The truth of the matter is that in the beginning of the play Othello is a marionette fairly well shaped and exceedingly picturesque; but as soon as jealousy is touched upon, the mask is thrown aside; Othello, the self-contained captain, disappears, the poet takes his place and at once shows himself to be the aptest subject for the green fever. The emotions then put into Othello's mouth are intensely realized; his jealousy is indeed Shakespeare's own confession, and it would be impossible to find in all literature pages of more sincere and terrible self-revealing. Shakespeare is not more at home in showing us the passion of Romeo and Juliet or the irresolution of Richard II. or the scepticism of Hamlet than in depicting the growth and paroxysms of jealousy; his overpowering sensuality, the sensuality of Romeo and of Orsino, has sounded every note of love's mortal sickness:
“Oth. I had been happy if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known.
- - - - - - - -
Damn her, lewd minx! O, damn her!”
We have here the proof that the jealousy of Othello was Shakespeare's
jealousy; it is all compounded of sensuality. But, and this is the
immediate point of my argument, the captain, Othello, is not presented
to us as a sensualist to whom such a suspicion would be, of course, the
nearest thought. On the contrary, Othello is depicted as sober
{Footnote: Shakespeare makes Lodovico speak of Othello's “solid
virtue”—“the nature whom passion could not shake.” Even Iago finds
Othello's anger ominous because of its rarity:
“There's matter in't, indeed, if he be angry."}
and solid, slow to anger, and master of himself and his desires; he
expressly tells the lords of Venice that he does not wish Desdemona to
accompany him:
“To please the palate of my appetite
Nor to comply with heat—the young affects,
In me defunct—and proper satisfaction.”
Shakespeare goes out of his way to put this unnecessary explanation in Othello's mouth; he will not have us think of him as passion's fool, but as passion's master; Othello is not to be even suspicious; he tells Iago:
“'Tis not to make me jealous
To say—my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company,
Is free of speech, sings, plays and dances well;
Where virtue is, these are more virtuous:
Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;
For she had eyes and chose me.”
It was all this, no doubt, that misled Coleridge. He did not realize that this Othello suddenly changes his nature; the sober lord of himself becomes in an instant very quick to suspect, and being jealous, is nothing if not sensual; he can think of no reason for Desdemona's fall but her appetite; the imagination of the sensual act throws him into a fit; it is this picture which gives life to his hate. The conclusion is not to be avoided; as soon as Othello becomes jealous he is transformed by Shakespeare's own passion. For this is the way Shakespeare conceived jealousy and the only way. The jealousy of Leontes in “The Winter's Tale” is precisely the same; Hermione gives her hand to Polixenes, and at once Leontes suspects and hates, and his rage is all of “paddling palms {1} and pinching fingers.” The jealousy of Posthumus, too, is of the same kind:
“Never talk on 't;
She hath been colted by him.”
{Footnote 1: Iago's expression, too; cf. “Othello,” II. 1, and “Hamlet,” III. 4.}
It is the imagining of the sensual act that drives him to incoherence and the verge of madness, as it drove Othello. In all these characters Shakespeare is only recalling the stages of the passion that desolated his life.
The part that imagination usually plays in tormenting the jealous man with obscene pictures is now played by Iago; the first scene of the fourth act is this erotic self-torture put in Iago's mouth. As Othello's passion rises to madness, as the self-analysis becomes more and more intimate and personal, we have Shakespeare's re-lived agony clothing itself in his favourite terms of expression: