Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 153
In the last moment of his self- elegy, Othello speaks of how in
Aleppo once he accosted a Turk who had beaten a Venetian citizen
and threatened the state. “I took by th’ throat the circumcised
dog, / And smote him— thus” (V.ii.355–356). Then he drives his
dagger into his own heart. Othello wants to confl ate his suicide
with a heroic act from his past, making of the suicide an admirable
deed. The knife thrust recapitulates his brave former gesture and is,
by association, a comparably intrepid act. Thus Othello dies by his
own hand and in a state of self- delusion, thinking he is still a hero.
In the world that Shakespeare is helping create, there may be no
more martial heroes, no more men who can believe that the fi re that
burns in their souls is identical to the fi re that burns in the stars.
For his part, Iago goes silent. Torture him as the state will, he af-
fi rms that “from this time forth I never will speak word” (V.ii.304).
He and his view of life have triumphed, though in some part of
himself Iago is probably horrifi ed by his victory.
How could an upwardly aspiring merchant’s son from the provinces
not sustain a mea sure of resentment for aristocrats and their pre-
tensions? Or, more to the point, how could the middle class of
London— rising, prospering— not take delight in watching one or
another of their antagonists being undone?
Though, to be sure, the po liti cal and economic climate in which
Shakespeare writes is not uncomplicated. Arnold Hauser tells us
that “all the fears entertained by the middle classes about the in-
crease in the powers of the sovereign were silenced by the support
they had in the monarchy in waging the class war. Elizabeth pro-
moted the cap i tal ist economy in every way.... The acquisitive
economy rose uninterruptedly and the spirit of profi t- making con-
nected with it embraced the whole nation” (2.137). In the forefront
of the urge for profi t was the new middle class and those members
of the nobility who were inclined to behave like them—to invest and