Marriage in Othello and Macbeth
By Tom Wolfe
Othello and Macbeth are both characters who make a tenuous effort at determining their own fortune. This is symbolised in the case of Othello by his marriage to Desdemona, and in the case of Macbeth by his murder of Duncan. In both plays Shakespeare uses the marriages of the central characters to track the fate of men who attempt to fight fate, but each play does this in different ways. In Othello, Desdemona represents the ideal, the unification of self and other that Othello seeks. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth represents the exact opposite: unconscious dark desires that are let loose and result in death and dismemberment. Macbeth and Othello are similar in that they are both drawn by circumstances to commit an unthinkable crime—the murder of a loved one. However, Othello murders his wife, and Macbeth is pushed, by his wife, to murder his King.
Shakespeare describes Othello from the beginning of the play as being a noble, “glorious soldier,” who, as Harold Bloom puts it, uses the language of “unfallen splendour”—seemingly a Venetian citizen who is beyond reproach. When he is brought to the Venetian council by the Brabantio, a Senator of Venice, we see that Othello’s position is immediately stronger (Brabantio hadn’t even been invited to the council meeting that he disrupted with his unwelcome case). The Venetians are in the midst of a conflict with the Turks, and as Venice’s greatest general Othello’s position in Venetian society is assured by the respect and admiration held for him by all of Venetian nobility except the racist father of Othello’s new bride. Othello seems to be well-aware of his position:
My services which I have done the signiory
Shall out-tongue his complaints. ‘Tis yet to know,--
Which, when I know that boasting is an honour,
I shall promulgate— (1.2.17)
Despite his strong position Othello still chose to elope. As an alien to the society of Venice, Othello realised that he is valued for the service that he brings to the city-state and not for intrinsic qualities like nationality. His blackness puts him symbolically as well as literally in a position of vulnerability. Moors, in Elizabethan theatre, were considered to be stereotypical villains—coarse, lustful, violent, cunning and deceitful (Best, p. 238) and so, despite the fact that Othello seems at first to be the best of the lot, he automatically, as a black man, carries the stigma of this stereotype with him. When he breaches what is socially acceptable—by eloping with Venice’s fairest prize, Desdemona—he instantly meets the wrath of Brabantio, who used to be a great friend:
Come hither, Moor:
I here do give thee that with all my heart
Which, but thou hast already, with all my heart
I would keep from thee. For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child:
For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
To hang clogs on them. I have done, my lord. (1.3.190-196)
If Othello had been white there would not have been the need for elopement since, considering his great reputation, he would have no doubt been considered a very acceptable suitor. Othello elopes because he fears the racism that will prevent his ultimate desire, union with Desdemona.
Othello’s marriage to Desdemona may be seen to symbolise the attempt that Othello makes to integrate into Venetian society. Othello’s integration appears to be as thorough as possible. His speech, his religion, his nationality, and now finally his marriage (with the intention of producing native offspring) all indicate a man who is fully desiring to escape his ethnic heritage and assume the traditions and customs of his new land. However, like many immigrants or citizens of a colonised nation, this integration only goes so deeply. When reading the play, it is easy to forget that Othello is, in fact, black; however, when observing the play on stage or on video, it is impossible to escape the fact that his skin colour differentiates him from his fellow countrymen. Bradley indicates that, contrary to contemporary habits (which for him meant 1904 but persist today) of making Othello the Moor “Moorish” in his blackness (a tan or light brown), Shakespeare likely meant for the Moor to be very black, or “Negro.” Bradley points out Roderigo’s reference to Othello as “the thicklips” (1.1.63) as one proof. If Othello’s integration had been successful—if in fact he had lived long and prospered and bore offspring on Cyprus with his Venetian wife Desdemona, then perhaps a true “Moor” would have been appropriate (an Egyptian, for example). But he does not. He cannot become a Venetian any more than he can colour his skin white.
Shakespeare cultivates an impression of Othello as being steadfast and slow to suspicion—as Bradley puts it, “his was the last nature to engender such jealousy from itself.” Bloom describes Othello as a “simple man” (1987, p. 2)—he does not suspect subtle plotting in others. Othello says,
Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw
The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt;
For she had eyes, and chose me.(3.3.187-189)
Othello does, indeed, trust his wife Desdemona. Unfortunately, Othello trusts everyone too easily, and trusts Iago’s false reports too much because Iago—opposite from Othello in his remarkable insight into human character—is able to see the hidden fears that the expatriate Othello carries with him in a foreign land. Iago opens the door to Othello’s unconscious insecurity; he represents the self-doubt, uncertainty, and potential disaster that face a metaphorical “black man” living in a metaphorical “white world.” Carol Thomas Neely writes that Iago, “destroys his superior by destroying Othello’s belief in his own superiority and the bonds which confirm that superiority.” (Neely in Bloom, p. 236)
Shakespeare parallels the decline in Othello’s marriage with the decline of social order. From a mediaeval perspective these parallels would be very relevant, as illustrated in the following homily from “An Exhortation to Obedience” (in Best, p 54):
For where there is no right order, there reigneth all abuse, carnal liberty, enormity, sin, and Babylonical confusion. Take away kings, princes, rulers, magistrates, judges, and such states of God’s order ... and there must needs follow all mischief and utter destruction both of souls, bodies, goodness and commonwealths.
Shakespeare’s world had inherited this mediaeval image of an ordered universe which dictated what was possible. If an individual chose to try to define his or her own course, the outcome was made clear by such homilies that threatened a chaotic world order. At the same time, new worlds, the Americas, had been discovered, science attacked the authority of the Church, and politics was being undermined by the new pragmatism of Machiavelli. Old, deterministic social orders were being questioned and the possibility of personal choice over one’s fate was held out as a possibility. In both Macbeth and Othello the fates of the central characters seem to fall according to the older orders.
The theme of the self-determining man is tightly linked to the theme of Order. Again, Shakespeare uses marriage significantly in both Macbeth and Othello to parallel and symbolise order. At the beginnings of each play both Macbeth and Othello are at the pinnacles of their careers and their marriages are intact and strong. This parallels the political environments as well—Othello has just won a great victory over the Turks; likewise, Macbeth has just been promoted to Thane of Cawdor as a result of his victory over the rebels. As well, social order, at the outset of both plays, is very much intact. As each play progresses, we see parallels between the way the political climate turns for the worse and how social order crumbles or is even reversed, and in both cases the marriages are ended by death.
The relationship between Othello’s marriage and social order is illustrated by the two swordfights. The first occurs as Cassio and Roderigo are squabbling on the first evening in Cyprus. Montano, the former governor of Cyprus before the coming of Othello, steps in to protect Roderigo from Cassio and is wounded. Othello meanwhile is with Desdemona, presumably in the act of, or, according to a few critics, about to consummate his marriage. The fight is brought to an end and peace is restored when Othello leaves Desdemona and intervenes. At this point, law and order—for which Othello, who has replaced the former governor, has responsibility—still persist in Cyprus, though to a lesser extent than in Venice. Othello is portrayed as being in control, free of anxiety, secure in his place. Still, we have seen the seeds of anxiety that have been planted and await germination—Iago’s subtle but increasingly more focused attempts at unseating Othello first with Brabantio and now with his exposed plot to involve his constructed story of Cassio. As an audience we are meant to see Othello as being strong and intact. Many critics—whom Carol Thomas Neely calls “Othello critics”—believe this to be the case and believe that Iago is a strong diabolical and independent character who overpowers the essentially good Othello with his incessant plotting. I believe, with Neely, that Othello is more subtly complex, a character whose psyche is tormented. Within Othello there are hidden forces at work: the anxiety caused by Iago reflects unconscious fears instilled by Othello’s literal and metaphorical foreign birth. Desdemona represents an ideal to which Othello is striving but cannot ever be one with.
The second fight occurs on the second and last evening in Cyprus. Cassio and Roderigo are at it again, and again their fight is interrupted. This time it is not Montano who intervenes but Iago. Meanwhile Othello is behaving quite differently from the first example. He is not present during the conflict between Cassio and Roderigo, and rather than order being re-established, a man is killed (though by Iago, not Cassio) for the first time in the play. During the first fight Othello leaves the marriage bed to perform his role as general on Cyprus. During this fight, however, Othello hears the noise of fighting, assumes that Cassio is being murdered, and, rather than intervening as he should do as military head of Cyprus, returns to his wedding bed not to consummate his marriage (in the normal manner at least) but to murder his wife.
Critics who believe that Othello has already slept with Desdemona argue that the question of whether the marriage is consummated is an irrelevant point. Indeed, if the play had spanned several weeks it would be unlikely that so much time would have passed without the union of Othello and Desdemona. The fact that the action takes place for the most part within one day could be seen as being simply due to the constraints of the stage—Shakespeare could have meant Iago’s deception to be stretched out over weeks. I believe that these arguments are unnecessarily contrived, and I do see the question of consummation as being important. I side with the critics who believe that Othello has not yet consummated his marriage. Othello’s decline is swift, and Shakespeare leaves him with no time to bring about the union with Desdemona that would have meant the perfect, but for Othello unattainable, union of his self with the ideal represented by Desdemona. The initial depression that Othello feels upon being exposed to doubt via Iago is a defence against the deep pain over the loss of Desdemona, the object of Othello’s desires whom Othello wrongly thought was one with him through their marriage. Cassio, who was a native Venetian, seems to be a much more suitable and hence more ideal spouse for Desdemona, and this is a fear that Iago capitalised on. Othello’s fear that his life remains fragmented is further symbolised by the handkerchief, an “antique” gift to his mother from an Egyptian woman. The handkerchief, among other things, represents to Othello his connection with his ancient past in Africa and his mother. The fact that Desdemona has misplaced it becomes for Othello intolerable “proof” that the loss he feels is true. The irony of Othello’s outrage is great. On the one hand, it is true: Desdemona will never be united with him as one, but at the same time if Othello had accepted her as one should accept an other, he would have been blessed greatly by her. She did, after all, lose the handkerchief while trying to minister to her husband: Othello pushed it aside, rejecting Desdemona’s loving attempt to heal his pain (Neely in Best, p. 234). Later in the play, Othello changes even the history of the handkerchief, claiming that it was a gift from his father to his mother and shifting its significance from a symbol of feminine power (from an Egyptian woman charmer) to one of male control.
Othello demands “ocular proof” of Desdemona’s infidelity; in other words, he wants to see the real thing. Curiously, though, Iago tricks Othello through a series of signs and stories that intentionally shift and move around creating a chain of meaning that ends up convincing Othello as if they were the “ocular proof” that Othello demanded. Desdemona’s loss of the handkerchief actually occurred as a result of her love for her husband, but Othello mistakes the handkerchief for her honour, which she has apparently discarded:
Her honour is an essence that’s not seen;
They have it very oft that have it not:
But, for the handkerchief,--
In fact it was Othello who, symbolically, discarded the handkerchief and Desdemona, distracted by her husband’s distress, failed to notice it went missing. In this way Othello mistakes his own oversight for hers—so the handkerchief may also represent Othello’s blindness to the real meaning of the sign despite his apparent eagerness to see the truth.
Far from seeing the truth, a simple trick fools Othello into thinking that in seeing the handkerchief he has actually witnessed Desdemona’s honour being disgraced before his eyes. The conversation that Iago and Cassio have while Othello is in hiding is actually about Bianca but Iago is able to construct the environment in such a way that Othello mistakes it for being about his beloved and innocent Desdemona. Next, the dream that Iago relates to Othello is actually a fantasy of Iago’s own design—therefore doubly unreliable—relating to Cassio and Iago:
... I lay with Cassio lately; ...
In sleep I heard him say ‘Sweet Desdemona,
Let us be wary, let us hide our loves;’
And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,
Cry ‘O sweet creature!’ and then kiss me hard,
As if he pluck’d up kisses by the roots
That grew upon my lips: then laid his leg
Over my thigh, and sigh’d, and kiss’d; and then
Cried ‘Cursed fate that gave thee to the Moor!’ (3.3.410-423)
Othello unwittingly perceives the fantasy to signify a real event between Cassio and Desdemona. In doing so, Othello confuses first of all a dream for reality (which being real can be perceived “ocularly”), and then Iago, Othello’s deceiver, for Desdemona, Othello’s love. Cassio is the spousal partner that Desdemona ideally should have, according to the correct Venetian order of things (according to Brabantio in any case), and Iago is Othello’s source of unease as one who is separate from (but striving to become one with) this order. On one level, the fictional dream is Iago’s, but such is Othello’s anxiety that he transfers the contempt he has for the dream figures of Iago and Cassio into his relationship with Desdemona and is thus forced to alienate Desdemona permanently through death. Iago cleverly uses these linked signs—which may all be traced back to what should have been a good marriage—to deceive Othello into mistaking a story for the real thing.
Othello’s psychological downward spiral is a natural and fated result of one who seeks to attain the impossible, an ideal that he can never have. The utter failure of Othello to find union with Desdemona reinforces to Othello’s audience that man is not equipped with the spiritual power to withstand the complete disruption of his psyche and social environment that results from overstepping his fated station. Othello tried, but failed, to bring about the union he so desperately desired, an effort which ended in death.
Although it may at first be possible to perceive Othello to be an inherently good man driven to wickedness by an other, it is difficult, from the start, to do so with Macbeth. Macbeth’s fascination with the “weird sisters” is where suspicions of Macbeth’s intentions begin. Banquo himself comments on Macbeth’s reaction:
... My noble partner
You greet with present grace and great prediction
Of noble having and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal ... (1.3.54)
The word “weird” in the Collins English Dictionary refers to fate or destiny. The prophecies of the witches, though, are both “foul and fair”—on the one hand, it should be good news for Macbeth (“great prediction/Of noble having and of royal hope”) yet Macbeth immediately realises that the prophecy will not come about by accident but by foul means at his hand. In this way, the witches are like Lady Macbeth: the words they speak to Macbeth stir and help bring to being his unconscious desires for power and speed him towards his fate. And, like Othello, anxiety begins to well in him as he contemplates his tenuous position as one who determines his own fate:
Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? (1.3.132)
Macbeth is aware of the correct order of things: “good” is associated with accepting the due course of fate. He has won his title as “Thane of Cawdor” as a matter of fate or destiny; this part of the witches’ prophecy, the part “commencing in a truth,” came about without any “foul” improvisation on Macbeth’s part. Macbeth’s anxiety comes from the prophecies that followed the first. The inevitability of the “foul” means by which he must come to power is reinforced in Macbeth’s first meeting with Duncan. Macbeth is the rightful heir to the throne until Duncan’s sons come of age, but Duncan, in a move to assert his desire to see his descendants sit on his throne, establishes a crown prince: “We will establish our estate upon Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter The Prince of Cumberland” (1.4.37 – 39). Macbeth immediately realises the implications of Duncan’s declaration: the “Prince of Cumberland” is an impediment to Macbeth, “a step/On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,/For in my way it lies” (1.4.48-49). Macbeth anticipates the struggle that he will endure as his conscience calls him to account for the actions welling out of his unconscious:
Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (1.4.48 – 51)
Macbeth summons the courage to blind his conscience (“eye”) from the actions of his “hand” as the desires of his unconscious are carried out. Lady Macbeth also anticipates this weakness. Her first words echo Macbeth’s unconscious: “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be/What thou art promised” (1.5.16 - 17). Yet she questions Macbeth’s character: “Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way” (1.5.17 – 19). Macbeth’s soliloquy describes his uncertainty; however, it is an uncertainty that comes not from a moral question but out of fear of the consequences:
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; (1.7.1-4)
While Macbeth struggles between his dark urges for regicide and what he perceives to be the ideal behaviour of a kinsman, subject, and host, “who should against his murderer shut the door” (1.7.18), it is Lady Macbeth who intervenes:
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this. (1.7.49-58)
Lady Macbeth focuses on the definition of an ideal man that involves the ability to translate desire into action, appealing to Macbeth’s warrior nature. Prior to Macbeth’s arrival, Lady Macbeth has uttered an evil spell that grants her the bloodthirsty ambition she knows she will require if she is to convince Macbeth to murder Duncan:
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature (1.5.39-44)
Macbeth alone possesses the ambition, but has too much imagination—he can see how things will go wrong, and this stirs in him an anxiety that inhibits him from being fully self-determining. Lady Macbeth, his wife, however, pushes him past those fears by blinding him to the real potential for consequences. In doing so, she ironically prevents Macbeth from ever being able to conceive children by her symbolic “unsexing.” On a literal level she may still have remained a woman, but she becomes mad and commits suicide, thus concluding Macbeth’s descendants in a very conclusive manner.
Watson describes Macbeth’s misdeed as resembling, “the one Freud says civilization was formed to suppress: the murder of the ruling father of the first human clan because he refused to share his reproductive privileges with his filial subjects” (in Bloom, p. 135). Macbeth, so long as Duncan remained living, would remain merely a subject. Though Lady Macbeth and Macbeth could literally bear offspring in their marriage, their descendants would never be entitled to take the throne, to sit as Kings, and name their children Kings after them. Once Macbeth has committed the murder of Duncan he learns that “What’s done cannot be undone” (2.2.14; 5.1.68). Duncan’s murder was Macbeth’s improvisation on the witches’ prophecy, the “nearest way” to his destiny. This bold, self-determining action necessitated the killing of yet many more fathers and their sons in order for the improvisation to be completed, and eventually became far too big for Macbeth to handle.
According to the mediaeval concept of an ordered world Macbeth’s action was as unacceptable as Othello’s marriage to Desdemona. Macbeth proves to be as incapable as Othello of the psychological stamina that is required of him, and falls victim, like Othello, to madness. Like Othello, Macbeth’s fate, as a self-determining man, must be death. Othello’s disunity was marked by the death of his marriage; Macbeth’s disunity was marked first by the suicide of his wife, then by graphic and literal dismemberment—beheading.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold, Ed. (1987) William Shakespeare’s Othello. New York: Chelsea House Publishers.
Neely, Carol Thomas (1985) “Women and Men in Othello.” in William Shakespeare’s Othello. Harold Bloom, Ed. (1987).
Bloom, Harold, Ed. (1987) William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. New York: Chelsea House Publishers
Watson, Robert N. (1984) “’Thriftless Ambition,’ Foolish Wishes, and the Tragedy of Macbeth.” in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Harold Bloom, Ed. (1987)
The Collins English Dictionary (1990) London & Glasgow: Collins.
Best, Michael. (1999) English 324: Shakespeare Course Guide, Histories and Tragedies, Victoria: University of Victoria.
