144 Ideals in the Modern World
but also ridiculous. It is Titus’ commitment to the old Roman mar-
tial values that causes his destruction. His honor is his undoing.
Titus is Shakespeare’s tragic beginning, and he never travels as
far away from its spirit as one might wish. In time, he will become
a more sophisticated assassin of the heroic ideal. But the modus ope-
randi will remain: the glorious must be debased. Then, in future
plays, it will be brought back to life again to be debased once more.
That Shakespeare’s Othello is a fi gure with epic stature is beyond
doubt. Those around Othello recognize him as a hero: when trou ble
arises, he is the one the citizens depend on to save Venice. But we
also know that Othello is a hero because he tells us so. Homer sings
the song of Achilles and Hector; Othello sings the song of himself.
Early in the play he tells the story of how he wooed and won Des-
demona by rendering the tale of his own life. He wrote a compressed
epic poem about himself: his battles and triumphs, his privations,
and his wanderings.
Like Odysseus, Othello describes the wonders he has seen
and the amazing events that have befallen him. Othello is a heroic
fi gure in a literary production of his own devising. So to Brabantio
and then to his dau gh ter Desdemona, Othello tells the tale
of most disastrous chances:
Of moving accidents by fl ood and fi eld,
Of hair- breadth scapes i’th’ imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my [travel’s] history;
(I.iii.134–139)Othello fi nishes his story with a fl ourish, speaking of “the Canni-
bals that each [other] eat, / The Anthropophagi, and men whose