Shakespeare's Tragedies by Stanley Wells

Author:Stanley Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780198785293
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2017-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

And, noble signor,

If virtue no delighted beauty lack,

Your son-in-law is far more fair than black.

(1.3.288–90)

The malice and evil-spiritedness of Iago are firmly established in his opening dialogue with Desdemona’s foolish suitor Roderigo, to whom he freely admits that he follows Othello, whom he hates ‘as I do hell pains’, only ‘to serve my turn upon him’, feigning ‘love and duty … for my peculiar end.’ And we rapidly learn that Iago’s hatred for Othello centres on the fact that Othello has chosen Cassio, not Iago, as his lieutenant.

Roderigo joins in Iago’s racial and sexual vilification of Othello, saying that Desdemona has eloped with ‘a lascivious Moor’, but as soon as Othello appears Shakespeare works to overturn whatever prejudice the audience may have felt against his black hero, who responds with calm dignity to Brabanzio’s accusations that he can have won Desdemona only by practising black magic. And when Brabanzio repeats his accusations before the Duke of Venice and the full Senate, Shakespeare gives Othello a calm and dignified speech of self-defence:

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