In fact, they're talking about a prostitute Bianca who is in love with Cassio. Then Iago stabs Cassio from behind. When more of Othello's soldiers appear, Iago stabs Roderigo too, as if trying to help Cassio.
Then Iago tries to pin all the blame on Bianca, Cassio's prostitute lover. He tells her to shut up, but she tells Othello and everyone present that Iago is to blame for the whole situation.
Othello tries to stab him, but instead Iago stabs Emilia and runs out. He's captured and brought back in, but he refuses to explain why he did all these terrible things. He swears he will never speak again. Othello by William Shakespeare. As one of "the usual lunacies," so-called, in the interpretation of the play, however, Professor Bradley says, "It has been held, for example, that Othello treated lago abominably in preferring Cassio to him.
This is the basis of the complaint of lago, and arouses at once his suspicion and bitter resentment, and soon turns him into an abiding but very stealthy enemy. If Othello can be capable of such gross violation of all military rules and practices, lago sees that he can no longer trust Othello, and that all confidence between them has virtually ceased to exist, and no longer can he hope for the intimate relationships of former days to continue.
This rewarding of Cassio with a military position because of personal service to himself and Desdemona was a most dangerous thing for a general to do, and opened up all kinds of possibilities of trouble, not only with lago, but with the discipline of all his forces. Only the fortune that favors fools could save him from disaster. But it was fatal when one of the disposition of lago was involved, for it turned him at once into an enemy, not only to himself, but to all the others connected with the insult, to Desdemona and Cassio, linking all three in his plan of revenge.
Here, then, is an outstanding fact that too few critics have even observed, and none have adequately explained. At this point in the lives of Othello and lago a great change comes over their relations. It cannot be too much insisted upon that up to this time they had, been the warmest and closest friends, and that lago had been in fact the confidential officer of Othello.
Now all at once, for some reason that has not been understood, lago has been turned into the bitter enemy of his old friend, Othello, and as if to mark the importance of this for the interpretation of the play, the dramatist has chosen this point in their relations for the opening scene.
But in spite of all that has been observed about the importance of Shakespeare's opening scenes for the exposition of his dramatic art, little attention has been paid to this fact in respect to Othello.
The task of the critic at present, then, is to discover the cause of this great change in the relationships of these two men, and from this to trace the further development of the play. Ever since Coleridge it has been the common thing, though by no means universal, to attribute the whole trouble to the sudden and unmotived malignity of lago, or to forget the fact that it has been sudden and unlike anything heard of before on the part of lago, and to assume only the malignity.
Later critics, however, have not been able to overlook the emergence of the malignity at this time, and have attempted to explain it from their own imaginations rather than from the words of the play. Professor Bradley may be taken as voicing the best that can be said by those who would lay all the blame of the tragedy upon lago, but who feel they must account in some manner for this sudden malignity.
Not content with charging lago with the evil the play undoubtedly lays upon his shoulders, Professor Bradley suggests that lago has always been in reality a villain, and has worn his "honesty" only as a mask, which now he throws off, revealing suddenly the real villain that he is, his true nature.
He has always been, says Professor Bradley, "a thoroughly bad, cold man, who is at last tempted to let loose the forces within him. A complete criticism of the assigned motive of lago, and an attempt at the elaboration of his real state of mind must be left until after we have followed the conflict through the initial stages, when we shall be better able to judge the real merits of the case.
Sufficient reason has been found, however, for declining to admit that the drama is the story of the intrigue of lago, and as the name would intimate it is the play of Othello. There is also now justification for attempting to explain the play as in the main the tragedy of the Moor in his new home in Venice. In our attempt to find the explanation of the tragedy in the hero, as assigned by the dramatist, we seem forced to say that now at last, when a crisis comes upon him, the great Moorish general, transplanted from the wilds of his African or Spanish home into the cultured and refined life of Venice, finds himself unable to bear honorably all the great responsibilities of his high position and his new life.
It may be that the dramatist, who was a man of peace and had little admiration for the Caesars and 'other great warriors, is here taking his opportunity to show how little of the higher virtues dwells in great military ability.
But the fact that he makes Othello a Moor, and so designates him throughout the play, must also be accounted for. Up to this time Othello had borne himself nobly in his adopted state, and had the full confidence of the people and the senate, and was universally acknowledged to be the first soldier of Venice. But at this point he fails. Her love for Othello is unwaning:. She bids Othello to do the sensible thing and ask Cassio how he obtained the handkerchief but this is too rational for Othello who has already ordered his murder.
Even as Desdemona faces her death, she asks Emilia to commend her to her 'kind lord'. She remains in love with him knowing that he is responsible for her death. In his final speech Othello claims that he was "one that loved not wisely but too well" and it is clear that his feelings regarding Desdamona were extremely passionate and overwhelming.
Whether one lays all the blame for the tragedy at Iago's door, however, or holds Othello responsible is a matter for each individual audience member as they watch the play.
The relationship between Iago and Emilia is not that of a strong and equal tie of love which we expect to find existing between man and wife. When she exposes his scheme he kills her without a moment's hesitation and shocks the people who witness it: "The woman falls; sure he hath killed his wife.
Emilia seems to love lago and wants to make a success of their marriage. She steals the handkerchief in order to make him happy and perhaps strengthen their relationship:. Her character is somewhat tarnished by her association with Iago but she seems self-aware enough to realise that this is the case: "The ills we do, their ills husbands' instruct us so". Her remarkable courage in standing up to him to defend Desdamona in the final Act redeems her character in the eyes of the audience:. Iago's murder of Emilia exposes his true nature to the world and proves conclusively that he had driven Othello to kill Desdamona.
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