"Rethinking Iago's Jests in Othello II.i: Honestas, Imports and Laughable Deformity"

 

Derrin, Daniel. “Rethinking Iago’s Jests in Othello II.i: Honestas, Imports and Laughable

Deformity.” Renaissance Studies. Vol. 31, Issue 3, June 2017, pp. 365-382. 

Though it has often been discarded by directors who deem the scene as “filler provided for an anxious Desdemona” (365), Daniel Derrin asserts the importance of Othello’s Act II, Scene I as essential to understanding a complex exchange of power between the two witty characters through their negotiation of an ethos—honestas. Darrin argues the scene offers “a serious dramatic exploration of Iago’s persuasiveness and Desdemona’s cleverness” (365). He defines honestas as a reflection of the “moral goodness” expected of civil conversation and explains how Iago uses a false sense of it to bring down virtually all major characters in the play, though he claims this fictionalization of honesty does not necessarily imply Iago is ethically “vacuous.” Derrin asserts that jokes are funny because of certain shared value-laden beliefs between the deliverer and recipient and expounds on Desdemona’s possible interpretations of Iago’s misogynistic dialogue based on her responses to it. He also touches on the delicacy required of the interaction between the two characters of differing social standing.

--Leslie Leffers

 

“Emblems of Folly in the First Othello: Renaissance Blackface, Moor's Coat, and ‘Muckender’."

 

Hornback, Robert. “Emblems of Folly in the First Othello : Renaissance Blackface,

Moor's Coat, and ‘Muckender’." Comparative Drama, vol. 35, no. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 69-99. http://login.ezproxy.mnsu.edu/login?qurl=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41154067. Accessed 1 July 2021.

 

Robert Hornback begins with historical evidence that audiences would have understood the “emblems of folly” presented in Othello: blackface, the Moor’s coat, and the “muckender.” Moors in theater and pageantry were common and popular, creating a spectacle rather than portraying reality, with blackface, black gloves and leggings, and “a fleece of woolen hair” (Hornback 76). Historically blackness was associated with devils and evil; it was also associated with fools. Part of the fool’s costume was a “Mores cotte” – a flowing ankle-length robe called an aljuba; the first Othello would have worn one, signaling his “sensational, extravagant otherness” (Hornback 83-85). Another part of the natural fool’s costume was the “muckender” or handkerchief. It is clear that Shakespeare intentionally established Othello as a fool – a blackfaced Moor, wearing a Moor’s coat, and obsessed with a handkerchief. What would have surprised audiences was Othello the Moor being called “valiant” (1.3.48) and “noble” (4.1.264); Othello began metaphorically “white,” but by the end of the play he was transformed into the black fool he appeared to be. Shakespeare used a disturbing combination of disturbing humor and tragedy to “toy” with his audience, fooling them with “emblems of folly,” inviting them to laugh at the Moor – and then when they sympathized with Othello, the victim of the villainous Iago, they experienced “an awakening to a painful self-knowledge…that they had been fooled into laughing at sadism” (Hornback 94). Hornback argues that the purposeful construction of Othello as a fool and the butt of the joke was in reality an innovative device to evoke empathy for the victim and make the audience members aware of their own complicity in laughing at sadism.

--Jess Fraser