Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  Othello looks toward Iago's feet to see the cloven hoof that would indicate the devil and interrupts himself mournfully with his "-but that's a fable."

  He has learned! Till now he has believed the fables from Pliny, he has believed in magic handkerchiefs and sibyls, in crocodiles and moon-bred lunacy-and, of course, in Iago too.

  Now, for the first time, he has discovered the necessity of skepticism-far too late.

  Demand me nothing. ..

  As all of Iago's lies and trickeries are exposed, the confused Othello wants to know but one thing. Why did Iago do it? The audience wants to know too, since the revenge went far beyond anything necessary to punish Iago's grievances. But Iago says:

  Demand me nothing.

  What you know, you know.

  From this time forth I never will speak word.

  —Act V, scene ii, lines 299-300

  Ludovico threatens to make him talk under torture, but it seems reasonable to suppose that no torture will make Iago talk. This failure to say why has irritated many, but, in my opinion, it should not. Iago's pleasure at manipulating lives was intense and it is something we can all understand, for, in a much milder way, it is present in all men-and yet it is not something that can be easily explained.

  … the base Judean…

  Now it is only necessary to take Othello back to Venice so that he might be tried for murder.

  Othello, however, has one last thing to say. With an effort, he manages to pull himself together into almost the man he once was and speaks once more, a little in self-pity, much more in self-hate. He asks them all to tell the tale honestly, saying:

  Then must you speak

  Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;

  Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,

  Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,

  Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away

  Richer than all his tribe…

  —Act V, scene ii, lines 339-44

  In many editions of the play, the phrase "like the base Judean" is made to read "like the base Indian." It seems to me that "Judean" is much the more preferable. If "Indian" is used, the allusion is obscure; if "Judean" is used, it is brilliantly apparent.

  In Matthew 13:45-46, Jesus is reported as saying "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it."

  It is easy to envision Jesus (who, in the Christian view, represented the kingdom of heaven) as being the pearl of great price more valuable than all else in the world besides. The Jews, in rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, would then be pictured as throwing away the pearl of great price. In particular, Judas, who betrayed Jesus, would be the "base Judean."

  From this point of view, the extent of Othello's self-hatred is clear. He compares his murder of Desdemona with the crucifixion of Jesus, and himself with Judas.

  … in Aleppo once Othello goes on to say:

  And say besides that in Aleppo once,

  Where a malignant and a turbaned Turk

  Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,

  I took by th'throat the circumcised dog

  And smote him-thus.

  —Act V, scene ii, lines 348-52

  With the last word, before anyone can stop him, Othello stabs himself, falls upon Desdemona in a final kiss, and dies.

  This last pathetic passage cannot be taken literally. Aleppo is a city in what is now northwestern Syria, and (except for a brief period in 969) it has been Moslem for over thirteen centuries. If Othello killed a Turk in Aleppo, he was killing him in the midst of a city of Turks and it is not likely he would have got away alive.

  He must mean something else…

  The Moslems and Jews were marked off from the Christians by being circumcised; that is, a flap of skin at the end of the penis was removed. "Uncircumcised dog" was a common derogatory phrase for Christians among the Moslems, indicating that they were outside the pale of the true religion. Othello's use of the reverse phrase in his last agony is like a return to his origins.

  After all, if Othello was Moslem originally, conversion to Christianity in later life could not utterly wipe out the tricks of speech he had learned as a young man. Furthermore, he would still be circumcised; baptism may cause one to be born again in the spiritual sense, but it cannot grow a new foreskin.

  Othello therefore pictures himself as having returned to his origins, of having forgotten the Christian virtues of forgiveness, of having become "a malignant and a turbaned Turk." He beat a Venetian (Desdemona). He also traduced (defamed) himself; robbing himself of his own fame and reputation by his actions; and insofar as he was the representative of the state in Cyprus, he traduced the state.

  So he took by the throat "the circumcised dog" (himself) and killed him.

  O Spartan dog

  It is the end. The destruction has been complete, and Iago's plot has worked itself out to the final bit. That Iago himself is trapped and is to be destroyed by torture must seem quite irrelevant to him. The victory is his.

  Ludovico says to Iago bitterly:

  O Spartan dog,

  More jell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!

  Look on the tragic loading of this bed.

  This is thy work.

  —Act V, scene ii, lines 357-60

  A "Spartan dog" is a bloodhound, one that is trained to hunt and kill, and therefore a cruel and bloodthirsty person.

  But does Ludovico expect Iago's conscience to be touched? It is precisely "the tragic loading of this bed" that is his victory, and one can imagine that Iago, wounded and pinioned and with the certainty of agonizing torture awaiting him, must, as he looks upon the bed, smile.

  So the play ends-and the manner of its ending reflects history too, in a way, for all that the play is utter fiction from beginning to end.

  The Battle of Lepanto, however much of a glorious victory it seemed to Europeans, and however much of a psychological boost it gave them, had no military value. Within a year the Turks had replaced their losses and were as powerful as ever at sea. The Christian allies, having won their victory, quarreled among themselves and did nothing more. The Venetians were left to face the Turks alone. The war on Cyprus continued to go against them, and in 1573 the Venetians yielded and ceded Cyprus to the Turks, who were to keep it for three centuries.

  And so, just as Othello's coming to Cyprus may be compared to the victory at Lepanto, so his death seems to signify the valuelessness of that victory and the ultimate loss of Cyprus to the enemy.

  24. Measure For Measure

  In this play, written in 1604, Shakespeare takes the opportunity to study the relationship of justice and mercy. He had done so in The Merchant of Venice, but there he had not been consistent. Portia had demanded mercy of Shylock, but when the tables were turned she did not show it (see page I-539).

  We all favor mercy for those with whom we sympathize, but are not nearly as keen when mercy is sought for those we hate. In this play Shakespeare carries through the notion of mercy to ultimate consistency, and in offering mercy to the villain makes many critics unhappy. In presenting an unpleasant situation so that the offering of mercy becomes hard indeed, more critics are made unhappy. The result is that Shakespeare's great play of mercy is usually considered one of his unpleasant comedies, like All's Well That Ends Well.

  .. any in Vienna…

  The setting of the play is in Austria. This setting Shakespeare takes over from a tale by Cynthius; a tale from the same collection, in fact, from which he had a year earlier or less taken the plot for Othello (see page I-609).

  Cynthius' tale begins with the Emperor Maximian appointing a new judge over the city of Innsbruck. There was a real Emperor Maximian who ruled over the Roman Empire, along with Diocletian, from 286 to 305, but there is no indication that the play takes place in Roman tunes.

  The name may have been inspired to Cynthius by the fact that two Holy Roman emperors
named Maximilian ruled in the sixteenth century. The first, Maximilian I, ruled from 1493 to 1519, and the second, Maximilian II, became Emperor in 1564. He was on the throne when Cynthius' collection was published in 1565.

  The two Maximilians, like all the emperors after 1438, were members of the House of Habsburg, who ruled, specifically, as archdukes of Austria.

  Shakespeare shifts the scene from Innsbruck, a provincial town in western Austria, to Vienna, the capital, but he is writing a Renaissance romance, and all the characters have Italian names. Thus, the Archduke of Austria and presumably Holy Roman Emperor (but referred to only as "Duke" in the play) is Vincentio.

  The Duke is planning to retire for a while from the tasks of government and intends to appoint a deputy to wield his powers. He suggests his candidate to an aged lord, Escalus, who approves and says:

  // any in Vienna be of worth

  To undergo such ample grace and honor

  It is Lord Angela.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 22-24

  Angela is given the post, though he is reluctant, and the Duke then leaves in great haste.

  … the King of Hungary …

  The scene then shifts to a Viennese street, where we are introduced to Lucio, who is listed in the cast of characters as "a fantastic." He is fantastic in costume and conversation, in other words; he is avant-garde, ahead of the fashion, a gay man about town.

  He is talking to two unnamed Gentlemen and says:

  // the Duke, with the other dukes,

  come not to composition with the King of Hungary,

  why then all the dukes fall upon the King.

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 1-3

  Nothing further is mentioned of this, of any threat of war, of the King of Hungary; nor is there any hint as to who "the other dukes" might be.

  Hungary is Austria's eastern neighbor. Through the Middle Ages it was an extensive and often powerful kingdom which was, however, weakened by the existence of a turbulent aristocracy whose quarrels among themselves worked to the ruin of all.

  Hungary had reached its height a little over a century before Measure for Measure was written, when, from 1458 to 1490, Mathias Corvinus ruled. He temporarily broke the power of the Hungarian nobility, spread his power northward over Slovakia and Silesia, and in 1485 even conquered Vienna. He made Vienna his capital and ruled over Austria.

  Corvinus died in 1490 and his weak successor gave up the earlier conquests and let the nobility gradually regain their power. The real disaster, however, came in 1526, when the Ottoman Turks (see page I-520) invaded Hungary and destroyed the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohacs. By 1540 the major part of Hungary had been made part of the Ottoman Empire and the western fringe was taken over by the Austrian Duke, Ferdinand I.

  … nineteen zodiacs…

  The talk shifts almost at once to internal affairs. It seems that a wave of puritanism is sweeping over Vienna and a moral crackdown is in process. Older laws against sexual immorality, which had been allowed to lapse, are now being drawn noose-tight and houses of prostitution in the suburbs are being closed down.

  What's more, a young nobleman, Claudio, is being haled off to prison for moral offenses. He is engaged to Juliet, but the marriage had been delayed while the matter of a dowry was being negotiated and meanwhile Juliet has managed to get pregnant.

  The Duke's deputy, Angelo, a man of rigid and unassailable virtue (his very name means "angel"), is applying the law against unmarried intercourse to the extreme and Claudio will be slated for execution.

  Claudio, in this deep trouble, stops to talk to his friend Lucio and complains of being thus struck down by penalties:

  Which have, like unscoured armor, hung by th'wall

  So long, that nineteen zodiacs have gone round

  And none of them been worn…

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 168-74

  The sun travels once around the zodiac in one year. Nineteen zodiacs are therefore nineteen years.

  Lucio advises Claudio to appeal to the Duke, but the Duke is not to be found. Claudio therefore asks Lucio to hasten to a nunnery where his (Claudio's) sister is about to take her vows. Perhaps she will plead with Angelo on his behalf and win him over.

  … to Poland

  But the Duke has not really left after all. He wishes to observe affairs while remaining unobserved, see how the moral reform will work out, and so on. The Duke explains this to a monk, Friar Thomas, saying that even Angelo, his deputy, doesn't know the truth:

  … he supposes me traveled to Poland;

  For so I have strewed it in the common ear,

  —Act I, scene iii, lines 13-15

  In Shakespeare's time Poland was much larger than it is today. It bordered on Austria (and what had once been Hungary) to the northeast, and included large sections of what is now the Soviet Union. It extended from the Baltic to the Black Sea and was almost at the peak of its territorial expansion. But the aristocracy in Poland, as in Hungary, was uncontrollable and kept the central government weak.

  … snow-broth…

  Lucio reaches Isabella (Claudio's sister) at the nunnery. She has not yet made her final vows and she may speak to him. He tells her of Claudio's situation. Claudio cannot make amends by marrying the girl he has made pregnant because Angelo is intent on setting an example. Lucio has no great hopes that Angelo can be swerved from this, for the man is icily virtuous. Lucio describes Angelo as

  a man whose blood

  Is very snow-broth…

  —Act I, scene iv, lines 57-59

  The implication is that he cannot feel the stirrings of passion and cannot sympathize with those who do. Under the lash of virtue he would insist upon a rigid justice that would be as cruel as anything vice would demand.

  Yet, as a last resort, Lucio urges Isabella to go to Angelo and plead with him. He might be softened by a girl's request.

  The chances of success are sum, however, for in the next scene Angelo is shown in conversation with Escalus and he insists on the letter of the law firmly. Strict justice and nothing but justice is what he demands, and he gives orders that Claudio be executed the next morning at 9 a.m.

  … at Hallowmas. ..

  The gravity of the developing situation with respect to Claudio is lightened by a scene in which a comic constable, Elbow, has arrested Pompey, who works as servant in a brothel, and Froth, who has been a customer there. Both are brought before Angelo and Escalus for judgment.

  When Pompey begins to testify, however, he does so with a long-windedness that weaves round and round the point without ever coming to it. It drags in even the exact time of the death of Froth's father. Pompey says:

  Was't not at Hallowmas, Master Froth?

  —Act II, scene i, lines 123-24

  Froth answers with grave precision:

  All-hallond Eve.

  —Act II, scene i, line 125

  "Hallowmas," which is also "All Hallows' Day," is a day set aside for the celebration of all the saints generally, known and unknown, and it is also known as "All Saints' Day." The celebration is on November 1, which happens, by no great coincidence, to be an important pastoral holiday of the ancient Celts. Many of the ancient customs of the earlier pagan holiday have come down to us, transfigured by Christian disapproval, and have given us a melange of witches and hobgoblins.

  The night, naturally, is the best time for the spirits of darkness, and since in ancient times (among the Jews, for instance) the twenty-four-hour day included the sunlit period plus the night before, rather than the night after, it was the night of October 31 that was witch time. This is the "All-hallond Eve" that Froth refers to, or "All Hallows' Eve" or "All Saints' Eve," or, as it is best known today, Halloween.

  … a night in Russia

  Angelo, whose virtue leaves him no room for humor, leaves in disgust, allowing Escalus to render judgment, and saying:

  This will last out a night in Russia,

  When nights are longest there.

  —Act II, scene i, lines
133-34

  In Shakespeare's time Russia was just impinging on west European consciousness (see page I-154). At that time Russian territory had already reached the Arctic Ocean, and in 1553 an English trade mission under Richard Chancellor reached that nation through the one port that was open to the sea powers of the West-Archangel, on the Arctic shore.

  It was this which gave England the notion of Russia as an essentially Arctic nation; a notion that was never quite wiped out of European consciousness. There were parts of Russia that were farther south than any part of England, even in the sixteenth century, before still further expansion southward had taken place. What counted, though, was the latitude of Archangel, which is only a hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle. "When nights are longest there" (in December and January) they are over twenty-three-hours long-though much of that time is twilit

  … a shrewd Caesar …

  The mild Escalus, left to deal with Pompey and Froth, lets them go but warns them nut to be picked up again, for he does not wish to see them before him once more. He says to Pompey: