![]() ![]() The intent of the plot against Othello, Iago continues, is to: Till I am even’d with him, wife for wife, The thought whereofĭoth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards, Not out of absolute lust (though peradventure That she loves him, ’tis apt, and of great credit:Īnd, I dare think, he’ll prove to DesdemonaĪ most dear husband. ![]() That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it He explains the mechanics of the op in Act Two: ![]() Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light. That thinks men honest that but seem to be so, He does this despite recognizing that Othello has a “constant, loving, noble nature” and is an upstanding, decent human. Iago convinces Othello that his newlywed wife, the much-desired Desdemona - who he himself likes, both as a friend and object of desire - is having an affair with Michael Cassio, the younger colleague who got the promotion Iago had sought. The entire plot involves a nasty disinformation campaign he runs against his boss. This is an Elizabethan antecedent to the vile “lusty Black men are coming for our white women” trope disseminated by the KKK and other racists in the Reconstruction period and beyond.Īnd, finally: Iago is a troll. That his wife has maybe, possibly, but probably not actually dallied with a Moor - that introduces a racial element to the dynamic. In other words, Iago’s going to assume this happened, even though he himself doesn’t actually believe it. There is fear of being made a cuckold - in MAGA parlance, a “cuck.” Early in the play, Iago tells us of his suspicion that his boss, the titular Othello, banged his wife, Emilia:Īnd it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets Exchange the M-word for the N-word, and you have the simple, benighted, ugly motive of the Trump rally-goer who hasn’t gotten over the fact that Barack Obama was president. “I hate the Moor,” Iago says, on more than one occasion. Animating all the action is white male grievance about something dumb - in Iago’s case, being passed over for a promotion - and the violent, petty, heartless lengths to which aggrieved white men will go to avenge these perceived slights. Othello, I now realize, applies perfectly to the current moment. The reason Iago goes silent at the end, I theorized, is that, despite the arsenal of 1,700 new words at his disposal, the Bard simply could not figure out what to make his villain say to sufficiently explain his heinous actions. I don’t believe this at all.” Not only that, I was convinced that Shakespeare himself agreed with me. I remember reading it in high school or early college and thinking, “This plot is nuts. The exception, it occurred to me this week, is Othello. The characters may be universal, behaving in the flawed, self-sabotaging way humans always have, but most of us don’t have to fret over how exactly to take out the uncle who is sleeping with our mother to avenge our father’s murder, or whack a king to fulfill the prophecy of some witches, or survive being shipwrecked on a mad sorcerer’s island, or tame a shrew. Do we really need two parts of Henry IV?Īnd the plots aren’t particularly applicable to modern times. We have Be Real to update and Wordle to puzzle over and Netflix to binge. Why five acts, Billy? Can’t you distill it to three? I’m sure the audiences of 1603 were content to take in four-hour theatrical productions, but in 2023, we’re busy. The plays, though? They’re usually, let’s face it, kind of dull. There are clunkers for sure but, at his best, Shakespeare is as good as English verse gets. I’ve written before about Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, but the dude just cranked out top-shelf material, like the rest of us mortals exhale carbon dioxide. As a poet, he is without parallel in the language. The prolific wordsmith coined some 1,700 words, including assassination, zany, bloody, dishearten, obscene, majestic, lonely, and my personal favorite, countless. Shakespeare helped invent modern English. ![]()
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