play insists that we look beyond the cultural narratives and stereotypes that
could ideologically subdue and categorically undo the Moor. It prompts us to
view Othello’s tragedy (as we would the tragedies of Hamlet, Macbeth, and
Lear) not only from the outside in but also from the inside out. Iago clearly
exploits the marital relation to alter Othello’s vision, doing in Cyprus what he
could not do in Venice. But in Cyprus as well that relation becomes an un-
prescribed site of improvisation and negotiation between Othello and Desde-
mona, requiring that we take Othello on his own terms, as a tragic hero whose
fate is as contingent on his interactions with his wife as on the manipulations
of his nefarious ensign. Indeed, what makes the tragedy intriguing and cathar-
tic, rather than, in Aristotelean terms, pathetic, is that instead of simply
falling into another’s narrative, into the trap of stereotype, Othello partici-
pates in a story of his—and Desdemona’s—own making. Signally, before
Iago’s sustained invasion of Othello’s thoughts can even begin to take hold, it
is interrupted by Desdemona’s intervention on Cassio’s behalf. However
much that suit catalyzes Othello’s jealousy of Cassio and so plays into Iago’s
hand, it exposes and engenders or inflames a potentially disturbing tension
within the marriage that puts at stake and at risk the fundamentals of power,
voice, authority, desire, and gender. For, as I have argued elsewhere, in speak-
ing for Cassio, Desdemona speaks boldly, transgressively, even combatively
for herself, making clear that while she is not now requesting a “boon” “touch-
ing [Othello’s] love indeed,” someday she will, and that “it shall be full of
poise and difficult weight, / And fearful to be granted” ( 3. 3. 77 , 82 – 84 ).^79 In
addressing Cassio’s unruly behavior, Othello must therefore come to terms
with hers, and as he does so, the political becomes deeply, perplexingly per-
sonal. Othello twice asserts “I will deny thee nothing,” to shut the matter
down, as if to deny Cassio is to deny Desdemona, and he then asks to be left
“but a little to myself,” as if to give in to her is to deny and negate himself
( 3. 3. 77 , 84 , 86 ). However we choose to read the marital dynamic and the po-
sitions (aggressive, submissive, erotic, and such) husband and wife take within
it, at its center—and at the center, therefore, of Othello’s tragic decline—is a
volatile tension that exceeds, even if it feeds, Iago’s “uncleanly apprehensions”
( 3. 3. 143 ). To view Othello through that tension, as the play insists we must, is
to understand his character as not only deeply embedded in a domestic rela-
tionship but also inextricably improvised from it.
Even as that relationship begins to unravel to a breaking point of no re-
turn, the Moor’s ability to reshape Venice does not. That is, even as Othello
becomes estranged from his wife, from himself, and from behaviors that
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