sign in sign up
<<
Home , Beast with two backs, Catch My Soul, Catch My Soul (musical), The Puritan

Reading 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”: and the Mystery of Iniquity

Chapter III ...... 51 “Never Taint My Love”: 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 , 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, : Lectures on , Othello, , . 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 these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). Each human person seems to have a choice on how to act, and this choice directly affects salvation. Thus, Roman Catholics from St. Augustine to Erasmus to John Paul II argue that the human will co-operates with the divine will, and there is an important sense in which all those in hell—as in Dante’s Inferno—have chosen to be there. Strongly influenced by Dante, Eliot chooses ‘catholicism’ rather than ‘calvinism,’ but makes his own spiritual home in the traditions of the Anglican Church.9 Many Christian approaches to this question, including both the Puritan Milton and the Catholic Dante, do stress the importance of human free will in any ‘theodicy’ that seeks to explain how an omnipotent God allows suffering and evil; moreover, most Christian theologians believe that God desires to form a ‘love’ relationship with free subjects, even “friends,” as Jesus insists his servant-disciples be called (John 15:15), rather than the ‘master-robot’ relationship commonly asserted by enemies of theism. Milton’s Satan is one such enemy, and Paradise Lost 9: 679-732 clearly (contra Romantic mis-readings of this great poem) presents how the perverse psychology of the fallen angel twists our understanding of divine love and causes human beings, commonly, to fall by making ourselves “gods” (as Satan tempts Adam and Eve in Gen. 3:5) rather than accepting that only God can be God.

Othello and the Christian Tradition

William Shakespeare’s Othello: The Moor of Venice foregrounds similar issues in many ways. Direct allusion to the topical issues inherent in theological dispute seems to come in casual conversation, as often happens in Shakespeare, when the soldier Cassio remarks to his drinking companions that “God’s above all, and there be souls must be saved and there be souls must not be saved” (2.3. 95-97). One of these companions replies, “It’s true,” but this response is surely filled with dramatic irony; as

9 See “In Search of Faith 1925-1929,” in Peter Ackroyd, T.S. Eliot (London: Abacus, 1985), 149-177. Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xiii the audience is well aware by this point in the play, the respondent is the play’s primary villain, Iago, and he is a man who is actively working, even as they drink together, to cause Cassio’s death and damnation. Nor, of course, does Iago’s simple answer explain how “true” salvation occurs; is Iago endorsing Calvinism, thus suggesting that Shakespeare believes the opposite possibility common in the Reformation, the Catholic emphasis on free will? Yet when Cassio is ultimately saved, it seems more by grace than human will, for another villain attempts to murder him at play’s end yet somehow he survives. By then Iago has committed many other damnable acts, yet—very unusually for Shakespearean tragic villains—he is not finally shown to be killed. Instead, Iago has succeeded in deceiving the play’s hero, Othello, making him believe that his wife, the saintly Desdemona, is adulterous; this causes Othello to murder Desdemona, and then commit suicide—tragic death that strongly suggests our hero’s ultimate damnation. Othello himself seems to have foreshadowed this conclusion when, earlier in the play, he spoke of his own damnation by telling Desdemona, “Perdition / But I do love thee, and when I love thee not / Chaos is come again” (3.3.91-93). The choice to love or not seems to directly affect the eternal destination of one’s soul, as in Matthew 25, yet one might also wonder whether Othello’s apparent damnation is predestined, if not by God then by the cultural circumstances into which he is born. Is Othello ultimately damned, however, or are there elements, to borrow a commonplace Calvinist term, of “irresistible grace,” that are offered to him within the play, which might preserve his soul even after the death of his body? Before one can attempt to answer such questions, one must notice many aspects of the dramatic and cultural circumstances that Shakespeare portrays in the play, giving it an artistic depth that makes its theology even more complex.

Othello as Medieval Morality

This depth is created, first, by an obvious medieval dramatic structure underlying the play’s plot and characterization, a structure that has been noticed by many critics. A ‘psychomachia’ is a common medieval aesthetic form in which a ‘good’ and ‘evil’ angel vie for the soul of ‘Everyman,’ who represents the soul believed by Christians to reside in every human person. On this reading of the play, Desdemona and Iago vie for the soul of Othello, with the fallen angel, described by Othello at play’s end as a ‘demi-devil’ (5.3. 307), clearly ‘winning’. The simplicity xiv Preface of this medieval structure has discouraged its use in contemporary literary criticism, for it obviously does not account for many of the play’s complex elements. Yet the medieval structure can account for many important elements of the play, even the character’s names, if one notices the ironic inversion created by Shakespeare. ‘Iago’ is the Spanish form of St. James, Spain’s patron saint; this name thus has an obvious ironic, negative connotation for Shakespeare’s audience, who certainly regard Spain as their nation’s primary foreign enemy at the time when the play was first produced. ‘Dramatic irony’ is thus developed throughout the play, for unlike most of the onstage characters who are convinced by the outward friendliness of “honest” (2.3. 8) Iago, as he is regularly called, the audience does hear the soliloquys in which Iago proclaims his evil intentions. Ironic inversion is also suggested by Desdemona’s name; one could trace its etymology to ‘dysdaimon’, Greek for ‘unfortunate’, but Shakespeare’s audience would be much more likely to hear connections to Latin and its cognate Romance languages, Spanish, French, or Italian, as befits the play’s setting in Italy. ‘Des-demona’ suggests, in ‘romance’ languages, ‘of the female devils’; as with Iago, this ‘meaning’ is clearly the opposite of her true character, for Desdemona is among the most virtuous characters in all of Shakespeare. Again, ‘dramatic irony’ builds throughout the play as Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona is adulterous, but the play’s audience always knows she is not. Given the obvious ironies of two of the play’s central characters, could the same apply to the play’s tragic hero? The name ‘Othello’ suggests the ‘Ottoman’ empire, the Islamic political empire that, in Shakespeare’s time, is the primary enemy of Christian Europe. The play’s subtitle, “The Moor of Venice,” also suggests that the hero is ‘other’ in Italian culture, for historically were Muslims who had lived in Spain until being expelled to northern Africa in the 15th century. Othello’s own religious background in the play rarely suggests Islam, but, given the obvious intention with Iago and Desdemona, could his name also connote ironic inversion? Could Othello be, not an ‘other’, but rather an Everyman? The other elements of his character cannot be ignored, certainly, but perhaps Shakespeare does intend to remind us that, whatever else he is, Othello is a man with a soul. To claim such might not seem radical, but one must remember that to affirm a soul in an ‘other’ not only, in Shakespeare’s time, confers the ‘human rights’ familiar to us in the 21st century, it also affirms ‘eternal rights’ available to those able to live in eternity—though the key question, where, remains. Since onstage dialogue regularly looks forward to the afterlife at the conclusion of Shakespearean tragedy, we must be open to Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xv seeing the soul in Shakespearean characters. This issue has recently been thoughtfully considered by Dympna Callaghan10: do characters have souls and, if so, how should critics discuss this reality? The question is not as strictly theological as it might appear, given that most critics assume some kind of interior life within dramatic characters, in addition to the words by which they express this interior life.11 But the issue of “soul” goes beyond modern conceptions of human psychology or emotional life, and asserts the need to discuss the characters’ relationship to eternal reality, as eternity is understood by theology. Do Shakespeare’s characters have souls in this sense? Does Othello? Such questions are at the heart of this study. Considering the medieval roots and theological meaning of Othello inevitably raises, for many, the issue of allegory. For everyone agrees that a major difference between much medieval literature and Shakespearean drama is the complexity of character in the latter; no character simply allegorically represents or embodies a single trait. Though this point is certainly true, a much more common Renaissance approach to literature than allegory, also inspired by the Bible, is typology12. A biblical hermeneutic authorized by Christ Himself, who tells the disciples that he will be in the earth for three days, as Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the whale (Matt. 12:40), typology makes no attempt to disguise or efface the obvious differences between the characters compared. Rather, figures are compared to suggest similarities, but the comparison is meant to be limited. In the complex ‘four-fold’ theory of meaning commonplace in the medieval world13, typology was usually connected to historical figures and literal meanings, whereas allegory was associated more with spiritual or mystical meaning. Both typology and allegory, however, and this is the crucial point for this study here, could

10 Dympna Callaghan, “Do Characters Have Souls?” Shakespeare Studies 34 (2006): 41-6. 11 To cite an obvious example, think of the guilt usually assumed to describe Richard III’s nightmare of past victims before the Battle of Bosworth. 12 For further discussion of Early Modern typology, see Robert Hollander, ‘Typology and Secular Literature: Some Medieval Examples and Problems,’ in Literary Uses of Typology from the Late Middle Ages to the Present, ed. by Earl R. Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 3–19. See also Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, ‘Typological Symbolism and the “Progress of the Soul” in Seventeenth-Century Literature,’ in Literary Uses of Typology from the Late Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Earl R. Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 79–114. 13 The classic study of this complex hermeneutic is Henri De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis. 1959. Translated into English as part of Ressourcement series, 4 Vols (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998-). xvi Preface contribute to a text’s meaning as ‘anagogy,’ which concerns ultimate, eternal meaning. Anagogy, as 20th century American writer Flannery O’Connor usefully put it, is a mode of meaning concerned with “the divine life and our participation in it’14. As such, anagogical meaning is crucial to theological aesthetics, and can draw on both typology and allegory. The former is focused on in this study, in no small part because both Mary and Christ are normally understood by Shakespeare’s age to be absolutely unique figures. Thus, typology is a much more flexible way than allegory for Christian writers to refer to biblical meaning. This complex but crucial point was clarified in an article on Othello that appeared as part of a study of the recurrence of Marian moments in Early Modern British Drama.15 While the basic argument of that article still stands, this book attempts to broaden the relevance of the medieval typology found within Othello, while learning from further Marian scholarship, in order to show the relevance of a theological approach to our contemporary critical understanding of Shakespearean drama.

Historicizing Othello

The ‘medieval’ approach to Othello derived from the close reading and attention to tropes (or figures of speech, such as irony) typical of the ‘New Criticism’ that dominated English Studies in universities for the first third of the 20th century, yet it was clearly melded to what also becomes known as “Old Historical” criticism, the study of dramatic sources in literary tradition and genre. The “New Historicism” that became popular in the 1980s considerably widened the field of possible literary sources, arguing that dramatic meaning derives not just from an author’s or audience’s mutual awareness of literary history, but from the much broader field of ‘culture’ that becomes signified through the term ‘discourse’. For the foremost practitioner and pioneering theorist of ‘New Historicism’, Stephen Greenblatt, “the work of art is the product of a negotiation between a creator or class of creators, equipped with a complex, communally shared repertoire of conventions, and the institutions and

14 Flannery O’Connor, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction.” Mystery and Manners. 1961. Ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), 72. 15 Greg Maillet, “Desdemona and the Mariological Theology of the Will,” Marian Moments in Early British Drama. Ed. Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 87-110. Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xvii practices of society.”16 To describe this “repertoire” is to ‘historicize’ a play, to understand it within the complex, innumerable field of cultural signifiers that is available within any historical moment. ‘New Historicism’ is the guiding inspiration of much late 20th century Othello criticism, particularly influential works such as Virginia Mason Vaughn’s Othello: A Contextual History17. The first half of Vaughn’s book describes four primary ‘discourses’ in Jacobean England: the “global discourse” of “Venetians and Turks,” the “military discourse” of “knights and mercenaries,” the “racial discourse” of “black and white,” and the “marital discourse” of “husbands and wives”. Vaughn provides numerous examples from diverse historical sources for each discourse, showing how each contributes to the possible meaning Jacobean audiences might have found in Othello. The second half of the book then functions as a kind of New Historical stage history, describing the play’s reception in selected cultural milieus, such as Restoration England, the 18th century theatre, or 20th century plays such as Trevor Nunn’s 1989 production for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Particularly significant for Vaughn is Paul Roberson’s 1943 portrayal of Othello, for this marks the first time that a black actor enacts the play’s pioneering racial discourse. It takes a long time for theatrical practice to catch up to authorial inspiration, apparently, given that Shakespeare clearly intends, almost 400 years earlier, for Othello to be the stage’s first major black hero. Postcolonial literary critics of our day are very interested in the cultural conflict in the play, between not only Christian Europe and the Muslim Ottoman empire, but also whichever form of Northern African belief system Othello reverts to as he becomes convinced that Desdemona is adulterous. The handkerchief he has given her as a personal present has been traded trivially with other women, simultaneously violating and confirming its personal significance for him; “that handkerchief,” he says, “Did an Egyptian to my mother give / She was a charmer, and could almost read / The thoughts of people” (3.4. 55-58). Yet Vaughn and other critics who foreground the study of race in the play also raise a more disturbing question: is the play itself racist, in the sense that, as Othello’s jealousy makes him homicidal, are the racist assumptions of the audience confirmed rather than challenged?

16 Stephen Greenblatt, “Towards a Poetics of Culture,” New Historicism, ed. H.Aram Veeser (New York: Routledge, 1989), 12. 17 Virginia Mason Vaughn’s Othello: A Contextual History. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). xviii Preface

Feminist Othello

A similar question is often raised by the literary criticism perhaps most commonly used to discuss Othello today, feminist literary theory. For after Desdemona eloquently affirms her love for Othello early in the play, before the Venetian Senate, her father says to Othello: “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see / She has deceived her father, and may thee” (1.3. 333-34). Since Othello is later deceived, though by Iago rather than by Desdemona, and Desdemona herself certainly suffers greatly at the consequence of her decision, is the play itself patriarchal? Does Shakespeare intend to warn young women not to rebel against the authority of their fathers, or at least not to marry outside of their own racial and cultural circumstances? Feminist critics also point out that Desdemona is largely silenced in the text of the last three acts of the play, especially, and that directors of the play often reduce her lines from the first two acts, particularly those which do not seem essential to the play’s plot. The scene most praised by feminist critics, however, is the famous dialogue of 4.3. Desdemona’s lady in waiting, (who as Iago’s wife has become thoroughly familiar with male treachery), tells Desdemona that women can be just as devious as men in romantic affairs, being made of the same human stuff. In almost any period of human history, and certainly in the Jacobean era, as Vaughn points out, Emilia’s words are a challenge to reigning ideologies about women being kinder, more submissive, and more obedient than men. Emilia’s subsequent murder in Act 5, however, at the hands of her husband Iago, is on a feminist reading part of the play’s sad portrayal of violence against women. The most obvious example of this, of course, is Othello’s murder of his own wife. Does Desdemona’s certainly faithful but arguably naïve love for Othello, recalling Griselda in Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale but based on Desdemona’s own personal and religious ideology, so condemn her that one must also question the truth of this ideology? For feminist literary critics, Othello documents the related tragedies of racism and patriarchy, and certainly does not offer redeeming hope of any kind.

Othello as Christian Tragedy

In the critical environment that reigns today, can there be reason yet to consider Othello as a ‘Christian Tragedy’? What would cause us to consider the play in this way? How would this approach relate to the already prevalent understanding of Othello? Can a Christian approach to Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xix this tragedy draw upon the already existent forms of criticism? Are there insights possible through ‘Christian Tragedy’ that help us see things in the play we might otherwise miss? These are the relevant questions that must be answered, in order to avoid the inevitable accusations of bias and personal interest that tend to arise, after postmodernism, in any critical inquiry. Clearly the play does present the possibility of Othello’s damnation. Does Shakespeare intend to present him as a Christian? Rather than seeing him as a foreign ‘other’, it is certainly possible, given that his off-stage marriage to Desdemona begins the play, and that only Christians could participate in sacramental marriage in the Venetian, medieval Italian setting of this play, this appears on one level to be a Christian tragedy. Perhaps an even more important element of this tragedy, however, is suggested by its underlying medieval structure, for surely central to the tragedy that occurs is Othello’s human soul, facing not only the pain of death but the drama of eternal life. Religious discourse does inform historicist analysis in many ways, unsurprising given how important religion was to the four discourses identified, for example, by Vaughn. Religious faith, alters, for example, our view of the play’s racial questions, for the Judaeo-Christian tradition is very clear that there is only one human ‘race,’ despite the racism often exhibited by religious believers. More generally, it can be argued that Christian theology, in a crucial way, deepens our understanding of the nature of the play’s historicized discourse. Nowhere is this more true than in our understanding of the play’s female characters, especially the essential role of Desdemona in the play. As antagonist to Iago, Desdemona’s leading role is asserted but often practically ignored by the medieval critics of the play, and one can be grateful to feminist approaches for restating her leading role. The value of Desdemona’s virtue, however, shines anew in the eternal light offered by Christian theology. Partly this approach can be justified on historical grounds; if Othello occurs in a Christian setting, and is performed for a Christian audience, then we should at least be open to thinking about the characters’ interior life in a Christian way. More controversially, however, a Christian approach to the play accepts the apparent invitation, in many Shakespeare plays, to view the end of the play as no more a ‘conclusion’ to characters’ lives than the opening of the play is their beginning; just as some ‘pre- existent’ life for each character is assumed and usually clarified by the scenes of the play itself, so some future life, even after death, is often asserted or at least hinted at by the ‘ending’ of the play. Difficult though it xx Preface often is for modern critics to notice, in Shakespeare’s plays this point applies as much to death in tragedy as to marriage in comedy.

Christian and Catholic?

If it is essential to consider Christianity as an important cultural ‘discourse’ for this play, why does my title further specify my intention to read Othello as a ‘Catholic’ rather than simply a ‘Christian’ tragedy? Is this primarily because I am a Roman Catholic, and can read the play only according to my own biases? Partly just though such an accusation might be, there are other good reasons why the distinction, at least in this case, is valuable. Before clarifying these reasons, let me be clear that I do not regard ‘Catholicism’ and ‘Christianity’ as separate religions; though the ecclesiastical and historical issues are too complex to consider here, suffice it to say that, as for the earliest Christians, by ‘catholic’ I simply mean whatever Christians must hold, as best we can currently discern, as universally true. Nevertheless, it is inevitably true also that describing something as ‘catholic’ associates one with the doctrines and theology of Roman Catholicism, and largely my work welcomes this association. But my approach should not be read as an attempt to “claim Shakespeare for the faith”; is idolatry, and the primary point of investigating religion in Shakespeare is to understand his plays, not his beliefs. My own background, aided by relevant sources, should make it more likely to notice Catholic elements in Shakespeare’s work, but my own biases are no substitute for critical evidence. Given that clarification, there are still good reasons for describing Othello as a “Catholic tragedy”. Most obviously, there is the play’s Italian world, a setting Shakespeare uses in many plays, perhaps most notably in and , to present Catholic culture. In the Jacobean political world, it is undoubtedly true that for many in Shakespeare’s audience, Catholic Europe was a general enemy, and this is especially true of Spain. Iago as ‘St. James’ would have been a dramatic irony almost comical for Shakespeare’s audience, but neither the many recusants nor even the Anglicans in his audience likely rejected entirely Catholic culture. Thus an Italian setting allows a foreign and therefore less controversial depiction of key elements of Catholic culture, such as the sacraments, which Anglicanism remained either open to or ambiguous about. Given this history, the recent turn towards religion in English Studies must, of necessity, consider Catholicism. As the editors of the Marian Moments volume put it: Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xxi

Joining historians in rejecting the received belief that Catholicism could be turned on and off like a water spigot in response to sixteenth-century religious reform, a number of early modern British scholars have begun turning their attention to the vestiges of Catholic tradition and culture that leak out in early modern drama, via stage imagery, plot devices, and characterization.18

Whether Shakespeare himself hoped that his art would help return England to the ‘old faith’ is probably a question we will be unable to answer, this side of heaven, despite the extensive biographical efforts in that direction from many recent critics. Nevertheless, it is worth knowing the key reasons for the opposed positions on this question. Historians have clearly established that Shakespeare’s region of England, Warwickshire, was a centre of Catholic or ‘Recusant’ activity, both before and after the 1605 Gunpowder plot. The 18th century biographer Malone claimed to have seen the since lost will of Shakespeare’s father, and further claimed that this will was clearly in the form of Jesuit wills that had been smuggled into England during Elizabeth’s reign. Perhaps even more significantly, it was discovered in 196419 that in 1606, when paranoia and persecution of Catholicism was perhaps at its height in Jacobean England due to the Gunpowder Plot, both the godparents of Shakespeare’s son (Hamnet, who died aged 11 in 1596), Hamnet and Judith Sadler, and the playwright’s eldest daughter, Susanna, refused (for the longest possible time while avoiding corporal punishment) to receive communion in Stratford’s Trinity Anglican Church, a symbolic but spiritual means for Recusants to reject the authority of the state church.20 These facts cannot prove Shakespeare’s own beliefs, but surely suggest sympathy for Recusants; even if it were true that Shakespeare’s

18 Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins, “Introduction,” Marian Moments in Early British Drama. Ed. Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 1. Three of the key historical and literary studies of Early Modern Catholicism are Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern English Texts, ed. Arthur Marotti (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999) and Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, eds. Dennis Taylor and David N. Beauregard (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003) and Alison Shell, Catholicism, Controversy and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 19 Reported in Hugh A. Hanley, Shakespeare Family in Stratford Records,” Times Literary Supplement, May 21, 1964, 441. Also see Samuel Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Lives. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 12. 20 The story of this extraordinary moment has been told well recently by James Shapiro in The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 222-23. xxii Preface own religious position differed substantially from his father and daughter, it strikes me as highly unlikely that Shakespeare would choose devout godparents for his children (and name them after them, since his second daughter is named Judith), if he was not at least sympathetic to Catholicism in a way uncommon for most English Anglicans or Puritans. Historical studies of the Stratford parish in which Shakespeare grew up, like the painting of the Last Judgment now restored on the walls of its chapel, reveal the vibrant Catholicism of Shakespeare’s native Warwickshire region.21 It is true, on the other hand, that no similar record of ecclesiastical protest exists for Shakespeare, and the baptismal and marital records that do exist justifiably led 20th century biographers like A.L. Rowse to conclude, “Shakespeare lived and died in the Anglican Church.”22 It is also true, of course, that public proclamation of Catholicism could have prevented Shakespeare from practicing his career as playwright. That he might avoid such political troubles does not make him a crass careerist; perhaps he thought, quite justifiably, that his art could speak for him. To accept this one need not view his plays as a secret ‘code’, as was argued in Clair Asquith’s Shadowplay23, for one can see developing faith in the primary ideas of his plays. Though early plays like Richard III might follow historical sources to affirm the role of providence in ending the Wars of the Roses and raising the Tudor House, while comedies like and even tragedies such as Hamlet or King Lear can be seen as sympathetic to Catholic viewpoints, the last plays are clearly Shakespeare’s most religious works. There is an irony to this development given that the “Act to Restrain Abuses of Player” was passed by the British Parliament in 1606, in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot and growing Anglican-Puritan tension, to require censorship of any reference to the Christian faith. This Act hardly marks the beginning of religious tension in Shakespeare’s England, or of official censorship, but it is true that references to Christian divinity common in plays before this becomes replaced by classical deity. Far more likely than a change of belief in Shakespeare, whose 1616 will clearly

21 The Last Judgment, from A Series of Antient…Paintings…on the Walls of the Chapel….at Stratford upon Avon, etched by Thomas Fisher, 1807. Partially reproduced in William Shakespeare, Othello, eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, 1993. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 258. 22 A.L. Rowse, William Shakespeare: A Biography. 1963 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1995). 23 Claire Asquith, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare. (New York: Public Affairs, 2005). Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xxiii affirms Christian belief, the role of classical divinity in Shakespeare’s late plays corresponds to the ‘baptism’ of classical ideas common in the Christian Humanism prevalent in Renaissance art in the 16th Century. More indicative of Shakespeare’s own beliefs, if definitive, would be evidence of his revising the quarto papers (usually published close to a play’s initial performance) later given to his fellow actors, Heminges and Condell, for the eventual publication of the in 1623, seven years after his death. Lacking any definitive authoritative papers this cannot be proven, but studies of plays in which there is a major difference between the quarto and folio has suggested, to many, authorial revision.24 This is especially true of Othello and King Lear25, in that the dying words of both heroes are changed in a manner that could reference Christian divinity. For many critics, the folio of Lear is superior to the quarto, and one can make a similar case for Othello. For a Christian approach to the play, the two most important variants from quarto to folio are Desdemona’s defense of Othello before the Venetian Senators (1.3.) and Othello’s closing speech; in both cases, the Folio text is clearly more Christian, than the Quarto, and perhaps suggests the maturing of the author’s theological beliefs. Nevertheless, there are some important and obvious differences between the textual sources of Othello and King Lear. Perhaps most importantly, though Othello was probably acted as early as 1602, its quarto is not printed until 1622, whereas the Lear quarto is 1608 (after 1606 performance). It is thus possible that Shakespeare, alive until 1616, directly revised and edited the Lear but not the Othello quarto. E.A. J. Honigmann has recently used the 3rd Arden edition of Othello to make the case that both its quarto and folio derive from Shakespeare’s own papers, and represent his ‘first’ and ‘second’ thoughts.26 Honigmann’s argument is compelling but not certain, as must be the case given that the original papers no longer exist. For editions today, some editorial mix of quarto and folio for Othello seems inevitable. Yet there is clearly also good reason to favor the folio text of the play, despite the folio’s oft-noted

24 For an excellent discussion of the textual issues raised by King Lear, see Rene Weis, King Lear: A Parallel Text Edition, 2nd Edition. (London: Routledge, 2010). 25 Both the quarto and folio texts of King Lear were printed in William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). All subsequent references to Shakespeare, other than to Othello, will be to this edition, and will appear parenthetically in the text. 26 William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. E.A.J. Honigmann, 1997. The . 3rd Edition. Eds. Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson, David Scott Kastan, H.R. Woudhuysen (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 351-67. xxiv Preface

‘bowdlerizing’ or censuring of any kinds of oath, and one can appreciate the editorial policy of Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, whose Folger Shakespeare Library edition follows the folio text except when minor textual variations or obvious censorship dictates otherwise.27 Mowat’s and Werstine’s text is thus the Othello cited throughout my study, and its reproduction of the Last Judgment paintings of the walls of the church at Stratford-upon-Avon28 is an important source of inspiration for my topic.

Desdemona and Mary

The ‘Doom’ painting of Stratford-upon-Avon has a central image of Mary interceding with Christ for the souls of the dead, like most ‘Last Judgment’ depictions, but perhaps the most fascinating element of the painting is the unnamed but clearly female person in shroud, close to those already captured by demons. She may be a nun, or simply a holy woman praying for souls, but either way she is clearly a type, in the medieval sense, of Mary. More important to the Catholicism of Othello than either its author’s biography or setting is the crucial role in the play of Desdemona. Though she is clearly a complex, realistic character who is an independent daughter and loving wife in the play, it also seems undeniable that Shakespeare intends to compare elements of her character to the women most associated with Catholicism, either in Shakespeare’s day or our own: Mary, the Mother of God. As contrary to secular assumptions though some might find this, how else can we interpret Cassio’s lines early in Act 2 of the play when, after describing how the rough seas “having sense of beauty do omit / Their mortal natures, letting go safely by / The divine Desdemona” (2.1. 72-74), he announces the arrival of Desdemona to Cyprus by exclaiming:

O, behold, The riches of the ship is come on shore! You men of Cyprus, let her have your knees. Hail to thee, lady, and the grace of heaven Before, behind thee, and on every hand Enwheel thee round! (2.1. 83-88).

27 William Shakespeare, Othello, eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, 1993. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009). 28 The Last Judgment, from A Series of Antient…Paintings…on the Walls of the Chapel….at Stratord upon Avon, etched by Thomas Fisher, 1807. Partially reproduced in William Shakespeare, Othello, eds. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, 1993. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 258. Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xxv

Very likely, many in Shakespeare’s audience would have here heard direct allusion to Catholic doctrines of and prayers to Mary. For Catholics of course, and certainly not for many forms of Christianity that began in the Protestant ‘reformation’, Mary is a woman so infused with divine beauty that one should kneel before here and say, like the angel Gabriel, “Ave” (Luke 1: 28) or, as it is translated from the Latin into the most common English prayer to Mary, “Hail”. Not by her own merits but solely through what Cassio here calls “the grace of heaven,” Roman Catholics (with Eastern Orthodox Christians) follow Gabriel by asserting that Mary is plena gratia, or “full of grace” as the “Hail Mary” puts it, and this is the basis of the controversial doctrine defining Mary’s absence of original sin, the “immaculate conception”. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Mary’s grace makes her especially known as stella maris, star of the sea, guiding sailors to safety. Jaroslav Pelikan demonstrates clearly, in his magisterial Mary through the Centuries29, that Mary “has been more of an inspiration to more people than any other woman who ever lived.”30 As part of this history, Mary has influenced the creation of countless fictional women in literature, from medieval lyrics to Tolkien’s Galadriel. Tolkien’s friend Fr. Robert Murray, S.J., had compared Galadriel to Mary, and in his letter of reply Tolkien seems to concur,31 adding that “Our Lady” is the basis of “all my own small perception of beauty.”32 Mary as inspiration to beauty is a crucial aspect of her influence through the centuries, as stated perhaps most eloquently by G.M. Hopkins poem “May Magnificat,”33 which explains why “May is Mary’s month,” by showing how the beauty and vivacity of spring expresses the Catholic understanding of Mary. This understanding, however, was not only not shared but virulently opposed by many elements of the Protestant Reformation. Though published after Othello, a good guide to how strongly Marian devotion could be opposed in Shakespeare’s time is The Jesuites Gospel,34 written

29 Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary through the Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 30 Pelikan, 2. 31 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 171-72. 32 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 172. 33 G.M. Hopkins, “May Magnificat,” G.M. Hopkins: The Oxford Authors. Ed. Catherine Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 139-140. 34 William Crashaw, The Jesuites Gospel. 1610. Qtd. by Arthur F. Marotti, “Foreword,” Marian Moments in Early British Drama. Ed. Regina Buccola and Lisa Hopkins (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), xv-xvi. xxvi Preface by William Crashaw in 1610, which ridicules Marian piety as unworthy of the Christian faith. It is not an exaggeration to say that no aspect of Christianity was more divisive in the Reformation than Marian devotion. Protestant Reformers condemned the ‘cult’ of Mary and sought to eradicate all aspects of its devotion, frequently destroying ‘relics’ of Marian devotion, while pious Catholics were horrified by what they saw as desecration of the holy. Richard Crashaw, rebelling against his father William, even accepted Mary as spiritual mother, and becomes one of the most imaginative and orthodox Catholic poets who ever lived. Outwardly, Shakespeare was not as committed either way, but can it be true, living in England at this time of great conflict, that Shakespeare chose to make Desdemona one of the “great Madonnas” of literature? Somewhat surprisingly, the direct allusions to Mary in Othello have received surprisingly little critical attention. Partly this is because Desdemona is, as already noted, a complex, realistic character, but also— and this is a point made especially clear by feminist critics of the play— her virtue has often been trivialized, dismissed as a naïve, tragic innocence fated to be overshadowed by Iago and finally snuffed out by Othello. For many critics, Othello becomes not a medieval psychomachia in which the ‘good angel’ and the ‘bad angel’ war for Everyman’s soul, but rather a psychological drama in which ‘honest’ Iago deceives gullible Othello. The tendency to see the play this way is often enhanced by directors cutting Desdemona’s lines as ‘unnecessary’ to the plot of the play, ignoring their thematic importance. By contrast, however, how could our understanding of the play change if we bring a sympathetic, theologically developed view of Mary, such as is normative in Roman Catholicism, to our interpretation of Desdemona’s character and role in Othello? It is certainly true that Mary is important theologically to the many streams of the Christian faith that today have developed an identity beyond ‘protesting’ Catholicism, and that there are many elements of Othello that concern foundations of Christianity that unite all Christians. In the afore- mentioned dialogue of Emilia and Desdemona, for example, the cynical older woman does tell the younger innocent that adultery is a “small vice” to commit compared to winning “all the world” (4.3. 66-68), yet surely the play’s historical audience would also have heard Jesus’ famous, related question: “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). Questions of the eternal soul are also clearly raised at the play’s end, when Othello demands, pointing to Iago, “Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil / Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?” (5.2. 307-08). Again, the warning of Jesus comes to mind: “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: Reading Othello as Catholic Tragedy xxvii but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Is Jesus advising us to fear Satanic evil here, or to feel the eternal glory and holiness of God, closely linked when Proverbs tells us: “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10)? After the grace and truth that comes with Jesus Christ, however, should we not affirm that “perfect love casteth out fear” (1 John 4:18)? Such are the ‘catholic’ questions that must be considered by all Christians. Othello, it seems, demands not only that we face the evil in human nature that destroys beautiful love, but also that we ask if the perfect love that Desdemona retains for her husband, even during her murder, should drive out our fears for Othello’s damnation? Reading Othello as Catholic tragedy, then, is not an exercise in dramatic demonstration of theological doctrine, but rather an exploration of the drama of Christian salvation.

CHAPTER I

“OF HERE AND EVERYWHERE”: READING OTHELLO AS CHRISTIAN EVERYMAN

Even the most ardent medievalist is likely to feel, initially, that seeing Othello as an “Everyman” is a far-fetched comparison. Many critics, though, have compared him to the first biblical man, Adam. Paul N. Siegel’s outline of the play’s typology was not unusual for its time; “for the Elizabethans,” Siegel argued,

the noble soul of Othello, the diabolic cunning of Iago, and the divine goodness of Desdemona would not have had a loosely metaphoric meaning. Desdemona, who in her for-giveness and perfect love, a love requited by death, is reminiscent of Christ, would have represented Christian values; Iago, who in his envious hatred and destructive negativism is reminiscent of Satan, would have represented anti-Christian values. The choice that Othello had to make was between Christian love and forgiveness and Satanic hate and venge-fulness…. and, like all men who succumb to the devil, evil, his fall was reminiscent of that of Adam.1

For most critics today, however, Othello, like most of the major characters in Shakespeare’s mature plays, is a complex, well-rounded figure whose nature cannot be simply summarized or allegorized. Moreover, there has to be some significance in the most obvious aspect of his ‘otherness’, the fact that he is the first sympathetic hero of color on the English theatrical stage. The clear nobility of this black hero, so obviously needed by the Venetians, is surely one of the seminal anti-racist moments in English history. Yet it also seems clear, at least with Iago and Desdemona, that the play does require a hermeneutic of irony, even ‘opposites’, in which one might expect that Othello, apparently an obvious ‘other’ in Venetian society, may also be intended by Shakespeare to be an ‘Everyman’ who experiences the trials faced by every human being. The first example of this paradox occurs early in Othello when Iago, together with his dupe , goes to awaken Brabantio, the father of

1 Paul N. Siegel, “The Damnation of Othello,” PMLA (1953): 1063. 2 Chapter I

Desdemona, to tell him of her elopement and sudden marriage to Othello. Their marriage, though offstage, is clearly the central event around which all conversation turns early in the play. Whereas weddings are normally joyful events, by the light of day, in the ironic hermeneutic of this play nothing of matrimony’s ceremonial joy is portrayed. Instead, rather than announcing the news with joy, Iago hollers from the street at night, awaking Brabantio but creating a waking ‘nightmare’ that assumes (accurately) that the Venetian father will not be pleased with his new foreign son-in-law. Beyond ‘racist’ connotations, however, Iago specifically likens Othello to an animal copulating; he screams to Brabantio:

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram Is tupping your white ewe. (1.1. 97-98)

Iago’s metaphor here, while certainly a racist means to cast Othello in the role of aggressor against Brabantio’s innocent child, likens both new husband and wife to animals, which normally Christianity describes as not having an eternal soul. Iago completes the comparison, with his characteristically lewd vulgarity, by also telling Brabantio that his “daughter / and the Moor are now making the ” (1.1. 129-131). In Iago’s debased figurative narrative, therefore, this couple lack souls, and would therefore also lack the free will generally characteristic of human beings. This is clearly true not only of the object of Iago’s attack, Othello, but moreover of Desdemona also; her free will to enter the marriage is thus denied, and any spiritual role of sexuality in marriage is debased and scorned. Though neither Brabantio nor the play’s audience might immediately realize this, a final irony of these lines is that the sexual consummation of Desdemona’s and Othello’s marriage—claimed here by Iago to be occurring “even now, now, very now”-- does not actually occur until 2.3. of the play. Iago’s screams, so confidently asserted, are lies. In reality, the love of Desdemona and Othello is more spiritual than physical; in the Christian conception of marriage, this is a sign of its initial nobility. That we can assert the opposite of Iago’s claims can also be argued for, with many supporting examples from the text, but before doing so it is worth first noticing Roderigo’s parallel attempt to add to Brabantio’s nightmare:

Your daughter, if you have not given her leave, I say again, hath made a gross revolt; Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes