The Imagery of Othello Talks

In the tragedy Othello Shakespeare uses imagery to talk between the lines, to set moods, to create a more dramatic impact on the mind of the audience, and for other reasons. Lets consider the types and impact of imagery.

A surprising, zoo-like variety of animal imagery occurs throughout the play. Kenneth Muir, in the Introduction to William Shakespeare: Othello, explains the conversion of Othellos diction:

Those who have written on the imagery of the play have shown how the hold Iago has over Othello is illustrated by the language Shakespeare puts into their mouths. Both characters use a great deal of animal imagery, and it is interesting to note its distribution. Iagos occurs mostly in the first three Acts of the play: he mentions, for example, ass, daws, flies, ram, jennet, guinea-hen, baboon, wild-cat, snipe, goats, monkeys, monster and wolves. Othello, on the other hand, who makes no use of animal imagery in the first two Acts of the play, catches the trick from Iago in Acts III and IV. The fondness of both characters for mentioning repulsive animals and insects is one way by which Shakespeare shows the corruption of the Moors mind by his subordinate. (21-22)

H. S. Wilson in his book of literary criticism, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, discusses the influence of the imagery of the play:

It has indeed been suggested that the logic of events in the play and of Othellos relation to them implies Othellos damnation, and that the implication is pressed home with particular power in the

imagery. This last amounts to interpreting the suggestions of the imagery as a means of comment by the author the analogy would be the choruses of Greek tragedy. (66)

The vulgar imagery of Othellos ancient dominates the opening of the play. Standing outside the senators home late at night, Iago uses imagery within a lie to arouse the occupant: Awake! what, ho, Brabantio! thieves! thieves! thieves! / Look to your house, your daughter and your bags! When the senator appears at the window, the ancient continues with coarse imagery of animal lust: Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is topping your white ewe, and you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you'll have your nephews neigh to you; you'll have coursers for cousins and gennets for germans. Francis Ferguson in Two Worldviews Echo Each Other describes the types of imagery used by the antagonist when he slips his mask aside while awakening Brabantio:

Iago is letting loose the wicked passion inside him, as he does from time to time throughout the play, when he slips his mask aside. At such moments he always resorts to this imagery of money-bags, treachery, and animal lust and violence. So he expresses his own faithless, envious spirit, and, by the same token, his vision of the populous city of Venice Iagos world, as it has been called. . . .(132)

After Brabantio and his search party have reached the Moor, he quiets their passions with imagery from nature: Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. The senator, thinking that his daughter has been enchanted by the Moor, employs related imagery in his confrontation with the general: If she in chains of magic were not bound, foul charms, drugs or minerals / That weaken motion, practiser of arts inhibited, prison, bond-slaves and pagans. In the essay Wit and Witchcraft: an Approach to Othello Robert B. Heilman comments that the pervasiveness of images of injury, pain, and torture in Othello has a very strong impact, regardless of who is using them (333).

With the matter of Brabantios accusations settled, Othello discusses the Ottoman advance upon Cyprus with hard, unfeeling images: the flinty and steel couch of war, hardness, wars. This contrasts

sharply with the soft, love-centered imagery of Desdemona, who attests that to his honour and his valiant parts / Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate, and who refers to herself as a moth of peace. She seems to draw the general into her soft ways, as he responds that when light-wing'd toys / Of feather'd Cupid seal with wanton dullness [. . .] Let housewives make a skillet of my helm mythological and domestic imagery.

On the occasion when Iago talks Roderigo out of committing suicide over the loss of Desdemona, he uncharacteristically employs decent, wholesome imagery:

Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our

wills. (1.3)

With the action now relocated to the island of Cyprus, it is Michael Cassio who, in answering Montano regarding the Moors marital status, says that Othellos wife excels the quirks of blazoning pens, our great captain's captain, Give renew'd fire to our extincted spirits, The riches of the ship, and other highly flattering imagery. Waiting at the harbor in Cyprus, Iago employs imagery critical of his Emilia: Sir, would she give you so much of her lips / As of her tongue she oft bestows on me, to the extent that Desdemona labels him a slanderer. David Bevington in William Shakespeare: Four Tragedies comments on the mundane trend in the imagery of the play:

The battle of good and evil is of course cosmic, but in Othello that battle is realized through a taut narrative of jealousy and murder. Its poetic images are accordingly focused to a large extent on the natural world. One cluster of images is domestic and animal, having to do with goats, monkeys, wolves, baboons, guinea hens, wildcats, spiders, flies, asses, dogs, copulating horses and sheep, serpents, and toads; other images, more wide-ranging in scope, include green-eyed monsters, devils, blackness, poisons, money purses, tarnished jewels, music untuned, and light extinguished. (217)

Later, after the cunning ancient has deceived Othello regarding Casio and Desdemona, Othello interrogates Emilia as to his wifes closeness to Cassio. Then he talks with his wife, including copious spiritual imagery: heaven (repeatedly), devils, honest, hell, soul, cherubim, fountain from which my current runs, and Christian. Also the senses of touch and smell are appealed to with the Moors words:

O, ay; as summer flies are in the shambles,

That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed,

Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet

That the sense aches at thee [. . .] . (4.3)

In Act 5, Othellos deliberation on the mode of death for his wife suffocation involves considerable imagery: Yet I'll not shed her blood; / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, / And smooth as monumental alabaster. He reflects, with both mythical and nature imagery, that when he puts out her light

I know not where is that Promethean heat

That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose,

I cannot give it vital growth again.

It must needs wither: I'll smell it on the tree. (5.2)

Shortly before the murder, Othellos words to the waking wife contain spiritual imagery: Have you pray'd to-night, Desdemona? and If you bethink yourself of any crime / Unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace, / Solicit for it straight, and I would not kill thy unprepared spirit; / No; heaven forfend! I would not kill thy soul. Desdemonas replies gravitate toward the spiritual: Then heaven / Have mercy on me! and Then Lord have mercy on me! and never loved Cassio / But with such general warranty of heaven, and But while I say one prayer!

After the Moor commits the murder, Emilia appears and informs that Cassio is alive; this news prompts musical imagery from the Moor: Not Cassio kill'd! then murder's out of tune, / And sweet revenge grows harsh. Learning the truth from subsequent testimonies, Othello makes an image-heavy farewell to his Desdemona before stabbing himself to death:

O cursed slave!

Whip me, ye devils,

From the possession of this heavenly sight!

Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur!

Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! (5.2)

In her book, Everybodys Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack comments on the imagery of darkness and how it supports the evil schemes of the ancient:

In the darkness of this Venetian street, he moves to disrupt Othellos marriage if he can. Later, in the darkness of a street in Cyprus, he will close his trap on Cassio, involving him in a scuffle that will cost him his lieutenancy. Still later, in the dark island outpost, he will set Roderigo to ambush Cassio, and so (he hopes) be rid of both. Simultaneously, in a darkness that he has insinuated into Othellos mind, Desdemona will be strangled. (134)

WORKS CITED

Bevington, David, ed. William Shakespeare: Four Tragedies. New York: Bantam Books, 1980.

Ferguson, Francis. Two Worldviews Echo Each Other. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Shakespeare: The Pattern in His Carpet. N.p.: n.p., 1970.

Heilman, Robert B. Wit and Witchcraft: an Approach to Othello. Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. Rev. Ed. Rpt. from The Sewanee Review, LXIV, 1 (Winter 1956), 1-4, 8-10; and Arizona Quarterly (Spring 1956), pp.5-16.

Mack, Maynard. Everybodys Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Muir, Kenneth. Introduction. William Shakespeare: Othello. New York: Penguin Books, 1968.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos.

Wilson, H. S. On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy. Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1957.