Alex's Reviews > Othello

The thing with Othello is that he's a fuckin’ idiot and he sucks. There's this towering scene, Act 3 scene 3, it’s the centerpiece of the play. Iago's convincing him that his wife Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio, and he has this whole complicated plan worked out involving handkerchiefs and innuendo, but he needs none of it: at the first drop of poison in his ear, Othello's like,

"Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore.
Be sure of it, give me the ocular proof."


Mekhi Phifer and Josh Hartnett in 2001 high school Othello, I love this version

Iago's all, it can’t be this easy.
"Beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster."

But it is! Othello careens totally off the rails:
"I had been happy if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known."

He instantly believes the worst, and then he makes it entirely about him, right? "She could have fucked the whole army - it's the part where I found out that hurts." Othello sucks.

Top Five Worst Husbands
5. Othello (would also accept the Duke of Cornwall from Lear)
4. Heathcliff
3. Agamemnon
2. Humbert Humbert
1. Tie, Bluebeard & Shahryar (that's Scheherezade's husband from Arabian Nights; I had to look up his name)

If there's a problem with Othello it's that, it's what an irredeemable dickbag Othello is. He sounds great. He's maybe my favorite Shakespearean character to read. Try it, read some out loud: everyone sounds like Shakespeare but him. But he has no real character arc, and that’s frustrating. He talks big but he's flimsy. Only one thing happens here: Iago subverts Othello. There are none of Shakespeare’s characteristic parallel, wandering subplots. Othello is his most focused work. It's as close as he comes to classic Greek tragedy. One - thing - happens.


Lawrence Fishburne in Branagh’s 1995 version

Right, so on to that one thing: Iago. He's Shakespeare's best villain ever, the apotheosis of a certain thing Shakespeare loves to do, what James Earl Jones called "motiveless malignity." He tosses motives around - he thinks Othello fucked his wife? - but he doesn't really go into it and you don't get the sense he really cares any more than you do. It's motiveless malignity. Iago gets compared to the personified Vice character in old morality plays, who was (of course) always the most fun. Vice for Vice's sake. He snickers to the audience. He's the one who connects with us; no one else is paying attention.

He works in darkness. He's enshadowed at the beginning, and in most of his key scenes. He works by suggestion and sudden moves from alleys. There are maybe hints of gayness? In 3.3, as "proof" of Desdemona's infidelity, he says he shared an army cot with Cassio and in the middle of the night Cassio started dreaming, called him Desdemona, and frenched him. It's not less weird than it sounds.

We like Iago because he's fun and he's not an idiot, and this is a play mostly populated by idiots - Othello, Roderigo, Cassio, omg is Cassio a chump. The only other characters with any sense are the women: Desdemona, the sex worker Bianca, and Iago's wife Emilia, the actual linchpin of the play. Shakespeare's women are often powerful. Here’s my favorite part with Desdemona: Othello gets called off to war on their wedding day and he’s like oh, man, bummer, see you when I get back, and she’s like fuuuuuuuuck that, I'm coming too! “The rites for why I love him are bereft me,” she complains. I was promised sex! That was the point! Where is the sex? You’re not getting rid of me until you sex me!


Carver from The Wire and Marianna Bassham in 2010 Othello on the Boston Common, which I got to see and it was fun

Later on, she will feel differently about the other sex. “Oh these men,” she cries, “These men!” Emilia agrees:

They are all but stomachs, and we all but food:
They eat us hungerly, and when they are full
They belch us.

And the ending is as painful as anything Shakespeare's ever written. Watching Desdemona beg for life:

D: But half an hour!
O: Being done, there is no pause.
D: But while I say one prayer!
O: It is too late.

It's wrenching.

So that’s part of what the play’s about: these men, these men, these men and their posturing and their dicks. How weak they are, and what chumps. “Thou hast not half that power to do me harm,” says Emilia optimistically in the final act, “As I have to be hurt.” But it’s a lot of harm.