretending that he has come to investigate the noise. Cassio hears Iago’s voice and calls out. Feigning shock and concern for Cassio, Iago quickly finds Rodorigo and kills him under cover of the darkness, directly taking action for the first time in the play. He helps Cassio, asking Lodovico and Gratiano to assist him. They are joined by Bianca and then Emilia. As Cassio is carried out, Iago accuses Bianca of being behind the attack, saying that it is “the fruits of whoring.” He sends Emilia to tell Othello and Desdemona.

ACT 5 SCENE 2Lines 1–123: Othello approaches Desdemona’s bed, holding a light—a visual symbol of the light/life, darkness/death imagery that runs throughout his soliloquy. He dwells on images of purity, such as alabaster and snow, and images of death, many of which have a sexual connotation, such as the plucked rose. He kisses Desdemona and his resolve almost breaks. She wakes and he tells her that she must pray, as he cannot kill her “unpreparèd spirit.” Desdemona pleads with Othello, repeating that she does not love Cassio and did not give him the handkerchief. Othello informs her that Cassio is dead and, misunderstanding her innocent tears at this news, he smothers her. As he does so, Emilia calls for him. His calm certainty breaks down as he fluctuates between Emilia’s calls and Desdemona’s body. Eventually, he lets Emilia in.

Lines 124–270: Emilia reports that Cassio has killed Rodorigo, and Othello is dismayed to learn that Cassio is not dead. As they talk, Desdemona cries out, and, parting the bed curtains, Emilia finds her. Desdemona claims that she is “guiltless” and, denying Othello’s responsibility for her murder, she dies. Othello, however, sees Desdemona’s final act as further evidence that Desdemona is “a liar gone to burning hell” and tells Emilia that he killed his wife because “she was a whore.” Emilia argues that Desdemona was “heavenly true” and Othello tells her that her own husband told him of Desdemona’s affair with Cassio. Emilia is stunned and unable to say anything except “My husband?” for some time, before scornfully telling Othello that Iago lied and that he is a “gull.” She calls for help. Montano, Gratiano, and Iago enter, and Emilia tells Iago that he “told a lie, an odious, damnèd lie,” a sharp contrast to the label of honesty he has been given throughout the play. She announces that Desdemona is dead and Gratiano and Montano are horrified. Gratiano reveals that Brabantio has died in grief at his daughter’s marriage. Othello insists that Desdemona was “foul” and unfaithful, and tells them that she gave Cassio the handkerchief. Despite Iago’s threats, Emilia bravely reveals that she found the handkerchief and gave it to him. Othello tries to kill Iago, but Iago stabs Emilia and flees.

Lines 271–416: Emilia asks to be laid by her mistress’s side. Montano tells Gratiano to guard “the Moor” while he pursues Iago. Emilia’s last words are to assure Othello of Desdemona’s innocence and her love for him. As Othello laments Desdemona’s death, Lodovico and Montano bring in Iago as a prisoner and the wounded Cassio. Othello stabs Iago but fails to kill him. With all the remaining characters assembled, the truth is established and evidence produced of Iago’s villainy, but he refuses to explain himself and vows “From this time forth I never will speak word.” Othello is stripped of his command and Cassio given leadership in Cyprus. As he is to be led away, Othello begs to be remembered as “one that loved not wisely but too well” before stabbing himself. He kisses Desdemona as he dies. Iago’s punishment is for Cassio to decide. Lodovico recommends the use of torture while he returns immediately to Venice to report what has happened.

OTHELLO IN PERFORMANCE: THE RSC AND BEYONDThe best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.Finally, we go to the horse’s mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director. He or she must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways.

FOUR CENTURIES OF OTHELLO: AN OVERVIEWDespite the theatrical challenges it presents, Othello has been performed almost continuously since the first recorded performance on November 1, 1604, at the court of James I. This has resulted in a remarkably full performance history focused historically on the roles of Othello and Iago and, to a lesser extent, Desdemona. The uneven balance between the main parts, with Iago speaking 31 percent of the lines to Othello’s 25 percent, has often resulted in a sort of theatrical contest between the two which a number of productions have capitalized on by having actors alternate the roles.Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian with the King’s Men, and the first Othello, was celebrated for his performance, described by an anonymous elegist as “his chiefest part, / Wherein beyond the rest he moved the heart.” There is evidence that Iago was played by one of the company comedians, John Lowin.¹ A spectator of the performance by the King’s Men at Oxford in 1610 records how the audience was moved “to tears” in the last scene when “that famous Desdemona, killed before us by her husband, although she always acted her whole part supremely well, when she was killed she was even more moving, for when she fell back upon the bed she implored the pity of the spectators by her very face.”² Interestingly, neither Othello’s color nor the fact that Desdemona was played by a boy was considered noteworthy. After Burbage’s death, until the closure of the theaters in 1642 Othello was played by Ellyaerdt Swanston with Joseph Taylor as Iago. Since Taylor is also known to have inherited the role of Hamlet, this suggests that it was no longer regarded as a role for a comic actor.Othello was one of the first plays to be performed after the Restoration and subsequent reopening of the theaters in 1660. It was assigned to the newly formed King’s Men under Thomas Killigrew and hence avoided the radical rewriting of William Davenant, although promptbooks that survive for the next two centuries record a tendency to cut lines and sometimes whole scenes (such as Othello’s fit and the eavesdropping scene) that came to be regarded as lacking in decorum.³ Samuel Pepys saw a performance at the Phoenix, recording in his diary how the “very pretty lady that sat by me cried to see Desdemona smothered.”⁴ The Restoration theater introduced scenery and women actors, but the first recorded instance of a woman performing on the English stage was Margaret Hughes as Desdemona on December 8, 1660, so the production Pepys saw in October which so moved the “pretty lady” must have been with a boy actor.Othello was the part in which Thomas Betterton, the leading actor of the early eighteenth century, “excelled himself,” according to Colley Cibber.⁵ Judging by contemporary accounts, he was able to combine heroic and pathetic aspects of the character. Cibber talks of Betterton’s “commanding mien of majesty” and the way in which his voice “gave more spirit to terror than the softer passions,” whereas Richard Steele was struck by “the wonderful agony” in which he appeared “when he examined the circumstances of the handkerchief…the mixture of love that intruded upon his mind upon the innocent answers Desdemona makes.”⁶ If Othello was the noble Moor, Iago had to be irredeemably villainous; the actor specializing in such parts who played Iago to Betterton’s Othello was Samuel Sandford, described by Cibber as “a low and crooked person” having “such bodily defects” as rendered him unsuitable for “great or amiable characters.”⁷Barton Booth, renowned for noble deportment and dignity, took over the part from Betterton, bringing charm and “manly sweetness” to the role and a grief in which his “tears broke from him.”⁸ The Grub Street Journal complained that Colley Cibber’s Iago, by contrast,“shrugs up his shoulders, shakes his noddle, and with a fawning motion of his hands” drawls out his words so that “Othello must be supposed a fool, a stock, if he does not see through him.”⁹ James Quin, who succeeded Booth, was also noted for his dignity, whereas David Garrick, who revolutionized eighteenth-century acting with his ease and naturalness, failed in the part. His interpretation, described as suggesting rather “a man under the impression of fear, or on whom some bodily torture was inflicting, than one labouring under the emotions of such tumultuous passions,”¹⁰ was clearly in advance of the times.Contemporary criticism suggests a growing awareness of racial issues. The actor-dramatist Samuel Foote objected to Quin’s performance, commenting: “Sure never has there been a character more generally misunderstood, both by audience and actor, than this before us, to mistake the most tender-hearted, compassionate, humane man, for a cruel, bloody, and obdurate savage,”¹¹ while Quin in turn criticized Garrick’s appearance in the part, for which he wore a turban, asking: “Why does he not bring the tea-kettle and lamp?”¹²—a reference to the “small black boy in a plumed turban holding a kettle in Hogarth’s series A Harlot’s Progress.”¹³ Garrick was more successful as one of several actors who played Iago to Spranger Barry’s handsome, graceful Othello. Barry contrived by all accounts to be even more “sweet” and “comely”¹⁴ than Booth. His performance, characterized by “blended passages of rage and heartfelt affection,”¹⁵ was perfectly matched by Susanna Cibber’s “expression of love, grief, tenderness”¹⁶ as Desdemona.A translation of the play in 1792 by Jean-François Ducis, in which the great French tragedian Talma played Othello, caught the mood of revolutionary France, coming a year after the successful slave revolt in the French colony of San Domingo (modern-day Haiti). Ducis’ version was heavily cut and adapted. There was further cutting of the English text in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the interests of propriety, which suited the neoclassical acting of John Philip Kemble, described by Hazlitt as “the very still-life and statuary of the stage.”¹⁷ His Othello was “grand and awful and pathetic,…European,”¹⁸ despite his Moorish costume. However, Kemble’s sister, Sarah Siddons, playing Desdemona, was warmly praised and given credit for a changed appreciation of the role in which she “established an interest and importance to that character which it had never possessed before.”¹⁹ Despite the beginnings of a changing critical perspective with regard to Iago, the part was still being played as “a pantomime villain,”²⁰ although Edmund Kean had given an innovative performance as “a gay, light-hearted monster, a careless, cordial, comfortable villain.”²¹Kean went on to play Othello for many years in a performance Leigh Hunt regarded as “the masterpiece of the living stage.”²² Like Garrick before him, Kean brought passion and naturalism to his roles, triumphing as Othello despite the limitations imposed by his physique.²³ He used relatively light makeup for the part in order for his facial expressions to be more easily visible. Kean’s performance developed over the years and he continued to play the part until 1833, when he finally collapsed onstage into the arms of his son Charles, who was then playing Iago. By the time that William Charles Macready took over the role, there was a growing public debate over Othello’s racial origins and the role of sexuality within the play. Macready had played Iago to Kean’s Othello, but was “baffled”²⁴ when he took over the role.2. “Talk you of killing?” Sarah Siddons as Desdemona at Drury Lane in 1785. Her performance established a new “interest and importance” to the part.

Meanwhile, in New York, leading American tragedian Edwin Forrest played Othello at the Bowery Theater. He was so successful that he continued to play the part for forty years, visiting London with it in 1845. Although it was popular with audiences, many English critics objected to the violence of Forrest’s performance. His biographer, William Rounesville Alger, argued for the legitimacy of Forrest’s interpretation though, comparing it favorably with his predecessors and contemporaries.²⁵ There were also notable productions in mainland Europe. French actor Charles Fechter played the part in English at the Princess’ Theatre in 1861 to mixed reviews. Novelist and critic Henry James greatly admired Tommaso Salvini’s Othello, despite the “grotesque, unpardonable, abominable” practice of having him speak in his native Italian while the rest of the cast performed in English. James reflected upon the Italianate nature of Salvini’s Othello: “No more complete picture of passion can be given to the stage in our day,— passion beginning in noble repose and spending itself in black insanity…Salvini’s rendering of the part is the portrait of an African by an Italian; a fact which should give the judicious spectator, in advance, the pitch of the performance.” He went on to contrast his performance with that of another notable Italian actor:In the Othello…of Salvini’s distinguished countryman, Ernesto Rossi, there is…a kind of bestial fury…Rossi gloats in his tenderness and bellows in his pain. Salvini, though the simplicity, credulity, and impulsiveness of his personage are constantly before him, takes a higher line altogether; the personage is intensely human.²⁶3. “Were it my cue to fight, I should have known it / Without a prompter.” Edmund Kean at Drury Lane Theatre, 1814. His Othello was “the masterpiece of the living stage.”

While Forrest was playing Othello in the United States and England, the first black Othello, Ira Aldridge, played to packed houses across Europe, having previously played the role to acclaim in the English provinces and, for just two performances in April 1833, on the stage of Covent Garden in London. Touring in the years after the revolutions of 1848, Aldridge’s performances were enthusiastically received, although criticism of his “naturalness” often suggests unconsciously racist attitudes: “In the role of Othello Mr Aldridge was extraordinary—he is a genuine tiger and one is terrified for the artists who play Desdemona and Iago, for it seems that actually they will come to harm.”²⁷Henry Irving was another actor who found that Othello eluded him. In the 1881 Lyceum production he alternated Othello/Iago with Edwin Booth. Despite their different styles, Booth’s traditional, classical style versus Irving’s more modern naturalism, both actors won praise as Iago while disappointing as Othello. However, Irving’s was recognized as “emphatically a new Iago,”²⁸ decisively changing attitudes to the role:Mr. Irving’s Iago conceals his inherent vileness and depravity under a frank, soldierly, swaggering manner. His reputation for honesty becomes readily intelligible; it arises from his rude, frank air, now cynical, now convivial, yet always really malevolent and vicious.²⁹The twentieth century confronted many of the play’s problematic qualities. Critical attitudes toward Othello were radically revised in the light of T. S. Eliot’s and F. R. Leavis’ negative assessments of the character as egoistic and self-deluding. This made traditional portrayals of Othello’s “nobility” difficult and tended to further accentuate the role of Iago. Race and racism became an issue in casting the play.The African American singer and actor Paul Robeson played Othello at the Savoy in 1930 in a production hampered by a set and lighting that left the actors upstage and in the dark. Despite Robeson’s imposing physical presence, Herbert Farjeon described him as “the under-dog from the start. The cares of ‘Old Man River’ were still upon him. He was a member of a subject race, still dragging the chains of his ancestors.”³⁰ Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona and Sybil Thorndike as Emilia were both praised for their performances. When Robeson came to reprise the role with greater success at the Shubert Theater, New York, in 1943 as America’s first black Othello, he is reported to have told the director, Margaret Webster, that looking back on the earlier production he had felt so “overwhelmed by the thought of playing Shakespeare at all, especially in London, with his unmistakable American accent, that he never reached the point of looking Othello squarely in the eye.”³¹ Webster’s influential and hugely successful production focused firmly on the issue of race and racism, permanently changing attitudes to the play.Meanwhile, Tyrone Guthrie cast Ralph Richardson as Othello in his 1938 production at the Old Vic with Laurence Olivier as Iago. Guthrie and Olivier, influenced by Freudian psychology, saw Iago as motivated by repressed homosexual desire. The critics were generally severe:Mr. Ralph Richardson…plays the Moor with skill, dignity and taste. He has a beautiful voice, and speaks his lines with understanding. But he fails to be heroic; his Othello inspires no awe; we are sorry for him, but we do not feel the profound pity that should extend from him to the whole condition of man; and the tragedy dwindles into a thriller about a villain who ruins an amiable and well-bred simpleton. The excessive mildness of the Othello is aggravated by the excessive liveliness of the Iago…We are shown, not a lion killed by a viper, but a virtuoso toreador playing a bull. And it is his exquisite accomplishment that we concentrate upon, not the blind processes of the victim.³²4. “It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul”: Paul Robeson, the first black actor since Ira Aldridge to play Othello in London, with Peggy Ashcroft at the Savoy, 1930.

Orson Welles’ 1951 production at St James Theatre, in which he starred and directed, attracted equally unflattering reviews. Blacking up by white actors, while not yet regarded as unacceptable, was now a source of humor:The glad cry “The coalman cometh!” was suppressed with difficulty when Mr Orson Welles came on the stage as Othello, clad in a sooty costume of familiar cut that greatly amplified his already impressive frame…Mr. Welles is a stiff actor, apparently limited in gesture and expression, but he has dignity and a commanding voice. The speech to the Senate, spoken very quietly and naturally, is extremely effective and in the early scenes at Cyprus there is no question of Othello’s military authority. But when he is on fire with jealousy Mr. Welles can only stand as if stunned, his eyes fixed and glaring. Then he looks lost, passion and poetry missing.³³Welles’ film of the production the following year won first prize at the Cannes Film Festival.In 1956 at the Old Vic, John Neville and Richard Burton alternated the roles of Othello and Iago, but neither managed Othello satisfactorily. John Gielgud played the part in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1961 Stratford production. Despite the beauty of his vocal delivery, Gielgud was generally considered miscast. Three years later, Laurence Olivier played Othello in John Dexter’s production for the National Theatre’s inaugural season. Olivier famously did painstaking research on his voice and appearance. The production caused a sensation: “Many loved Olivier’s performance. Many loathed it. No one could ignore it.”³⁴ Doubts might be cast upon his preparations but not the power of his performance:Whether the Negroid physiognomy which Olivier was at such pains to create was necessary to establish this character I take leave to question…But of the cathartic power and visible splendor of the performance there can be no doubt whatever.³⁵As another critic put it:It could have been caricature, an embarrassment. Instead, after the second performance, a well-known Negro actor rose in the stalls bravoeing. For obviously it was done with love; with the main purpose of substituting for the dead grandeur of the Moorish empire one modern audiences could respond to: the grandeur of Africa. He was the continent, like a figure of Rubens’ allegory.³⁶Since then, performances of the play with white actors blacking-up have become increasingly problematic. Donald Sinden at Stratford in 1979 and Paul Scofield at the National in 1980 attempted it, but, as Julie Hankey records, both “actually raised laughs at some of Othello’s extravagant moments.”³⁷In the earliest productions of the play, race does not seem to have figured largely—the main focus was on rank, the undoing of a superior by a malevolent subordinate. Judged in the light of the West’s subsequent history of colonialism, it has become increasingly difficult to mount a successful production. The Ghanaian-born actor Hugh Quarshie has argued that the play is in fact inherently racist and that no black actor should attempt Othello.³⁸ The most successful recent productions have, however, cast black actors. In America, James Earl Jones first played Othello in 1964 at the New York Shakespeare Festival. His lack of classical training was seen as an obstacle that he was able to overcome “in the force and integrity of his delivery.”³⁹ Reprising the role at the 1981 American Shakespeare Festival, Jones had grown in the part, although it was Christopher Plummer’s Iago who gained most of the plaudits. Janet Suzman staged a production in apartheid South Africa at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg, in 1985 with John Kani as Othello, Richard Haines as Iago, and Joanna Weinberg as Desdemona as a deliberate challenge to the government’s political ideology. It played for six weeks and was hugely successful with black and white audiences alike.In Terry Hands’ 1985 production for the RSC, Ben Kingsley played Othello to David Suchet’s sexually ambiguous Iago. Much was made at the time of the rather pale-skinned Kingsley’s mixed African-Indian heritage. In 1989 the Jamaican-born operatic bass-baritone Willard White was cast against Ian McKellen as Iago at the RSC’s The Other Place. Sam Mendes cast David Harewood as Othello against Simon Russell Beale’s Iago at the National Theatre in 1997. Two years later, Michael Attenborough directed Ray Fearon and Richard McCabe in an RSC production. In 2001, Doug Hughes cast Keith David as Othello and Liev Schreiber as Iago at New York’s Joseph Papp Public Theater. In 2004 Gregory Doran directed the black South African Sello Maake Ka-Ncube as Othello, with Antony Sher as Iago. The RSC productions are discussed below in more detail, but it would be fair to say that in all of these Iago was seen as dramatically more successful, begging questions about the balance between the roles in the writing and the policy of color-blind casting that now paradoxically applies to every role except Othello. Othello has become a superb opportunity for black performers, offering a breakthrough role for rising stars (such as Chiwetel Ejiofor in Michael Grandage’s Donmar Warehouse production of 2008, with Ewan McGregor as Iago) and a change of direction for established figures (such as Willard White the opera singer and, in 2009, the comedian Lenny Henry, who was directed in the role by Barrie Rutter for Northern Broadsides). But it is, for now, a part from which white actors are barred. Jude Kelly’s “photo-negative”Othello in 1997 in Washington, D.C., with Patrick Stewart’s Othello as the only white cast member proved an interesting experiment while hardly providing a long-term solution.Given the increasingly problematic nature of conventional productions, it is not surprising that a number of radical revisions, adaptations, and offshoots have been produced, including Murray Carlin’s Not Now, Sweet Desdemona (1969), Jack Good’s rock opera Catch My Soul (1970–71); Charles Marowitz’s An Othello (1972), Paula Vogel’s Desdemona: A Play About a Handkerchief (1979), Djanet Sears’ Harlem Duet (1997), Caleen Sinnette Jennings’ Casting Othello (1999), Andrew Davies’ updated television adaptation Othello (2001), and Tim Blake Nelson’s film “O” (2001). The most successful adaptation is undoubtedly Giuseppe Verdi’s operatic masterpiece Otello (1887) in a genre which does not pretend to realism.A wide range of film versions are available, including a fascinating 1922 German silent movie directed by the expatriate Russian Dimitri Buchowetzki, starring Emil Jannings and Werner Krauss. Orson Welles’ 1952 film took four years to make owing to financial difficulties; using a heavily cut text and Welles’ characteristically adventurous camera work, it was much more successful than the stage version. Russian director Sergei Yuttuvich produced his Russian adaptation in 1955 with Sergei Bondarchuk as Othello. In 1964, Stuart Burge filmed John Dexter’s National Theatre production with Laurence Olivier, Frank Finlay, and Maggie Smith. Olivier’s performance, while undeniably powerful, is disturbing in its appropriation of the black body⁴⁰ and looks dated. Trevor Nunn’s (1990) RSC production at The Other Place with Willard White and Ian McKellen, with an American Civil War setting, fares better than Jonathan Miller’s for the BBC starring Anthony Hopkins in the same year. Oliver Parker’s 1995 film with Laurence Fishburne as Othello and Kenneth Branagh as Iago was highly acclaimed but is problematic in its own way: “Parker configures him [Othello] as a fascinating and useful outsider in Venice, a man whose power carries hints of an eroticism, derived from his arresting physicality…less the supreme exemplum of Venice than an exotic misfit within it.”⁴¹ However, the film belonged to Branagh. As one critic put it: “Kenneth Branagh doesn’t just steal the show; one suspects he might have sat in the director’s chair as well.”⁴²

AT THE RSC“Haply, for I am black”The great Irish actor Michéal MacLiammóir called Othello the “most passionately human of all Shakespeare plays.”⁴³ Diving into a wealth of painful emotions, Shakespeare offers us an intense exploration of human relationships and frailties. By focusing on a limited number of characters in a claustrophobic setting there is no relief for the audience, who witness helplessly the vile destruction perpetrated by the worst emotional vandal in English literature. When done well, this can be an agonizing and almost unbearable experience in the theater.Not by accident, Othello has a long history of audience intervention: of performances in which someone, forgetting that it is only a play, has stood up and tried to warn Othello against Iago, or to proclaim Desdemona’s innocence.⁴⁴And yet, Othello has a rather checkered past in performance with very few productions touching that raw nerve, the open wound, that we sense when reading the play. Sexual jealousy was obviously something that Shakespeare understood well: Leontes’ perplexing and irrational jealousy in The Winter’s Tale; the strong emotional evidence we find in the Sonnets. There is an extraordinary realism in the behavior and feelings expressed in these works. Onstage, however, the problem lies not with believability, but with the two central characters. It has proved difficult to find two actors of equal strength and a director who can maintain the balance between them. If Iago dominates too easily, it can be detrimental to the actor playing Othello, diminishing the magnificence of the character so the impact of his fall is lessened.Until recently, the actor playing Othello has had the further barrier of convincingly portraying a man of a different race, blacking up and adopting characteristics that can appear as racial stereotypes. As critic Michael Billington pointed out, this has led to fewer performances and a diminishing of the play’s place among the greatest of tragedies:Othello has lately become the odd man out among Shakespeare’s tragedies. Current racial sensitivity makes it virtually impossible to have a white actor blackening up as the hero.⁴⁵The RSC has not had a white actor playing Othello since 1979, but opinion is still heavily divided as to whether it would be acceptable at all in the twenty-first century to have an actor blacking up. With theater audiences made up of predominantly white, middle- and upper-class people, Bob Peck, who played Iago in 1979, pointed out thatThe controversial element in the play is the way in which an inter-racial marriage is used to force an audience, whose own prejudices are put into the mouth and actions of a very seductive and persuasive villain, to adopt a moral attitude towards its events.⁴⁶5. Donald Sinden blacked up for the role of Othello in the RSC’s 1979 production directed by Ronald Eyre.

Writing a year later, this production’s Othello, Donald Sinden, was sometimes alarmed by audience reaction:We tell ourselves it is usually those who are not very bright who feel it but I wonder…you felt sympathy going to Iago, you were fighting to keep that sympathy. They were nearly cheering him, egging him on, go on there, get the black man, like goading a bull. It was really sinister. All that talk of majesty and dignity in Othello meant nothing right here in Britain in 1980. They thought “He’s black and a bloody fool to try and make it anyway.”⁴⁷In 2004, Gregory Doran chose two South African actors who had been brought up under apartheid to play Othello and Iago, Sello Maake Ka-Ncube and Antony Sher.6. Sello Maake Ka-Ncube as Othello in the RSC’s 2004 production directed by Gregory Doran capitalized on his African cultural heritage and the experience of growing up under apartheid in South Africa.

Their experiences of living under a racist regime informed their performances, as Ka-Ncube explained:Certainly the play has powerful resonances for me as someone who grew up under Apartheid, but being an artist is always about taking risks and being black—whether you grew up in South Africa under Apartheid or in Manchester or as an African American—is about being at risk all the time. That’s something you live with in a world that is defined by white men’s standards.⁴⁸Reviewers picked up on this in his performance:… Ka-Ncube’s Othello…wears an African beaded necklace under his jacket and, even before you glimpse that, you sense a trace of cultural uncertainty beneath his proud, assured air. Though he doesn’t flinch when his enraged new father-in-law accuses him of bewitching Desdemona, his abstemiously blank expression—eyes front—suggests this is not the first time he has taken racist flak. His own references to his unpolished speech sound genuinely self-deprecating, making his susceptibility the more credible when he is encouraged to doubt Desdemona’s love.⁴⁹Sher used genuine examples of racist behavior he witnessed in his past:[something] we both use, which perhaps would not have come to us if we were not both South Africans, is when you really start to blow, when you say: “Arise, black vengeance.” I remember, in rehearsals, you began reverting to an almost tribal ancestral behaviour, as if you were summoning the ancestors, which you do with stamping. That allows me, when you have your epileptic fit and are unconscious at my feet, to mimic and mock your tribal behaviour. That again, to me, feels very much from the South Africa of our youth, where white people would mock black people, or would simply not take you seriously, but would see something clown-like or apelike in that behaviour.⁵⁰The understanding that these two actors had of living in an overtly racist society obviously benefited them when tackling the play, producing powerful performances. However, most actors who have played Othello, black and white, don’t consider the play a “tragedy of racism”—crimes of passion, after all, are committed by all races. Nevertheless, it is Othello’s “otherness,” the fact that he is an outsider, which gives Iago the advantage when working on his insecurities.Ray Fearon, who played Othello in 1999, believed that the issue of race is essential but that having an actor of power was the most important thing:I don’t believe in giving black actors the role. You give it to actors who are credible. You get someone of quality. But Othello says,“I am Black.” You can’t get round that. He’s black in a world of white people, insecure, other, paranoid. Only his blackness makes sense of the play. Because I’m black, I know how he feels. When I wear a pea cap and trainers, people just see me as a stereotypical black man. That attitude is going to take a long time to go away.⁵¹Fearon being much younger than the traditional Othello, lines had to be cut with reference to age, but the sexual chemistry between Othello and Desdemona was much more pronounced:Fearon is not the most profound of Othellos, but, thanks also to Waites’s unaffected warmth, he is one of the most touching. I have seen more distraught Moors, but few who wailed and gasped and touched their Desdemonas with more feeling. It is not just a case of killing the thing he loves, but of hardly being able to let her out of his arms. And he compensates for his lack of weight by growing in charisma and fire. The man who half-drowns Iago in a ewer, or follows his furious yell of “goats and monkeys” with a torrent of spit directed at the wife he has just whacked round the chops, is not to be fooled with.⁵²The physicality of the play in its displays of affection and violence also makes it practical to have a black actor in the part of Othello, as Trevor Nunn, who directed a production for the RSC in 1989, pointed out:Not only for political reasons, but for reasons of integrity to the play, and sheer theatrical practicality. A play that’s so overwhelmingly about male-female relationships needs a physical relationship between Othello and Desdemona. And with a white actor in black make-up that’s the one thing you can’t have. If they touch each other, Othello comes off on Desdemona.⁵³In Nunn’s production Othello’s vocal control set him apart as much as his color:Willard White, the black opera bass cast as Othello, often seems to be the only person on stage speaking verse, his utterances as rhythmically distinctive as his rich, dark vocal register. He gives life to the old cliché about “the Othello music”: this towering, Negro general is as alien to the Venetians in his speech as in his physical appearance.⁵⁴In 1985, Ben Kingsley was the first non-Caucasian actor to play Othello at Stratford since Paul Robeson in 1959. Playing opposite David Suchet, the two actors were physically similar, dark-eyed and bearded, causing many critics to comment on the fact. Kingsley himself felt that “Othello and Iago are almost two faces of the same man…They are both suffering from the same psychological disturbance”⁵⁵—hence Iago’s ability to manipulate someone whom he understands completely. Although the set was abstract in design the costuming went for authenticity:Terry Hands’s production, and especially its costumes…reflect an Elizabethan society that used violence to achieve its ends and heroes to spearhead its conquests…The starting point for Kingsley’s preparation was indeed a Moor and more particularly the portrait of the Moorish Ambassador to the court of Queen Elizabeth I.⁵⁶All reviewers mentioned the impressive impact of Kingsley’s first entrance as an Arab Moor:On to the stage of midnight black, with everyone on it wearing black, steps a strange aloof figure in a dazzling white robe. A grey bearded ancient, mysteriously smiling, he might be some grave Indian mystic on a visit to an unknown planet.⁵⁷He enters with solemn tread, wins the Senate over with humor (even clicking his teeth as he talks of “the cannibals that each other eat”) and dotes crazily on his Desdemona. This is a man, ageing and ringlet-locked, who has invested all his happiness in a young bride…and who is thrown into chaos by doubt.⁵⁸

A Military LifeFrom a technical viewpoint, Othello makes no special demands in staging. The emotions tapped in the play—love, hate, jealousy, envy—are so elemental that elaborate settings may actually detract from the bare display of them. Scene changes are likely…to break the momentum…The realism of the play lies in its emotional development, not in scenery.⁵⁹This statement was proved when in 1961 Franco Zeffirelli staged Othello in full Venetian splendor. Elaborate sets with massive scene changes may have given the stage the genuine look of Renaissance Italy, but killed the sense of claustrophobia and unstoppable momentum, and completely dwarfed the actors’ performances.One of the major difficulties has been to balance the play’s public dimension with the personal space of private emotion:The gradual narrowing of the play’s locales is but one contributor to the play’s remorseless focusing on the personal lives of the main characters: life in the great Mediterranean city contracts to a beleaguered island and its frightened populace, then to the rooms in Othello’s headquarters, and then to the marriage bed round which the curtains are finally drawn to shut out the sight of the pain that can ultimately be only personal.⁶⁰Ralph Koltai, designer of Terry Hands’ 1985 production, went for a minimalist interpretation. The characters were in Elizabethan dress, but the setting consisted of a black stage with “smoked-perspex screens edged with gold,”⁶¹ behind which sat “sculptural emblems of a Cypriot crucifix later replaced by a dangerously resting gold lion,”⁶² an emblem of Venetian imperialism.There is little stage furniture, scarcely any attempt at social realism. A few flickers of light on the back wall suggest Venice; the storm that marks Othello’s arrival at Cyprus, brilliantly taking its cue in a welcome suggestion of diabolism from Iago’s “Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light,” is the only big production number: lights blindingly flash, the noises of thunder are theatrical rather than natural. The overall effect of the design … is to release the play from local associations and to put the focus very much on the actors, who perform urgently, with a high degree of psychological realism.⁶³Starting with John Barton in 1971, most recent productions have emphasized the military setting of the play. Thus the public element remains without taking away from the intimacy of the action. With this genuine sense of army life we get important distinctions in rank from costume, rules of conduct influencing characters’ behavior, and the isolating effect of the army barracks on Desdemona.Julia Trevelyan Oman, designer of the 1971 production set in the nineteenth century, was influenced by early war photographs from the Crimea and American Civil War:They represent the past, but the near past, and the uniforms and background details still have a poignant reality and emotional appeal for us…I see Cyprus as a remote dusty army outpost cut off from civilisation, and Othello himself as a soldier as different in manner and dress from the other professionals in his army as Napoleon or Rommel from theirs.⁶⁴In this barrack atmosphere, heavy with the celibate fantasies of men herded together in heat, it’s easy to understand why Othello should trust his senior NCO more than his new bride from home; how jealousy might crackle through his imagination like fire through a dry thorn-bush. Meaning is restored to the play’s talk of honour, reputation. Where else, today, but in the Army could we accept a drunken fight spelling disgrace for Cassio or a man regarding his wife’s infidelity as the ruin of his career?⁶⁵Michael Attenborough’s 1999 production used an Edwardian militaristic world with special attention paid to the inevitable tensions and jealousies of army life:Cyprus feels like a British colonial outpost with soldiers in red tunics, Desdemona in a muslin dress and army bands playing in the distance: as in Much Ado, it strikes me that Shakespeare understood the peculiar danger of the aftermath of conflict when leisure afternoons are filled with malice and mischief…it is the military context that gives resonance to [Richard] McCabe’s wonderfully observed Iago…When Cassio taunts him with the fact that the lieutenant must be saved before the ensign, you see a look of pure hate, quickly masked, flash across McCabe’s eyes….⁶⁶Stephen Brimson Lewis’ set in 2004 intensified the sense of claustrophobia in the play by having “a framework of rusting, corrugated iron and a wire fence, [which] vividly suggests a decaying end of empire location, a military stockade behind which Othello and his men retreat.”⁶⁷The army barracks become a microcosm of Venetian life isolated within enemy territory. Trevor Nunn’s production in 1989 also hinted at the tensions outside the barrack walls:… costumed by Bob Crowley in a style suggestive of Chekhov crossed with the American Civil War…Watch-dogs bark, clocks chime, while in Cyprus—a place, we are reminded, with larger racial tensions of its own—the cicadas are periodically silenced not only by distant church music, but the muezzin’s call to prayer.⁶⁸The influence of the military on personality was vividly demonstrated in Trevor Nunn’s 1989 production, performed in the intensity of a studio theater, The Other Place:Cyprus is clearly defined as a simmering colonial outpost where the women fuss over the barley-water while the men get on with post-war admin…[Ian] McKellen [as Iago] is the absolute embodiment of the professional soldier: every detail is correct down to the little baccy-tin for half-smoked cheroots and the obsessive way he tidies his barrack-room blankets.⁶⁹McKellen’s performance in 1989 was noted for this fastidiousness born out of army life:Psychotically unable to tolerate disorder, Iago is perpetually tidying up the barracks, righting overturned chairs, pouncing on the litter. For this “model” NCO, the marriage of Desdemona and black Othello, an even more conspicuous irregularity in his world, naturally demands eradicating too…Unsmiling, the least jocular of Iagos, McKellen establishes no rapport with the audience—something of a feat in The Other Place—let alone the usual sense of complicity. In this terrifying performance, asides, like soliloquies, are private, echoing inside the desert of his head.⁷⁰This militarism and precision of Iago’s devices is what makes the man so chilling. In 2004, Antony Sher’sknowing, nudging, darkly funny performance invites us to appreciate the intricate mechanics of destruction. And in his modern khaki his Iago looks like a chunky, florid blend of an Afrikaner cop and the moustached Hitler; but nobody could more subtly use concern, helpfulness, moral indignation and blunt soldierly decency to lure a man and a marriage on to the rocks. It’s awful and it’s impressive.⁷¹

A Woman’s PlaceIn a military world the role of women is marginalized, although clearly defined. As in John Barton’s 1971 production, the effect is toisolate and make Desdemona more vulnerable, and the innate brutality of the play more obviously naturalistic.⁷²The daily life of an army on active service is as foreign and exotic to Desdemona as is her new-made lord. Any support from family, friends and the only society she has known as a gently-nurtured aristocratic girl is removed from her by her voyage to Cyprus, leaving her with only the intimacy of Emilia, whose allegiance is at least partially to her husband. Of course, to Othello the camp has always been the centre of his existence; but this particular camp environment is rendered unfamiliar by the presence of a wife.⁷³Women are by definition excluded from the battlefield and barracks. Kept in the bedroom and at the dinner table, they share neither the same experiences nor the same intimacies. No wonder the husbands…relate more intensely to their fellows than to their wives.⁷⁴In 2004, Greg Doran createda predominantly male, militaristic society in which women are either romanticised or treated as whores. Lisa Dillon’s fragile, loyal, indisputably loving Desdemona wanders into this world like a rose waiting to be crushed. And Amanda Harris’s Emilia…is a perfect portrayal of the hardened service wife who has long learned to adjust to this brutal male ethos.⁷⁵The attitude toward women was portrayed as disturbingly misogynist:The Venetian soldiers…are so sloppily dressed they look as if they’d have trouble controlling Mykonos, let alone Cyprus; but they’re a nasty lot, who punch Nathalie Armin’s harmless Bianca and push around the Islamic women who gather on cushions at the front of the stage or lurk behind steel netting at its rear.⁷⁶This issue of Iago’s repulsion toward physical contact with his wife has been played as disgust at her supposed infidelity, and as a homosexual leaning, but is also indicative of the redundancy of these women in a man’s world. Michael Attenborough’s attention to this fact was highly praised when he directed Othello in 1999:The virtue of this production is that it creates a militaristic world where women’s needs and desires go unrecognised: the drinking-scene, in particular, is beautifully staged with the men engaging in bizarre quasi-homosexual rituals. And part of Iago’s tragedy is that he is so much a creature of this world that he sees women as little more than sexual objects waiting to be crushed.⁷⁷Of course, Iago is severely psychologically twisted; his view of everyone, but especially women, rancid with images of bestiality. One instantly pities Emilia. In 2004, what incited Antony Sher’s Iago wasa disgusted fascination with sex. Amanda Harris’s excellent Emilia, his embittered wife, repels him so much that his fingers move into strangling mode before they readjust into shoulder massage.⁷⁸His jealousy of Emilia is only proprietorial. Here…Harris’s performance brilliantly fills in the picture. She is tense and tired, smokes nervously, takes the odd tipple and is clearly bored to the gills with Iago’s wise-guy joviality and heavy-handed sex jokes. In this marriage, she is an object, but a dangerous object: at the end Iago stabs her in the genitals.⁷⁹In 1985:The Emilia of Janet Dale is a marvellous study in rejected sexuality, canoodling her way for a fleet moment into Iago’s favour with the procured handkerchief only to find herself spun from the embrace in a premonition of [Ben] Kingsley’s “turn, turn, turn” humiliation of Desdemona which leads to a truly shocking slap on the face.⁸⁰At the beginning of the play, Othello’s demonstrative affection for his new bride distinctly marks out his behavior as different from the rest of his command. In 1999:Military discipline and ceremonial are the façade cracked open by Othello’s infatuation with Desdemona. The obliviousness of Fearon’s Othello to the embarrassment of Lieutenant Cassio (Henry Ian Cusick) at his hungry fondlings of Desdemona on the quayside makes it more than usually credible that he should be so blind to Iago.⁸¹As Iago’s poison works on Othello we see his behavior and language toward women change. Othello physically demonstrates the bestial behavior which Iago only thinks and talks about. They become two sides of the same jealous monster. In 1979:Sinden conveys the ecstasy of jealousy with splendid conviction. At one point he is reduced to emptying his wife’s laundry basket and sniffing the sheets for evidence of copulation. And he carries the humiliation of Desdemona further than I have ever seen by threatening to tup her in front of Emilia and by hurling her contemptuously to the ground in front of the Venetian visitors.⁸²Shakespeare presents us with two women at either end of the scale, one who has suffered at the hands of a brute, and is worldly-wise through her experiences as both abused and army wife, and one new to that lifestyle and marriage. Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona in Trevor Nunn’s production was very girlish in nature:There is an apt sense of Desdemona the daughter about this interpretation. Her teasing and cajoling manner is that of a favourite young girl playing up to her daddy. As well as emphasising the generation gap, it helps Iago when he opportunistically reminds Othello how she was false to her father in Venice in order to get away from his arms.⁸³hurling herself prematurely into an adult world, [Desdemona] is fragile, lovely, spoilt, manipulatively aware of her charm, and very young…On the quayside, waiting for Othello, her flippant exchanges with Iago reveal a deep uncertainty as to how a married woman ought to behave under such circumstance, and end in tears.⁸⁴The development of the relationship between Desdemona and Zoë Wanamaker’s Emilia in this production was given an added depth, poignancy, and focus. Traditionally, she is portrayed as the “warm, motherly Emilia,”⁸⁵ but more recent productions have cast women with less of an age difference in the two roles. In 1989, the two women started out as strangers, Emilia being reluctantly assigned to the task of companion-cum-maid. This made better sense of the fact that Emilia doesn’t admit to Desdemona that the handkerchief has been taken:[She] seemed to be jealous of a relationship which made her acutely aware of the inadequacy of her own marriage. When Emilia denies to Desdemona any knowledge of what has happened to the handkerchief, it can be an uncomfortable moment inconsistent with loyal friendship, but for Zoë Wanamaker it read powerfully as a moment in which she was prepared to have Desdemona suffer a little of the marital disharmony that for Emilia was habitual.⁸⁶The willow song scene acted as a breaking down of the divisions between the two women. At first reluctant to emotionally engage with this inexperienced girl, even pushing her arms from her when Desdemona hugs her for comfort, their shared experience betrayed a developing bond. In a clever piece of directing, the two women were linked in the final scenes by combining their voices. After smothering Desdemona with his hand, Willard White’s Othello lay back on the bed, distraught. Outside Emilia was heard calling gently “My lord, my lord.” In a voice almost spectral in its urgency and tone, Othello believed that he was hearing Desdemona’s voice, took the pillow and then smothered her again. As Desdemona struggled to utter her last words, Emilia helped her by completing her sentences.⁸⁷She berates Othello and as her own culpability is revealed she displays remarkable courage and moral strength. For Zoë Wanamaker, this was all the more powerful because of the absence of any easy sentimentality in her earlier relationship with Desdemona.⁸⁸Significantly, Emilia was left dead on the floor, ignored by those present, with no word of her sacrifice.

A Mind DiseasedOn playing the role of Iago, David Suchet commented:Actors seem to have latched on to one quality and played that—the smiling villain, the devil’s agent, the latent homosexual. Or you get the cold, objective playwright Iago, the one who creates the action. One thing I have discovered this first week is that any of those interpretations will work—up to a certain point. Then it would be a struggle to maintain it for the rest of the play. Studying the text very carefully one notices that Shakespeare himself has not got a clear line on Iago. If he had, it would be clear.⁸⁹Shakespeare endows Iago with a psychological condition beyond most people’s understanding. He gives no clear line with him because there is no clear line with a self-absorbed psychotic. The audience is taken on a disturbing journey into the mind of someone suffering a mental disturbance, and is left with the realization that the only genuine reason for his behavior lies in his own twisted nature, which is unfathomable. Actors playing Iago have picked up on certain elements of character that are evident in the text to give themselves an accessible psychological route into this dark void of a man.Like many real-life serial killers, he shows one face to the world while being a completely different character underneath. He wishes to tear apart all that is beautiful, pure, and honorable. Bob Peck, who played the part in 1979, stated that Iago, completely aware of his own corruption,seems to me to be a man whose life of deception and fraud is so repugnant to him that he can’t bear to see virtue, compassion, love or anything of positive moral good in others.⁹⁰Iago is a man who has structured his life on the principle that human beings are merely animals. For him, words like “nobility,” “honour,” “self-sacrifice” and “love” are shams…And yet Iago is not quite secure in his cynicism. Styles of life which argue against him constitute a personal affront. In order to preserve his own self-respect, to avoid becoming ugly even in his own eyes, he must either prove that they are hypocritical, or else destroy them. This is why he needs to turn Desdemona’s virtue into pitch, to make Cassio drunk, and to drag Othello down until he is speaking Iago’s characteristic language of “goats and monkeys” instead of his own.⁹¹Bob Peck’s performance had picked up on the image of the tough, reliable, and jovial NCO. Like most modern Iagos, he spoke with a regional accent to indicate his class—and another reason for hatred:Far from being an incarnation of motiveless malice, he is intensely jealous, crudely ambitious and utterly callous, a hate machine created by the slow, dehumanising process of professional warfare.⁹²He played the part with far more humor than usual, involving the audience and chuckling over his achievements, setting himself up from the start as the arch manipulator:During Iago’s first major soliloquy, the one where he sets up the plan to destroy Othello and his rather shaky alibi for so doing, [Ronald] Eyre has the other four principals concerned. Emilia, Desdemona, Cassio and the Moor himself line up silently on stage behind him, so that Iago may view them almost as if they were waxworks before arranging them into his evil patterns.⁹³Iagos have varied enormously, but they remain constant in their emphasis on one thing—sexual jealousy. Richard McCabe pointed out:Iago’s psychosis runs far deeper than mere ambition…Here is a man consumed by professional and personal jealousy to the point of destruction.⁹⁴When comforting Desdemona in Act 4 Scene 2, McCabe’s Iago held her in his arms:the more I played the sympathetic uncle figure, the more repulsive it became…The effect on my Iago, though, was devastating…Many killers prefer not to think of their victims as real human beings as this can trigger a moral sense within them. So I let out a gasp, contorted my body from its customary ramrod erectness, and turned upstage as if to hide the effect my internal conflict was revealing…⁹⁵Similarly, in 1989, Ian McKellen rocked Desdemona gently in his arms and stroked her hair as if taking some perverse sexual pleasure from touching the wife of his enemy.In 2004, Antony Sher’s Iago,when briefly alone in Desdemona’s dressing room…stealthily kisses a dress hanging in her wardrobe trunk. Women and their sexuality are fascinating, but alien and threatening…⁹⁶Conversely, in 1985, David Suchet followeda Freudian line by implying Iago is deeply in love with Othello and manically jealous of Desdemona. Instead of gloating over the pole-axed, epileptic hero, he stands over him stroking his hair and urging him on to virile revenge… giving us a deeply masculine homosexual prone to sudden, terrifying glimpses into his own iniquity: when he cries “Men should be what they seem / Or those that be not, would they might seem none” he stops short like a man who has peered into the abyss.⁹⁷He suggesteda deep vein of fellow feeling with his commander, as if he sought to educate him in manly detachment. It is a deeply human reading of a deeply inhuman character.⁹⁸at the death of Othello he makes a last impulsive gesture to embrace the corpse before letting his head fall, as though his own life has now run out…the Satanic element has been suppressed in pursuit of an explanation not really supplied by the text.⁹⁹Suchet here again broke with tradition, surprising his audience who expected to see the stony-faced or gloating Iago at the end of the play, demonstrating no remorse or regret, unreadable to the last. In 1989 the effect of Iago’s final stare left the audience chilled with the conviction that they were in the company of a complete sociopath:here is an arresting final image of the pinioned Iago gazing down on the death-loaded bed, not with any hint of snickering triumph but with a blank astonishment at the havoc he has created. There is no hint of pity. Instead Ian McKellen’s countenance suggests the inhuman detachment and moral vacuum of the murderer surveying his victims.¹⁰⁰

THE DIRECTOR’s CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH TREVOR NUNN AND MICHAEL ATTENBOROUGHSir Trevor Nunn is the most successful and one of the most highly regarded of modern British theater directors. Born in 1940, he was a brilliant student at Cambridge, strongly influenced by the literary close reading of Dr. F. R. Leavis. At the age of just twenty-eight he succeeded Peter Hall as artistic director of the RSC, where he remained until 1978. He greatly expanded the range of the company’s work and its ambition in terms of venues and touring. He also achieved huge success in musical theater and subsequently became artistic director of the National Theatre in London. His productions are always full of textual insights, while being clean and elegant in design. Among his most admired Shakespearean work has been a series of tragedies with Ian McKellen in leading roles: Macbeth (1976, with Judi Dench, in the dark, intimate space of The Other Place), Othello (1989, with McKellen as Iago and Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona), discussed here, and King Lear (2007, in the Stratford Complete Works Festival, on world tour, and then in London).Michael Attenborough, born in 1950 to a distinguished theatrical family, graduated from Sussex University in 1972 and worked as associate director at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, from 1972 to 1974. He was artistic director of the Leeds (now West Yorkshire) Playhouse from 1974 to 1979, associate director of the Young Vic from 1979 to 1980, artistic director of the Palace Theatre, Watford, from 1980 to 1983, and director of the Hampstead Theatre from 1984 to 1989, which won twenty-three awards during his tenure. In 1989 he was appointed artistic director of the Turnstyle Group in the West End and then, in 1990, resident director and executive producer of the Royal Shakespeare Company, becoming principal associate director in 1996. In July 2002 he was appointed artistic director of London’s Almeida Theatre. He is also joint vice-chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and an honorary associate artist of the RSC. Originally seen as specializing in directing new writing, he rapidly established himself as a sensual, non-flashy director of Shakespeare’s plays. He directed Othello for the RSC in 1999 with Ray Fearon as Othello, Richard McCabe as Iago, and Zoë Waites as Desdemona.

Does Iago lie to the audience? Are we really supposed to believe his accusations about both Othello and Cassio cuckolding him? Also with regard to Iago: his language is full of sexual imagery throughout the play. How much of a clue to his character does that give you?TN: The question of yours I feel impelled to start with is whether or not we are “supposed to believe” Iago’s accusations about being cuckolded by Othello and Cassio; in my view, this question comes closest to discovering and defining what Shakespeare is exploring. Shakespeare frequently chose a “theme” on and around which he would compose a complex dramatic debate, after having selected a “story” which could provide him with his necessary range of opportunities. So Romeo and Juliet is his play about “Love,” which involves Shakespeare in an equal and necessary exploration of “Hate” and the interconnection of these feelings. Hamlet is his play about “Death”—from a ghost returning to address the living, to a bourn from which no traveler returns, to suicide, to a grave littered with decomposing skulls—but it’s a discussion which involves Shakespeare in an exploration too of the will to live, and resolutions of how to live with the knowledge of mortality.In this way, Othello is self-evidently Shakespeare’s play about “Jealousy” but that subject draws him to an equal and necessary investigation of the concept of “Trust.” “Honest” Iago is trusted by his commander, his colleagues, by Rodorigo, by Desdemona and, with misgivings, by Emilia. Iago’s scheme is to stir Othello into jealousy, to increase that jealousy to such an extreme that there can only be violent consequences. But in Shakespeare’s play about jealousy, the most jealous character is not Othello, but Iago.“Honest” Iago is jealous of the Moor, jealous of Cassio for achieving the promotion Iago hoped for, and jealous of the physical sublimation that marriage has given Desdemona and Othello. His jealousy finds expression in suspicion, bile, and contempt, and accordingly he plays with the idea that both the men he hates have slept with his wife.Very early on in his writing career, Shakespeare discovered the energy and frisson that derives from a character intent on wickedness, sharing his (or her) intentions directly with the audience. Aaron and Tamora share with us their hidden malevolence, Richard III lets us delightedly into his darkly comic view of life, and so on throughout the canon until King Lear, where Edmund capitalizes on engaging our sympathy and support for “bastards.” But the most daring and outrageous use of this device is in the writing of Iago; Shakespeare invites us to see the surrounding world through Iago’s eyes, and therefore to find his willingness to confide in us alluring, funny, and a kind of privilege. We are aware that we are in a dangerous relationship, that we are spending time with somebody whose magnetism is thrilling but who is requiring us to compromise our sense of morality, increasingly with each implicating soliloquy.MA: Well, he puts both those accusations of cuckoldry as possibilities. I don’t think he swears that it’s happened. It is conjecture, and even if they haven’t, it suits him to believe that they have. So, no, I don’t think he lies to the audience. I think what he reveals to the audience is the scale of his insecurity. I think it’s obvious neither of those things has happened, but it’s not obvious to him. It is an imagined truth, but to the paranoid person there’s no difference between imagination and truth. I don’t think he’s lying, I think it suits his paranoia.The sexual imagery is probably the biggest clue of all. The play is about Iago’s jealousy. Like poison poured in the ear, he poisons Othello with language, with persuasion. He’s so clever with language, and it’s fascinating that as Othello turns, he starts talking like Iago: “goats and monkeys” and in the “brothel scene” [Act 4 Scene 2] when he talks about “a cistern for foul toads,” it could be Iago talking.7. Ian McKellen as “Honest Iago” in Trevor Nunn’s 1989 production at The Other Place with Michael Grandage as Rodorigo.

But the reason I say that it is the most important clue is that I suspect Iago’s biggest insecurity is sexual, even bigger than his professional insecurity. Shakespeare couldn’t be clearer; we get the biggest, clearest window into his personality from Emilia. When she talks very emotionally in that key speech in Act 4 Scene 3 it’s clearly all about her relationship with Iago. We get a picture of a man who knocks her around, who’s cruel, who’s staggeringly jealous, and who is promiscuous with whores. In a way, he has the same kind of emotional immaturity as Othello, but he’s twenty times cleverer, more devious and more malicious. But the nature of jealousy, the springboard, the flower bed from which jealousy happens is clearly insecurity. We would know that. We become jealous in our own relationships because we’re insecure about ourselves. I think Iago’s sexual insecurity is absolutely huge. What his language portrays is a fascination with sex, but also disgust. He never talks about it beautifully. He talks about it in ugly, animalistic, bestial, purely sexual terms—he never talks about love. And that’s why I think it’s the biggest clue of all.

Since Paul Robeson played the part of Othello, race has been a big issue for the play, in terms of both casting and interpretation. Where did you stand on this?TN: Ours was the first RSC production, and possibly the first in England since Paul Robeson at Stratford, to cast a black artist in the title role. As director, I could not possibly have gone ahead with the production if I had failed to find the casting of an artist of color to play the central role. The days of the acceptability of white actors wearing black makeup had gone by the end of the 1970s, even though there were few candidates in those days who were qualified by experience or training to provide the authenticity that roles like Aaron and Othello so clearly demanded.I was very fortunate to encounter the magnificent Jamaican-born opera singer Willard White at Glyndebourne, when we worked together on Gershwin’s epoch-making and culture-defining Porgy and Bess. It was clear to me that Willard was as much an extraordinarily imaginative and daring actor as he was a uniquely mellifluous bass-baritone. So, yes, Paul Robeson revisited, though it wasn’t until after we had opened Othello that I realized that Robeson had actually been the last black artist to play the part in England. I reasoned with Willard that if he was ever to play Othello, it would have to be in the theater because Verdi’s account of the role makes him (unaccountably) a tenor, and Willard, as I said, is a glorious bass-baritone.MA: One of the things that I profoundly disagree with is Coleridge’s statement about Iago’s “motiveless malignity.” I think what Shakespeare actually does is to provide so many motives—some of them fantastical, some of them made up, some of them paranoid, some of them real (like, for example, Cassio’s promotion)—that race becomes one of a number of factors. I think the play is not about Othello’s jealousy, but about Iago’s jealousy; the fact that this black chap has succeeded both sexually and professionally faster than he has is simply another element of that. Yes, Iago is a racist. Yes, Brabantio turns out to be a racist, having sat around the fireside happily with Desdemona and Othello. But it’s clearly not a fully racist society in Venice: they’re very proud of Othello. I suspect there’s a degree of making a virtue of necessity: he’s clearly the most able soldier and therefore they have to accept him, but there’s no sense of an incipient racism there; nor indeed from any of the other characters like Rodorigo or Cassio. I think the point about racism is how it fits with Iago’s make-up, personality, neuroses. One of the extraordinary things about Shakespeare’s writing is that he managed to grasp hold of several stereotypes—which we still wrestle with four hundred years later—and render them human. The Jew in Shylock, color in Othello, and indeed women; he expands and humanizes the whole notion of being a Shrew. And so while he does grasp the issue of racism, I don’t think it’s a play about racism.

Historically, Desdemona has traditionally been represented in terms of innocence and victimhood, but in more recent times more attention has perhaps been paid to her independence of spirit and adventurousness—she rebels against her father and insists on going to Cyprus. Was yours a spunky Desdemona?TN: How Desdemona came to be seen and presented—as in Verdi’s Otello—as a creature of angelic innocence is bewildering when so much evidence points in a different direction. Certainly in our production, we stressed that it was Brabantio’s trust in Desdemona that had been betrayed, that she had colluded to the full in the elopement, both out of her independence and a sense of adventure, and indeed out of passionate feelings of love in anticipation of sexual and sensual fulfillment.We explored how different the reality of Cyprus was for Desdemona, compared with her imaginings. In our production, she found herself in a military fort on the edge of civilization, surrounded entirely by sex-starved men in uniform who were, almost without exception, undressing her with their eyes whenever she appeared, and making her the subject of ribald fantasy. In this world of sexual tension, Emilia represents a haven, and Cassio appears to be a mild-mannered articulate young man (obviously with no head for alcohol) who is something of an exception to the rule.MA: Yes. It was one of the reasons why I wanted to do the play. Zoë Waites had been a very spirited Juliet. I think Juliet is much more intelligent and imaginative than Romeo, and I wanted the same scale of pluck, intelligence, imagination, independence, and sheer bloody fight. Desdemona is the victim of the play, but she’s not to be played as a victim. She, also, is blinkered; she’s blinkered because even in the scene with Emilia she still religiously believes in Othello, despite the fact that he’s attacked her. But, that aside, she’s a very bright kid. One of the genius moments in the writing, and genius moments from Iago, is when he says to Othello in Act 3 Scene 3, “She deceived her father brilliantly, why do you think she couldn’t deceive you?” He turns her intelligence, her sophistication, and her ability against Othello. Iago has spotted that Desdemona is shrewd and bright and no fool at all. It seems to me to dilute and weaken the play if she’s played in any way as passive.In the “brothel scene” I did something which I would never have done with two actors whom I didn’t know very well. We were only in the second week of rehearsals; we had a rough physical shape for the scene and we knew what we wanted it to be about—Othello torn between love and hate. It was fundamentally a scene about him punishing her, but then finding at least half a dozen moments where his whole stomach turns over and he thinks,“Oh my God, you’re beautiful,” or “Oh my God, I love you so much.” The truth of the situation just wells up in his stomach and grabs him by the throat. The actors were still on the book and I said (and it’s about as complicated a scene as there is in the play), “Look, let’s just throw ourselves at it.” It was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen in a rehearsal room. It just blew the top of your head off. I was crying, the stage manager was crying, it was astonishing. And the reason for that was that those two actors had no problem with being completely vulnerable. And yet they were very specific with the text, it wasn’t just generalized emotion. That version of the scene never really changed. We refined it, but that sense of these huge surges of love, anger, and terror never really altered. There would have been no point in rehearsing that way if Desdemona wasn’t, at one level or other, Othello’s equal.

How important do you see the age gap between Othello and Desdemona, and how did that affect your casting of the roles?TN: I had a rarely advantageous situation to build upon then, an actor to play Othello of magnificent handsome appearance, with a voice that stopped all other conversation the moment he entered a room, a man of international expertise and indomitable courage as he had conquered opera audiences around the globe.He was twenty or so years older than his Desdemona, an age differential that I think is absolutely fundamental to the play. The fact that Othello describes himself as “declined / Into the vale of years” reveals that he is conscious of being no longer young, having won a bride who is still very young and who, therefore, may have a ready disposition to exchange him for younger company. When he secretly marries Desdemona, Othello is already a national hero, famous, celebrated, a giant among pygmies. I have seen versions of the play where Othello is dashing, youthful, up and coming, and I have felt that what Iago does to him is of less consequence than the play requires, because the edifice that came crashing down was just not big enough, the destruction wrought was just not sufficiently impossible.MA: I’d just done Romeo and Juliet with Ray Fearon and Zoë Waites and they were absolutely breathtaking. Towards the end of our international tour I remember getting the two of them together in a hotel in Belgium and saying,“Would you like to play Othello and Desdemona?” And they both said, instantly,“Yes.” So the casting arose out of the fact that I’d got two really talented young actors who had this incredible chemistry. The big issue for Ray was his age [he was thirty-two at the time of the production]. To age his appearance he shaved his hair and grew a beard, and I did actually have to cut a line: “declined / Into the vale of years.”Some people commented on the fact he was too young. I think that’s just because they had inside knowledge that that is how the play is written. There is absolutely no evidence in the rest of the play that his age makes any difference at all. In fact, quite the reverse. I would say a younger man helps in terms of explaining his promotion and his leadership, and their effect on Iago, so I deliberately cast an Iago [Richard McCabe] who was older than Othello; it’s usually the other way around.But also Ray’s age undermined the conventional view of Othello as “Oh, he’s an old man, he can’t get it up and that’s why he’s vulnerable to Cassio.” There is no evidence for that. What I think is a much more interesting story to tell is that Othello is an emotional virgin. This is why I believe the question of color is less interesting. He’s a soldier, a raconteur, but he has never engaged in emotional relationships. Whereas an older man would have experience of this, a younger man would possess a certain naïveté; I think that’s what makes him so vulnerable to Iago’s plotting. So not only was I not making an excuse for Ray’s youth, I felt it was a positive advantage. I thought it made the audience examine the nature of his vulnerability beyond simply being an old man. Our Othello was virile and beautiful, very sexy, and he had a very physical relationship with Desdemona. Interestingly, whereas a lot of reviewers in Stratford said he was too young, several of them openly, clearly recanted when we came to London. Initially, they just couldn’t see beyond his appearance. Indeed, the London reviews were terrific.

Did you and your actors make any unexpected discoveries about Cassio and/or Rodorigo?MA: I didn’t really have expectations so I couldn’t tell you what was expected or unexpected. But I think that it’s true to say that I was quite shocked by how stupid Rodorigo was! A lot of the men in the play are totally governed by obsession. I think, for example, that Othello becomes addicted to jealousy. At one point he says,“Give me proof that she’s unfaithful.” He doesn’t say,“Please find out that she’s not.” It’s as if he wants this torment.“It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.” Rodorigo suffers from the same kind of obsession, which turns him into an idiot. When the truth is staring him in the face, Othello still can’t see it. When you think Othello or Rodorigo are so gullible as to believe Iago, you have to see it in the context of men who simply can’t see the world beyond Desdemona.8. Richard McCabe’s Iago was deliberately cast to be older than Ray Fearon’s relatively young Othello in Michael Attenborough’s 1999 RSC production.

I don’t think Cassio contained any surprises. I wanted him to be a different social class from Iago. I wanted him to be much more beautiful than Iago but still a soldier. There are images that echo each other through the play; this is another very emotionally immature person. His only relationship is with a whore whom he doesn’t visit very often. These aren’t grown-ups! Arguably the only real grown-up in the play is Emilia. Everybody else’s lives are very blinkered. I rather liked Cassio—I grew to like him more and more. There’s so much said about him, and actually working on him and rehearsing him you really felt sorry for him. But he is quite naive. There’s a lot of naïveté within the play, and a lack of sophistication.

What is revealed by Emilia’s speech at the end of Act 4 Scene 3 about how women as well as men have affections, desires for sport, and frailty?MA: I think it’s a speech about Emilia’s own relationship. It’s a desperately sad scene because they are just missing each other in the dark. Desdemona is being very selective with what she hears, and Emilia, who is a woman of the world, has seen it all in all its horror, is in a way warning her. And Desdemona is sort of sticking her fingers in her ears and going “La, la, la, I can’t hear you!” That’s the tragedy of that scene. I think it’s there because Iago is never going to tell you the truth about himself, but Emilia does. She doesn’t talk about other relationships. In fact what she says, rather as Shylock does, is “Do we not have affections too? Just because we’re put upon, it doesn’t make us insensible.” It’s the best statement about women in the past five hundred years! The scene’s prime function is to show us two very different female views of the world, and to give us insight into the Iago–Emilia marriage.

Critics worry about the play’s “double-time” scheme: looked at one way, the events are compressed over just three nights (with a gap for the sea voyage after the first act), but for Iago’s plot to make sense, a much longer span of time must pass. Why does this not seem such a problem in the theater?TN: Shakespeare uses the device of “double-time” scheme in many of the great plays. It’s not a mistake, it’s an intention, and it’s intended for theater performance, not for the scholar’s study. He creates an illusion of scale, distance, and the elapse of time suggesting epic, life-changing events, but in performance there must always be a sense of a narrative urgently moving on at a speed which can neither be controlled nor contained by the protagonists. Shakespeare also uses anachronism as a device, so that his plays can be set in an ancient and contemporary world at one and the same time. Cleopatra playing “billiards” in ancient Egypt, Gloucester not needing “spectacles” in ancient Britain are not oversights but, like the street talk and slang abounding in the plays, spurts of contemporary energy for an audience engaged in the here and now of the drama.MA: I strongly suspect Shakespeare didn’t think about it very much. What he obviously did want to do was compress the timescale, so that in the three hours in the theater you are shocked by the speed at which things happen. If he were to give naturalistic explanations for events he would have to stretch it out and therefore the whole thing would be less shocking. It’s the shock of the speed and scale of Othello’s decline that creates the effect.

How did you and your designer set about creating the contrasting worlds of Venice and Cyprus, and of public versus private life?TN: Othello is the most domestic of the tragedies. We divided the play at a point where the handkerchief is dropped. As the second part begins, any one of four characters might have picked it up before, almost randomly, Emilia noticed it. A negligible small square of fabric becomes the deciding factor in a catastrophe of multiple deaths, terror, and the furthest extremes of emotional suffering. Shakespeare couldn’t be clearer. The climax of the play takes place in a bedroom. I was so glad, therefore, to be doing a small theater intimate-scale production, where the bedroom could be the size of a bedroom, and not, as we have often seen, a palatial space the size of two tennis courts, robbing Shakespeare of his messy, muddled, up-close revelation of what happens behind the locked doors of a marriage gone wrong.MA: One of the challenging elements in designing Shakespeare is that he wrote for a nonscenic theater, and therefore saw sequences following quickly, one after the other, changing location very swiftly. I remember Cicely Berry saying once,“There’s no pause in Shakespeare until the end of the play.” We tried very hard to keep the flow of things, so both Venice and Cyprus were quite spare; consequently, if you introduced an item of scenery it really had an effect.For Venice I wanted something quite magisterial and formal, not particularly decorative. I wasn’t concerned with a literal representation of Venice so it wasn’t very beautiful; rather it was elegant and spare. If I were to put another adjective to it, it would be masculine. The scene where Othello persuades the Duke and the Senators to accept the marriage was very formal. We chose early twentieth-century costumes because, like Trevor [Nunn], I felt that the military context was very important. The Duke and Brabantio were like the formal elders of Venice, in frock coats and in an elegant, very male setting, with a big long table, inkwells, and blotters: quite starchy.In Cyprus, although the setting is an army camp, it is much more sensual. So we wanted heat and light as opposed to coolness and elegance. I wanted something that evoked a camp, so there was no architecture. Robert Jones [the designer] had these canvas panels that came in and out so that you could completely shutter off the upstage area, or open the whole stage up. It could configure into different arrangements that would give you different locations. The great benefits of what he did were twofold. One, it was in quite a gentle, warm color that made it feel very sensual. If you backlit it you could perform shadow-play behind it. The other thing was that it seemed to me that there are several stunning moments in the play where you go from an incredibly intense and intimate scene into one where suddenly everyone is present: for example, Act 4 Scene 1, which begins with Othello and Iago, where Othello is absolutely losing his mind. Lodovico arrives with news from Venice and suddenly the stage is flooded with soldiers. It’s the scene in which he eventually slaps Desdemona. So from that intimate, awful, ferocious, locking-antlers quality which Othello and Iago have, suddenly everything flew out and we were in a public place and Othello was on public show; he was the army commander, and he was expected to act in a particular way and yet he was clearly cracking up. This places the audience in the position of being in on a secret about Othello’s internal life which the other characters aren’t aware of. That feeling of being able to go from a two-handed scene to a twelve- or fifteen-handed scene, at the click of a light switch, was really important.I also felt it was important that you got a strong sense of Emilia and, particularly, Desdemona being fishes out of water in Cyprus; that they shouldn’t, strictly speaking, really be there. So, for example, when Desdemona landed in Cyprus, she arrived with half a dozen hatboxes. She was an elegant, urban girl with a lot of money. It’s hot; there are a lot of soldiers, with sweat under their arms, and this girl arrives as if she’s gone to the Mediterranean on holiday! I wanted the increasing feeling that she didn’t know what to do with herself at the formal arrival in Cyprus. Should she join the parade? Should she watch the parade? During that wonderful scene where there’s the riot in the middle of the night, we played it that Othello and Desdemona were trying to consummate their marriage and are interrupted and he has to get up. He arrives bare-chested, holding a sword, and he’s clearly been disturbed from his love life. And she comes on covered by a sheet and all the men suddenly become aware that there’s a half-naked woman there. She was out of place. So although it was a very sensual place it was not there to accommodate sophisticated, well-dressed, wealthy, urban girls.

T. S. Eliot famously read Othello’s farewell speech (“Soft you; a word…”) as a deluded man cheering himself up. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it? But on the other hand, there is an element of Othello, after having been stripped bare (“goats and monkeys,” “that common whore of Venice,” and all that), now protecting his image once again with the carapace of his poetic music?MA: I think that’s actually a half-truth. Yes, there’s no question that his assessment of what has happened is going to be different from ours. We wouldn’t appraise it in the same way. But I don’t think that necessarily means he is twisting the truth in a cynical or manipulative way. If you feel life draining out of you then you will say things that aren’t necessarily going to be gospel truth. But I do think that a lot of what he says in that last speech is true. In a way, what is awful about it is not the reconstruction of his image, but his bewilderment as his mind races. Othello actually says very little in that last scene. He is like a spectator. Now he has learned what really happened, he has to reassess reality. So the scale of what’s happening in his head when his life is draining away is colossal. I don’t think it’s anything manipulative or vain. I think it’s a man in a state of complete incomprehension and bewilderment. Like centuries of people since, he’s trying to work out why it happened. And Iago gives nothing away; he takes his secret to the grave. It’s a very hard speech to generalize about. It’s actually a man trying to find truth.

ANTONY SHER ON PLAYING IAGOSir Antony Sher was born in Cape Town in 1949. After compulsory military service in South Africa, he traveled to London to train as an actor. He joined the Liverpool Everyman Theatre in the 1970s, working with a group of gifted young actors and writers that included Willy Russell, Alan Bleasdale, Julie Walters, Trevor Eve, and Jonathan Pryce, playing Ringo in Willy Russell’s John, Paul, George, Ringo…& Bert. He joined the RSC in 1982 and played the title role in Tartuffe and the Fool in King Lear. In 1984 he won the prestigious Laurence Olivier Award for his performance in the RSC’s Richard III. Since then he has played numerous leading roles in the theater as well as on film and television, including Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Macbeth, as well as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and Iago in the RSC’s 2004 Othello at the Swan Theatre directed by Gregory Doran, which he discusses here. He also writes books and plays, including the theatrical memoirs Year of the King (1985) and Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa (1997, cowritten with his partner Gregory Doran).

The play is called Othello and yet Iago’s is the largest part. Does that somehow make the role different from Macbeth or Richard III or Hamlet or Lear, where the journey of the lead actor and that of the play are the same?I don’t think it matters that the play is called Othello, yet Iago is the larger role—the piece is structured as a thrilling combat between two heavyweights. Iago may be the instigator of the fight, and Othello the victim, yet the two men become locked together in a deadly hold, dragging each other down to destruction. And so they share, equally, the journey of the play.

Unlike most of the big Shakespearean roles, Iago’s contains a large measure of prose as opposed to verse: is there something distinctive about inhabiting a prose mind?The fact that a large amount of Iago’s dialogue is written in prose became very useful to our setting of the play, which was a military base on Cyprus, mid-twentieth century. In this context Iago was a recognizably modern NCO figure—a rough-talking square-basher, a master of barrack-room banter, and one who knows when to break open the bottles and start the songs, a veteran serviceman, immensely popular with the troops, and, to the rest of the world, just “honest Iago.” This interpretation was much more available in prose than it would’ve been in verse.

Iago’s language is full of sexual imagery throughout the play. How much of a clue to his character does that give you?Iago can’t seem to open his mouth without some sexual allusion spilling out. You could argue that this is just the way soldiers talk, but there’s something odder, more perverse in Iago’s language. To him, having sexual intercourse is “making the beast with two backs.” Why this savage image? Perhaps a clue comes in his speech about Desdemona: “Now, I do love her too, / Not out of absolute lust—though peradventure / I stand accountant for as great a sin.” Why does Iago have to reassure us that he could be lustful if he chose? We wouldn’t expect anything less of this supremely macho man. Is it that he’s impotent, and physically incapable of making the “beast with two backs”? Or is he sterile? Could these things account for his strange energy, his appetite for chaos, his nihilism? I’m not sure. I certainly based my portrayal on the idea of a man with a severe sexual hang-up, though I rather liked leaving this undefined.

Does Iago lie to the audience? Are we really supposed to believe his accusations about both Othello and Cassio cuckolding him?I don’t believe that Iago lies to the audience in his soliloquies. When he suggests that both Othello and Cassio have slept with his wife, Emilia, he thinks it’s true, so it’s no more like lying than Leontes’ accusations about Hermione’s fidelity in The Winter’s Tale. In fact, having previously played Leontes, I believe he and Iago are suffering from the same condition; medically it’s known as morbid or sexual jealousy, when someone becomes convinced, falsely, that their partner is betraying them. This possibility was enhanced in our production by Amanda Harris playing Emilia as a boozy, flirty army wife. We all felt that although the play is famously about one man consumed with jealousy, it’s actually about two. Iago seems as much under the spell of the “green-eyed monster” as is the Moor. I think the reason that Iago is so successful at duping Othello is that Iago knows about jealousy from deep within.“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy,” he says with real feeling. Earlier, talking of his suspicion that Othello has slept with Emilia, he says “the thought whereof / Doth—like a poisonous mineral—gnaw my inwards.” Iago is like a man with a highly contagious disease, who is determined to pass on the germs. This aspect of Iago was crucial to my interpretation. I totally reject Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s reading of the role, where Iago is simply possessed by some kind of “motiveless malignity.”9. Antony Sher as a morbidly “jealous” Iago with Amanda Harris playing Emilia as a “boozy, flirty army wife” in Gregory Doran’s RSC production at the Swan Theatre in 2004.

Some have found a homoerotic strain in the play—or at the very least a sharp contrast between the intense all-male world of the army and the domestic/feminine sphere introduced by Desdemona. Was this a productive approach for you?As a gay man I’ve never found any homoerotic strain in the play. I suppose the theory comes from the sequence when Iago tells of sleeping next to Cassio one night, and Cassio becoming aroused, and kissing Iago. I think this is just Iago in rabid, tabloid-journalist mode, trying to paint Cassio in the most salacious colors imaginable. I also wonder if the Iago-as-gay idea comes from a time when gay equaled evil. Hollywood did this for a while: the bad guy was always some twisted faggot. (Now it’s changed: the bad guy is just played by a British actor.)

What are your recollections of working on the great “temptation” scene in the middle of the play, where Iago seems to infect Othello with his language, as if transferring the “monster” in his own mind into Othello’s?One of the greatest episodes in all of Shakespeare is Act 3 Scene 3: the so-called “jealousy scene,” when Iago convinces Othello of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness. Apart from brief appearances by Desdemona and Emilia, it is a colossal two-hander (in playing time, it lasts about half an hour), during which both the characters and the actors have to slug it out tirelessly, in an extremely explosive situation. It would only take one wrong move from Iago, or someone to overhear and expose his lies, and the whole maneuver would backfire, and lead Othello to make a murderous attack on Iago rather than Desdemona. Or what if Desdemona didn’t drop her handkerchief halfway through, providing Iago with the one piece of visual evidence which will, eventually, in Othello’s eyes, clinch the case? One of Greg Doran’s preoccupations as a director is to constantly seek out what he calls “the crossroads”—those moments when the action might suddenly go a different way. He wants the audience to sit up sharply, wondering if this story is as familiar as they thought. You can’t act tension or danger onstage without providing some of the real thing, in terms of spontaneity and invention. The great South African actor Sello Maake Ka-Ncube (Othello) and I played the Act 3 Scene 3 crossroads for all they were worth, and each night it felt like a wild rollercoaster ride, without either of us quite knowing who would reach the other end safely or in command.

What do you make of Iago’s refusal to speak at the end?Iago’s vow of silence at the end is, I think, a very simple matter. Arising from a very complex one. He himself can’t explain what happened; any more than a psychopath can say, “I did it because of that.” Whatever it is that Iago suffers from—let psychiatrists call it “sexual jealousy” or Coleridge “motiveless malignity”— the man has been on a tremendous drug rush, fueled by weird chemicals in his own brain, and now it’s over. The only appropriate response is his final statement: “what you know, you know: / From this time forth I never will speak word.” Shakespeare leaves a powerful mystery there, like he does in all his best plays—questions, not answers, about human behavior.

SHAKESPEARE’S CAREER IN THE THEATER

BEGINNINGSWilliam Shakespeare was an extraordinarily intelligent man who was born and died in an ordinary market town in the English Midlands. He lived an uneventful life in an eventful age. Born in April 1564, he was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker who was prominent on the town council until he fell into financial difficulties. Young William was educated at the local grammar in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, where he gained a thorough grounding in the Latin language, the art of rhetoric, and classical poetry. He married Ann Hathaway and had three children (Susanna, then the twins Hamnet and Judith) before his twenty-first birthday: an exceptionally young age for the period. We do not know how he supported his family in the mid-1580s.Like many clever country boys, he moved to the city in order to make his way in the world. Like many creative people, he found a career in the entertainment business. Public playhouses and professional full-time acting companies reliant on the market for their income were born in Shakespeare’s childhood. When he arrived in London as a man, sometime in the late 1580s, a new phenomenon was in the making: the actor who is so successful that he becomes a “star.” The word did not exist in its modern sense, but the pattern is recognizable: audiences went to the theater not so much to see a particular show as to witness the comedian Richard Tarlton or the dramatic actor Edward Alleyn.Shakespeare was an actor before he was a writer. It appears not to have been long before he realized that he was never going to grow into a great comedian like Tarlton or a great tragedian like Alleyn. Instead, he found a role within his company as the man who patched up old plays, breathing new life, new dramatic twists, into tired repertory pieces. He paid close attention to the work of the university-educated dramatists who were writing history plays and tragedies for the public stage in a style more ambitious, sweeping, and poetically grand than anything that had been seen before. But he may also have noted that what his friend and rival Ben Jonson would call “Marlowe’s mighty line” sometimes faltered in the mode of comedy. Going to university, as Christopher Marlowe did, was all well and good for honing the arts of rhetorical elaboration and classical allusion, but it could lead to a loss of the common touch. To stay close to a large segment of the potential audience for public theater, it was necessary to write for clowns as well as kings and to intersperse the flights of poetry with the humor of the tavern, the privy, and the brothel: Shakespeare was the first to establish himself early in his career as an equal master of tragedy, comedy, and history. He realized that theater could be the medium to make the national past available to a wider audience than the elite who could afford to read large history books: his signature early works include not only the classical tragedy Titus Andronicus but also the sequence of English historical plays on the Wars of the Roses.He also invented a new role for himself, that of in-house company dramatist. Where his peers and predecessors had to sell their plays to the theater managers on a poorly paid piecework basis, Shakespeare took a percentage of the box-office income. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men constituted themselves in 1594 as a joint stock company, with the profits being distributed among the core actors who had invested as sharers. Shakespeare acted himself—he appears in the cast lists of some of Ben Jonson’s plays as well as the list of actors’ names at the beginning of his own collected works—but his principal duty was to write two or three plays a year for the company. By holding shares, he was effectively earning himself a royalty on his work, something no author had ever done before in England. When the Lord Chamberlain’s Men collected their fee for performance at court in the Christmas season of 1594, three of them went along to the Treasurer of the Chamber: not just Richard Burbage the tragedian and Will Kempe the clown, but also Shakespeare the scriptwriter. That was something new.The next four years were the golden period in Shakespeare’s career, though overshadowed by the death of his only son Hamnet, aged eleven, in 1596. In his early thirties and in full command of both his poetic and his theatrical medium, he perfected his art of comedy, while also developing his tragic and historical writing in new ways. In 1598, Francis Meres, a Cambridge University graduate with his finger on the pulse of the London literary world, praised Shakespeare for his excellence across the genres:As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labours Lost, his Love Labours Won, his Midsummer Night Dream and his Merchant of Venice: for tragedy his Richard the 2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet.For Meres, as for the many writers who praised the “honey-flowing vein” of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, narrative poems written when the theaters were closed due to plague in 1593–94, Shakespeare was marked above all by his linguistic skill, by the gift of turning elegant poetic phrases.