George Washington University the Shakespeare Association of America, Inc

George Washington University The Shakespeare Association of America, Inc.

Slaves and Subjects in Othello Author(s): Camille Wells Slights Source: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 377-390 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2871250 Accessed: 03-11-2015 15:28 UTC

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This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Slaves and Subjects in Othello

CAMILLE WELLS SLIGHTS

... Shall I say to you, "Let thembe free. . . "? You will answer, "The slavesare ours."'

IN THE LATE-SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES, England became increasinglyinvolved in the slave trade.During the same period,as numer- ous scholarshave argued,a new formof personal identitydeveloped. I want to suggestthat the representationof these phenomena on the earlymodern English stage shows that theyare interconnected.By attendingto these in- terconnections,we can learn a good deal not only about earlymodern sub- jectivitybut also about our own understandingsof libertyand coercion. Using Othelloas an example, I willargue thatemerging understandings of selfhood help to explain ideas and attitudesabout slaveryand that theyin turnillu- minate emergingunderstandings of self.

THE DISENGAGED SELF

In Sourcesof theSelf: The Making of theModern Identity Charles Taylorargues that the formof consciousnessemergent in earlymodern Europe, what he calls the "disengaged self," was bound up with an ideal of freedom and independence and with a vision of instrumentalcontrol of an objectified world and an objectifiedself. In the traditionalview derived from Plato, Taylorexplains, "reason can be understoodas the perceptionof the natural or rightorder, and to be ruled by reason is to be ruled by a vision of this order"; "gaining masteryof oneself,shifting the hegemonyfrom the senses to reason, was a matterof changing the directionof our soul's vision." In contrast,the disengagedsubject no longerlocates the selfas an inherentpart of a meaningfullyordered cosmos. This subject does not find order in the neutralizeduniverse but constructsit internally:"The new model of rational mastery... presentsit as a masterof instrumentalcontrol.... The hegemony of reason is definedno longeras thatof a dominantvision but ratherin terms

This essay originatedwith work done for a seminar titled "Slaves and Slaveryin English Renaissance Drama," chaired byJudithWeil at the annual meetingof the ShakespeareAssocia- tion of Americain Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 1994. I am gratefulto Geraldo U. de Sousa, Michael Keefer,Roslyn L. Knutson,JosephA. Porter,Carolyn Prager,Julie R. Solomon,Alden T. Vaughan, VirginiaMason Vaughan, and JudithWeil for theirgenerous and stimulatingsharing of ideas and information. 1 The Merchantof Venice,4.1.93-94, 97-98. Shakespeare quotations followthe RiversideShake- speare,ed. G. BlakemoreEvans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1974).

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 378 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY of a directingagency subordinatinga functionaldomain."2 In this ethic, rational control means the power to objectifythe body and the passions; a sense of self-worthdepends on the subject's statusas a rationalbeing. The disengaged self fostereda sense of responsibilityand developed a concept of moral and politicallaw which establishedpersonal freedomand rights.This selfalso fostereda feltneed to controlthe experience of the self and the worldexternal to the self.3The new individualismof the seventeenth century,Taylor argues, replaced an older political concept, in which social communitieswere takenas givens,with a new concept of politicalatomism, in whichthe basic social unitis the individual,whose membershipin community must be created. From thisconcept developed what C. B. Macpherson calls possessiveindividualism, "a conception of the mostbasic immunitieswe en- joy-life, liberty-on the model of the ownershipof property."4Indeed, as Seyla Benhabib has pointed out, the rightof propertyand a man's authority overhis household ofwife, children, and servantscame to be included among those basic rights.5The autonomous self "generatesand ... reflectsan ideal of independence and self-responsibility."Being "on his own," he mustfind paradigmsof orderwithin himself.6 Individual autonomy, then, was bound up withan ideal of freedomand withindividual isolation. The idea of the autonomous self,Benhabib suggests,was most clearlyformulated by Thomas Hobbes: "Let us ... considermen as ifbut even now sprungout of the earth, and suddenly,like mushrooms,come to full maturity,without all kind of engagementto each other."7 In earlyseventeenth-century England, the concept of unique, autonomous selves-of men as mushrooms-supported the developingvalues of privacy and individualliberty; it also created fear of social fragmentationand individual isolation.For example,John Donne's anxietyabout the "new philoso- phy" takes the formof dismayat a world thathas lost "all Relation": Prince,Subject, Father, Sonne, are thingsforgot, For everyman alone thinkeshe hathgot To be a Phoenix,and thatthere can bee None of thatkinde, of which he is,but hee.8 Donne's theorizingof social structuregrounds hierarchyin the necessityof social relations. His personal letterstestify to his own terrorof isolation. Writingto a friendabout his failureto finda place in the courthierarchy, he insiststhat failure to "contributesomething to the sustentationof thewhole" is social death: "to be no part of any body, is to be nothing."9 There is

2 Charles Taylor,Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989), 121, 143, and 149. 3 See Taylor,143-76. 4 Macpherson,quoted here fromTaylor, 196. 5 See Seyla Benhabib, Situatingthe Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernismin Contemporary Ethics(New York: Routledge, 1992), 155. 6 Taylor,167 and 193. 7 Thomas Hobbes, TheEnglish Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. W. Molesworth,11 vols. (London:John Bohn, 1839-45), 2:109. 8JohnDonne, "The FirstAnniversarie: An Anatomyof theWorld" in TheComplete Poetry ofJohn Donne,ed. John T. Shawcross(New York: New York UP, 1968), 270-86, esp. 278 (11.214-17). 9JohnDonne, Lettersto Severall Persons of Honour (1651), intro.M. Thomas Hester (New York: Scholars' Facsimilesand Reprints,1977), 51.

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another expression of recoil from self-creating individualism in Milton's por- trait of originary evil in a figure who denies divine creation and fantasizes limitless autonomy, claiming to be "self-begot, self-rais'd."'" Othello,too, explores the autonomous, atomistic identityemerging in early modern Europe. Roderigo's description of "an extravagant and wheeling stranger / Of here and every where" (1.1.136-37) is a hostile version of Othello's self-description of his "unhoused free condition" (1.2.26). Valuing personal freedom more than family lineage and inherited loyalties, Othello assumes that his position in society derives from conscious choice and service to the state. Unlike such protagonists as Hamlet, Lear, or Macbeth, who are tightly embedded in networks of kinship and feudal allegiance, Othello's sense of personal and social identityis based on individual achievement and merit. He owes his position in Venetian society to personal ability and the chances of war. Though he proudly claims descent from "men of royal siege" (1. 22), he sees no disjunction between his origins and his current position; his sense of social identity derives from "My services which I have done the signiory" (1. 18). Venice, famous in Renaissance Europe not only as a cosmopolitan trading center but as a flourishing independent republic, is the appropriate home for a militaryhero participating in a civic community characterized by values of justice, public service, and individual merit.11For example, Lewes Lewkenor, on whose translation of Gasparo Contarini's De Magistratibuset Republica Venet- orum Shakespeare drew for some details of his representation of Venice, has only praise for things Venetian:

their iustice is pure and vncorrupted:their penall Lawes most vnpardonably executed: theirencouragements to vertueinfinite: especially by their distribution of offices& dignities,which is ordered ... [so that] it vtterlyouerreacheth the subtiltieof all ambitiouspractises, neuer fallingvpon anybut vpon such as are by the whole assemblyallowed formen of greatestwisedome, vertue and integritie of life... 12

Contarini attributes the Venetian Republic's freedom and stabilityto its tradition of devotion to the common good. He warns that history teaches that "sundry commonwealthes ... [,] by the vndermining ambition and treachery of some their wicked and vnfaithfullcitizens, were brought into seruitude and bondage.''l3 In contrast:

our auncestors,from whome wee haue receyuedso flourishinga commonwealth, all in one did vnitethemselues in a consentingdesire to establish,honour, and amplifietheir country, without hauing ... the least regardeof theirowne priuate

"0JohnMilton, ParadiseLost in JohnMilton: Complete Poems and Major Prose,ed. MerrittY. Hughes (New York: OdysseyPress, 1957), 322 (Bk. 5, 1. 860). " Othellois discussed in the contextof English images of Venice in MurrayJ.Levith, Shake- speare'sItalian Settingsand Plays (New York: Macmillan,1989); David C. McPherson,Shakespeare, Jonson,and theMyth of Venice(Newark: U of Delaware P, 1990); and VirginiaMason Vaughan, "Othello".A ContextualHistory (Cambridge: CambridgeUP, 1994). 12 Gasparo Contarini,The Commonwealth and GouernmentofVenice, trans. Lewes Lewkenor(Lon- don, 1599), sig. A2v. Referencesin Othelloto Lewkenor's translationare recorded in A New VariorumEdition of Shakespeare: Othello, ed. Horace Howard Furness(Philadelphia:J. B. Lippincott, 1886), 1.1.200n, 1.3.61n; and WilliamR. Drennan, " 'Corruptmeans to aspire': Contarini'sDe Republicaand the Motivesof lago," Notes& Queries35 (1988): 474-75. 13 Contarini,77.

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glorieor commodity....[O]ur auncestorsdelighted not in vaineglorieor ambition,but had onlytheir intentiue care to thegood oftheir country and common profite.'4 Moreover,while he makes clear that Venetian societyis hierarchicallyor- dered, with power correspondingto "nobilitie of lineage" rather than to "estimationof wealth," Contariniinsists that political power derivesfrom civic virtue: "all which were noble by birth,or enobled by vertue,or well deservingof the commonwealth,did ... obtain thisright of government."He continueswith a pointparticularly significant for Othello's positionin Venice: "yea and some forrainmen and strangershave beene adopted into this number of citizens,eyther in regardof theirgreat nobility,or thatthey had been dutifulltowardes the state,or els had done unto them some notable service.''l5 In settinghis play and in identifyinghis hero as a "Moor of Venice," then,Shakespeare drew on the humanistmyth of Venice, an ideal in whichcivic virtue produces a powerful,free society that in turnprotects and nurturesthe honor and freedomof its members.'6 But ifin the figureof the Moor ofVenice the playcelebrates a new kind of hero and a new relationof selfto state,it also revealsdangers in the autonomous, self-createdidentity. The sinisterobverse of Othello is lago, who claims the position of lieutenant on merit-"I am worth no worse a place" (1.1..11) -and offersas proofhis servicein the field.Like Othello, he values independence fromconstraints, and, like Othello, he assumes that service ratherthan birth,rank, or factionshould be rewardedand thata positionof responsibilityin the stateconstitutes reward. lago articulatesand appeals to the autonomous self's sense of inviolable privacywhen he contemptuously refusesto wear his hearton his sleeve (1. 64) and when,at Othello's urgingto "give thyworst of thoughts/ The worstof words" (3.3.132-33), he protests, "I am not bound to thatall slavesare free [to]" (1. 135). Of course, to point to continuityis not to claim identity.lago's insistenceon the rightto keep his thoughtsto himselfis a deliberatemanipulation of Othello's need forfrank and open exchange. The contrastsbetween Othello's love and lago's malice, between Othello's "free and open nature" (1.3.399) and lago's secrecyand hypocrisy,are crucial to the play's moral economy; but, as self-fashioned autonomousindividuals valuing personal freedom and definingthemselves by theirpublic service,they share an epistemologicalspace. If lago was created out of the Englishstage tradition of Machiavellianvillains, Othello was shaped

14 Contarini,6- 7. 15 Contarini,18. Venice relied militarilyonforeign mercenaries. Contarini endorsed the practice as allowing citizens to devote time to public life and as preventingthe developmentof militaryfactions among citizens.Machiavelli, in contrast,opposed the use of mercenariesand argued passionatelyfor a citizenmilitia on the groundsthat citizens make the best soldiersand thatmilitary discipline teaches civic virtue. SeeJ.G.A. Pocock, TheMachiavellian Moment: Florentine PoliticalThought and theAtlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1975), 321-22 and 200-201. Some criticsbelieve thatOthello is a hired soldier,while othersassume thathe is a citizen. For the formerposition, see Vaughan, 35; for the latter,see Carol Thomas Neely, "Circumscriptionsand Unhousedness: Othelloin the Borderlands" in Shakespeareand Gender:A History,Deborah Barkerand Ivo Kamps,eds. (London and NewYork:Verso, 1995), 304. The play does not specify,and I believe that by stressingboth thatOthello is a foreignerand that he is dedicated to the city,the play conflatesVenetian practicewith the ideal of the patriot-soldier. 16 In addition to Contariniand Machiavelli,important civic humanists were Leonardo Bruni, Donato Giannotti,Francesco Guicciardini,and Colluccio Salutati. Pocock's The Machiavellian Momentis a magisterialmodern account of the republicantradition.

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SLAVES AND SUBJECTS IN OTHELLO 381 by the discourseof civichumanism to whichNiccol6 Machiavelli'sDiscorsi was a major contribution.

ENGLISH SLAVERY An old womansaid thatonce theywere slaves, but now they were free.... The smallboy was puzzled.... He askedthe teacher what was the meaning of slave, and theteacher explained. But it didn't make sense.... He toldthe teacher what theold womanhad said.She wasa slave.And the teachersaid she wasgetting dotish.It wasa long,long, long time ago.... Andmoreover it had nothingto do withpeople in Barbados.No one therewas ever a slave,the teachersaid. ... ThankGod, he wasn'tever a slave.He or his fatheror his father'sfather. ThankGod nobodyin Barbadoswas evera slave.It didn'tsound cruel. It was simplyunreal."7 The combinationof curiosity,bewilderment, estrangement, and denial ex- perienced by George Lamming'sprotagonist growing up in Barbados in the 1940s can, I think,help to focussimilarly complicated responses to slaveryin earlymodern England. Collectionsof travelliterature such as those of Rich- ard Hakluytand Samuel Purchascontained accounts of Ottomanslavery; the growthof trade and travelthroughout the sixteenthcentury brought English merchant-adventurersinto contactwith the actual practice of slavery.'8En- glish participationin the Atlanticslave trade reached itsfullest development in the eighteenthcentury. But from the 1560s, when John Hawkins made threeslaving voyages, trading in human merchandisewas highlyprofitable. In the Caribbean, English colonistswere establishingthe systemof plantation slavery.African slaves were firstbrought into England itselfin the mid- sixteenthcentury,'9 and the number of slaves increased thereafter.For the mostpart, slaves were used as domesticservants and entertainersat courtand in the households of rich merchants. Slaveryas a materialpractice, then, was well known.Nevertheless, England tended to see itself,however inaccurately, as a land withoutslaves. For example, in his Descriptionof England (1587), WilliamHarrison wrote: Asfor slaves and bondmen, we have none; nay, such is theprivilege of our country bythe especial grace of God and bountyof our princesthat if any come hither fromother realms, so soon as theyset footon land theybecome so freeof conditionas theirmasters, whereby all noteof servile bondage is utterlyremoved fromthem.20 Justas English culturesimultaneously promoted and denied slavery,so it exhibitedcontradictory understandings of the natureof slavesand slavery.In a societywhere all except the monarchwere subjects, and wordssuch as subject

17 George Lamming,In theCastle of My Skin (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), 57. 18 For the followingbrief summary of Englishslavery, I have relied primarilyon Peter Fryer, StayingPower: The History of Black People in Britain(London : Pluto Press,1984); Alden and Virginia Vaughan, "Racial Slaveryin English Renaissance Drama: HistoriographicalContexts" (Unpub- lished paper, 1994); and JamesWalvin, Black and white:the Negro and Englishsociety, 1555-1945 (London: Penguin Press, 1973). 19Walvin dates slaveryin England from1555 (1 and 7), and Fryerfrom 1570 (5 and 8). 20 WilliamHarrison, TheDescription of England: The ClassicContemporary Account of TudorSocial Life,ed. Georges Edelen (Ithaca, NY: CornellUP forthe FolgerShakespeare Library, 1994), 118. Harrison's descriptionseems to be accurate only for Europeans. Nonwhiteslavery was legally enforcedin England throughoutthe sixteenthand seventeenthcenturies; see Fryer,113-26.

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 382 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY and serverarely had pejorativeconnotations, subjection in itselfwas not disgraceful.Nor did the commodificationof people as propertyprovoke violent abhorrence. Several formsof subjection,such as apprenticeship,imprison- ment,and marriage,limited movement and entailedproperty rights. Enslave- ment throughmilitary misadventure, remediable throughransom, was regarded as unfortunaterather than disgraceful.Parish records indicate that collectingmoney to ransomvictims captured and enslavedby "infidelTurks" was a familiarpractice in manyparts of England.2' But thisrecognition of the actual contingencyof slaverycoexisted witha concept of the natural slave, incapable of honor. In earlymodern drama thiscombination of familiarityand denial, of pity and contemptis evident.Clever Plautine slaves scheme and plot to the dis- comfitureof theirmasters and the delight of theateraudiences, and refer- ences to cowardly,lying, perfidious, pernicious, base, and murderousslaves crowd the language of insult.Tamburlaine enslavescaptive kings and yokes themto his chariot,and the epithet"slave" comes readilyto Hamlet's tongue to expressdisgust with Claudius and withhimself. Yet despite the inscription of slaveryin character,metaphor, and stagedaction, it is curiouslyeffaced and distanced.The forceof Hamlet's self-descriptionas a "peasant slave" and of his self-recriminationfor not having "fattedall the region kites/ With this slave's offal" (2.2.550, 579-80) depends on distance fromthe literal.The beatings the Dromio twinssuffer and Caliban's enslavementbring into dra- matic focus the physicalviolence thatis the basis of slavery,but these subju- gations are located in ancient Ephesus and on a remote island. On the En- glish Renaissance stage,slavery happens long ago and/or faraway. Othelloprovides a clear example of the simultaneousforegrounding and distancingof slaveryand of viewingslaves with both pityand horrifiedcon- tempt.Although Cinthio's storyof the Moor of Venice does not mention slavery,Shakespeare's Othello tellsDesdemona "Of being takenby the inso- lentfoe / And sold to slavery"and of his "redemptionthence" (1.3.137-38). Othello's account, moreover,is not one of shamefulsubjection but instead formspart of a narrativeof valor and triumph.The storyof being sold into slaveryis one of the "disastrouschances" (1. 134) he has sufferedand cou- rageouslyovercome. As withthe "moving accidentsby flood and field" and the "hair-breadthscapes i' th' imminentdeadly breach" (11.135, 136), his enslavementand redemptionmove Desdemona to pity.As withhis talesof the "Anthropophagi,and men whose heads / [Do grow] beneath their shoul- ders" (11.144-45), his storyof captivitycontributes to the exotic image that attractsher to the noble Moor. WinningDesdemona's love by tellinghis life storyand defending himselfagainst Brabantio's charges by narratingthe courtshipare of a piece withOthello's confidence that "My parts,my title, and myperfect soul / Shall manifestme rightly"(1.2.31-32). Beyond this brief mention in 1.3, there are no referencesto Othello's enslavementand none to slaveryas a historicalinstitution, while the termslave recurs frequentlyas an epithet of abuse. Othello in agonized jealousy exclaims,"O thatthe slavehad fortythousand lives! / One is too poor, too weak for my revenge" (3.3.442-43). Emilia speculates thatDesdemona has been

21 See RoslynL. Knutson,"Elizabethan Documents,Captivity Narratives, and the Marketfor ForeignHistory Plays," English Literary Renaissance, 26 (1996): 75-110; and CarolynPrager, "The Problem of Slaveryin TheCustom of The Country," Studies in EnglishLiterature 28 (1988): 301-17.

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SLAVES AND SUBJECTS IN OTHELLO 383 slandered by "Some cogging,cozening slave" (4.2.132), and lago calls Ro- derigo a "murd'rous slave" as he stabs him duringthe brawlin the fifthact (5.1.61). In thefinal scene Montano and Lodovico call lago a "damned slave" (5.2.243, 292), and, as Othello envisionshis damnation, he exclaims, "O cursed, cursed slave!" (1. 276).

SELVES AND SLAVES

The fearand loathingelicited by thisconstruction of the "naturally"base slave registers,I believe,a pervasiveanxiety that the developmentof autonomous subjectivitybrings about the dissolutionof social relations.The defining characteristicof chattelslavery, as distinguishedfrom other formsof subjection, is the social death of slaves and their natal alienation. According to Orlando Patterson,"[b] ecause the slave had no sociallyrecognized existence outside of his master,he became a social nonperson.... Alienated fromall 'rights'or claims of birth,he ceased to belong in his own rightto any legiti- mate social order." The antithesisof slavery,then, was not autonomybut belonging,being "embedded in a networkof protectivepower."22 Saxon law, David Brion Davis observes,regarded the " 'autonomous' strangerwho had no family or clan to protect him ... as a slave."23 As the shoulder note to a sixteenth-centurytranslation of Euripidesobserves, "Al exiles are like bondmen. '24 In Othello,literal slaveryis represented not as a manifestation of individual or racial inferioritybut as a result of military and financial exigencies. But while Othello's enslavement is presented merely as an unfortunate mishap in the vagaries of a militarylife, slave as a sign of social death is a term of absolute contempt. Thus when lago is repeatedly called "slave" in the final scene, the epithet registershis total alienation from human society and justifies inflicting on him "any cunning cruelty/ That can torment him much, and hold him long" (5.2.333-34). Both senses of slave bear on Othello. In the undrama- tized past he survived bondage unscathed to achieve a position of eminence and power in Venice. The play unfolds his degeneration from honorable and honored member of Venetian society to a dishonorable slave, a monstrous outsider, and the tragedy lies in the potential for monstrositywithin honor. lago is able to manipulate his victims so skillfullybecause he thinks in the same terms they do. In fact, lago articulates the rationale for self-fashioning and individual responsibility that Othello embodies:

'tis in ourselvesthat we are thus or thus.... the power and corrigibleauthori- ty... lies in our wills.If the [beam] of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise anotherof sensuality,the blood and basenessof our natureswould conduct us to most prepost'rous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions.... (1.3.319-30)

22 Orlando Patterson,Slavery and SocialDeath: A ComparativeStudy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1982), 5 and 28. 23 David Brion Davis, Slaveryand Human Progress(New York: Oxford UP, 1984), 15. 24 Iocastain TheWhole woorkes of George Gascoigne ... (London, 1587 [STC 11638]), sig. Hiv.I am indebted for this referenceto Joseph A. Porter,"Othello's Enslavementas a Cultural Lens" (Unpublished paper, 1994).

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Othello does not, like lago, numberlove among "our ragingmotions"; but, as severalcritics have shown,he becomes vulnerableto lago's identificationof love withlust because he, too, suppressessensuality, assuring the Venetian senate on hiswedding night that "feather'd Cupid" willnot distracthim from "business" (11. 269, 271).25 While Stephen Greenblatt'sinfluential essay tracesOthello's disparagementof passion and sensualityto traditionalChris- tian distrustof sexuality,I want to argue that it has less connection with Christianasceticism than witha neo-Stoic ideal of rationalself-control. Oth- ello proteststo the senate thathis desirefor his bride to accompanyhim is not

To pleasethe palate of myappetite, Nor to complywith heat (theyoung affects In [me] defunct)and propersatisfaction; But to be freeand bounteousto hermind. (11.262-65)

In the termsof Charles Taylor's analysis,Othello's account of his attitude towardDesdemona has less in common withan Augustinianconcept of two kinds of love, charityand concupiscence, than witha Cartesianideal of rational controlin whichone's desiresare objectifiedand strengthof willis the centralvirtue. In opposition,then, to the now-dominantview that Othello's vulnerability lies in his positionas an alien, a Moor not fullysecure within Venetian society, I see Othello as not merelya Moor in Venice but the Moor ofVenice, whose deepest values and sense of self are fullyconsonant with those of Venice's other inhabitants.The warriorwho believes thatmilitary service to the state "makes ambitionvirtue" (3.3.350) is articulatinga centraltenet of civichumanism.26Interpreting Othello's Venetian values as alien cultural norms tenuouslyadopted can implythat his transformationfrom defender ofjustice to murdereris one of a black barbarianemerging from behind his civilized mask and revertingto his savage origins. Recent scholarshipshows that the earlymodern period was a crucial moment in the historyof European responses to black-skinnedAfricans. Al- though the concept of scientificallyverifiable, biologically distinct races did not gain currencyuntil the nineteenthcentury, such scholarsas Karen New- man, Michael Neill, and Kim Hall have documented the emergenceof racist ideas duringthis period and analyzedtheir important role in constructionsof national and personal identity.27Similarly, although we need to resistanach- ronisticallyimposing on the Renaissance our post-nineteenth-centuryas-

25 For discussionsof Othello's sexual anxieties,see Edgar A. Snow, "Sexual Anxietyand the Male Order of Thingsin Othello,"ELR 10 (1980): 384-412; and Stephen Greenblatt,Renaissance Self-Fashioning:From More to Shakespeare(Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980). 26 See Pocock, 132-35; and Quentin Skinner,"The republican ideal of political liberty"in Machiavelliand Republicanism,Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner,and Maurizio Viroli, eds. (Cam- bridge: CambridgeUP, 1990), 293-309, esp. 303. 27 Among the growingvolume of valuable scholarshipon race in earlymodern England, I've found the followingespecially helpful for studying Othello: Emily Bartels, "Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Othello, and RenaissanceRefashionings of Race," ShakespeareQuarterly 41 (1990): 433-54; Gerard Barthelemy,ed., CriticalEssays on Shakespeare's"Othello" (New York: G. K. Hall and Co., 1994); Edward Berry,"Othello's Alienation," Studiesin EnglishLiterature 30 (1990): 315 - 33; Margo Hendricksand PatriciaParker, eds., Women,"Race, " and Writingin theEarly Modern

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SLAVES AND SUBJECTS IN OTHELLO 385 sumptionsof racializedslavery, we can see itsbeginnings. Black and slavewere by no means interchangeableterms in the seventeenthcentury. As Ania Loomba observes,"the slavepopulation of Europe consistedof Tartar,Greek, Armenian,Russian, Bulgarian,Turkish, Circassian, Slavonic, Cretan,Arab, African(Mori), and occasionallyChinese (Cathay) slaves."28But we should not extrapolatetoo much fromsuch evidence.Just as lago's image of "an old black ram" (1.1.88) appeals to an "increasinglybiologized idea of race" which Kwame AnthonyAppiah has located in the nineteenthcentury,29 so Brabantio's cry that "Bond-slaves and pagans shall our statesmen be" (1.2.99) articulatesan emergingidea of racialized slavery. I cannot claim to contributehere to the projectof uncoveringthe rootsof racism-the repugnance at physicaldifference inscribed in Othellois already well documented. But I do suggestthat attention to the interactingideas of personal identityand slaverymay complicate and illuminate the history of race. Earlymodern slaverywas not racialized,but when the profitabilityof slave labor in the Americascreated a need to rationalizethe dehumanization of black-skinnedAfricans, the drivefor control and the fearof isolationthat characterizedisengaged selvesproved useful.Such attitudesencouraged un- derstandingthe sociallydead slave as inherentlyother and understanding slaveryas the product of natural baseness ratherthan as a contingentand threateningpossibility. Complementing Orlando Patterson'sargument that the practiceof slaveryis constitutiveof the idea of freedom,30I suggestthat the freedomof self-definingsubjectivity was constitutiveof the ideologysup- portingracialized slavery. Still, as Appiah warns, "if it is clear enough how this ideology that will develop into racialismcould serve alreadyin the seventeenthcentury to li- cense the domination of subject peoples, it is also importantto mark the differences.'31 While race and slaverywould eventuallybe so tightlyinterwo- ven thatthey were seen as naturallyinseparable, in the early1600s theywere distinct.Othello is a key text in this historynot only because it mixes self- identity,race, and slaveryin an unstableand explosivecombination, but also because theycombine only occasionally.This veryinfrequency suggests that theirsubsequent identificationwas not inevitable.

Period(London: Routledge,1994); Kim F. Hall, Thingsof Darkness: Economies of Race and Genderin EarlyModern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1995); Eldred D. Jones, Othello'sCountrymen: The Africanin EnglishRenaissance Drama (London: Oxford UP, 1965); Ania Loomba, Gender,Race, RenaissanceDrama (Manchester:Manchester UP, 1989); Michael Neill, "Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery,and the Hideous in Othello,"SQ 40 (1989): 383-412; and Karen Newman,Fashioning Femininityand EnglishRenaissance Drama (Chichgo: U of Chicago P, 1991), 71 -93. 28 Ania Loomba, "The Color of Patriarchy:Critical difference, cultural difference, and Renais- sance drama" in Hendricks and Parker, eds., 17-34, esp. 29. See also Lynda Boose, "The 'Gettingof a LawfulRace': Racial Discourse in EarlyModern England and the Unrepresentable Black Woman" in Hendricksand Parker,eds., 35-54; PeterFryer, Black People in theBritish Empire: An Introduction(London: Pluto Press, 1989), 63-72; Neely,303-4; and WilliamD. PhillipsJr., Slaveryfrom Roman Timesto theEarly Transatlantic Slave Trade (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1985), 6-7. 29 Kwame AnthonyAppiah, "Race" in CriticalTerms for Literary Study, Frank Lentricchiaand Thomas McLaughlin,eds. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990), 274-87, esp. 279. 30 "Before slaverypeople simplycould not have conceived of the thingwe call freedom.Men and women in premodern,nonslaveholding societies did not, could not, value the removalof restraintas an ideal" (Patterson,340). 31 Appiah, 279.

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The play neitherportrays nor evokes stable responses to Othello's blackness. The image of "an old black ram" is more than counterbalancedby referencesto the noble and valiantMoor. On the whole, Othello's blackness and culturaldisplacement are correlativeof, rather than contrastingwith, his role as self-defined,autonomous citizen.Othello is confidentof the respect he commands in Venice. Jagomanipulates him not throughhis alien exoti- cism but through his Venetian need for social order and epistemological clarity.Like his possessivejealousy, Othello's pervertedsense ofjustice is "a monster/ Begot upon itself,born on itself" (3.4.161-62). The ethic of rationalcontrol, as Taylorpoints out, internalizedthe virtues of the honor ethic. For example, in Descartes generosity-"the centralmo- tiveof the honour ethic" -means "that strongsense of one's own worthand honour whichpushed men to conquer theirfears and baser desiresand do great things."32In Othello the honor ethic of the aristocraticwarrior has been transformedinto the self-esteemof the freeman whose reason controls his passion and whose honor entails the defense of the civilizedcommunity fromall thatis barbarousand bestial.When he upbraidsCassio forsacrificing "reputation" for "the name / Of a night-brawler"(2.3.194-96), and when Cassio in disgracelaments that, in losing reputation,he has lost "the immor- tal part" (1. 263) of himself,Jago finds the groundsfor theirruin. Realizing thatCassio, Desdemona, and Othello are not drivenby carnal lustsso much as theyare motivatedby their sense of themselvesas participantsin a civilized community,Jago exploits their generosity, loyalty, and a sense of self-worth based on responsiblyfilling positions of trust.He can count on Desdemona's generous and forcefulintercession on Cassio's behalfjust as he can relyon Othello's "free and open nature." The pernicious brilliance of Jago's de- structivescheme is preciselythat he turnsOthello's strengthsagainst him, pervertinghis sense of responsibilityfor the commongood intomurder, "else she'll betraymore men" (5.2.6).3 Unlike Richard III, who manipulatesa pervasive greed for power, Jago turns his victims' virtues into "pitch" (2.3.360); and out of the ideals and qualitiesthey most value in themselves,he makes the net thatenmeshes them. Correlatingwith Venetian ideals of civic order and justice and of partici- pation in civic life is fear of losing control. Such fear lies behind Cassio's shame at his betrayalof public trust,Brabantio's claim "I am glad at soul I have no otherchild, / For thyescape would teach me tyranny"(1.3.196-97), and the Venetian senators'methodical preparations for defending their empire againstthe Turks.All these are in turncontinuous with Othello's deter- minationto controlhimself, Cyprus, and Desdemona.34To Othello, order in

32 Taylor,153. 33 The oppositeview, that lago corrosivelydissolves Othello's civilizedveneer so thathe reverts to primitivesavagery, has remained current,although many of the play's acutestcritics have, I think,convincingly refuted it. Compare,for example, the followingquotations: "to attributethe destructiveimpulses unleashed in Othelloto man's 'bestialnature,' to the sexual impulsebreaking throughthe civilizedbarriers that usually contain it,is to turnthe visionof the play on itshead. Shakespeare locates the principleof evil and malice at the level of the superego,the agencythat enforcescivilization on the ego" (Snow, 410); "for the momenthe [Othello] has a clothingof civilizationover his rough essence, but waiting to erupt at any moment are dark forces primitiveand elementalchaos" (Levith,32). 34 Like Othello's control of himselfand his world, the city-state'scontrol of its empire is tenuous.Although in the playthe Turkishthreat to Cyprusdissipates in a storm,some members

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SLAVES AND SUBJECTS IN OTHELLO 387 the stateand the cosmos is not so much perceivedas imposed: "For Christian shame,put bythis barbarous brawl" (2.3.172); "when I love thee not,/ Chaos is come again" (3.3.91-92). He experiences Jago's questioningof Cassio's and Desdemona's loyaltyas an invasionof his privacyand a violationof his propertyrights.35 When his sense of controlis undermined,the possessiveness inherentin his love becomes explicit:"O curse of marriage!/ That we can call these delicate creaturesours, / And not theirappetites" (11.268-70). As John Donne recognized,"Love is a Possessoryaffection, it deliversover him that loves into the possession of that that he loves."36 But an identity grounded in controland possessioncannot toleratethe vulnerabilityof being possessed, so Othello must destroylove. By insinuatinga hidden threatto Othello's "good name," Jago activates Othello's overwhelmingneed forcertainty and clarity.By definingjealousy as the irrational uncertaintyof one "Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet [strongly]loves" (3.3.170), he manipulatesOthello into equating rationality withdispassionate examination of evidenceleading unambiguouslyto certain judgment. Once Othello takesa stance as impartialobserver of an objectified Desdemona, then generalizationsabout femalesexuality and Venetian social mores replace his own experience of Desdemona and of theirlove as consti- tutingknowledge.37 Lacking the interdependentorder and certaintyof love, Othello adopts Jago'sdualistic vision of instrumentalreason opposed to raging lust. His perceptionof chaotic animalityis a pathologicalversion of Bra- bantio's fear of witchcraft.Brabantio's theorythat Othello could have no power over Desdemona "Sans witchcraft"(1.3.64) reflectsthe troubling power that the idea of unnatural evil exerted in Renaissance English culture.38Noting thatbelief in witchcraftin Europe curiouslycoincided witha general decline in beliefin magic,Taylor suggests that the obsessionalconcern with witches, and thespectacular rise of beliefin and sense of threatfrom them, can be partlyunderstood as a crisisarising in the transitionbetween identities. The aspectof possession,of ravishment,perhaps becameeven more important and obsessionaljust at thetime and to thedegree

of the play'sfirst audiences would have knownthat in factVenice lostCyprus to theTurks in 1571. See McPherson,30 and 79. 35 For discussion of Othelloin the contextof the women-as-propertyideology, see Kenneth Burke, "Othello:An Essay to Illustratea Method," TheHudson Review 4 (1951): 165-203; Peter Stallybrass,"Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed" in Rewritingthe Renaissance: The Dis- coursesof Sexual Difference in EarlyModern Europe, Margaret W. Ferguson,Maureen Quilligan,and NancyJ.Vickers, eds. (Chicago: U of Chicago P 1986), 123-42; and James L. Calderwood, The Propertiesof "Othello"(Amherst: U of MassachusettsP, 1989). 36JohnDonne, TheSermons ofJohn Donne, ed. George R. Potterand EvelynM. Simpson,10 vols. (Berkeley:U of CaliforniaP, 1953-62), 1:184. 37 See the illuminatingdiscussions of epistemologyin Othelloin Joel Altman," 'Preposterous Conclusions': Eros,Enargeia, and the Compositionof Othello,"Representations 18 (1987): 129-57; StanleyCavell, Disowning Knowledge in SixPlays of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987), 125-42; KatharineEisaman Maus, Inwardnessand Theaterin theEnglish Renaissance (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995), 104-27; and Naomi Scheman, "Othello's Doubt/Desdemona's Death: The Engenderingof Scepticism" in Power,Gender, Values, Judith Genova, ed. (Edmonton, Canada: Academic Printingand Publishing,1987), 113-33. Scheman's essay is particularlyinsightful in demonstratingthe male genderingof the Cartesiandisengaged self. 38 For a discussionof the evidentiaryprocedures in witchcrafttrials in relationto Othello,see Maus, 110-20.

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thatthe identitywas emergingwhich would break our dependence on ordersof ontic logos, and establisha self-definingsubject.39 Terror of the irrational and uncontrollable, of being possessed, corroded the identity of the emergent autonomous self. Othello's effortsto gain certaintybecome obsessive and self-defeating. The last strawis the loss of the handkerchief, which signifiesto him not merely loss of exclusive control of Desdemona but also cultural isolation. In Othello's first account of the handkerchief's provenance, his mother received it from an Egyptian charmer with the promise it would "subdue my father / Entirely to her love" (3.4.59-60), and his dying mother gave it to him to pass on to his wife when he married. In the shorter, second version, his father gave the handkerchief to his mother, and Othello gave it to Desdemona as a "pledge of love" (5.2.214). However we interpret the inconsistencies in the two accounts, the constants are that the handkerchief is a symbol of love, the power of which derives from its connection to Othello's parents. With its loss, Oth- ello, like a slave, has been cut off"from the social heritage of his ancestors."40 He kills Desdemona and himself in a desperate effortto regain connection with society through identification with ordered, free Venice. I am arguing, then, that the early modern English fascination with and occlusion of slavery register the fear that a developing concept of individual autonomy could lead to isolation, that an ideal of freedom conceptualized as control over an objectified self and external world could lead to its opposite. Milton's Satan, claiming total autonomy, is revealed as "not free, but to [him]self enthrall'd.'"41 So, too, in Othello slavery and freedom transform themselves into each other. Othello's "unhoused free condition" incorpo- rates his period of slavery,but his attempts to defend his honor and to assert total control over Desdemona enslave him to lago's interpretation of him and his world. Faced with the terrible consequences of his revenge, Othello re- members his earlier potency:

I have seen the day That withthis little arm, and thisgood sword, I have made myway through more impediments Than twentytimes your stop. (5.2.261-64)

But memories of former power lead him to recognize fantasies of autonomy as futile-"But (O vain boast!) / Who can control his fate?" (11. 264-65). Othello can no longer imagine making his own way through impediments; his mind now is possessed by self-images neither of power and control nor of weakness and defeat but rather of exclusion and isolation:

Now-how dost thou look now? 0 ill-starr'dwench, Pale as thysmock! when we shall meet at compt, This look of thinewill hurl mysoul fromheaven,

39Taylor, 192. 40 The phrase is Patterson's(5). 41 Milton in Hughes, ed., 328 (Bk. 6,1. 181).

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And fiendswill snatch at it. Cold, cold, mygirl? Even like thychastity. 0 cursed,cursed slave! Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of thisheavenly sight! (11.272-78)

The terribletruth that Desdemona is chaste and dead means thatOthello is damned, a cursed slave.42 Othellowas writtenand firstperformed in a transitionalmoment between a world where all people were to some degree subject to othersand enslave- mentwas a misfortuneanyone mightsuffer and one where the enslavement of certain groups of people was scientificallyjustified as natural. The play registersthe ambivalenceof this transitionalperiod. By representingOthel- lo's tragedyas subjection to "the practice of a damned slave" (1. 292), it records fascinationwith the idea of slaveryas dishonorableabjection. Yet it adds an episode of Ottomanslavery to Othello's past adventureswhile erasing contemporaryEuropean slaveryas a social institution:the "manya purchas'd slave" Shylockobserved (MV, 4.1.90) are nowhere to be seen in Othello's Venice. Such simultaneouseffacement of and fascinationwith slavery were characteristicof English culture.Dramatizing both the empoweringdignity and the fragilevulnerability of the self-definingautonomous self,the play embodies culturalanxieties about isolation and illuminatesthe conditions that in the late-seventeenthcentury would produce both a flourishingslave trade and theoriesof inalienable human rights. Othello,whose honor consistsin servingthe common good, and Jago,who followsonly to servehis own turn,are twoversions of the morallyand politi- cally autonomous self our liberal traditionshave conflated.John Locke's concept of a disengaged selfgenerated ideals of freedom,responsibility, and inalienable human rights."Slavery is so vile and miserablean Estate of Man, and so directlyopposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Na- tion," he wrote,"that 'tis hardlyto be conceived,that an Englishman,much less a Gentleman,should plead for't."43 But Locke the Englishgentleman was both an administratorof slave-holdingcolonies and an investorin the Royal AfricanCompany, and he also wrotethat slaves "are by the Rightof Nature subjectedto the AbsoluteDominion and ArbitraryPower of theirMasters."44 Recentlysuch theoristsas Quentin Skinnerand Chantal Mouffehave argued convincinglythat the traditionof civichumanism is potentiallyuseful in ad- dressingthe politicalproblems of our own time,providing a wayof reconcil- ing a "negative" concept of freedom(i.e., the absence of constraint)with the idea of personal libertyrealized throughcivic virtue and public service.45The figureof Othello, who servesthe common good in a culturallydiverse and ordered society,gives imaginativeforce to such arguments.But Othello's

42 The phrase "0 cursed,cursed slave!" is ambiguousand can also referto lago; see Furness, ed., 5.2.339n. In any case, it denotes isolationfrom human community. 43JohnLocke, Two Treatisesof Government, quoted here fromDavid Brion Davis, TheProblem of Slaveryin WesternCulture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1966), 118. 44 Locke, quoted here fromDavis, TheProblem of Slavery, 120 - 21. See also Fryer,Black People, 65. 45 Skinner,293-309; Chantal Mouffe,"Radical Democracy:Modern or Postmodern?"trans. Paul Holdengraber,in UniversalAbandon? The Politics of Postmodernism, Andrew Ross, ed. (Min- neapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988), 31-45.

This content downloaded from 130.225.27.190 on Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:28:27 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 390 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY tragic fall also reminds us that civic humanism assumes a self-possession founded on possessionfirst of militarypower and thenof property.46Though the ideal of freedom through political participationcan supplement the purelynegative freedom of rights-basedliberalism, it does not solve the prob- lems created by possessiveindividualism and by the disengaged self's alienation fromobjectified others. In George Lamming's novel, quoted in section 2's epigraph, the school teacher denies that slaveryever had anythingto do withthe people of Bar- bados: "It was in anotherpart of the world thatthose thingshappened. Not in LittleEngland." The old people rememberslavery and rememberthat it was Queen Victoria,the "greatand good queen," who freedthem.47 But they fail to rememberthat, as David Brion Davis points out, "it was not the en- slaverswho colonized and subjectedAfrica, but the European liberators.''48

46 Cf. Pocock, 463. 47 Lamming,57 and 56. 48 Davis, Slaveryand Human Progress,xvii.

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