Othello, Act 1, Scene 2, lines 1-27

By the mid-1970s, the job market for PhD’s in English was bleak, so I was lucky to receive an offer from Wellesley College. I had solid credentials and strong recommendations, but so did countless others who applied for the position. I think too about all the highly qualified people who have struggled and failed to find jobs in the humanities in the even more difficult decades since.

In college and graduate school, I’d been trained by terrific teachers, expert close readers, and, as it turned out, “close reading” was the approach to literature that everyone on the Wellesley faculty believed in and put into practice in their courses. When I spoke in my interview about teaching, talked about a few poems, and described some assignments, I could sense that members of the department liked what I was saying. They felt comfortable with me, and I had the same reaction to them. They were doing what I valued and had been taught to do.

My good fortune came to mind again last week in my Shakespeare course. It’s always invigorating to be in contact with his dramatic language and the characters he makes come alive, each voice the creation of a consciousness. Here’s Othello’s first appearance on stage:

Enter Othello, Iago, and Attendants with torches.

Iago: Though in the trade of war I have slain men
Yet do I hold it very stuff o’th’ conscience
To do no contrived murder: I lack iniquity
Sometimes to do me service. Nine or ten times
I had thought t’ have yerked him here, under the ribs.

Othello: ’Tis better as it is.

Five simple words: “Tis better as it is.” Othello’s tone and bearing show us he’s not the man Iago and Roderigo derided in the previous scene. He’s confident, self-assured. But he’s outside Iago’s demonic mind, suspects nothing, is in the dark about his subordinate’s evil intentions. We know Iago is dishonest; Othello does not.

Iago then completes the iambic pentameter line that Othello began, and expresses his concern about the threats and accusations that Desdemona’s father Brabantio has directed against him:

                                    Nay, but he prated
And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms
Against your honour.
That with the little godliness I have
I did full hard forbear him. But I pray, sir,
Are you fast married? Be assured of this,
That the magnifico is much beloved
And hath in his effect a voice potential
As double as the duke’s: he will divorce you
Or put upon you what restraint or grievance
The law, with all his might to enforce it on,
Will give him cable.

Othello replies, again with five words: “Let him do his spite.” Shakespeare could have stopped there, but instead he makes this unadorned phrase the point of departure for Othello’s voice at its most opulent and commanding—the resonating images and combinations of words that the critic G. Wilson Knight defined as “the Othello music”:

My services, which I have done the signiory,
Shall out-tongue his complaints. ’Tis yet to know –
Which, when I know that boasting is an honor,
I shall promulgate – I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege, and my demerits
May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune
As this that I have reached. For know, Iago,
But that I love the gentle Desdemona
I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea’s worth. But look, what lights come yond?

Enter Cassio, with Officers and torches.

“Spite,” which introduces this passage, is the desire to hurt, offend, or irritate. It signifies malice, but in Shakespeare’s era, it also suggested petty annoyance, inconsequential ill will. Othello acknowledges Brabantio’s inimical feeling but believes it cannot hurt him. Shakespeare gives him an aura of power held in reserve: “Tis yet to know.” Othello isn’t a braggart, but one day he’ll declare his lineage, the story of how he came to be who he is.

He will “promulgate” it, a wonderful word that derives from Latin roots that mean to bring out publicly, to publish, to cause to come forth. That’s the word in the First Folio text (1623); the Quarto text (1622) is close in meaning but less common: “provulgate.” These words appear nowhere else in the Shakespeare canon, and, in both texts, they’re followed by “fetch,” a concrete verb of Old English and Germanic origin: to go after and then bring back, from one place to another.

“Demerits” is intriguing because for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, it had opposite meanings. It could refer to merits, to features or facts that call for praise or reward. But it also could carry a negative ring, as it does for us today. Does Othello have “demerits,” that is, faults, failings? Perhaps he does. But they do not amount to much, and whatever they may be, Othello will profess them openly, “unbonneted,” gallantly, hat off, no need for concealment or undue deference.

Othello affirms to Iago, and to himself, that he comes from royal ancestry. His status is as high as that of the Venetians he serves, and it’s the daughter of one of them that he, an equal in his own eyes, has married. “As this that I have reached”: the tight rhythm indicates everything is properly in place.

“Reached” means achieved, attained. It’s a stressed word, emphasized by a period. Shakespeare wants us to hear in it the sense of success gained over time. Othello has performed services for the state; his lineage is noble; he has done nothing wrong, has nothing to apologize for. Still, there’s the intimation that for him to get where he is, he had to strive and labor for it.

And there’s a detail that’s a little confusing in Othello’s phrasing—confusing in a way that reveals another turn or twist in his relationship to Desdemona. He says it’s only because he loves her that he “would” marry her and hence give up his freedom, his “free condition.” The implication I hear is that he has not married Desdemona yet—that’s something he would do, will do, as if it were in the future, a commitment to come. He’s clinging to the image of the free and roaming adventurer he was before he married. But he has married Desdemona already; he isn’t the person he was.

This is the first time Othello refers to Desdemona by name. He loves her, and she is “gentle,” kind, mild, courteous, of fine background. In a stage production, I’d want the actor to infuse these emotions into the four syllables of Des-de-mo-na, as if she were a beguiling work of art.

Shakespeare could have given more to Othello to elaborate his love, but he chose not to. Instead, in a turn we might not have expected, Othello describes the sacrifice he has made, the relinquishing of his liberty.

Formerly, Othello was (the final syllable is stressed) “unhoused,” which Samuel Johnson glosses as “free from domestic cares. A thought natural to an adventurer.” As we learn later, Othello has not resided in houses; he has lived in tents (1.3.86) amid his geography-spanning battles and exploits.

“Circumscription” is another Latinate word: boundary, restriction, confinement. For Shakespeare, it signaled limitation in space, as opposed to omnipresence or infiniteness.

Othello had freedom. Now he doesn’t. All the treasures at the bottom of the seas could not have induced him to change. It’s the love of Desdemona that has done it. He knows the treasures are there, but since he has never seen them, he can imagine them as immeasurable. He forgets they got there from shipwrecks, disasters that sent lives and fortunes to the ocean’s bottom.

Othello’s love for Desdemona is intense and exhilarating to him, but it’s fragile, for it has come at a cost. This warrior, an older man, different in race and background, celebrates his passion for his beloved even as he wonders whether the sacrifice of his freedom was worth it. Has he given up too much, lost more than he gained? That’s Othello’s fear, the vulnerability Iago exploits.

For many rewarding years, I’ve spoken with students about Shakespearean moments like this one, learning more and making new discoveries. And about great moments in Milton and Wordsworth too, Frost and Stevens, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Hemingway, Ralph Ellison…. I’m grateful for my good luck on that interview day half a century ago.

William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, where he enjoys teaching courses on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other American writers. His recent publications include essays on Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway.