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Iago is passed over for a promotion by his commander, Othello, a Moor and a general in the service of Venice, and he vows revenge. Othello has just married Desdemona, the daughter of Brabantio, a Venetian Senator, and Iago enlists the aid of Roderigo, a rejected suitor, to tell Desdemona's father about the marriage. Brabantio goes to seize his daughter but is interrupted by news of a Turkish attack on Cyprus. The Duke and the Senate convene, and after hearing Desdemona and Othello testify to their love for one another, they allow her to accompany him to Cyprus, which he will defend against the Turks. Iago, whom Othello regards as honest and trustworthy, is given charge of Desdemona on the journey. At Cyprus, Iago has Roderigo start a brawl, in which Cassio, Othello's lieutenant, wounds another man.
Othello strips Cassio of his command, and Cassio goes to Desdemona to ask her to convince her husband to reinstate him. Iago, meanwhile, sets about convincing Othello that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with Cassio. Through innuendo and pretended honesty, Iago makes Othello almost mad with jealousy, until the Moor names him his lieutenant and makes him promise to help him kill Cassio and Desdemona. Desdemona has lost a handkerchief that Othello gave her as a love-token, and Emilia, Iago's wife, finds it and gives it to her husband. Iago plants the handkerchief in Cassio's house, then arranges for Othello to see Cassio give it to his mistress, Bianca.
Othello is now convinced that Cassio has betrayed him with Desdemona, and that Cassio is flaunting his sexual conquest by giving Desdemona's handkerchief to a common whore. Othello begins abusing his wife in front of messengers from Venice, who are amazed to see this change in a man they thought to be noble. That night, Othello tells his wife to wait for him in bed and goes out to walk about the city. Iago has convinced Roderigo that if he kills Cassio, Desdemona will sleep with him, so Roderigo attacks the former lieutenant. Cassio is saved by his mail shirt and wounds Roderigo; Iago flees, stabbing Cassio as he goes. Othello, passing, hears the cries and thinks that Cassio is killed, and so he returns to the castle to kill Desdemona.
Meanwhile, Iago and the Venetian messengers find the wounded men; Iago secretly kills Roderigo and sends Emilia to the castle with news of the brawl. Othello awakens Desdemona, tells her that she must die, and strangles her. Emilia returns and finds her mistress; Desdemona revives for a moment and then dies, saying as she passes away that Othello is innocent of her death. Her husband, however, proclaims his own guilt, and as the others return, Emilia realizes her husbands plot and exposes it. Iago, furious, stabs her and flees; he is captured and ordered to be tortured to death. Othello, heart-stricken, makes a final speech in which he passes sentence on himself, and then he commits suicide.
He falls beside Desdemona. Othello is a fast-paced play. Most of the action is compressed into a single day, and scenes begin in mid-conversation, as if the events outpace even the staging. Real subplots are not allowed instead, we have a purely domestic tragedy, centering around the three principal characters and controlled by Iago. Indeed, in no other tragedy does a single figure have so much control over events. There are no counterplots against Iago, no real resistance, because no one but he (and the audience) is aware that he is dictating the rush toward the ghastly denouement.
The audience, in a sense, shares the fate of Desdemona and Othello, too, are caught in Iago's trap and can only watch helplessly as his plots bear fruit. The play begins in Venice and shifts quickly to Cyprus, an outpost in which Othello has command but his villainous ensign has control. The swiftness with which Iago destroys his master is almost stunning on the first night, he manages to disgrace the lieutenant, Cassio, whose place he covets, and the next day he needs only two conversations to convince the Moor that Desdemona has been unfaithful. At this point, we have reached Act III, scene iii; now the terrible rush of events slows, and the murder of Desdemona is delayed for an act while Iago plays still more games with his master, and while Othello suffers. Then (and it is the same night, only twenty-four hours after their arrival in Cyprus) the murder is committed, Iago's deception revealed, and the play comes to an end. A number of critics suggest that this compression is a necessity of the stage, and that Shakespeare intended the audience to understand that in real life Iago's plot would have taken weeks to reach its fulfillment.
On the stage, however, the compressed time is a terrible reminder of the villains complete control over events. Indeed, Iago's power is such that it is easy to see the other two principals as being overshadowed. This is a mistake: the tragedy succeeds only because Iago's victims match his wickedness with their nobility and purity. Othello, whose race is usually portrayed negatively in Elizabethan theater, is cast from the beginning as a true heat once a great general and a great man.
He is flawed, of course; his nobility and honest nature enables Iago to dupe him, and he carries deep insecurities that his ensign exploits. But there is no question of his greatness, just as there is no question of Desdemona's goodness. She is pure to a fault, as unwilling to see or imagine evil in others as she is to allow it in herself. Her love for her husband is strong enough that not even her murder can shake its half-rises from her grave in an attempt to save him from punishment for the crime. Iago's absolute evil has its antithesis in the absolute love that Othello and Desdemona bear for one another; Shakespeare's depiction of their passion is his strongest image of romantic affection in any tragedy.
Iago's destructive energy fascinates us, but we suffer with his victims, whose very strengthsOthellos trust and Desdemona's purity are used against them. For all their virtues, they are helpless, because what Iago represents is nullity, chaos, and non being. He does not defeat his victims so much as unmake them. When I love thee not, / Chaos is come again (III. iii. 92 - 93), the Moor says of his wife, and it is chaos, embodied in honest Iago, that wins the day.
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