with no explicit mark or measure of citizenship, seems remarkably secure. We
do need to make a distinction between Othello’s social standing and his mar-
ital relationship, the one defined through stabilizing exteriors, the other
through uncertain interiors (and I will return to these). For what I am talking
about is Othello’s status as a domestic subject within Venice, and not his role
as husband within a marriage, although the two will intersect. What I am
talking about, that is, is the play’s insistence that Othello has a place “here,”
as much as has Iago, if not also Brabantio. And while that place does not reg-
ister the specific terms of Othello’s residency, it nonetheless exposes his re-
siliency as a Venetian subject.
This positioning provides an important preface and supplement to the
scenes at court where Brabantio challenges Othello and where the Venetian
court’s acceptance of the Moor and the marriage could be—and has been—
taken as political expediency.^59 Yet even there Othello has notable leverage in
defending and defining his (and Desdemona’s) domestic position. In re-
sponse to Brabantio’s incrimination of the courtship, Othello sets the bounds
of what he will or will not show, exposing the inside of Brabantio’s house,
not his own, stopping well short of the site and circumstances of the elope-
ment, and confirming only that “I have married her” ( 1. 3. 80 ). Moreover, the
duke lets Othello determine the terms of the proceedings, calling for Desde-
mona at the Moor’s request, and hearing his testimony in the meantime.
These responses may well be contingent on other pressures. There is, after
all, no action or reaction here that is not: because drama hinges on the illu-
sion that what we are watching is being improvised in the moment, from al-
ways unfolding contingencies, we are always in a sense in medias res, as the
opening scene underlines.^60 But if the court’s endorsement of Othello’s
social choice is conditioned on the Turkish threat, it is conditioned as well
on his credibility as a domestic subject. Not only is the senate at least as ready
to hear that Othello won Desdemona “by request and such fair question / As
soul to soul affordeth” as that he “by indirect and forcèd courses” “subdue[d]
and poison[ed]” her ( 1. 3. 112 – 15 ). Despite Othello’s protestations that he is
“rude” in “speech” and unlikely to “grace [his] cause / In speaking for
[him]self,” the senate and duke, in fact, count on him to represent his own
domestic affairs in a way that defies further dispute ( 1. 3. 82 , 89 – 90 )—that is,
to provide a “wider and more overt test” of truth than the “thin habits and
poor likelihoods of modern seeming” which Brabantio voices ( 1. 3. 108 – 9 ).
Whether or not Othello’s exoneration is a foregone conclusion, at this ab-
solutely critical moment the court relies on him to speak persuasively over
174 chapter seven