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Othello As Catholic Tragedy

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Othello As Catholic Tragedy Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy By Greg Maillet Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy By Greg Maillet This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by Greg Maillet All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-1399-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1399-0 For my Mother TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Othello and the Nature of Christian Tragedy Chapter I ...................................................................................................... 1 “Of Here and Everywhere”: Reading Othello as Christian Everyman Chapter II ................................................................................................... 19 “Demand that demi-devil why”: Iago and the Mystery of Iniquity Chapter III ................................................................................................. 51 “Never Taint My Love”: Desdemona and the Magnificence of Mary Conclusion ................................................................................................. 83 Catharsis, Christian Tragedy, and the Catholicism of Othello PREFACE OTHELLO AND THE NATURE OF CHRISTIAN TRAGEDY Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body? (Othello, Othello 5.2. 353-541) And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul. (Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew 10:282) Perfect love casteth out fear. (1 John 4:18) It has been a long time since critical debate raged over whether it is possible that a genre such as “Christian tragedy” could even exist. Influential critics such as A.C. Bradley3 and I.A. Richards4 had argued that it could not, that the redemptive power of Christ and the saving purposes of God make Christianity a religion much more amenable to comedy than tragedy. Both genres were defined according to classical criteria, with comedy normally defined as the turn from unhappy to happy circumstances, 1 William Shakespeare, Othello, eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, 1993. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009). 2 The Bible: Authorized King James Version. 1611. Introduction and Notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). All subsequent biblical references are to this edition, and appear parenthetically in the text; though the KJV is published about seven years after the first performance of Othello, its poetry is more resonant with the play, in my view, than is the Geneva Bible or other earlier editions. The KJV may have influenced both the quarto and folio of Othello. 3 A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1905), 25. 4 I.A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1925), 246. x Preface while tragedy was the fall from heights of greatness to depths of despair. Richard Sewall consolidated and clarified many of the main arguments against the concept of ‘Christian tragedy” in The Vision of Tragedy, arguing that “in point of doctrine, Christianity reverses the tragic view and makes tragedy impossible”5. Despite the vigorous counter-arguments of Roy Battenhouse6, Christian approaches to Shakespearean tragedy became very uncommon. In 2011, however, a number of young scholars renewed the conversation between theology and tragic literature7; some gave arguments to suggest the compatibility of Christianity and tragedy, while others sought to explain why there is such an abundance of tragic literature produced by Christian culture. The basic issues can be illustrated through even a cursory glance at a few of the major authors of the Christian literary tradition: Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, and T.S. Eliot. Each of these major authors, in their own way, helps us to understand both why tragedy is so often part of the Christian vision, and why Christianity and tragedy might be ultimately incompatible. No one can forget the painful image of those trapped in Inferno, like the lovers Paulo and Francesca, but Dante goes on in The Divine Comedy to portray Adam and Eve redeemed in the Highest Heaven, with Christian saints such as Mary, Peter, and John. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve are tragically expelled from the Garden of Eden in Book 10. Yet in the final two books of the poem, the angel Michael comforts the original couple with a detailed vision of the divine plan of salvation that had already been revealed in Book 3 of the poem, and ‘foreordained’ by God before human time even began. Even if one is not a ‘universalist’—i.e., believing that all are saved by God—it is not hard to understand the argument that Christianity is essentially a ‘comic’ religion, one in which divine salvific powers often redeem the lost and prevent tragedy. The clarity of this argument is not without tension, however, as can be shown through another sixteenth-century text, Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr. Faustus8. Marlowe’s own theology is not made clear by the play, but 5 Richard B. Sewall, The Vision of Tragedy. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 50. 6 Roy Battenhouse, Shakespearean Tragedy: Its Art and Christian Premises. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969). 7 Christian Theology and Tragedy: Theologians, Tragic Literature and Tragic Theory. Eds. Kevin Taylor and Giles Waller (London: Routledge, 2011). 8 Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, first performed 1588-93, published in 1604 and 1616. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. 8th Ed. Gen. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York & London: Norton, 2006), 461-493. Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xi its title character is a doctor of theology at Wittenberg, Luther’s German university. Though one can’t believe that Faustus is a direct allegorical representation of Luther, one also can’t miss the fact that, from the opening scene of the play, Faustus chooses necromancy rather than divinity, and ‘sells his soul’ to Lucifer, after calling up a representative fallen angel, Mephistopheles. Ironically, even as doing so, Faustus claims, and seems in part to believe, that “hell’s a fable,” but Mephistopheles is very clear about the reality of hell; he replies, to Faustus’ skepticism, “thinkest thou still, until experience changes your mind” (Scene 5: 125- 27). The play ends tragically, with Faustus experiencing the physical reality of a fall into hell, created through the ‘hell-mouth’ commonly used upon the Elizabethan stage. Yet questions remain. Was Faustus ‘pre-destined’ to fall, and in that sense is his ultimate damnation foreordained before the play even begins? A ‘good angel’ and ‘evil angel’ vie for Faustus’ soul throughout the play, and though he normally follows the advice of the latter, there are moments when Faustus seriously contemplates conversion to Christianity. There is even one sad moment when he cries out for salvation in the name of Christ, yet then Lucifer appears (Scene 5: 256-58). Is he, as some have speculated, ‘predestined’ to damnation? Is the play’s tragic conclusion foreordained before the beginning of the play, when Faustus is shown choosing necromancy? Is salvation also predestined by God’s absolute grace, meaning that Christianity prevents any form of tragic suspense in which dramatic outcomes are unclear? In no small part, critical response to these questions depends on a response to the fundamental theological options dividing Europe in Marlowe’s time. Such divisions are still with us in the 21st century, but they can be clarified by remembering the decision that T.S. Eliot contemplated when considering his own conversion to Christianity in the 1920s: a ‘calvinism’ in which the power of divine Grace is absolute, or a ‘catholicism’ in which human ‘free will’ co-operates with divine grace, but is also capable of rejecting God. In the former, God chooses whom to save and whom to damn in hell, as seems to be suggested in Romans 9, where St. Paul speaks of how God hath “mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Rom. 9: 18). In Catholicism, free will is not absolute either—the Pelagian form of this argument is clearly rejected as heresy thanks largely to St. Augustine’s spiritual leadership—but there is a balance between the providential actions of God and the freedom of humanity. Rather than stressing Romans 9, St. Paul’s chapter on the election of Israel that is so important in Calvinism, in Catholicism the more commonly cited biblical text, for eschatology, is xii Preface Matthew 25: 31-46, Jesus’ allegory of the sheeps and the goats at the Last Judgement, receiving their just reward. Those who visited the sick, fed the hungry, and visited those in prison go to heaven, while those who did not are told, in the Latin used by the Doctor of Theology at the conclusion of the 15th century play Everyman, “ite maledicti in ignem eternum” or “depart, evildoer, into eternal fire”. Jesus solemnly promises, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of
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