0:00 [Music] in this video we'll be looking at the theme of jealousy in othello [Music] one of the most commonly cited causes for othello's fall is his jealousy according to prominent shakespearean academic emma smith othello is the tragedy of a black man in a white world persuaded that his innocent wife has been unfaithful to him and prompted by jealousy to murder her but is jealousy really the problem or is it simply the symptom of a bigger underlying cause to understand this we'll need to first look at the concept of hamasha like many terms in classical literary
0:46 theory hamasha is a semantic can of worms that continues to define neat interpretation since the inception in aristotle's poetics homage has been defined as a tragic flaw an error in judgment or even a pre-ordained misstep but the simplest way to understand the term is a character fault or a mistake that causes someone to fail or be destroyed but calling it a fault is somewhat misleading because the word fault connotes moral failing and the hamashia of tragic heroes isn't always a bad trait for example most of us would agree that macbeth's hamasha is his ambition but ambition coupled
1:32 with moderation and wisdom can in fact be a good thing in a similar vein hamlet is his absolutism but absolutism in the face of temptations could be the sign of a principled person so with othello then is jealousy really the hamashia that transforms him from a gracious general to a fallen and matricidal wreck or is jealousy merely the symptom of a more troubling character trait bubbling underneath from which othello cannot escape and must contend with to understand the intersections between othello's genesee and his overall character it's important to look at the broader diplomatic currents in late elisabethan
2:19 england the english spanish war from 1585 to 1604 saw the continual erosion of english and spanish relations with elizabeth the first and philip ii of spain at loggerheads with each other over everything from politics to trade [Music] keen to form alliances as a bulwark against spanish forces elizabeth the first reached out to the moroccan sultan and established the barbary company in 1585 which strengthened anglo-moroccan diplomatic and trading ties during this period the presence of moorish emissaries grew at the english court now these relations continued into the jacobean era which was during james the first spring
3:05 and with shakespeare being so firmly attuned to the political rhythms of james the first escort the bard was slightly inspired by these quote foreign aliens at once close and distant to construct the protagonist of othello [Music] like the merchant of venice othello is about an ethnic other who must find his way in a world of white venetians and like the jewish play this moorish play is also based on an italian source text specifically cynthia's jun capitano moral translated as a moorish captain in which a moorish general falls victim to the evil orchestrations of his phoenician enzyme [Music]
3:52 in many ways othello is one of shakespeare's most manichaean characters he is both man and beast hero and villain protector and intruder lover and murderer captain and criminal fair and black [Music] and the speed with which othello switches on one identity or the other is a barometer of the clarity and control he has over a given situation perhaps it's ironic for a military man but we see throughout the play that the less othello acts the clearer and more in control he is but on the other hand each concrete action he takes only pushes him further down the tragic abyss so the identity of othello as an alien
4:38 is central to our interpretation of how hamashia works in this play because everything the more does and says is tied to his self-perception as such his terrible actions are to some extent catalyzed by a flawed sense of self and subsequently this breeds the jealous sentiments that drive him to destruction again self-perception is the cause and jealousy is but the sympathy he is not really motivated by jealousy but jealousy eggs him on in his quest for acceptance both from himself and from those around him let's now start with our first key idea jealousy is often symptomatic of deeper
5:25 insecurities [Music] let's begin with jago the notorious antagonist of the play most people think of othello as a play of marital and sexual envy but the genesis lies in fact in professional jealousy we know this from the very beginning of act one when jago expounds on his hatred for the more to the gullible but well-endowed rodrigo who is in love with destimona and is jealous of othello for having won the ladies affections well we soon find out that there are many reasons for yago's dislike of othello the first one he offers is that the moore has passed him over for a promotion according to the enzyme he was on track
6:10 to become lieutenant but the position went to one michael cassio instead as he complains three great ones of the city and personal suit to make me his lieutenant of capped to him and by the faith of man i know my price i am worth no worse a place these are the words of a man with a wounded ego steeped in disappointment and bitterness the mercenary addiction of my price and worth suggests that thiago sees professional relationships as no more than commercial exchanges which foreshadows the unemotional ruthless approach he will soon go on to execute his plot of poisoning othello's mind the word
6:57 place here meaning office or rank reflects iago's sense of entitlement as if there is a specific position that he thinks is exclusive to him and waiting for him to assume this notion of singular exclusivity and thwarted prestige will recur in yago's later remarks particularly when he alludes to the rumor of othello and his wife emilia's affair notice by the way that he makes this claim of knowing his worth before he relates cassio's professional triumph which tells us that the root of his discontent is the sense that he has been cheated out of what he believes he rightfully deserves more so than in any strong jealousy towards of cassio indeed it's arguable if he even
7:43 actually does envy cassio whom he disdains as a quote great arithmetician sarcastically of course and one who has never set a squadron in the field someone who is a bookish etheric with mere prattle without practice and soon we realize that jago isn't just sort about othello spern he also suspects that there is something fishy going on between his captain and his wife emilia towards the end of act one yaga reiterates that i hate them all and it is thought abroad that twix my sheet he has done my office i've done my office means taken my position and what's interesting is that shakespeare uses professional diction
8:30 to describe a domestic identity that of the husband perhaps the implication here is that jago sees his marriage in similar terms as he does his occupation both are competitions in which he can't bear to see himself lose especially not to a racial outsider whom he alludes to as black othello in act 2 scene 3. so the sheer thought of emilia having cheated on him with a quote black beast is enough to drive jago up the wall and no corroboration is necessary as he goes on to say i know not to be true but i premier suspicion in that kind would do as if for surety
9:16 at the end of act two scene one yago reiterates the suspicion in a soliloquy as he says for that i do suspect the lusty more hath leaped into my seat the thought whereof doth like a poisonous mineral nor my inwards and nothing can or shall content my soul till i am even with him wife for wife or failing so yet that i put them all at least into a jealousy so strong that judgment cannot occur recalling such earlier references to one's position as in no worse a place in act one scene one and done my office in act one scene three we see the notion of a unique station reflected in the phrase my seat
10:01 professionally othello may be ranked higher than jago but domestically yago must maintain his patriarchal dominance even if it is wheeled over just one person his wife and to have even this taken away from him is unthinkable and the last blow that iago's ego will stand for after all losing a lieutenancy is bad enough but to be emasculated is unacceptable and despite this being no more than a suspicion iago evokes in a simile and personification that just the thought of it eats away at him like a poisonous mineral gnawing my inwards such is the fragility of his manhood and ego which is really what troubles yago but instead of confronting his crippling
10:48 insecurities he externalizes his rage and shame onto the other whom he calls the lusty more [Music] the verb leaped in leaped into my seat tells us that jaguar views othello as a predatory animal rather than a human being and that his bubbling plot against them all would be as savage and undertaking jago's deep-rooted insecurities however are secondary to those of othello whose fate is basically one big tragedy of insecurities and for all his confidence and sophistication othello is painfully aware of his inadequacies whether they be in manner society or in speech
11:34 the first glimpse of this comes in act one scene three when the moor defends himself at the council chamber against provincial's accusations of him stealing desdemona but before othello gets to the main point about him being neither a sorcerer nor a kidnapper he prefaces that rude am i in my speech and little blessed with the soft phrase of peace but since these arms of mine had seven years pith till not some nine moons wasted they have used their dearest action in the tented field and little of this great world can i speak more than pertains to feats of broil and battle and therefore little shall i grace my cause in speaking for myself now much has been said about the irony
12:20 in the speech which is of course the conspicuous lack of rudeness in othello's oration for not only is the more naught cause with his words he is incredibly eloquent almost poetic his syntax here is marked by the use of hyperbotan which is the inversion of normal word order as in rude am i in my speech and little of this great world can i speak and therefore little shall i grace my cause and speaking for myself this technique shifts the first person pronouns of eye and mind to the back of the line which enables the fellow to convey the impression of self-defacing humility of course he then goes on to humble brag by relating the rich experiences and stories of his battles and travels
13:07 but the point here is that he acutely registers the need to appear hyper well-mannered in front of the phoenicians [Music] this awareness however belies the very self-consciousness he feels as a moorish outsider in a white society as if he has to compensate for his alien status by being extra eloquent extra agreeable and extra tactful now that's all good and well at this stage in the play but othello's self-awareness of not belonging reveals for us the wobbly foundations of his confidence which will later morph into a much deadlier instinct at the hands of yago's monstrous meddling indeed as we see in act 3 scene 3 when
13:53 yago starts pouring his pestilence into a fellow's ear othello's composure starts to crack and out spills his most incriminating insecurities atiago's suggestion that desdemona may be up to no good with cassio and that othello should look to your wife observe her well with cassio the moore immediately doubts himself and exposes the niggling anxieties within him that will soon cloud his judgment as he reflects if i do prove her haggard though that of justice were my dear heartstrings i'd whistle her off and let her down the wind to pray at fortune happily but i am black and have not those soft parts of conversation that
14:39 chambers have although i am declined into a veil of years yet that's not much she's gone i am abused and my relief must be to loathe her [Music] for i am black and she is white for i am declined and she is young these implied contrasts while previously the mark of a humanistic triumph in the celebration of the fellow and destimonas nuptials are now instead reframed as shameful comparative points by the self-conscious more the irony of course is that destimona fell for him precisely because he is a foreigner although of course her love goes beyond a mere fascination with exoticism and also because he is much older and
15:24 more mature othello's remark that he has declined into the veil of years also for both the decline which characterizes his trajectory from this point onwards in the play and is reinforced by the symbolic image of a low area of land a valley connoted by the word fail as othello becomes more convinced by destimona's falseness he equates the alleged dishonor of her name with the black complexion of his face as he goes on to say by the world i think my wife be honest and think she is not i think that thou art just and think thou art not i'll have some proof her name that was as fresh as diane's visage is now begrimed and black as mine own
16:12 face as othello agonizes over the tug of paradoxes between thinking his wife honest and dishonest believing jago to be just and not he wavers but he soon confirms all without the some proof that he had asked for it's ironic that he should use past tense in a simile of desdemona's name that was as fresh as diane's visage because the audience knows at this moment that desdemona remains chaste and pure despite othello's misguided accusations and diane here is an allusion to diana who is the roman goddess of chastity and of the moon but othello then goes on to parallel destimona's
16:57 sullied name with his begrimed and black face and this is problematic because the blackness of his face is but as physical objective truth which does not in itself carry positive or negative connotations and yet we see that othello has internalized the stereotypical associations of blackness with evil which he here reaffirms in this false equation of moral fallenness and dark skin let's now move on to our second key idea jealousy defies logic and reason we tend to think of othello and to an extentiago
17:43 as the only agent of jealousy in the play but even a minor character like roberto who is destimona's dad and a venetian senator is afflicted with this disease of what jago calls the green-eyed monster roberto is purely shakespeare's invention as cynthia's text doesn't include this father figure now interestingly we see the shadow of sherlock in brabacho both being fathers of daughters who have married men they disapprove of but there is a crucial difference between and bravancho while sherlock has always despised christians and lorenzo the man shylock's daughter jessica elopes with is a christian robancho was apparently friendly to a fellow before he found out
18:30 about the latter's marriage to his daughter as we find out from othello's testimony at the council chamber in act one scene three with brabacho in attendance is it possible then for someone to be perfectly cordial to another on professional terms but to be absolutely repulsed by that same person on matters of familial relations now some readers have attributed bravancho's revulsion towards othello to pure racism but there's more to it than that which i think points to a good amount of paternal jealousy where a possessive father can't quite let go of his daughter the fact that brabancho didn't like rodrigo as a suitor is early evidence of this as he says
19:16 in act one scene one i have charged thee not to hunt about my doors in honest plainness thou hast heard me say my daughter is not for thee robancho tells rodrigo this at the start of the play and it's only after he realizes that othello is the alternative that he changes stat and says to rodrigo oh would you had had her robancho's immediate assumption is that othello must have stolen his daughter despite him a having spent much time with othello and b presumably having a solid understanding of his own child destimona we know that brebancho likes othello as a person when the latter tells the duke and senators that her father loved me often fighted me
20:04 still questioned me the story of my life from year to year the battles sieges fortunes that i have passed i ran it through even from my boyish days to the very moment he made me tell it notice the active verbs othello uses here in relation to probancho and loved me invited me questioned me bade me so the emphasis is that brabancho was in fact the quarter in their relationship and he was the one who had taken the proactive initiative of inviting othello over to his house and asking about his exotic life stories so contrary to probancho's accusation of othello being the unwelcome intruder
20:49 we see that the opposite is the case and that if anything robancho was largely responsible for othello and destimona's marriage having facilitated that proximity between the moor and his daughter yet brabancho while himself charmed by the moore speech somehow cannot fathom that his daughter would be equally attracted to the man and insists that she must have been charmed by sorcery instead upon seeing the moor after he finds out about the marriage brabancho draws his sword and barks oh thou fowl thief where hast thou stowed my daughter damned as thou art thou hast enchanted her but i'll refer me to all things of sense if she in chains of magic were not bound
21:36 whether a mage so tender fair and happy so opposite to marriage that she shunned the wealthy curled darlings of our nation would ever have to incur a general mock run from a garage to the bosom of such a thing as thou to fear not to delight that thou has practiced on her with foul charms abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals that weaken motion i'll have it disputed on tests probable and probable to thinking besides showing his rage in this moment robancho betrays the logical gaps in his thought first just because desdemona have shunned the wealthy curled darlings of our nation a reference to rich white venetian
22:22 suitors doesn't mean that she is opposed to marriage per se this is what we call a non-sequitur which is a statement in which the conclusion doesn't logically follow from its premise and robancho attempts to bridge the illogicality in his claim by pointing to othello's supposed foul charms drugs or minerals as the cause it's hard to think that the father in calmer circumstances would also believe his daughter to be so deprived of independent thinking especially when we'll very soon witness in the next scene act one scene three testimonials clarity of mind and soundness in judgment it's surely ironic then that probancho should conclude this rant with a pseudo appeal to thought
23:08 as with the range of epistemic addiction i'll have it disputed on as probable and palpable to thinking since this very speech exposes the fundamental lack and reason of probancho's accusation towards the mall [Music] now being the consummate schemer that he is yago understands the reason-shaped hole that resides in jealousy and so he manipulates this to extreme ends for his evil self-interest having asked his wife amelia to steal desdemona's handkerchief which is a gift from a fellow iago tells us that he'll plant this prop in cassio's house and devise a situation wherein othello will see cassio
23:54 holding onto the hanger chief therefore jumping to the conclusion that destimona must have given it to her secret lover and jago is confident that this plan will work because he knows that triforce light as air are to the jealous confirmation strong as roofs of holy writ the clash between the juxtaposition of light and strong is couched within the simile of trifles lightest air too strong as proofs as holy writ but to compare two things that are in fact so similar exposes the very illogicality of the comparison to the jealous then even the most trivial things would seem to carry the weight of scriptural words which is why jealousy
24:41 so often drives people to make erroneous links between the fake and the real the flimsy and the legitimate [Music] in a less sinister iteration of this idea emilia offers practical wisdom on the baseless nature of jealousy as she understands the futility of getting the jealous-minded to see any reason at all responding to destimona's bewilderment over the cause of othello's rage emilia says but jealous souls will not be answered so they are not ever jealous for the cause but jealous for they are jealous tis a monster begot upon itself born
25:26 on itself emelia's metaphor of jealousy as a monster echoes her husband's earlier reference to that green eyed monster in act 3 scene 3. her most striking line though is but jealous for they are jealous the tautology of which shows that there need not be any reason for the breeding of jealous thoughts or emotions the epistrophe in the line begot upon itself born on itself reinforces this vicious circularity of jealousy it's like a pernicious weed that grows without end and the more it grows the more it harms its host and this point should also remind us of jago's characterization of the green eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on
26:13 finally the self-echoing homophones of souls and so and jealous souls will not be answered so suggests a sense of stasis and in turn also points to the impossibility of progress in terms of rational dialogue with someone like othello finally we come to our third key idea jealousy can be destructive and by now we see that jealousy well not always the primary cause of events is of course the gravitational source of all destruction in the play consider this othello is jealous of cassio which leads him to kill destimona and ultimately to commit suicide robancho is jealous of
27:00 othello and is then at the end killed by grief rodrigo is jealous of the fellow and in turn at the end he is killed by argo yago is jealous of cassio and othello he then goes on to kill his wife amelia and is ultimately punished bianca is jealous of othello's supposed newer friend and is there not taken seriously by cassio the only other character in the play who isn't jealous of anyone bar destimona and emilia is cassio cassio isn't jealous of anyone and he's the one who ultimately gets to live on and rule over cyprus and by the way this summary only takes into account the main characters
27:46 so we're not considering anxiety characters like the duke of venice lorovico graciano etc so for all the men except for cassio jealousy is the engine that sets in motion the subsequent destructive and self-destructive events had rodrigo not being jealous of the more successful courtship of destimona he wouldn't have become a pawn fiago's poisonous plot had yago not been jealous of cassio's promotion and othello's superiority perhaps he wouldn't have had a stronger motivation to wreak havoc had othello not been jealous of cassio's relative youth and charm
28:31 he wouldn't have fallen for yago's prevarications [Music] finally had robancho not been jealous of othello's supposed thievery of his daughter he wouldn't have died of grief [Music] even for someone like bianca who doesn't meet the fatal end of the other female characters in the play her jealousy still doesn't win her any respect from the man she loves and while destimona and amelia are not themselves victims of jealousy they both fall victim to the victims of
29:18 jealousy desdemona is eventually killed by a rage-filled jealousy blinded husband and amelia is stabbed by her evil machiavellian husband unable to counter the force of the husband's moral and emotional influence the two female characters are thus seen to be scapegoats of a patriarchal social structure in which good sense and rational judgment are subsumed under the overcast of violent male egos finally to wrap this video up let's just quickly conclude whether othello really is a tragedy of jealousy and let's do that by looking at othello's final speech in act five scene two right before he
30:05 kills himself after realizing his wrongful murder of his wife i pray you in your letters when you shall these unlucky deeds relate speak of me as i am nothing extenuate nor set down ought and malice then must you speak of one that loves not wisely but too well of one not easily jealous but being wrought perplexed in the extreme of one whose hand like the base indian threw a pearl away richer than all this tribe of one who subdued eyes albeit unused to the melting mood drop tears as fast as the arabian trees
30:51 their medicinal gum [Music] is it possible that after so much to do with the green eyed monster for othello to actually say that he is not one easily jealous and to make a serious point about not wanting to be remembered as a jealous man what could shakespeare be suggesting about the root cause of his tragedy there are those who have commented on the blame-shifting nature of this pointless monologue but there is perhaps a more reasonable interpretation instead of focusing on the moore's remark that he was wrought perplexed in the extreme by evil forces we would benefit from directing our attention to his phrase subdued eyes because it isn't so much
31:37 the feelings of jealousy that had led othello astray but rather the psychological and cognitive impacts of jealousy that he couldn't withstand he is overwhelmed by the confusion of the signal and the noise of jealous agents around him and as such was compelled to fall back on native instincts and to dispense with clear judgment ultimately othello's tragedy is in being a foreigner forced to assimilate in foreign land he is given the challenge of venturing beyond his realm of expertise i.e military service and into that of social marital and sexual relations which he fails to master for his lack of venetian sensibilities
32:25 still this failure is what has enabled him to live out the maximum extent of his emotions which is to love too well having done this then there is probably not much left in mortal life for othello to stick around and so instead of regarding his suicide as the natural destination of a tragic fate perhaps we could choose to see it as a redeeming liberation from a tragic world which in turn makes the monster a little bit less tragic that's it everyone if you find this video helpful please give it a big thumbs up and subscribe to this channel for other english literature study videos down the line make sure you check out the blog post for this video in the description
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