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The Damnation of Othello

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2021

Paul N. Siegel
Paul N. Siegel*
Affiliation:
Ripon College, Ripon, Wls.
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Extract

Of Shakespeare's four great tragedies the Christian overtones of Othello have been least apprehended. Critics have seen in. it a noble soul caught in the toils of a diabolically cunning being, who tempts him to doubt the divine goodness of one in whom he has absolute faith, but they have failed to see the symbolic force of the characters and the action. For the Elizabethans, however, the noble soul of Othello, the diabolic cunning of Iago, and (he divine goodness of Desdemona would not have had a loosely metaphoric meaning. Desdemona, who in her forgiveness and perfect love, a love requited by death, is reminiscent of Christ, would have represented Christian values; Iago, who in his envious hatred and destructive negativism is reminiscent of Satan, would have represented anti-Christian values. The choice that Othello had to make was between Christian love and forgiveness and Satanic hate and vengefulness. When he exclaimed (III.iii.447—149), “Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow celli / Yield up, 0 love, thy crown and hearted throne / To tyrannous hate,” he was succumbing to the devil, and, like all men who succumb to the devil, his fall was reminiscent of that of Adam.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 5 , December 1953 , pp. 1068 - 1078
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

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References

page 1068 note 1 For Elizabethan denunciations of the feudal tradition of blood revenge and of the Italianate code of honor that prescribed it as being contrary to Christian love and forgiveness, see Fredson Bowers, Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy, 1587–1642 (Princeton Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 8–14.

page 1068 note 2 Certain Sermons or Homilies Appointed to be Read in Churches in the Time of the Late Queen Elizabeth (Oxford Univ. Press, 1822), pp. 63, 66, 83,122,139, 157, etc.

page 1069 note 3 S. L. Bethell's excellent “Shakespeare's Imagery: The Diabolic Images in Othello,” Shakespeare Survey, ed. Allardyce Nicoll, v (1952), 62–80, which I read only titer completing the first draft of this esssy, anticipates my conclusion that in Othello we witness the damnation of s soul. His purpose is, however, primarily to study a set of images, sad he gives little attention to character, speech, sad action in contributing to the symbolic import of the play. Others who have dealt with the Christian implications of Othello are Kenneth 0. Myrick (“The Theme of Damnation in Shakespearean Tragedy,” SP, xxxviii [1941], 235–245), G. Wilson Knight (The Wheel of Fire [Oxford Univ. Press, 19491, 97–119), and Harold C. Goddard (The Meaning of Shakespeare [Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951], pp. 486–491). Myrick sod Knight do not see Othello as damned, and Goddard believes that the play hints at a cosmic reunion between Othello sad Desdemona. In spite of my important differences with them, I am indebted to each of these critics.

page 1069 note 4 If any wretch have put this in your head,“ says Emilia to Othello (iv ii. 15–16), speaking of her husband without knowing it, ”Let heaven requite it with the serpent's curse!“ The reference is clearly to the Bible story of Adam and Eve.

One Christian tradition, later made use of by Mitton, was that Satan's envy of Adum in his bliss impelled him to tempt aim. Cf. Kathleen Ellen Hartwell, Lctantius and Milton (Harvard Univ. Press, 1929), p. 59.

page 1070 note 6 Boras, pp. 51–52.

page 1072 note 7 Modern editors generally follow the Quarto reading of the lines (v.ii.346–348) in which Othello speaks of himself as 'one whose hand, / Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe.“ Richmond Noble—Skakespeare's Biblical Knowledge (New York, 1935), pp. 91-93—argues convincingly, however, for the Folio reading ”base Iudean.“ ”Iudean“ would refer to Judas Iscariot, who, like Othello, killed himself in despair at his guilt and whose kiss of betrayal, bringing death to Christ, is recalled by Othello's words. (v.ii.358), ”I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee.“ ”Just as Judas threw away hit Saviour, the moat precious possession of his Tribe, to be (Othello) destroyed what had been his moat precious bleating.“ ”Pearl“ not only refers to Christ but alludes to the ”pearl of great price“ (Matt xiii.46), the kingdom of heaven and the soul whose abode it la. Cf. Macbeth, iiii.68–69: ”And mine eternal jewel/Given to the common enemy of man,“ I.e., his immortal soul given to the devil, who (Rev. xii.9) ”deceiveth all the world.“

page 1073 note 8 Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, tr. George Colville (1556), ed. Ernest Belfort Bax (London, 1897), pp. 51–52. Bradley writes (p. 181 n.): “Desdemona's sweetness and forgiveness are not based on religion, and her only way of accounting for her undeserved suffering is by an appeal to Fortune: ‘It is my wretched fortune’ (iv.ii.128).” Desdemona's acceptance of her wretched fortune is, however, Christian endurance of adversity as God's will. She is, at “A Sermon of Christian Love and Charity” recommended (Certain Sermons, p. 65), following the example of Christ in taking his “cup of death” with the words “Thy will be done.” The word “fortune” does not imply a rejection of the concept of divine

providence. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance followed Boethius in emphasizing the mutability of the things of this world while maintaining that, uncertain n life in this world is, it is under the control of the divine power which hid created the order by which it operates, an order of which seeming chance is a part. In the very next lint after the one which Bradley quotes, Dasdemona replies, in answer to Iago's question “How comes this trick upon hisa [Othello]?” “Nay, heaven doth know.” Men are in the dark, but heaven knows all things, permits the suffering of the good for its own purposes, and will perform justice—this is the feeling communicated to the audience, as it observes Iago's malevolently ironic pretense of ignorance met by Desdemona's faith in an all-seeing divine providence. Far from being, as Bradley says (p. 181 n.), “almost strictly secular” In her view, Desdemona is, although she does not speak in the flat, doctrinal terms of the goad angel of the morallties, a Christian figure. To Othello's question “Are not von a strumpet?” she replies (iv.ii.82–85):

No, as I am a Christian:

If to preserve this vessel for my lord

From any other foul unlawful touch

Be not to be a strumpet, I am none.

She is here, as she continues to be in her cry (iv.ii. 88) “O, heaven forgive us” in response to Othelle's unjust accusation and in her hope (ivii.135) “heaven pardon him” for the unknown villain who has calumniated her, “made one with Christ,” in the words of “A Sermon against Whoredom and Uncleanness” (Certain Sermons, p. 122): “And a little before he [St. Paul] saith, Do ye not know, that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a whore? ... How unseemly a thing hi it then to cease to he incorporate or embodied and made one with Christ...”

page 1075 note 9 Thomas Adams, The Diuells Banket (London, 1614), pp. 58–59 Quoted by Bowers, p. 31.

page 1077 note 10 It was one of the beliefs of the time that the wicked suffer within themselves torments anticipating those they ate to suffer in hell. Cf. Myrick, p. 233, and L. A. Cormican, “Medieval Idiom in Shakespeare: II,” Scrutiny, xvii (1951), 305. Othello's agony at having deprived himself of the divine goodness of Deidemona may also be regarded as the temporal prelude to the eternal agony he is to suffer. According to the theology depicted in Dante and inherited by the Elizabethans, the worst of hell's torments is the realization of one's eternal exclusion from divine goodness as a result of one's own action.