Essay
Key Paragraphs and Ideas entering Homosexuality in Othello
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As said above key paragraphs in Othello
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Othello quote bank organised into themes without analysis - all acts included
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HOMOSEXUALITYShakespeare also explores masculinity through the lens of homosexuality. He
portrays Iago as seeking to maintain his presentation of normative masculinity in order to
hide the emasculation he faces through his homosexual attraction towards Othello.
Shakespeare’s play is based off Giovanni Cinthio’s 1565 ‘Gli Hecatommithi’ of which the
‘ensign’ (Iago) yearns for Desdemona, yet Shakespeare adapts this plot line to instead
suggest Iago’s own infatuation with Othello. Laurence Olivier in 1938, David Suchet in 1985
and Sir Ian McKellen in 1989 all played the role of Iago as a homosexual character. Suchet
explaining his characterisation of Iago in such way due to Iago: ‘in spite of enduring him not,
praises Othello’s character and hardly dares to think of the happy couple together’. Stanley
Hyman in his 1970 psychoanalytical reading of Iago, further explored the homosexuality of
Iago and how this bond was likely to be initially created within the military where
homosocial relations were common. Therefore, when Othello rejects Iago for the position of
Lieutenant for Cassio and when Othello chooses to marry Desdemona, Iago’s jealousy urges
him to sever both connections. However, being homosexual was deemed ‘unmasculine’ and
henceforth Iago battles both his desire for Othello and desperation to remain masculine. His
projection of feeling feminised is targeted significantly upon Cassio the young, handsome
Venetian who’s military ability Iago continuously dismisses, describing him as ‘great
arithmetician’, who knows no more ‘than a spinster’ of the world of war. Here ‘great
arithmetician’ refers to Cassio to be inept in the battlefield and ‘spinster’ not only feminises
Cassio to an older unmarried woman but suggesting Cassio to also be inept in the bedroom.
This progresses into Iago’s infliction of blame onto Cassio for having slept with Desdemona,
as a means to form a hatred for Cassio in Othello’s mind. Significant numbers of productions
have also explored the narrative of the ‘battered wife’ within Othello, of which depicts Iago’s
abuse of Emilia, arguably due to his repressed homosexuality and desperation to depict
himself as this inherently masculine figure through outward violence. Inevitably, Iago even
murders Emilia.
Arguably Shakespeare explores Iago’s perceived ‘motivelessness’ as a disguise for his
unrequited homosexual love for Othello. Coleridge dictated in the beginning of the
nineteenth century his belief of Iago’s ‘motive hunting motiveless malignantly’, portraying
Iago as truly unmotivated in his actions towards Othello and instead an agent of chaos.
However, Stanley Edgar Hyman explores in Iago’s homosexuality as motivation, he notes that
cuckolding is an action of indirect homosexual intimacy: ‘two men symbolically uniting
sexually by sharing the body of the same woman’, therefore suggesting that Iago holds an
obsession of becoming intimate with Othello. Hyman also expressed how Iago’s homosocial
bonds were curated in the military and marriage of a military man to a woman is arguably a
betrayal to these masculine relationships. In a 1938 performance Laurence Olivier played
Iago as gay and as did David Suchet in 1985 and Sir Ian McKellen in 1989. Suchet noticed: ‘in
spite of enduring him not, he praises Othello’s character and hardly dares to think of the
happy couple together’. In act 3 scene 3 Iago vows his undying loyalty to his general: ‘I am
your own forever’, pleading himself as Othello’s property. Continuously Iago uses voyeuristic
imagery in reference to Othello’s sexuality. Iago’s desperation for the destruction of Othello
becomes symbolic of is his need to destroy his homosexual desire for him. Whilst describing
the imagined dream of Cassio’s about Desdemona, Iago places himself as within the role of
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