For Wednesday: Othello, Act Three

For Wednesday: Shakespeare’s Othello, Act Three

Only ONE question this time... (which you must answer!)

Act Three is the heart of the play and easily the most controversial, especially as regards how we read our hero, Othello.  In Scene iii, Othello swallows Iago’s suggestions about Desdemona’s unfaithfulness and rages,

Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell!

Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne
To tyrannous hate.  Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,
For ‘tis of aspics’ tongues!...O blood!  Iago, blood! 

An Elizabethan audience would expect a Moor to speak like this, and ultimately for a ‘good’ Moor to turn ‘bad’ as was his nature.  So far, Shakespeare seems to confirm his audiences’ racial prejudices by showing a Moor who is easily deceived (unintelligent?) and prone to wild rages and fits (a savage?).  For this reason, some African-American actors have refused to play the role, seeing it a crude stereotype or even an out-and-out racist portrait.    Of course, before this scene Othello was entirely ‘gentle’ and Iago has been working on him for three entire acts now; would anyone—white, black, or other—turn into a lunatic if they suspected their wife’s infidelity? 

Read Act Three carefully, particularly scene iii, and try to respond to the accusation that Shakespeare creates a stereotypical Moor in Othello, one who is prone to violence and cannot truly love (or think) like a European.  How might you prove OR contradict this reading through what he says—or what Iago says?  If you were the actor or the director, how would you want Othello to be portrayed?  Is there something fundamentally human in him—or is he meant to be a caricature of the “other”—someone who isn’t us and thus cannot share our values?