Hi everyone it's Lauren and welcome to the
latest episode in my series on
Shakespeare, today's video is going to be
about Othello. If you would like a more
general overview of Shakespeare I will
link my Introduction to Shakespeare up here
and also in the description box below
I've also already done one of these videos on
Romeo and Juliet if there are any other
plays that you would like me to take a
closer look at then please leave your
requests in the description box below
Othello is a story of treachery and
downfall, our story centers on Othelo
who is a general in Venice and is
described as a Moor, now although this is
commonly taken to mean
West African, Moorish actually just means
not white, it could mean anyone with dark
skin it could be someone with Arabic
heritage and Othello's race has been
interpreted in many different ways
throughout the years. Othelo is very
well thought of in Venice, he has risen to
the top of the army through his
prowess in battle and he's often
described as noble. However, the play opens
just after the secret marriage of
Othelo to Desdamona, who is the
daughter of a local rich family and
this mixed-race wedding does cause
several issues within the social structure
her father in fact thinks that Desdamona
must have been bewitched in order for
her to disobey her father and marry the
moor. Othello's real downfall however
is plotted by his ensign Iago for
reasons unknown, we don't know the full
extent of Iago's hatred for Othello
we just know that he despises him
He achieves his aims by arousing a
jealousy in Othello and tricking him
into believing that his wife is having an
affair with his lieutenant Michael
Cassio and Iago does this by
whispering thoughts and images into
Othello's ear but also by stealing Desdamona's
handkerchief and leaving it in Cassio's
room, which Othello then takes as a sign
that Desdamona has given this symbol
of her affection to Cassio and on that
very small thing Othello then goes
utterly mad with jealousy and rage and
proceeds to murder his wife. Othello is
a very interesting protagonist because
although we see that he does have very
many good and noble qualities we also
see that he is disposed to these
weaknesses of rage and jealousy and
anger
However this portrayal is obviously a very
rounded portrayal of somebody who is not
white
and Shakespeare does something very
interesting with what audience's
expectations would have been at the time
if they're depicted with a with a black
character on stage they probably
would have expected that character
to end up being evil
whereas really in this play
although he's an antihero, Othelo is
more the victim or the hero of the piece
and a Iago is actually very very
clearly the villain. Iago is a
fascinating character, he has more lines
in the play than Othello does and what's
very interesting about him is that we never
fully understand his motives. We open the
play with a conversation between him
and his friend Rodrigo
Iago says that he's very unhappy
with Othello because he has promoted
Cassio to lieutenant when he should have promoted
Iago. Rodrigo hates Othello because he
wanted to marry Desdemona and Othello
has gone and done that before he could
So through this interchange we see Iago
acknowledging to Rodrigo that he hates
Othello and he says 'I am not what I am'
which means to say that he's not as he appears
and although he appears to serve and be
friendly to Othello, that is actually an act and he's
planning to destroy him and take his
revenge
Although this is the motive that Iago
gives to Rodrigo at the beginning of
the play he then never mentions the
issue ever again, in fact even when he
manages to get Cassio fired from his
position for being drunk, Iago
doesn't stop and say 'okay, fine I've achieved
my aims now' he actually continues to
push Othello further down his path to
destruction
Similarly when Iago's wife Emilia finds
Desdamona's handkerchief she says
'my husband has asked me to steal this for a long
time and now I'll give it to him' which
implies that Iago has been wanting
this handkerchief for whatever reason from
before Cassio was promoted to lieutenant
so he constantly says 'I hate the moor' we
don't really know why we don't
understand this deep-seated hatred but we
can probably guess it hasn't just come
from this one act of promoting Cassio
above him. He also displays an almost
psychopathic lack of empathy and when
people have to die in order for
him to achieve his aims he's completely fine
with that. The fact that he's able to
convince everyone around him that he is
honest and true; he's constantly referred
to
as 'Honestly Iago' implies that he is
able to put on different faces
depending on who he's with
and although he professes to mainly hate
Othello and I suppose Cassio, he makes no
bones about killing Rodrigo when he gets
in his way, he doesn't care about the
fact that Othello is about to murder
Desdamona and he kills his own wife when
she's starts
spilling the truth about all of
his actions to everybody. He doesn't even
seem to have empathy or concern for
himself, even when he gets caught at the
end of the play he doesn't seem that
concerned and he just tells everyone
'I will speak no more' so even then we don't get his
motive as to why he did it. His behavior
is very reminiscent of psychopathic
serial killers! There's some really
interesting themes that come out of
Othello, one of the most obvious ones is
jealousy and revenge even right at the
beginning of the play we see Iago
saying he's jealous of Cassio and he will
enact revenge on Othello. Rodrigo is
jealous of Othello and then of course
Othello is driven mad by his jealousy and
his need to enact revenge on Cassio and
Desdemona due ton what Iago's
been saying to him. In fact, the only
characters that don't seem to portray
these traits are Desdamona and
Cassio themselves. One of the other
themes of the play toys with is the idea of
faith and I don't necessarily mean religious
faith here, but more faith in people and
faith in what you see as opposed to what
you believe. At the beginning of the
play Othello has a lot of faith in his
wife, he knows that she's true but at
the same time he has a lot of faith in
Iago, he trusts what Iago is telling him
when he's drip-feeding these subtle
hints or suspicions that the
Desdamona was cheating on him
The way the Iago manages to convince
Othello is very interesting as well
because it's a mix of Iago telling
Othello what he's seen and Othello just
trusting that and then also him showing
proof to Othello. But the proofs that he
gets are actually very small, so his proof is
Iago telling Othello that he's seen
Cassio with the handkerchief, Othello doesn't
actually see the handkerchief himself, he
does however question Desdamona for
the handkerchief and he realizes that she
doesn't have it and he takes that
absolute proof. Iago also orchestrates a
meeting between himself and Cassio
talking to Cassio about Bianca, his whore
and makes
Cassio say these lewd things, which Othello
believes are about Desdamona so this is a proof
which Othello is seeing, but as the
audience we know that Othello is not
seeing what he believes he's in fact seeing
and so there's an interesting mix of
characters believing what they are told
rather than what they see, but then also
when they do see things, believing them
to be what they want them to be; and then
we also have the audience knowing this
so there's a lot of dramatic irony here
where the audience knows a lot that
the characters onstage don't because
Iago is telling us his plans
It's also an interesting point that
Othelo chooses to believe Iago and not
Desdamona, who protests herr innocence to
the end. When it really is a case of one
word against the other, was jealousy
always within Othello and he just needed
that little spark of doubt in order for him to
act upon it? Another interesting theme to
come out of the play is obviously the subject
of race, but also race and isolation
because Othello is the only black
person in the cast of characters
that we have and interestingly, although
there are racial slurs used by Rodrigo
and Iagom we don't really see Iago
in his personal time, in his soliloquies
hating Othello because of his
race specifically. He uses racial slurs to
Brabantio in order to insight Brabantio's
anger. So we don't really know if
Iago's hatred stems from the fact
that Othello isn't white. Othello is
also displayed as a fully rounded
character, so it's very clear from this
play that any prejudices towards
Othello aren't necessarily Shakespeare's own
prejudices and he's actually using
different prejudices....I've said that word a lot!
that stem from all the different characters
so ones that would exist in different
people in society, in order to make a
comment on it, because it's very easy to
ascribe bad behaviours to people
who look differently to you and for the
probably all-white audiences of the
16th century or people who very rarely
saw people who weren't white, it would
have normally been very easy to make
dark-skinned characters bad and evil and
it's a very interesting portrayal in
Othello that he's a very fully
rounded individual and it's not as
simple as that. Something else I always
find interesting is how Othello has
been adapted onto the stage, so an
adaptation that i would highly recommend
is the Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Fishburne
one from 1995. I always find that there are a lot of
interesting / awkward / self-important
views that come from actors wanting to
play Othello
Very famously Laurence Olivier
'blacked up' for Othello in a National Theatre
production which I think he won oscars
for. It's a performance that is highly
lauded and everybody thought was
fantastic.Aas somebody in the modern day I
find white actors wanting to play Othello
a very entitled position because there's
no reason why you can't just not play
this one part, I mean i'm even Michael
Gambon blacked up to play it in the
eighties which makes you think 'Michael, really?'
Patrick Stewart has played
Othello in a production where the rest of
the cast were entirely black so it was more
of a comment of him being other but
because he was white and at least he didn't
black up. At the same time I kind of
question whether that play's really
necessary, like is it necessary
for Patrick Stewart to play Othello? Why
not just not play him? So it is an
interesting question and because the
central subjects of Othello are very much
about race, it really makes for some
interesting adatations, whether people try
and do it very very literally so that
Othello is black and everybody else is
white or whether you have a more mixed
race cast. I think that's one of the
reasons why it's performed so regularly because
there's so many different things that you
can do with it and the themes of kind of
race especially but jealousy and hatred
and love and devastation are all themes that are
relevant today as well. So I hope you
enjoyed this video, I'd love to hear more
from you if you have any more thoughts
on the play, and I will see you in my
next video, bye!