A Minute to Learn, a Lifetime to Master

            Boom.

            We did it.

            Shakespeare wrote a hit play and I read it.

            We did it.

           

            It’s Othello. It’s a damn masterpiece. It's a seminal work of western literature. And what insights does this kid from Wisconsin have to lay before you today?

            First off, there’s the obligatory contrasting to be done between Iago and Popeye:

 

IAGO

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In complement extern, ‘tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at. I am not what I am. (1:1 bolding is mine)

 

POPEYE

And I got a lotta muscle and I only gots one eye,

And I'll never hurt nobodies and I'll never tell a lie,

Top to me bottom and me bottom to me top,

That's the way it is 'til the day that I drop, what am I?

I yam what I yam! (Popeye, 1980 bolding is mine)

 

            Iago’s a good villain, but if he tried to outsmart Popeye and convince him that Olive Oyl was cheating on him, Popeye wouldn’t buy it. He’d eat some spinach and punch Iago so hard that his eyes would turn to Xs and his tongue would loll out of his mouth like a dead tapeworm. I suppose they would cast Bluto as Iago, which would be the best casting choice since Vince Vaughn played Norman Bates.

            Secondly, I want to address Othello’s attitude toward the murder of his wife. He has this line that disturbs me a little. He says to Lodovico:

 

An honorable murderer, if you will.

For naught did I in hate, but all in honor. (5:2)

 

Did Othello believe in honor killings? That it was his duty to kill Desdemona when he believed she had cheated on him, because she spoiled her honor and his by affiliation?

I don’t want to get into a big discussion about religion and honor killings and if Moor is really a geographic descriptor or a religious one. Besides, I checked out a copy of Laurence Olivier playing Othello and he was painted blue and he wore a giant cross on his chest. So my current conclusion is that Christian Smurfs believe in honor killings.

But I think even that theory could be debunked because Othello has been driven MAD by Iago’s conniving:

 

Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me

For making him egregiously an ass

And practicing upon his peace and quiet

Even to madness. (2:1)

 

            Any logic he employs after falling victim to these mindgames is the logic of a madman. (Which accurately describes logic employed by anyone who thinks honor killings are okay as well).

Finally, I want to talk about the Parker Brothers board game “Othello” and how despite being fun and excellent, it’s the dumb American version of “Go.” My cousin Erick has spent a couple of years learning to play “Go” and he tries to teach me every Christmas. We go have a bottomless cup of coffee at Common Grounds, which looks out over the harbor in Kenosha. Snow falls and as the sun sets the world turns blue like a Thomas Kinkade painting. 

We talk about how we used to play soccer together. We’d go down to Kemper Center and serve up crosses to one another and spend hours and hours trying to score headers and bicycle kicks. Then we’d sit in the grass and look out at Lake Michigan, sparkling and flat on the warm days, or churning, wild and steely on the blustery ones.

“Go” is a very different game than “Othello.” “Go” is played on a larger board, and when your pieces are captured, they can never be retaken. “Go” is more elegant-looking and at the same time endlessly more complex. When you do well at “Go,” you win large open spaces on the board and it’s called creating Life.

Ironically the movie Go is nowhere near as complex as the play Othello. One is about wicked manipulation and jealous rage leading to murder, it’s rife with racism and human weakness and honesty. The other is about taking Ecstasy, raving and going to Vegas.

           So, perhaps it’s best I take a lesson from Iago, and cut my insights into Othello short here before I prove myself the dumb American version of something more elegant and complex across either pond. I quote Iago’s somewhat unsettling final line:

 

Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.

From this time forth, I never will speak word. (5:2)

11th Grade Gabe Weighs In on Othello

Gabriel Llanas

English 11

Ms. Tara Stewart

11/13/94

Desdemona: Prudish? Naïve? You Be the Judge

Everyone knows girls are better than boys. They’re way hotter and smarter, and they make the best English teachers in the world. Some girls, who are really into Shakespeare and are amazing teachers -- even though they just graduated from college two years ago -- are so incredible that they would make a young man do anything (ANYTHING) to be with them.

Desdemona is pure, beautiful and honest (much like some teachers I could name). After Othello has accused her of being unfaithful, he tells her to go home and wait for him and he will be by anon. Desdemona talks to her maid, Emilia, and it is clear she would never even think about cheating on Othello. She tells Emilia:

Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world? (4:3)

Emilia, who is married to the deceitful Iago, has an understandably more down-to-earth perspective on this:

The world’s a huge thing.

It is a great price for a small vice. (4:3)

And she continues:

-why who would not make her husband a cuckold to make

him a monarch? I should venture purgatory for’t. (4:3)

But Emilia rationalizes further and gets even more realistic about it a few lines later:

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults

If wives do fall. Say they slack their duties

And pour our treasures into foreign laps, (4:3)

Just for example, say you have an English teacher at a prep school in… I don’t know, somewhere in the Midwest, and her “boyfriend” was a law student at some Ivy League Nerdversity. Well, being that far away from his totally hot and awesome girlfriend would probably be hard for said hypothetical “boyfriend” and he’s probably pouring treasures into foreign laps even as I write this alone in my room without my shirt on. Is it fair that said hot English teacher shouldn’t have a little treasure poured into her lap as well?

I mean, Emilia is certainly open to it:

And have not we affections,

Desires for sport, and frailty as men have? (4:3)

All I’m saying is that heavenly goddess English teachers who smell sweeter than magnolia nectar and whose smiles make a young man’s heart hop scotch across the playground of desire deserve a little “sport” sometimes too. Wouldn’t you concur?

Desdemona’s pure and all that, and maybe we’re supposed to think she’s better than Emilia, but I think she’s naïve and a prude and boring. Emilia is the more honest and human of the two of them because like Eazy-E she knows everybody’s “gotta get a nut.”

Ms. Stewart, I mean if you were honest with yourself, don’t you think -- hypothetically -- that you would like to indulge in a teachable moment with a young, virile, energetic, soccer-playing gentleman with a head of ample wing-shaped hair if you found out that the giant nerd you’re “dating” was sprinkling his affection on other girls’ foreign laps?

In conclusion: If you would like to discuss this further, I will gladly stop by your room in Macintosh Hall anon. I have honors study hall this semester, so I could even drop in during the evening hours. I’ll bring my copy of Othello, some scented candles, and my ready, able and surprisingly large brain.

The Convenient Handkerchief

My dad used to have handkerchiefs that were embroidered with his initials. They're part of this whole mysterious image I have of him and who he was when I was a boy and before I was born. He was a dad with handkerchiefs who played chess. He was a firefighter, and he and my mom would listen to opera in the backyard.

I used to think he had been some sort of continental gentleman, and the handkerchiefs were part of his uniform. Handed out after his graduation from a British, ivy-laden university. All gentleman must be equipped with handkerchiefs to offer to women who are in distress over small heartbreaks like an overturned slice of cake or a dead mouse.

Because of my allergies I had to carry a handkerchief around with me and actually use it for blowing my nose, which is gross. I felt bad when they were my dad's embroidered handkerchiefs, and I looked forward to my graduation day, when I'd receive my own fancy set of snot rags.

There was one time in my life when a handkerchief proved useful in a chivalrous manner. In my high school we had special literary events when we invited writers of modest success to judge short story contests and eat fancy dinners with us. My senior year, the writer was Stuart Dybek, and the winner of the short story contest was a sophomore girl named after a character in The Tempest. My short story about eating dirt unfortunately didn't even make the top three (thanks a lot, Dybek!). When this girl named after a character in The Tempest finished her story she was crying. I don't remember the details of the story, I think it was about her stealing something and then tasting pennies. It was a very moving piece of writing and I was quite jealous. But she sat down in front of me, and she was weeping, and I handed her a clean handkerchief, and she used it to wipe away her tears.

But it wasn't one of my dad's handkerchiefs. I didn't have one with me at the time... I was handkerchiefless right when I needed one the most! I was about to silently curse my ill-preparedness when all of a sudden there was a tap on my shoulder and Mr. Braverman passed me his handkerchief and I gave it to the girl named after a character in The Tempest. There were lots of other girls in that room -- sensitive, intelligent girls -- who saw my act of gentlemanliness and marveled. That's what I like to call Big Pimpin'. Thanks, Mr. Braverman.

Pretty convenient that a hanky should appear out of nowhere, just when I needed it.

So, the handkerchief in Othello is causing some problems for me. Iago is so cunningly undoing all of Othello's confidence in Desdemona's fealty already when suddenly this completely coincidental opportunity arrives with the accidental dropping of Desdemona's handkerchief that Iago's wife just happens to spot and pick up and steal to give to Iago because she says he's asked about it in the past. And of course this is the magic handkerchief which Othello gave to Desdemona on like their first date, which was a gift from Othello's mother and was made with Mummy juice and holy silk worms. Iago then plants the handkerchief on Cassio in order to fuel Othello's suspicion of their cuckolding.

I mean, I'm only to the end of Act 3, but this all seems like sloppy storytelling to me. Why didn't Shakespeare just write in a scene where Iago asks his wife to steal the handkerchief?

Maybe it's a little thing to bump on, but it's like Iago says:

Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ. (3:3)

Anyway, it's nice to know even the bard -- despite all his poetry -- has to rely on a convenient handkerchief once in a while too.

In Medias Res

I got in a small argument with my friends Simon and Raamla at a Toga party the other night over the exact meaning of In Medias Res. Simon lives in this great house in the Silverlake Hills with an unbelievable view and it was his roommate's birthday. I didn't wear a toga myself.

 

The last toga party I went to was my senior year at boarding school when we had the Labor Day weekend toga party in the new student center. Josh Klein and I borrowed some loafs of round decorative bread from the cafeteria and tied them on our heads. I'm sure there is photographic evidence of this in a shoe box in my dad's basement somewhere. 

That was a good party. I had a big crush on a girl named Muna, and although I don't think I danced with her or anything, it was nice to see her back from the summer in Saudi Arabia with a little sun-kissed tint in her hair. Thank heaven for the little things.

But anyway, I -- for some reason -- believed that flashbacks were a necessary part of the in medias res technique. It appears that I'm incorrect about this and I apologize profusely to Mr. Fornshell for my confusion and misrepresentation of his infallible instruction.

So Othello... 

Damn.

Not to state the obvious, but this is some good stuff.

Even before the play starts, Othello has eloped with Desdemona. Roderigo and Iago seek to destroy Othello by going to tell Desdemona's father, Brabantio,  about the elopement. Everyone is racist against Othello and Brabantio is convinced that Othello used witchcraft and cast a spell over Desdemona. There's a great build up to the introduction of Othello, and then when we meet him he is so respectable and commanding that it undermines the villainy of Roderigo and Brabantio -- but not Iago.

I heard that when they were trying to get Ricardo Montalban to play Khan in Star Trek 2 they had a meeting with him and he said "Khan is not in this movie very much," and they thought he was going to say no or ask them to rewrite the part to be bigger, but he continued: "but when Khan is not on screen... they are all talking about KHAN!"

In the introduction to the edition I have, Burton Raffel points out that Iago has a greater stage presence than Othello in this play, appearing on stage 64% of the time, while Othello is on stage approximately 59% of the play. Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear, all appear on stage more than any other characters in the plays that bear their names.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with Iago's scheming, and how his greater presence on the page affects my reading of the play.

We love the mischief-maker, cause they want things and they actively seek them out. We all have moments in life when we're overlooked or bested and we want revenge. The Joker is the guy who makes The Dark Knight interesting, and even though we like to think that this appreciation of the villain and the anti-hero is some recent evolution in the complexity of an audience, it will likely become clear that Shakespeare understood this better 400 years ago than we do today.