Again about Othello
The trouble with having a style is that you may produce something that looks finished and polished when it really is nothing of the kind. My attempt at an answer to elskuligr a few days back was one such thing; I was falling asleep on my feet as I wrote, and I managed to miss nearly every point of importance I wanted to make. But my unfortunate facility gave the piece a deceptive air of polish. A less generous opponent than elskuligr might well have asked me what I was really trying to prove, since it is not clear at all.
What I really should have said, then, is something like this. For the impact of Othello on reader and spectator, we do not need to know that Iago is a Spanish type. We do not need to know that Spain was England's enemy as Shakespeare wrote, that every Englishman regarded her as the great perturber of European peace (nor that the Spanish, with more justification, saw Elizabeth's England in the same light); that negative ethnic cliches about intrigue and poison were universally believed. We do not even need to know that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic (the evidence is overwhelming), that his admiration for Italian city states such as Venice was pretty nearly boundless, that he tended to shift on Spain alone the poisoner-intriguer ethnic cliche that other contemporaries tended to spread equally between Spain and Italy (think of Webster's hideous picture of Italy); not even, perhaps, that Turkey was regarded pretty much as what was left of the West looked at Hitler about 1940. We do not need to know any of those things, because Shakespeare has distilled from them all those elements that are universally relevant to human experience rather than merely local. We do not have to resurrect dead slanders against Italians or Spaniards to feel the full force of something like Iago: my God, how many underhanded, ambitious, resentful, destructive persons can be found in the average office, the average workplace? How many of us have seen a popular and admired person admit into his/her company someone wholly unworthy of it, and the ruinous results? We do not need to feel the terror of Turkey to understand that the fall of a personality as full, rounded, beautiful and bold as Othello is a catastrophe that diminishes us all: Shakespeare has brought out his excellence, not only in such magnificent language as "Put up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them!", nor even in the way he masters a violent riot merely by stepping in, but in the memorable romance with Desdemona - if such a woman, everyone understands, falls in love with such a man (and how eloquently he describes their falling in love, in the presence of all the great men in Venice!), he must be worth what he seems. In other words, the central experience afforded us by a great drama such as Othello does not depend on local associations: because it is rooted in universal experiences, it can be understood pretty much across the board.
What I really should have said, then, is something like this. For the impact of Othello on reader and spectator, we do not need to know that Iago is a Spanish type. We do not need to know that Spain was England's enemy as Shakespeare wrote, that every Englishman regarded her as the great perturber of European peace (nor that the Spanish, with more justification, saw Elizabeth's England in the same light); that negative ethnic cliches about intrigue and poison were universally believed. We do not even need to know that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic (the evidence is overwhelming), that his admiration for Italian city states such as Venice was pretty nearly boundless, that he tended to shift on Spain alone the poisoner-intriguer ethnic cliche that other contemporaries tended to spread equally between Spain and Italy (think of Webster's hideous picture of Italy); not even, perhaps, that Turkey was regarded pretty much as what was left of the West looked at Hitler about 1940. We do not need to know any of those things, because Shakespeare has distilled from them all those elements that are universally relevant to human experience rather than merely local. We do not have to resurrect dead slanders against Italians or Spaniards to feel the full force of something like Iago: my God, how many underhanded, ambitious, resentful, destructive persons can be found in the average office, the average workplace? How many of us have seen a popular and admired person admit into his/her company someone wholly unworthy of it, and the ruinous results? We do not need to feel the terror of Turkey to understand that the fall of a personality as full, rounded, beautiful and bold as Othello is a catastrophe that diminishes us all: Shakespeare has brought out his excellence, not only in such magnificent language as "Put up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them!", nor even in the way he masters a violent riot merely by stepping in, but in the memorable romance with Desdemona - if such a woman, everyone understands, falls in love with such a man (and how eloquently he describes their falling in love, in the presence of all the great men in Venice!), he must be worth what he seems. In other words, the central experience afforded us by a great drama such as Othello does not depend on local associations: because it is rooted in universal experiences, it can be understood pretty much across the board.