Everyone in the play (except for Bertram) is unimpressed by Parolles, but the old Lord Lafew is particularly insightful. He admits that Parolles “didst make tolerable vent of thy travel” (2.3.204–5), “vent” meaning copious talk, yet he is an obvious fake, as indicated by his absurd costume: “Yet the scarves and the bannerets about thee did manifoldly dissuade me from believing thee a vessel of too great burden” (2.3.205–7). The plethora of scarves Parolles wears is a parody of military dress. Lafew also calls him a “window of lattice” (2.3.215), a reference to a common tavern window. Parolles is grievously insulted, but he has no way of replying to Lafew. He pockets it all up with characteristic patience: “there is no fettering of authority” (2.3.239). Lafew is unsuccessful in convincing Bertram about Parolles, but he makes a heroic effort to unmask him: “Fare you well, my lord, and believe this of me, there can be no kernel in this nut; the soul of this man is his clothes” (2.5.42–44). Bertram seems impenetrable to the advice of his elders.
Parolles is convincingly exposed as a “counterfeit” (4.3.34) in the scene of the drum, when he is captured by his own soldiers in disguise. Bertram is present to witness his mentor revealing the secrets of his camp. As the First Lord says ironically: “Y’ are deceived, my lord; this is Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist—that was his own phrase—that had the whole theoric of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice in the chape of his dagger” (4.3.143–47).
Bertram is finally convinced that Parolles is a rogue when he is directly insulted. Parolles calls him “a foolish idle boy, but for all that very ruttish [lustful]” (4.3.220–21), and “a dangerous and lascivious boy, who is a whale to virginity, and devours up all the fry it finds” (4.3.225–26). Parolles proves to be a calumniator like Lucio in Measure for Measure, and Bertram cannot contain his indignation: “Damnable both-sides rogue!” (4.3.227).
The remarkable thing about Parolles is that his unmasking seems to have little effect on him. He is notably resilient when he abandons his military role. His soliloquy at the end of this scene is surprisingly insightful:
If my heart were great
‘Twould burst at this. Captain I’ll be no more,
But I will eat and drink and sleep as soft
As captain shall. Simply the thing I am
Shall make me live. (4.3.344–38)
Parolles recognizes that “the thing I am” is an impostor. He is aware that he has been playing a role, and he is doubly aware that there are many other roles he can play that “Shall make me live.” He goes on to comment on his failed braggart part:
Who knows himself a braggart,
Let him fear this; for it will come to pass
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
Rust, sword; cool, blushes; and Parolles live
Safest in shame! Being fooled, by fool’ry thrive!
There’s place and means for every man alive. (4.3.338–43)
The important thing for Parolles is to stay alive by whatever means it takes. He is not at all abashed or apologetic for his deceit. Those who were deceived were more fools than he was. Parolles is almost a sympathetic character at this point.
At the end of the play, as in Measure for Measure, all is forgiven by the folktale formula of “All’s Well That Ends Well.” Even Lafew is kind to Parolles, who seems to be thankful to him for being the first to find him out. Parolles, however, insists on some favors from Lafew: “It lies in you, my lord, to bring me in some grace, for you did bring me out” (5.2.46–47). Lafew is puzzled about what role he is being asked to play: “Out upon thee, knave! Dost thou put upon me at once both the office of God and the devil? One brings thee in grace and the other brings thee out” (5.2.48–50). But
Lafew does not abandon Parolles. He promises him “though you are a fool and a knave you shall eat” (5.2.56–57). So we end the play with Parolles seeming like a sympathetic character. His faults were clearly venal and came from a love of show rather than from any sense of evil-doing.
Chapter 22
Iago’s and Othello’s “Ha’s”
In the first scene of Othello, Iago’s style is established. He speaks like a soldier, directly and without circumlocution or flourishes. He is fluent in the way he presents himself, often using informal, colloquial expressions. At times, he sprinkles his discourse with mild oaths and interjections, like “’Sblood” (by God’s blood) (1.1.4), “Forsooth” (1.1.16), and “Zounds” (by God’s wounds) (1.1.83, 105). In stirring up the anger of Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, Iago does not hesitate to resort to vulgar, bestial sexual images like “an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe” (1.1.85–86), and “you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse” (1.1.107–8)—allusions to Othello’s blackness—and “your daughter and the Moor are making the beast with two backs” (1.1.112–14). It is not surprising that Brabantio, the old father awakened from his sleep by rude shouting in the street, should ask Iago “What profane wretch art thou?” (1.1.111). Like the cunning villain that he is, Iago specializes in sowing discord and chaos. His characteristic style is evident in the first scene in his conversation with his gull Roderigo (like Sir Toby and his dupe Sir Andrew in Twelfth Night). There is the beginning in this scene of the ironic insistence on the word “honest” (and related forms), of which there is an avalanche of repetitions in Othello, as there also is in Julius Caesar.
Iago clearly wants to distinguish his “honest” style of speech from that of Othello, who evades the suitors for Iago’s promotion “with a bombast circumstance, / Horribly stuffed with epithets of war” (1.1.12–13). Bombast is cotton used to stuff or line clothing, in other words, used to pad it out. Iago is contemptuous of Othello’s high-flown style—formal, rhetorical, and with long, carefully composed periods. He doesn’t speak like a soldier, even though Othello claims “Rude am I in my speech, / And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace” (1.3.81–82). Iago doesn’t believe this at all. Of course, Cassio, whom Othello has chosen as his lieutenant, is “Mere prattle without practice” (1.1.23)—a man of words, a theoretician, without any practical experience on the battlefield. Therefore, Iago resolves upon his duplicitous course: “I follow him to serve my turn upon him” (1.1.39). He firmly establishes his relation to Othello from the beginning of the play: “But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at; I am not what I am” (1.1.61–62). In other words, Iago will pretend to be something other than what he is. He will present to the world a face of candor and honesty both in words and in deeds.
Othello’s first speech clearly distinguishes his style from Iago’s:
I fetch my life and being
From men of royal siege; and my demerits
May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune
As this that I have reached. For know, Iago,
But that I love the gentle Desdemona,
I would not my unhousèd free condition
Put into circumspection and confine
For the seas’ worth. (1.2.20–27)
Othello speaks formally and rhetorically, as if conscious of addressing a group of people. He uses a polysyllabic and latinate diction, very different from Iago’s conversational style. This is abundantly clear in his address to Brabantio and his men, who come to arrest him: “Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them. / Good signior, you shall more command with years / Than with your weapons” (1.2.58–60). In a dire situation, Othello speaks with a calm and lyric self-control. He doesn’t succeed in pacifying Brabantio, but Brabantio doesn’t dare to arrest him with the officers he has brought for that purpose.
Act 1, scene 3 shows Othello at his best. His account of his wooing of Desdemona is elaborately detailed and a grand speech, as witnessed by the duke’s remark: “I think this tale would win my daughter too” (1.3.170). Brabantio is utterly confounded by Othello and by his own daughter. We see Iago in this scene, especially in his conversations with Roderigo, resorting to characteristic animal imagery. He scoffs at Roderigo’s idle talk of killing
himself: “Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon” (1.3.309–11). To Iago, all love is lust, and, like all of Shakespeare’s villains, he puts an overwhelming emphasis on will: “Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners” (1.3.315–16). Before the soliloquy that ends the scene, “sport” is another key word of Iago’s. He tells Roderigo: “If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport” (1.3.362–63). In the soliloquy itself, Iago apologizes to the audience for his attention to Roderigo: “For I mine own gained knowledge should profane / If I would time expend with such snipe / But for my sport and profit” (1.3.373–75). “Snipe” is a foolish bird, a woodcock, easily caught, and “snipe” is synonymous with fool or dupe. Iago’s “sport” identifies him with the joking Vice figure of the medieval morality plays.
It is not until act 3, scene 3—practically in the middle of the play—that Othello fully engages with Iago. As soon as Cassio exits from his meeting with Desdemona, who has promised to plead his case for reinstatement as Othello’s lieutenant, Iago skillfully plants a doubt in Othello’s mind: “Ha! I like not that” (3.3.34). “Ha” is an emotionally loaded interjection expressing surprise or wonder, usually with negative connotations. “Ha” has no specific meaning except what is implied in the context. Iago’s exclamation indicates that he is disturbed by Cassio’s parting from Desdemona. He expresses a strong reaction, but, characteristically, he never says directly what it is he doesn’t like about it. He forces Othello into a series of questions and disturbing efforts to penetrate his implications. Again, this is an uncharacteristic stylistic mode for Othello. His immediate reaction to Iago is “What dost thou say?” (3.3.35), which seems to mean not that he hasn’t heard what Iago has just said but that he cannot fathom what Iago could mean by his provocative “Ha!” He is immediately thrown into the disturbing predicament of trying to find out what Iago really means but refuses to specify. This, of course, lies at the heart of this scene, in which Iago seduces his unsuspecting captain for his own nefarious purposes.
Othello’s tragic vulnerability is defined by Iago in his soliloquy at the end of act 1, scene 3:
The Moor is of a free and open nature
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so;
And will as tenderly be led by th’ nose
As asses are. (1.3.388–91)
Iago gloats over what is to be his successful—and easy—seduction of Othello in act 3, scene 3. He is confident that it won’t be difficult.
After Iago’s exclamation “Ha! I like not that,” his speeches—or perhaps only his broken exclamations and insinuations—continue to provoke the “free and open” Othello. When he asks Iago to explain what he doesn’t like about Cassio and Desdemona, Iago puts him off with a nonanswer: “Nothing, my lord; or if—I know not what” (3.3.36). Othello is at a loss to understand what Iago is implying, but he is sure that it is something bad. When he asks: “Was not that Cassio parted from my wife?” (3.3.37), Iago emphasizes his own doubts: “Cassio, my lord? No, sure, I cannot think it / That he would steal away so guilty-like, / Seeing your coming” (3.3.38–40). The question we want to ask is whether the Cassio we see on stage really “steal[s] away so guilty-like” when he sees Othello coming. It is the same issue that arises with the jealous Leontes in The Winter’s Tale. Do we actually see Leontes’s wife, Hermione, and his friend Polixenes “Kissing with inside lip” (1.2.286) and “Horsing foot on foot” (288)? I think not, but at least Leontes’s fantasy is fed by his mad jealousy, whereas Iago’s hints and insinuations are part of a crafty purpose to win over Othello.
When Desdemona exits, we already see Othello in deep perturbation from Iago’s words: “Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee! And when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again” (3.3.90–92). “Chaos” is used only six times in Shakespeare, always with a direly negative meaning. In Venus’s complaint in Venus and Adonis, when Adonis is dead “with him is beauty slain, / And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again” (1019–20). In Ulysses’s speech on degree in Troilus and Cressida, chaos follows “when degree is suffocate” (1.3.125). So Othello sees both perdition and chaos coming as a result of Iago’s speeches. Notice how quickly he is persuaded by Iago and how profound his tragic vulnerability is.
The speech about chaos is followed by eight puzzled questions from Othello, who is now deeply troubled. He obviously cannot believe what Iago is implying, but he also cannot fathom what Iago is really saying. When Iago asks “Did Michael Cassio, when you wooed my lady, / Know of your love?” (3.3.94–95), Othello’s only reply is the question “Why dost thou ask?” (3.3.96), as if he cannot make out what Iago is driving at. This is followed by “Why of thy thought, Iago?” (3.3.98), and “Indeed?” “Ay, indeed! Discern’st thou aught in that?, / Is he not honest?” (3.3.101–3). These lines have no relation to the language that Othello speaks earlier in the play—he is already being drawn into Iago’s style.
The interchange between Iago and Othello that follows presents an almost meaningless verbal display in which the language conceals what the characters are thinking and feeling:
Othello. What dost thou think?
Iago. Think, my lord?
Othello. Think, my lord?
By heaven, thou echoest me,
As if there were some monster in thy thought
Too hideous to be shown. Thou dost mean something.
I heard thee say even now, thou lik’st not that,
When Cassio left my wife. What didst not like? (3.3.105–10)
Iago has no intention of showing Othello his “thought”; he says only—perfunctorily—“My lord, you know I love you” (3.3.117).
I think he enjoys tormenting Othello when he explains: “It were not for your quiet nor your good, / Nor for my manhood, honesty, and wisdom, / To let you know my thoughts” (3.3.152–54). But Othello is insistent: “By heaven, I’ll know thy thoughts!” (3.3.162). It’s no use pursuing the matter, and Iago is curtly dismissive: “You cannot, if my heart were in your hand; / Nor shall not whilst ’tis in my custody” (3.3.162–63). It is at this climactic point that Othello bursts out with sheer frustration: “Ha!” (3.3.164). “Ha” is a key word of Iago, who began this interchange with an observation about Cassios’s leaving Desdemona: “Ha! I like not that.”
So Othello has now clearly been caught up in Iago’s style of discourse. His insistence on “proofs” is another sign that he has entered the Iago world of materiality, abandoning his own sense of high-mindedness and a feeling for spiritual love: “I’ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove; / And on the proof there is no more but this: / Away at once with love or jealousy” (3.3.190–92). Othello’s demand for “ocular proof” (3.3.357) plays right into Iago’s hands, so that he really doesn’t need Desdemona’s handkerchief that Emilia has just found. Othello’s imperious and threatening exclamation is just what Iago desires to work his mischief: “Make me to see’t; or at the least so prove it / That the probation bear no hinge nor loop / To hang a doubt on—or woe upon thy life!” (3.3.361–63). Iago can easily answer Othello’s angry “I’ll have some proof” (3.3.383) with: “Would you, the supervisor, grossly gape on? / Behold her topped?” (392–93). The handkerchief then fits in perfectly with Othello’s demand for proofs. Othello’s puzzled exclamation a little earlier in the scene—“Ha! ha! False to me?” (3.3.330)—repeats the Iago word “ha” (3.3.35, 165) and strengthens his commitment to Iago and to Iago’s plan to murder Desdemona. At the end of the scene, in a quasi-religious ceremony, Othello appoints Iago his lieutenant, and Iago replies ominously: “I am your own forever” (3.3.476).
We need to add only one other scene to strengthen our sense of how Othello takes over Iago’s style. Act 4, scene 1 begins with a series of questions from the now very passive Othello. It replays act 3, scene 3 after Iago says “Ha! I like not that” (3.3.35). Othello casts himself in the role of an ignorant student questioning his master.
The discourse just before Othello’s epileptic fit is random and unpurposive:
Othello. What hath he [Cassio] said?
Iago. Why, that he did—I know not what he did.
Othello. What? what?
Iago. Lie—
Othello. With her?
Iago. With her, on her; what you will. (4.1.31–35)
It is at this point that Othello begins to speak disconnectedly, like a mad person who has abandoned syntax and sentence structure. Othello’s “falling sickness” is like that of Julius Caesar in Julius Caesar. Othello echoes Iago’s words: “Lie with her? Lie on her?—We say lie on her when they belie her.—Lie with her! Zounds, that’s fulsome.—Handkerchief—confessions—handkerchief!” (4.1.36–39). When Cassio enters, Iago speaks professionally, as if he were Othello’s doctor: “My lord is fall’n into an epilepsy. / This is his second fit; he had one yesterday” (4.1.51–52). And Iago advises Cassio about the remedy: “The lethargy must have his quiet course. / If not, he foams at mouth, and by and by / Breaks out to savage madness” (4.1.54–56).
Othello is transformed by the devious and poisonous Iago. He is not the person he was—not just in his language, but in his inner being.
Chapter 23
Lucio the Calumniator in
Measure for Measure
Lucio is described in the cast of characters as a “fantastic,” which relates to his role in the play. He has no specific function in the court of Duke Vincentio other than as a hanger-on and commentator. “Fantastic” is derived from “fantasy,” meaning that Lucio is a creature of Fancy, and therefore extravagant, capricious, and bizarre. It is difficult to define his practical function in the play. He is like the lunatic, the lover, and the poet described by Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as “of imagination all compact” (5.1.8), persons of “seething brains” and “shaping fantasies, that apprehend / More than cool reason ever comprehends” (5.1.4, 5–6). “Fantastical” is, in fact, a word that Lucio likes. He uses it twice to describe the absent duke: “It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the state, and usurp the beggary he was never born to” (3.2.93–94). This is almost exactly what Apemantus, another calumniator, says of Timon of Athens: “Thou’dst courtier be again / Wert thou not beggar” (4.3.242–43). Lucio also calls Vincentio “the old fantastical duke of dark corners” (4.3.158–59).
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