Shakespeare’s Suicides by Marlena Tronicke

Author:Marlena Tronicke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Perplexed in the Extreme”: Othello as Murderer and Victim

Othello’s suicide is one of the more prominent examples; in fact, he is the only of the four great tragic heroes to commit suicide. What equally sets him apart from Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth is that he is given a lengthy farewell speech just before he kills himself. Since Cassio’s final words on Othello fall short of a grand and eloquent tragic valediction, Othello’s own monologue preceding his suicide is sometimes attributed a quasi-eulogy status.37 Like a eulogy, it provides an indication of how to interpret Othello’s death and, retrospectively, his character as such:

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 extenuate,

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 wrought,

Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drops tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinable gum.

(5.2.338–351)

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