Othello and the Geography of Persuasion

catherine nicholson

Othello and the Geography of Persuasionenlr_1061 56..87

In the annals of Othello criticism Thomas Rymer holds the dubiousdistinction of being the critic most frequently cited for having

gotten the play wrong. Rymer’s notoriously nasty assault on Othello inhis Short View of Tragedy (1693) has been castigated by later critics asboth morally repugnant and aesthetically blind, and Rymer himselfdismissed as “an irresponsible detractor.”1 But the irresponsible Rymerhas proved irrepressible as well. His very peevishness makes him, as onecritic puts it, an “infallible barometer of ideological strain,” and thesense remains that if his criticisms are often wrong-headed, he gets atleast a few things exactly right.2 Perhaps most importantly, as JoelAltman first observed, Rymer’s seemingly perverse obsession with theprobability of Shakespeare’s tragedy “set the critical question” for sub-sequent readers of Othello, making Rymer “the most influential ofShakespeare’s readers after all” (p. 131).

Probability is at the heart of Rymer’s critique. Beginning from thepresupposition that “Nothing is more odious in Nature than animprobable lye,” he works his way through virtually every aspect of

1. Lynda Boose, “Othello’s Handkerchief: ‘The Recognizance and Pledge of Love’,” EnglishLiterary Renaissance (1975), 360. For a brief history of responses to Rymer, beginning withCharles Gildon’s prompt “Attempt at a Vindication of Shakespeare” (1694), see Joel Altman,“ ‘Preposterous Conclusions’: Eros, Enargeia, and the Composition of Othello,” Representations 18(1987), 129–31 and 152, n5; and G. F. Parker, “Foul Disproportion: Rymer on Othello,” TheCambridge Quarterly 171 (1988), 17–19.

2. Elizabeth Hanson, “Brothers of the State: Othello, Bureaucracy and EpistemologicalCrisis,” in Othello: Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin (New York, 2004), p. 134.To cite just a few of the better-known critics to come (however grudgingly) to Rymer’sdefense: Dryden believed that “almost all the faults” Rymer alleged against Othello were “trulythere,” while Pope is said to have pronounced Rymer’s views “generally right, though rather toosevere,” and Samuel Johnson conceded that his “ferocity” might be the “repulsive” and “ungrace-ful habit” of the truth. Most famously, in a somewhat cryptic note to his essay on “Hamlet andIts Problems,”T.S. Eliot claims that he has “never seen a cogent refutation of Rymer’s objectionsto Othello” (in G.F. Parker, p. 18).

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Shakespeare’s invention—plot, characters, dialogue, even props—toarrive at the damning conclusion that “never was any Play fraught likethis of Othello with improbabilities.” Chief among these improbabilitiesis Othello himself. A playwright’s responsibility, Rymer argues, is fun-damentally rhetorical:“to convince the very heart of an Audience.” Butin making his hero a “villainous Blackamoor,” Shakespeare soughtinstead “to entertain [them] with something new and surprising,”something “against common sense, and Nature.”3 This harping onprobability may seem ungenerous in light of Othello’s myriad dramaticstrengths, but it accurately reflects the play’s own obsession withprobability, belief, and their relation to what Rymer calls “commonsense.” By focusing so intently on moments at which Shakespeareseems to abdicate his responsibility to “convince” an audience, Rymerfocuses our attention on the peculiarly self-reflexive nature of theplay’s engagement with the work of persuasion. The “canon of prob-ability” according to which Rymer tries Shakespeare’s invention(and finds it wanting) is, as Altman observes, the “very process ofunderstanding . . . that Shakespeare interrogates” in his representationof Othello’s quest for proof (p. 131).

Moreover, although Rymer’s complaint that Shakespeare’s plotrequires an audience to “deny their senses, to reconcile it to commonsense” (p. 151) may depend on a willfully insensitive application ofneoclassical standards of verisimilitude to the Shakespearean stage, it iscousin to the incredulity that this particular Shakespearean play dram-atizes in response to its own extravagance.Aristotelian probabalism maybe remote from the aesthetic criteria of Jacobean drama, but it isentirely relevant to the world of Othello: as Lodovico protests in Act 4,“this”—the spectacle of Othello’s public abuse of Desdemona—“would not be believed in Venice, / Though I should swear I saw’t.”4

Lodovico’s outburst deserves our attention, not only because it antici-pates Rymer’s skeptical response to the same episode, but also becauseit posits a relationship between plausibility and place that structuresthis skepticism. In this regard Rymer’s critique has more to teachmodern readers about Othello and early modern rhetoric than even

3. Thomas Rymer, The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, ed. Curt Zimansky (New Haven,1956), pp. 132, 133, 157, 135.

4. 4.1.237–38. All citations from Othello refer to The Norton Shakespeare, ed. StephenGreenblatt,Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisamann Maus (NewYork, 1997), pp.2100–72.

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© 2010 English Literary Renaissance Inc.

Altman allows.The important point is this: Lodovico does not deny thetruth or even the general likelihood of what he has seen in Cyprus;rather, he protests that even the testimony of an eyewitness would notrender such behavior credible in Venice. This assumption echoes Bra-bantio’s objection upon first hearing of his daughter’s elopement:“What tells’t thou me of robbing? This is Venice” (1.1.107).5 LikeLodovico, that is, Brabantio identifies his disbelief with a sense ofdislocation: daughters might be stolen elsewhere, but not here, inVenice. Both men assign a local character to belief: in this cosmopolitanplay, probability is a function of where one is.

The aspect of Rymer’s critique that has proved least palatable tomodern readers—his racist resistance to the figure of the “nobleMoor”—derives from a similar sense of the relationship betweenplausibility and place. For Rymer, Othello is or ought to be unper-suasive because he literally comes from outside the boundaries of thecommunity on which “common sense” depends. His complaints aboutthe play’s implausibility thus take on the language of xenophobia. LikeBrabantio, he dismisses Desdemona’s elopement as incredible becauseof its foreignness: “Should the Poet have provided such a Husband foran only Daughter of any noble Peer in England,” he protests, “theBlack-amoor must have chang’d his Skin, to look our House of Lordsin the Face.” Desdemona’s behavior, he continues, places her “belowany Countrey Chamber-maid with us . . . With us a Black-amoor mightrise to be a Trumpeter . . . With us a Moor might marry some littledrab, or Small-coal Wench.” Of the barbarous scene witnessed byLodovico, he remarks, “Had the Scene lain in Russia, what could wehave expected more?” Iago’s devices, he claims, would persuade “noBooby, on this side Mauritania,” while even “in a Colder Climate” he

5. Although they do not align the play’s emphasis on the Venetian locale with its interest inprobability, both Alvin Kernan’s “ ‘Othello’:An Introduction,” in Modern Shakespearean Criticism:Essays on Style, Dramaturgy, and the Major Plays, ed. Alvin Kernan (New York, 1970) and MichaelNeill’s Putting History to the Question: Power, Politics, and Society in English Renaissance Drama (NewYork, 2000) expound upon what Kernan calls the play’s “symbolic geography” (p. 353). ForKernan, Venice serves as an “ageless image of government, of reason, of law, and of socialconcord,” while “out at the far edge are the Turks, barbarism, disorder, and amoral destructivepowers,” including Othello himself once he departs for Cyprus (pp. 353–54). Neill offers a morenuanced (and less racist) reading of the play, which he regards as “an essentially domestictragedy . . . elevated to heroic dignity partly by the boldness of its geographic scale.” The“remorselessly one-way” current of Othello’s fortunes thus matches “the voyage from Venice toCyprus,” which “leads to self-estrangement and a kind of diminution” reflective of Cyprus’colonial dependency upon a metropolitan center (p. 208).

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would have expected to find a “Champion” for Desdemona. Suchabsurdities, he concludes, “can only be calculated for the latitude ofGotham,” the proverbial home of fools and simpletons.6

Rymer’s mapping of the play’s improbabilities brands Othello, like itsprotagonist, as irredeemably far-fetched and reminds us that the“extravagant and wheeling” (1.1.137) strangeness of which Othello isaccused has both geographic and rhetorical significance. It is becauseOthello transgresses the literal bounds of Venetian (and English)society that he forces Shakespeare’s plot beyond the bounds of prob-ability.This is Rymer’s great contribution to the tradition of rhetoricalcriticism: his seemingly misguided tendency to conflate various mea-sures of proximity and distance—racial difference and identity, culturalbelonging and alienation, geographic fixity and rootlessness—with theconcepts of probability and improbability. This tendency may leadRymer to discount what modern readers recognize as Othello’s—andOthello’s—enormous persuasive appeal, but it allows him to appreciateand articulate the degree to which actual place determines the successand failure of rhetorical strategies in the world of Othello, to recognizewhat I have called the play’s “geography of persuasion.”

How, then, do we account for the fact that Rymer gets so muchwrong, both in his expectations of the play’s plot and in his assump-tions about its dramatic effect? After all, Othello’s strangeness does notrender him unacceptable, either to Desdemona and her fellow Vene-tians (including, until he learns of the elopement, Brabantio himself )or to most audiences; if anything, it appears to have the opposite effect.And if Desdemona’s love for Othello suggests, troublingly, that darkskin and foreign origins might be more attractive than the familiarcharms of one’s own countrymen, the appeal of the play’s admittedlynon-commonsensical plot raises the possibility, equally troubling to theRymerian worldview, that the far-fetched is as much an element ofpersuasion as the familiar. Othello and his eponymous play may thenbe at once implausible and irresistible.

The weaknesses of Rymer’s reading, no less than its strengths, reflectthe importance of the relationship between persuasion and place.Rymer rightly links proximity to probability, recovering for us theessential insight that the “commonplaces” on which rhetorical proofhas depended from Aristotle onwards are intimately and inextricably

6. Rymer, pp. 139 (emphasis added), 157, 160, 134.



bound to actual common places: to a kind of social, cultural, andgeographic mutuality from which Othello clearly departs. But he failsto appreciate that probability is not the whole of rhetoric, especially inthe early modern period. Renaissance rhetorical theory accords anequal, and at times contradictory, weight to the persuasive effects oftropes and figures: to poetic and rhetorical strategies whose effectdepends on distance and strangeness, whose “far-fetched” appeal restson a departure from the commonplace and common places. Althoughprobability may assume the confines of an essentially local discursivecommunity, the desires and sympathies that eloquence engenders arestimulated by a longing for what lies outside of such boundaries.

It is the tension between these two understandings of rhetoric’spersuasive geography, between the commonplace and the far-fetched,the homely and the foreign, that drives Shakespeare’s tragic plot—which turns out, in my view, to be a play about race precisely becauseit is a play about rhetoric. Recent accounts of the play’s rhetoricaldimensions have tended to suggest otherwise. “Othello is a play aboutpersuasion,” John Channing Briggs declares, and “even if we discoveredthat Shakespeare modeled Othello after the ethnography of Leo Afri-canus, that account’s description of Moors . . . would not give usadequate access to Othello’s characterizing drama.” Othello’s blacknessis part of “a simple pattern of contrasts,” Briggs argues; it is his “loss ofaccess to forms of proof and evidence” that seals his fate.7 While Iconcur with this sense of the centrality of persuasion to the play’sconcerns, I want to challenge the assumption that renewed attention torhetoric ought to displace attention to social, ethnic, religious, andgeographic differences. On the contrary, rhetoric points the way to aproperly historical sense of how such differences mattered. For Othello’s

7. John Channing Briggs, “The Problem of Inartificial Proof: Othello Peers into Bacon’sUniverse,” Ben Jonson Journal 10 (2003), 161, 163, 166. Of course, in addressing the history of raceand its relation to Othello, I am drawing on a rich body of critical discourse. In addition to thebooks and articles I cite in this essay, important works on race in the early modern periodinclude Margo Hendricks and Patricia Parker, eds., Women, “Race”, and Writing in the EarlyModern Period (London, 1994); Kim Hall, “Things of Darkness”: Economies of Race and Gender inEarly Modern England (Ithaca, 1995); and Catherine Alexander and Stanley Wells, eds., Shakespeareand Race (Cambridge Eng., 2000). For an overview of the particular debates surrounding racein Othello, see Virginia Vaughan Mason, Othello: A Contextual History (Cambridge, Eng., 1994),pp. 51–70, and Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (Oxford, 2002), 91–111. Loombais especially helpful in identifying the ways that religion, skin color, geography, and sexualityinflect one another in Othello’s representations of racial difference.



dramatization of the racial tensions that arise when a Moor becomesintimate with Venice cannot be extricated from its exposure of aparallel problematic within persuasion itself: the confrontation betweenthe foundational rhetoric of the commonplace and the destabilizingallure of figuration.Without a clear understanding of the way in whichRenaissance rhetorical theorists refer to the exotic and the remote intheir representations of tropical ornamentations, we cannot account forthe fascination Othello exerts—both within the play and upon itsaudience—as any more than the shallow appeal of what Rymer calls“something new and surprising.” At the same time, without an appre-ciation for the interdependence of proximity and probability that is somuch a part of Rymer’s resistance to the play, we will remain limitedin our understanding of the forces that conspire against and ultimatelydestroy the Moor.

iidefending the commonplace

To say that Othello is a play about rhetoric is to recognize, as AlanSinfield does, that its “action advances through a contest of stories, andthe conditions of plausibility are therefore crucial—they determine whichstories will be believed”.8 At the heart of Rymer’s response to the playis the conviction, borrowed from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics, thatnarratives derive plausibility from their close resemblance to the ordi-nary course of events. “Aristotle is always telling us,” Rymer writes,that poetry ought to follow “the reason and nature of things” with agreater fidelity than history itself, “which only records things higlety,piglety, right or wrong as they happen” (p. 163).The “common sense”to which he so often appeals is, for Rymer, the ordering principle thatkeeps both art and argument from straying too far from the normativecourse of events.

However restrictive such a formula might seem, it is just this willing-ness to resort to a shared sense of reason and nature on which Aristotlefounds his Art of Rhetoric. Unlike logical argument, which must adhereto universal standards of truth, rhetorical pistis—the “belief ” or “proof”engendered by persuasive speech—is established “on the basis of

8. Alan Sinfield, Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading (Berkeley,1992), p. 30. See also Trevor McNeely, Proteus Unmasked: Sixteenth Century Rhetoric and the Art ofShakespeare (Bethlehem, 2004) pp. 222, 226.



common beliefs.” Rhetoric therefore allows speakers to arrive at con-clusions based on general agreement, “what seems true to people of acertain sort.” This “of a certain sort” is crucial: the fact that theseconclusions may not “seem so to Socrates or Hippias” or to everyoneeverywhere is immaterial, since for a rhetorical proof to be effective, itneed only meet the standards of a given, locally defined audience. Forthe orator’s purposes, then, probability, or proximity to the truth, isclosely linked to more literal forms of proximity: since an audiencemakes judgments “on the basis of what they know and instances neartheir experience,” the orator’s task is to present his argument in such away that it replicates this familiarity. Consequently, “one should guesswhat sort of assumptions people have and then speak in general termsconsistent with those views,” and “one should not speak on the basis ofall opinions but of those held by an identified group.”9

Aristotle dubs the categories from which an orator might derive hisarguments the koinoi topoi, or commonplaces, of invention.These com-monplaces are ideational—familiar topics or relationships that allow anorator to generate quickly the particular claims useful to his case—butthey also have a special relationship to the actual locale in which theorator speaks: the rhetorical commonplaces are not universally butlocally common, as it were, adapted to the circumstances of a particularaudience. Cicero amplifies this local quality, Ann Moss observes, whenhe describes the topoi as sedes—the “dwelling-places” or “local habita-tions” of arguments—a metaphor that “was to become part of the basiclanguage of places, and . . . in turn, constitute the concept of place” forearly modern authors.10 Thus Thomas Wilson, early modern England’schief vernacular proponent of Aristotelian dialectic and rhetoric,defines the “places” of invention by analogy to the topography of theEnglish countryside, observing in his Arte of Logike (1551) that theskilled wielder of commonplaces “must bee like a hunter, and learn bylabour to know the boroughs. For these places [ie., the topoi] beenothing else but coverts or boroughs, wherein if any one searchediligently, he maie finde game at pleasure.”11

9. Aristotle, On Rhetoric:A Theory of Civic Discourse, tr. George A. Kennedy (Oxford, 1991),pp. 34, 41, 186, 187 (emphasis added).

10. Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford,1996), p. 5.

11. Thomas Wilson, The Rule of Reason, conteinyng the Arte of Logike. Sette foorthe in Englishe,and newlie corrected by Thomas Wilson. (1563 [2nd ed.]), sig. L1.



Rymer’s claim that Othello’s audience “must deny their senses, toreconcile [the plot] to common sense” appeals to the opinions andvalues of a community defined explicitly as English; in the same way,Brabantio’s knowledge that “This is Venice” is the cornerstone onwhich his belief in his daughter’s security (and, later, her innocence) iserected, and Lodovico’s confidence in the expectations of his fellowcitizens allows him to declare Othello’s violence incredible. Rymer,Brabantio, and Lodovico derive their arguments from claims to “knowthe boroughs” of which they speak. Not surprisingly, given the parallelsin their reasoning, Rymer finds Brabantio to be the only sensiblecharacter in Othello and declares that it is his misfortune that “humanitycannot bear” to witness (p. 136). When Brabantio’s case before theSenate fails, Rymer regards the event as a violation of geographical aswell as rhetorical realism, claiming that “a Body must strain hard tofancy the scene at Venice” (p. 138). It is a sentiment with whichBrabantio undoubtedly would agree.

I will return to the scene of Brabantio’s defeat, but first it might behelpful to explore just what kind of expectations are evoked (andsubsequently disappointed) by the claim that “This is Venice.” Rymeridentifies hatred of Moors as one such expectation, arguing that “theEnglish are not bred up with that hatred and aversion to the Moors, asare the Venetians, who suffer by a perpetual Hostility from them” (p.134), and critics have continued to debate just how surprising Othello’swarm reception in Venice is.12 Within the play, however, the Venetianattribute that is given most emphasis is not racial prejudice (which isconfined primarily to Iago’s histrionics), but a reliance on the persua-sive force of the commonplace, on a locally defined sense of probabil-ity. It is this attribute that makes Brabantio’s failure to persuade

12. In “Sexuality and Racial Difference,” Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Othello, ed.AnthonyGerard Barthelemy (New York, 1994), Ania Loomba argues that the “common-sense attitudestowards black people in Othello . . . indicate both the older tradition of hatred towards blacks[founded on an identification with the devil] and a newer expediency, a more complex ideologyof racism” (p. 168).Virginia Vaughan concurs that “the Venetian outlook in Shakespeare’s play ispredominantly racist” (p. 65), but Martin Orkin argues that the play’s racial prejudices are “to animportant degree confined to Iago, Roderigo, and Brabantio” in “Othello and the ‘Plain Face’of Racism,” Shakespeare Quarterly 38 (1987), 168. Emily Bartels goes further, claiming thatOthello’s status as a “stranger / Of here and everywhere” bespeaks a desirable cultural, racial, andgeographic fluidity and would enhance his status in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Shakes-peare’s Venice. See “Othello on Trial,” New Casebooks: Othello, ed. Lena Cowen Orlin [NewYork, 2004], pp. 148–70.



his “brothers of the state” (1.2.97) of his case so surprising, and sosignificant.

The series of scenes that precede Brabantio’s appearance before theSenate seem calculated precisely to heighten our sense of the sway ofprobability in Venice. The subject of each scene—Roderigo’s disputewith Iago; Brabantio’s rude awakening; the Senate debate over theTurkish fleet—is persuasion itself: the work of translating an initiallydubious response into a profession of faith. The play begins withRoderigo’s explosive disavowal of his faith in Iago: “Tush, never tellme! I take it much unkindly / That thou . . . shouldst know of this”(1.1.1–3). Roderigo continues in this vein for some time, until Iagopresents him with a litany of reasons, all of them commonsensical, forhis seeming disloyalty and urges Roderigo to “be judge yourself ”whether one such as he is likely “to love the Moor” (1.1.37, 39).To thisaccount Roderigo grudgingly concedes, “I would not follow him,then” (1.1.40). Evidence of his conversion is forthcoming: soon enoughwe see him at Brabantio’s door, swearing to “answer anything”(1.1.121) on Iago’s behalf and urging the senator to “let loose on methe justice of the state / For thus deluding you” should any of Iago’sclaims prove false (1.1.140–41).

Brabantio responds of course with his own cry of disbelief—“Whattell’st thou me of robbing?”—which proves equally susceptible topersuasion. Even before his servants have confirmed the reports ofDesdemona’s absence, Brabantio has yielded to the claim because itresembles his own fearful imaginings: “This accident is not unlike mydream; / Belief of it oppresses me already” (1.1.143–44). A dream mayseem a flimsy rationale for belief, but it serves for Brabantio as ameasure of what he is already prepared to accept as truth. Reeling fromone likelihood to the next, he attempts to construct a logical basis forthis new belief, first turning his suspicion upon his daughter—“Oheaven, how got she out? O, treason of the blood! / Fathers, fromhence trust not your daughters’ minds / By what you see them act”(1.1.170–72)—but then, recoiling from this possibility, devising analternative explanation: “Is there not charms / By which the propertyof youth and maidhood / May be abused” (1.1.172–74)? The unsavoryprospect of a wayward and deceitful daughter is replaced by the morepalatable—and familiar—topoi of guileless youth and vulnerable maiden-hood, commonplaces that conveniently save Brabantio’s pride even asthey shore up his belief. “Have you not read, Roderigo, / Of some



such thing?” he demands (1.1.173–74), as if the very commonness ofsuch knowledge secured its credibility.

From Brabantio’s frantic conjectures, we turn to the Venetian senate,where, despite the dubious reports of “a dozen sequent messengers”(1.2.41), the council has no certain knowledge of the Turkish fleet’sposition or plans. “There’s no composition in these news / That givesthem credit,” protests the bewildered Duke (1.3.1–2). His disbelief isechoed by his advisors: “Indeed, they are disproportioned . . . theyjump not on a just account” (1.3.2, 5). Here, too, however, credibilityis quickly established. Rhodes is a possible target, but Cyprus is themore plausible destination, and with such likelihoods the Duke pro-nounces himself satisfied. “Nay, it is possible enough to judgment,” heconcedes (1.3.9). “The main article I do approve . . . Nay, in all con-fidence, he’s not for Rhodes. . . . ’Tis certain, then, for Cyprus”(1.3.11, 32, 43). What amends the “disproportion” of the early reportsis a presumed proportionality between Turkish and Venetian militarystrategies. “We must not think the Turk is so unskillful,” one senatorobserves,“to leave that latest which concerns him first, / Neglecting anattempt of ease and gain / To wake and wage a danger profitless”(1.3.28–31).While such formulae satisfy the preconceptions and expec-tations of a given audience (the Senate is really thinking about whatthey would consider a reasonable course of action), their generalityinvites a wider range of application: Turks may be strangers, but theytoo can be brought within the bounds of the commonplace.

In each of these cases persuasion depends on the perception of aresemblance—between one’s own motives and another’s; betweendreams and reality; between domestic policies and enemy tactics. Suchaffinities may be misleading,13 but reasoning by resemblance is a useful,even indispensable tool in the confused atmosphere of Othello’sVenice.While Joel Altman condemns the play’s Venetian characters for theirhaste to arrive at “preposterous conclusions,”14 Katherine Maus recog-nizes the accretion of half-baked probabilities in the play’s first act as

13. As Iago perhaps implies when he comments, enigmatically, “It is as sure as you areRoderigo, / Were I the Moor I would not be Iago. / In following him I follow but myself ”(1.1.62–64).

14. Altman notes that “To leave that latest which concerns him first” is not only badmilitary strategy, it is also bad argumentation—something of which the Venetian Senate (and,later, Othello) may well be guilty in their eagerness to arrive at likely solutions to their dilemma.Altman argues that this leap to conclusions—a movement he associates with the rhetoricalfigure of hysteron-proteron, or “the latter part put before the former”—is typical of many of



a necessary response to situations whose epistemological opacity frus-trates the usual standards of proof.15 As Iago points out to Roderigo, noman can determine another’s “peculiar end” from his “outward action”(1.1.60–61) any more than fathers, as Brabantio laments, can judgetheir “daughters’ minds / By what [they] see them act,” or, as a senatorremarks, one can deduce an enemy’s true intent from “a pageant tokeep us in false gaze” (1.3.19–20). Within Renaissance legal theory, asBarbara Shapiro notes, crimes that resisted usual methods of proofbecause of their inherent secrecy—witchcraft was one, rape another—fell into the category of the crimen exceptum, or crime “done in thedark.” In the absence of witnesses—of “ocular proof”—wrongdoingwas established rhetorically, not through the consideration of “particu-lar pieces of evidence in the modern sense” but by weighing “thelikelihood, verisimilitude, and persuasiveness of the general account ofthe case.”16 The frantic deliberations of Othello’s opening scenes notonly take place in the obscurity of night; they are troubled by literalfailures to “place” various persons and things: Desdemona is not “in herchamber or [her father’s] house” (1.1.139); Othello is “not at [his]lodging to be found” by the Senate’s “three several quests” (1.2.45–46);the Turkish fleet occupies an unknown position in the MediterraneanSea; and one “Marcus Luccicos” (not mentioned elsewhere in the play,but earnestly sought by the Duke) is “not . . . in town” but “now inFlorence” (1.3.44–45).

What is left to judgment under such circumstances is the stabilizingand illuminating power of what the Duke pithily dubs the “possibleenough” (1.3.9). The Venetians’ reliance on this standard not onlyenables judgment in circumstances that defy certainty, it secures therepublic’s “power to protect itself from external enemies,” as JohnChanning Briggs observes (p. 167). Given this apparently shared faith inthe value of the probable, Brabantio’s case against Othello appearsstrong. The charge he brings before the Senate—that Othello has“enchanted” his daughter, binding her to him “in chains of magic”

Othello’s characters, whose craving for plausible narratives makes them easy prey for the“psychological topsyturvydom” Iago engineers (Altman, pp. 132–33).

15. Katherine Eisamann Maus,“Horns of a Dilemma: Jealousy, Gender, and Spectatorship inEnglish Drama,” English Literary History 54 (1987), 561–83.

16. Barbara Shapiro, “Beyond Reasonable Doubt” and “Probable Cause”: Historical Perspectiveson the Anglo-American Law of Evidence (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 119–20, 200–16. See also Shapiro’sA Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720. (Ithaca, 2000).



(1.2.64, 66)—is itself extreme, and extremely resistant to proof. ButBrabantio argues that the extremity of the crime justifies such specu-lation: judgment “must be driven / To find out practices of cunninghell / Why this should be” (1.3.101–03).The far-fetched, that is, is onlyfar-fetched by comparison.The notion that his daughter has voluntar-ily eloped with a Moor is not merely unlikely but contrary to “allthings of sense” (1.2.65).17 Drawing on the topoi of “nature,” “years,”“country,” and “credit” (1.3.96–97) to bolster his case, Brabantiodemands whether it is not “probable and palpable to thinking” (1.2.77)that his daughter should have been “practiced on . . . with foulcharms” (1.2.74). “It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect,” heconcludes,“That will confess perfection could so err / Against all rulesof nature” (1.3.99–101).

According to Aristotle, persuasive strategies of this kind presume arelatively homogeneous discursive community—which is to say, theforce of the rhetorical commonplace is sustained by the preservation ofliteral common places. Thus Aristotle observes that arguments fromprobability are most apt when presented among “people already accus-tomed to deliberate among themselves” (p. 41). Brabantio, among his“brothers of the state,” believes himself to be so situated, surrounded bythose so familiar that they will “feel this wrong as ‘twere their own”(1.2.98). Here may be the fatal flaw in his reasoning. For one thing, theintegrity of the community is already under strain: fearful of a Turkishattack, theVenetians are entrusting their defense to an outsider. Even asBrabantio invokes the insular values of the state, the attention of theSenate is displaced beyond its own borders to an outpost in Cyprus.“Othello, the fortitude of the place is best known to you,” the Dukeconfesses (1.3.221–22).

The pressure of these remote dangers bears upon the Duke’sresponse to Brabantio. Although he initially promises that the offenderwill be read “the bloody book of law,” even if it should be “our properson” (1.3.67, 69), sternness rapidly gives way to equivocation. Thephrasing of the promise forecasts Brabantio’s failure: precisely becauseOthello is neither proper nor kin—because he possesses the special

17. For a consideration of the way sexual and racial prejudices combine to produce thehistrionic response that Desdemona’s attraction to Othello engenders both within the play andin many of its later readers, see Karen Newman,“‘And wash the Ethiop white’: Femininity andthe Monstrous in Othello,” Shakespeare Reproduced, ed. Jean Howard and Marion O’Connor(London, 1987).



knowledge of the outsider—he escapes the home-grown probabilitiesthat, as the Duke admits, “prefer against him” (1.3.109). Thus, as soonas Brabantio names Othello, the Duke reverses course, disparaging thevery plausibility of Brabantio’s argument and claiming that there canbe “no proof / Without more wider and more overt test / Than thesethin habits and poor likelihoods / Of modern seeming” (1.3.106–09).The principles of similitude and approximation so critical to theSenate’s earlier deliberations are now dismissed as the shoddy veneer ofnewfangled sophistry.

This reversal shocks Rymer, who regards it as clear evidence of theplay’s departure from common sense. It should give us pause as well,since what is at stake for Brabantio is not only the integrity of thecommon place of Venice, but also the epistemological value of rhe-torical commonplaces. Brabantio’s threat that “if such actions may havepassage free, / Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be” (1.2.99–100) is commonly read as a bit of racist fear-mongering, an appeal topreserve the purity of Venetian blood-lines by the rigorous exclusionof the unlike. But it might also be read as an appeal to preserve thestandards of judgment that distinguish Venetian statesmen from theirbarbarous counterparts.That is, Othello’s difference and his strangenessare not only the qualities that arouse Brabantio’s ire, they are alsoprecisely the qualities his rhetoric must exclude in order to maintain itseffect. Commonplaces permit a community to arrive at mutuallyagreeable conclusions in matters of uncertainty, but they do so only solong as the community maintains certain shared values and assump-tions. The essence of Brabantio’s argument—that no well-bred Vene-tian woman could possibly be drawn to a barbarous outsider, exceptunder the influence of some alien substance—is therefore doublycommonplace. Its appeal to “all things of sense” relies on the verycultural and geographic homogeneity it seeks to defend.

As a result, the incursion of “an extravagant and wheeling stranger”into such an environment is fundamentally a rhetorical challenge:instead of handicapping his defense, Othello’s strangeness cripplesBrabantio’s means of accusing him. When “the conditions of plausi-bility are . . . stacked against him,” as Sinfield observes, Othello wiselyresponds not with plausibilities of his own, but by “playing on hisstrangeness” (p. 51).Although his defense may fall short of the standardsof probable argument, it succeeds nonetheless in establishing his per-suasive force: having heard him, the Senate is willing to believe what



Thomas Rymer finds incredible, “that Desdemona was won, byhearing Othello talk” (p. 133). It is a surprising conclusion, to be sure,but not, as Rymer would have it, evidence of Shakespearean perversity.Instead, Othello’s triumph over Brabantio bespeaks a paradox at theheart of rhetorical theory, a paradox by which strangeness becomesboth the antithesis and the epitome of persuasive effect.

iii“rather willingly ledd, than driuen by force”

To understand this paradox we must return to Aristotle, whose Art ofRhetoric undergoes a significant shift when it turns from the subject ofcommonplaces to the question of style. Aristotle makes this turn withapparent reluctance, partly because it brings his text into uncomfort-able proximity with the concerns of the sophists, but also because itforces him to reconsider and even contradict his earlier cautions againststrangeness and novelty. For if probability derives from familiarity, styleor lexis depends on a very different source: to “make the style orna-mented” one must “deviate from prevailing usage.” Aristotle observesthat “people feel the same in regard to lexis as they do in regard tostrangers compared to citizens,” and what people feel in regard tostrangers is, surprisingly, given the Rhetoric’s insistence on the forceof local opinion, desire. While the topoi draw on commonly sharedexperiences and beliefs in order to reinforce the resemblance betweenan orator and his audience, stylistic adornment “make[s] the languageunfamiliar, for people are admirers of what is far off, and what ismarvelous is sweet” (pp. 221–22).

Subsequent theories of rhetorical ornament retain Aristotle’s meta-phorical association between figures of speech, travel, and exoticstrangers. In De Oratore Cicero’s Crassus defines metaphors as wordsquasi alieno in loco collocantur, “set as if in a strange place,” and notes thatsuch figures elicit admiration because “it is a mark of cleverness tojump over things that are obvious [ante pedes posita: literally, ‘set beforeone’s feet’] and choose other things that are far-fetched [alia longarepetita]”—although he also urges orators to introduce such remotefigures with care: “indeed, a metaphor ought to be modest, as onetaken to a strange place, not rushing in to take possession of it and asby permission present, not seeming to have come by force [etenimverecunda debet esse translatio, ut deducta esse in alienum locum, non iruisse



atque ut precario non vi venisse videatur].”18 Reflecting on Cicero’s own“employment of skillful ornament,” Quintilian observes that this talentfor metaphor defies categorization as “Attic” or “Asiatic,” as it elicited“the enthusiastic approval of the world at large.”19 According to Quin-tilian, the transport of meaning effected by figurative translatio invites acorresponding sense of transport in the hearer.Thus Cicero’s audiencesin the law courts did not choose to greet his speeches with “thunders ofapplause,” a response inappropriate to the gravity of their surroundings;rather, they were “compelled”—almost literally moved—to do so: “[I]twas the sublimity and splendour, the brilliance and the weight ofhis eloquence that evoked such clamorous enthusiasm. Nor . . . wouldhis words have been greeted with such extraordinary approbation if hisspeech had been like the ordinary speeches of every day. In myopinion, the audience did not know what they were doing, theirapplause sprang neither from their judgment nor their will; they wereseized with a kind of frenzy and unconscious of the place in whichthey stood, burst forth spontaneously into a perfect ecstasy of delight”(Quintilian, III. 212–13). “Unconscious of the place in which theystood,” Cicero’s enthralled audience has been removed by the force ofhis eloquence from the very circumstances that according to Aristotle’stheory of the topoi, ought to have structured their reception of hisarguments.

The suasive power of figuration, the aspect of rhetoric accordedmost attention and value by Renaissance theorists, thus attenuates theauthority of the commonplace, reorienting rhetoric toward the unfa-miliar and the far-fetched.The tensions that result from this conceptionof figuration are evident in Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique (1553). Wilsonwas not only the English author most devoted to an Aristotelianaccount of probable argumentation; he was also one of the mostvehement defenders of the vernacular against foreign influence of allkinds. According to Wilson, eloquence had been so thoroughly iden-tified with the highly-wrought ornamentation of Latin oratory thatEnglish authors came to regard strangeness itself as a linguistic virtue.

18. Cicero, De Oratore, pp. xxxvii.149–50, xl.159–60, xli.165; tr. Judith H. Anderson, inTranslating Investments: Metaphor and the Dynamic of Cultural Change in Tudor-Stuart England (NewYork, 2005), pp. 132, 134, 136. I’m indebted to Anderson’s sensitive translations of the Ciceroniantext and her discussion of the “positive sense of admiratio or ingenium” that attends most classicaldiscussions of metaphor.

19. Quintilian, The Institutia Oratoria of Quintilian, ed. and translated H. E. Butler. 4 vols.(London, 1980), III, 212.



Many “seeke so far for outlandish English, that they forget altogethertheir mothers language”, he complains. They “will say, they speake intheir mother tongue,” but “if some of their mothers were aliue,they were not able to tell what thei say.” Instead of a rhetoric thatreinforces the bonds of kinship and country, they cultivate a speech“pouder[ed] . . . with oversea language,” a kind of “French English”(ironically exemplified by the borrowed word “pouder”) or “EnglishItalienated,” which is as ludicrous “as if an Oratour that professeth tovtter his mind in plaine Latin, would needes speake Poetrie, and farrefetched colours of antiquitie.”20 These “farre fetched colours”—whether they are identified with excessive ornamentation, affectedarchaisms, or actual foreign phrases—divert rhetoric from its centralpurpose: to promote common values so that men may “live together infellowship of life” (Wilson, Rhetorique, sig. [A7]).

But despite his cautions against “outlandish,” “oversea,” and “farrefetched” language, when Wilson comes to the subject of style andornamentation, like Aristotle, he alters his message: “exornation,” hewrites, is the preeminent mark of rhetorical skill, “a gorgeous beauti-fying of the tongue with borrowed wordes, and change of sentence orspeech with much varietie.” Such variety, he emphasizes, is onlyallowed to those who have already mastered the “vsuall phrases” andthe “orderly plac[ing]” of them; but when it is added, it “boldelycommende[s] and beautifie[s] our talke,” so that “our speech mayseeme as bright and precious, as a rich stone is faire and Orient.”Thisfair and orient speech is achieved by the use of tropes and figures, turnsof phrase that are “farre fetcht and translated,” “vsed after some neweor straunge wise, much vnlike to that which men commonly vse tospeake” (Wilson, Rhetorique, pp. 169–170). While in his treatment ofargument Wilson uses the language of geographic distance and culturaldifference to signal the improper and unpersuasive use of speech, whenhe deals with style, distance and difference—epitomized by the Orientand its gems—are resurrected as markers of what is best, most beau-tiful, and most eloquent.

Most English rhetorical manuals of the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries are more interested in the Orient effects offiguration than they are in the invention of topics or the elaboration ofcommonplaces for arguments. By means of figures and tropes, as

20. Thomas Wilson, Wilson’s Arte of Rhetorique, 1560, ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), p. 162.



Abraham Fraunce writes in his Arcadian Rhetorike (1588), languageis transformed: “turned” or “drawen away from his first propersignification, to another,” but “so conuenientlie, as that it seem ratherwillingly ledd, than driuen by force.”21 The effect of such “turning” or“drawing away” is not, as with the commonplaces, a confirmation ofshared experience or belief, but rather the introduction of somethingnew and strange: “A Figure,” writes Henry Peacham in The Garden ofEloquence (1593), “is a forme of words, oration, or sentence, made newby art, differing from the vulgar maner and custome of writing orspeaking.”22

The emphasis on figures and tropes in these English rhetoricsentails a striking reversal of the relationship presumed to existbetween place and eloquence: now rhetoric leads to the alien andexotic, rather than sustaining the common and usual. In The Arte ofEnglish Poesie (1589), George Puttenham urges upon his readers “amaner of utterance more eloquent and rethoricall than the ordinarieprose . . . because it is decked and set out with all maner of freshcolours and figures.” This kind of speech, he claims, is eminently fitnot only for the delight of one’s audience, but also for the task ofpersuasion: figurative speech “sooner inuegleth the iudgement ofman, and carieth his opinion this way and that.” Like Aristotle’s lexisand Wilson’s “exornation,” Puttenham’s figuration owes its persuasiveforce not to familiarity or likelihood but to the foreign allure of its“rich Orient colours,” which “delight and allure as well the myndeas the eare of the hearers with a certain noueltie and strange manerof conueyance, disguising it no little from the ordinary and accus-tomed.” As figuration, rhetoric recapitulates the pleasurable effects oftravel itself, transporting listeners from “the ordinary and accus-tomed” to things novel and strange, just as Desdemona, according toRoderigo, is “transported” to Othello’s embrace (1.1.125). Ultimately,the most potent effect of such rhetoric is not to confirm an auditor’ssense of place in the world, but to provide the illusion of leaving it,carried “whither soeuer the heart by impression of the eare shalbemost affectionately bent and directed.”23

21. Abraham Fraunce, The Arcadian Rhetorike (1688 [2nd ed.]), sigs. A2v, D1v.22. Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence (1593), sig. C1.23. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1589), rpt. English Reprints, vol. IV (New

York, 1966), pp. 24, 149, 150. The last quotation is ironically a commonplace of Renaissancediscourse about the exotic.



It is precisely this effect of delight, allurement, and “strange convey-ance” that Othello’s speech has upon his audience at the Venetiancourt. The fantastical narrative of his “most disastrous chances,”“moving accidents,”“hairbreadth ‘scapes i’ th’ imminent deadly breach”(1.3.133–35) not only strikes his audience with its novelty, it transportsthem, moves them with its exotic imagery, out of the Venetiancommon-place into a land of “antres vast and deserts idle, / Roughquarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven” (1.3.139–40). AsPatricia Parker and Jonathan Sell have argued, Othello’s own travels are“dilate[d]” (1.3.152)—drawn out, expanded, opened up and madeavailable to his audience—in the same way that maps and travelnarratives revealed foreign lands to early modern English readers orthat orators amplified their arguments through an accretion ofexamples and ornament.24 Declining to mention the most obvious andimmediate—we might say, the most proximate—point in his defense,the fact of his utility to the Venetians, Othello reaches far back in timeand space to rehearse his “whole course of love” (1.3.91), “the story ofmy life . . . even from my boyish days” (1.3.128, 131). Promising todeliver “a round unvarnished tale” (1.3.90), he offers instead an expan-sive and patently fabulous “traveler’s history” (1.3.138).

Within classical and Renaissance rhetorical theory, the figure mostoften identified with novelty and strangeness is metaphor: as Putten-ham calls it, “the figure of transport.” Even more potent in its effectthan metaphor, however, is a figure he dubs “the farre-fet,” or meta-lepsis.While metaphor “is a kind of wresting of a single word from hisowne right signification, to another not so naturall, but yet of someaffinitie or conueniencie with it,” metalepsis extends this operation byseveral steps, substituting a word whose link to the original term is

24. Patricia Parker,“Shakespeare and Rhetoric: Dilation and Delation in Othello,” in Shakes-peare and the Question of Theory, ed. Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (New York, 1985), pp. 54–74.Sell identifies Othello’s speech as a prototypical early modern travel narrative, which “pushes theproblem of credible representation to the limits. . . . [S]o much is new, so little can be taken forgranted, that the rhetorical challenge of finding words for that new matter, verba for those newres, is at its acutest” See Rhetoric and Wonder in English Travel Writing, 1560–1613 (Burlington,Vt.,2006), p. 2. Instead of relying on the language of consensus, travel narratives force the speakerto attend to “contextual disparity”—to the distance between the world he describes and thatinhabited by his audience—and to accommodate that distance by his choice of tropes and topoi,generating a new rhetoric of what Sell paradoxically dubs “exotic commonplaces” (p. 1). Formore on the rhetoric of exotic travel narratives, see Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions:The Wonder of the New World (Chicago, 1991) and Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the OtherWorld: Exotic European Travel Writing 400–1600 (Ithaca, 1988).



remote or obscure. As an exaggerated version of metaphor, metalepsisintensifies the effect of transport, both in its treatment of language—“leaping over the heads of a great many words, [to] take one that isfurdest off ”—and in its effect on the hearer, whose “conceit [is]strangely entangled.” Metalepsis is a particularly effective device forwooing women, Puttenham remarks, since “things farrefet and dearebought are good for Ladies” (pp. 189, 193).

In her rich discussion of the trope, Madhavi Menon notes thatmetalepsis “telescopes” temporal, geographic, and semantic distances“so that the far appears near, and vice-versa.”25 The same is true ofOthello’s narrative, which as Edward Pechter remarks, “has displace-ment as its subject,”26 but also, thanks to repeated references to “thingshappening ‘oft’ and ‘still’ ” creates the impression of coherence andcontinuity, “an unbroken succession of marvelous events” (p. 41). Suchtemporal sleights of hand, combined with the tale’s geographic andrhetorical expansiveness, mimic the operation of metalepsis, which, asMenon observes,“confers the cloak of respectability on two terms that,in its absence, might not be linked at all,” and “creates commonalitybetween two seemingly disparate circles” (p. 74).

Certainly this is the effect of Othello’s story on his Venetian audi-ence; the story provides a respectable cloak for a conjunction earlierdescribed as monstrous: “an old black ram . . . tupping [a] white ewe”(1.1.88–89) or “the beast with two backs” (1.1.118). Othello’s accountbrings what Brabantio and Iago represent as frighteningly alien intothe realm of the ordinary—“my offending / Hath this extent, nomore” (1.3.80–81)—even as it dramatically foreshortens the distancebetween his audience and the places and experiences that signal hisotherness. Such metaleptic compressions produce an effect that itselfcan only be described by metalepsis: “a greedy ear” (1.3.148), “a plianthour” (1.3.150),“a world of kisses” (1.3.158). It is the cloaking effect ofthese figures on which Othello’s defense ultimately depends, far morethan it does on the fantastic landscape of his traveler’s history—familiarenough in its way, drawing as it does on stock imagery from Mandev-ille and others. The domestic scene of Desdemona’s “downright vio-lence and storm of fortunes” (1.3.247), the intimate moment at whichshe becomes “half the wooer” (1.3.174), defies inclusion in the world

25. Madhavi Menon, Wanton Words: Rhetoric and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama(Toronto, 2004), p. 85.

26. Edward Pechter, Othello and Interpretive Traditions (Iowa City, 1999), p. 41.



of the commonplace. Both literally and rhetorically, the far-fetchedstory of Othello’s life prepares for the introduction of these potentiallyshocking metaphors. Just as Crassus advises, Othello introduces hismetaphors with caution, reminding his audience that both he and hisdiscourse were “invited,” acting as “one taken to a strange place, notrushing in to take possession of it and as by permission present, notseeming to have come by force.” The stratagem succeeds: like Desde-mona, who “swore, in faith, ’twas strange, ’twas passing strange / ’Twaspitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful” (1.3.159–60), Othello’s audience ofsenators is excited by the very far-fetched quality of his story toimagine new commonalities and sympathies. “I think this is a talewould win my daughter, too,” the Duke admits (1.3.170).

Thanks to his story, Othello himself becomes a kind of embodiedmetalepsis: like the trope itself, he is a remote and yet strangelypersuasive figure, whose “unhoused free condition” (1.2.26) enableshim to traverse time and space, forging potent, unexpected, and poten-tially illicit connections. The claim “that Desdemona was won, byhearing Othello talk” turns out to be both far-fetched and true.Othello’s speech allows him to persuade the Senate of this implausi-bility precisely by demonstrating the rhetorical force of implausibilityitself. When he promises to “present / How I did thrive in this fairlady’s love” (1.3.124–25), he does more than simply describes theprocess; he replicates it. His success in doing so may, as Rymer argues,constitute a transgression of certain rhetorical expectations, but itopens up the possibility of a rhetoric of novelty and difference, and ithints at the vulnerability of the commonplace, and of common places,to penetration and transformation by that which is, or was, “furdestoff.”

It is this appropriation of persuasion by the far-fetched and improb-able to which Rymer so strenuously objects. Even if Othello hadexisted, Rymer argues, this fact would offer “no warrant” (p. 163) forShakespeare’s outlandish invention. When it comes to persuasion, heinsists, veracity is no substitute for verisimilitude. Othello’s triumphover Brabantio, however, suggests that when the rhetoric of probabilityis confronted with circumstances, language, or individuals from beyondthe pale of familiar experience, its fate is to be reduced to merecommonplaces—trite and threadbare “sentence[s]” of conventionalwisdom such as those the Duke lamely offers to Brabantio in conso-lation for his loss. Urging his fellow senator to “let me speak like



yourself ” (1.3.198), he proceeds to “lay a sentence” (1.3.198)—or seriesof sententiae—meant as substitutes for the legal sentence he hadpromised:

When remedies are past, the griefs are endedBy seeing the worst which late on hopes depended.To mourn a mischief that is past and goneIs the next way to draw new mischief on.What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,Patience her injury a mockery makes.The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief;He robs himself that spends a bootless grief. (1.3.201–08).

Brabantio replies with bitter wit:“So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile,/ We lose it not so long as we can smile” (1.3.209–10). Mocking theDuke’s perfidious exchange of sentences for sentencing, he observes,“He bears the sentence well that nothing bears / But the free comfortwhich from thence he hears” (1.3.211–12). Such wordplay exposes theineffectuality masked by the pleasing proportions of such sayings,which “being strong on both sides are equivocal” (1.3.216). The verycommonality that makes commonplaces persuasive, it would seem, canalso deprive them of force, causing them to seem too familiar, toogeneral, too susceptible to application in any cause.27 Brabantio departsannouncing his loss of faith not only in his community, but in rhetoricitself: “words are words; I never yet did hear / That the bruised heartwas pierced through the ear” (1.3.217–18). The latter line is itself acommonplace formulation of the power of eloquence to heal andtransform, one Brabantio surely has heard before, but one he is nolonger willing to credit.

ivcorrupted commonplaces, monstrous fancies,

strange truths

If in Othello’s first act the commonplace proves vulnerable to penetra-tion from without, by far-fetched strangers and their fantastic narra-

27. In “Othello: An Interpretation,” Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Othello, ed. Barthelemy(New York, 1994), Eldred Jones suggests that the patently inadequate nature of the Duke’sreassurances “leav[es] room for the suspicion that his feelings were with Brabantio” after all(p. 43).



tives, it subsequently proves equally susceptible to manipulation fromwithin. Brabantio’s dismissive response to the Duke’s “sentences” ironi-cally foreshadows Othello’s own attempt to dismiss Iago—“It is notwords that shakes me thus” (4.1.39–40)—whose arguments also rest onthe relentless accumulation of likelihoods and commonplaces.28 ButIago does not pervert the logic of the commonplace so much asexploit its inherent instabilities. Because rhetorical proofs are drawnnot only “from what is necessarily valid,” but also, and more impor-tantly, from “what is true for the most part,” Aristotle admits that it ispossible to construct what he calls “apparent enthymemes,” or rhetori-cal arguments that persuade simply by mimicking the form of theprobable (pp. 189, 205). Iago’s claim that “[i]t cannot be that Desde-mona should long continue her love to the Moor” (1.3.335–36) is justsuch an argument. Citing her betrayal of her father as the premise ofhis proof, he infers a plausible consequence: “It was a violent com-mencement in her, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration”(1.8.337–38).

In his discussion of “coniectural orations,”Thomas Wilson treats themanipulation of probabilities as a perfectly respectable rhetorical strat-egy, noting that “matters [may] be examined and tryed out by suspi-cions gathered, and some likelihode of thinge appearinge” (p. 90). Sucha gathering of suspicions and likelihoods is precisely the method bywhich Iago mounts his case against Desdemona and Othello. Follow-ing Wilson’s suggestion that a subject’s “countrey,” “yeares,” and“nature” may serve as confirmation of such suspicions (p. 112), Iagoargues that their characters inform against the match: “These Moorsare changeable in their wills” (1.3.339–40), and “[s]he must change foryouth” (1.3.342). The “frail vow between an erring barbarian and asupersubtle Venetian” (1.3.346–47), he concludes, cannot be expectedto last. Such commonplaces allow Iago to conceal even from himselfthe extent of his lying invention: “What’s he then that says I play the

28. “Iago’s stories work,” as Alan Sinfield observes, “because they are plausible” (p. 30); hepositions himself, Peter Stallybrass writes, as “the voice of ‘common sense,’ the ceaseless repeti-tion of the always already ‘known’, the culturally ‘given.’” See “Patriarchal Territories:The BodyEnclosed,” in Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. Margaret Ferguson, et al. (Chicago, 1986),p. 139. In “Iago’s Use of Proverbs for Persuasion,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 4:2(1964), 250, 252, Joseph McCullen compares Iago’s speeches to collections of early modernproverbs and discovers that his language is a tissue of adages and folk wisdom. “[B]oth the firstand the final statements made by Iago are proverbial locutions,” he observes, and “the proverbiallore” threaded throughout Iago’s speech “ma[kes] credible” otherwise unfounded assertions.



villain, / When this advice is free I give, and honest, / Probal tothinking” (2.3.310–12)?

The phrase “probal to thinking” exactly captures Iago’s deceptivemethod and the rhetoric of the commonplace, both of which relyupon an elision between probability and proof, or probation. WhenIago first hints to Othello of his wife’s infidelity, Othello responds,“No, Iago, / I’ll see before I doubt; when I doubt, prove” (3.3.193–94),to which Iago hastily replies, “I speak not yet of proof” (3.3.200). Inplace of proof he supplies commonplaces—which is to say, generalassertions about a place which is common to him but not to Othello.“I know our country disposition well,” he states, reminding Othello ofhis own outsider status among the Venetians: “In Venice they do letGod see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands. Their bestconscience / Is not to leave ’t undone, but keep ’t unknown” (3.3.205–08). When Othello expresses mild doubt—“Dost thou say so?”(3.3.209)—Iago presses on, supplying Othello with the premises of anenthymeme whose unpleasant conclusion he may deduce for himself:“She did deceive her father, marrying you, / And when she seemed toshake and fear your looks, / She loved them most. . . . Why, go to,then!” (3.3.210–2). The elliptical quality of such suggestions, far fromminimizing Othello’s mistrust of his wife, as Iago disingenuously sug-gests they ought, only secures his belief that Iago “doubtless / Sees andknows more, much more, than he unfolds” (3.3.247–48)—the abbre-viations and elisions produced by the substitution of commonplaces forcertainties create space for credulity.29

Thus, when Othello finally demands “ocular proof” (3.3.365) ofIago’s insinuations, he quickly modifies his request: “Or at the least soprove it / That the probation bear no hinge nor loop / To hang adoubt on” (3.3.369–71).30 The first demand, Iago knows, is impossible;the second, however, is a simple matter of putting Othello into theright frame of mind, for “trifles light as air / Are to the jealousconfirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ” (3.3.326–28). He there-fore offers probabilities as a substitute for proof: “But yet I say, / If

29. For more on the “unfolding” of Iago’s suspicions in Othello’s mind, see Parker,“Shakespeare and Rhetoric,” pp. 54, 63–69.

30. For this reason, although John Channing Briggs reads Othello’s transformation in termsof a drive toward the proto-Baconian world of scientific, or inartificial, proof—toward the“seemingly inartificial supremacy of material facts” (p. 176)—I would insist that Othello remainscrucially dependent upon rhetorical arguments and forms of proof.



imputation and strong circumstances / Which lead directly to the doorof truth / Will give you satisfaction, you might have ’t” (3.3.410–43).This is Iago’s great insight: certainty might depend on proof, butsatisfaction, the pleasure of believing oneself certain, depends onnothing more than probability, or even prejudice, “the thin habits andpoor likelihoods of modern seeming.”

If Othello is the chief audience for Iago’s commonplaces, Desde-mona is their most frequent subject. When Roderigo protests thatIago’s generalizations, while plausible in the main, cannot apply to hisbeloved, who is “full of most blessed condition” (2.1.241–42), Iagoscoffs at the notion that any woman is exempt from the weaknesses ofher kind: “Blessed fig’s end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes”(2.1.243). Urging both Roderigo and Othello to renounce theirparticular knowledge of Desdemona in favor of his generalizedpronouncements, he reduces Desdemona herself to a commonplace:a “supersubtle Venetian” (1.3.347), “inclining” and “most easy . . . tosubdue” (2.3.313–14).31

In response to such insinuations, Othello’s reasoning increasinglyresembles that of his father-in-law, even to the point of accepting adream (or Iago’s invented account of one) as “a foregone conclusion”(3.3.433) to “help . . . thicken other proofs / That do demonstratethinly” (3.3.435–36). Like Brabantio, he comes to view Desdemona’ssingular affection for a Moor as the sign of “nature, erring from itself ”(3.3.232).When Iago repeats the topoi of Brabantio’s earlier speeches,arguing that for Desdemona “not to affect many proposed matches /Of her own clime, complexion, and degree, / Whereto we see in allthings nature tends” suggests “foul disproportions” and “thoughtsunnatural” (3.3.234–38), Othello accepts such generalities as a sign ofsavvy: Iago “knows all qualities with a learned spirit / Of humandealings” (3.3.263–64). And even as he hesitates to conflate suchgeneral propositions with Desdemona herself—“I do not in position /Distinctly speak of her,” Iago cautions (3.3.239–40)—he struggles to

31. Kenneth Burke appears to be getting at something different when, discussing “thecomplexity of her relation to the audience,” he remarks rather cryptically upon Desdemona’s“nature as a rhetorical topic.” In “Othello:An Essay to Illustrate a Method,” excerpted in Othello,ed. Edward Pechter (New York, 2004), p. 246. But his formulation certainly jibes with my ownsense of both Brabantio’s and Iago’s recourse to commonplaces in their descriptions of her.For more on the misogynistic character of Iago’s recourse, see Valerie Wayne, “HistoricalDifferences: Misogyny and Othello,” The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism ofShakespeare, ed.Valerie Wayne (Ithaca, 1991), pp. 153–79.



maintain this sense of distinction. Is it not likely, he wonders, that sheshould revert to “her country forms” (3.3.242)—to the standards ofplausibility her father articulated, to the attractions of her Venetiansuitors, and to the moral laxity of her female compatriots? Iago’scommonplaces not only assimilate Desdemona to a debased and gen-eralized image of Venetian womanhood; they continually remindOthello of his exclusion from the community that would recognize“our country disposition” and “her country forms”: these are places towhich a Moor has no access.32

In recognition of this dual function of the commonplace—its powerboth to produce an impression of shared beliefs and to define theboundaries of local knowledge—Peacham’s Garden of Eloquence dividesthe commonplace into two related figures: apodixis, or the maxim, andmartyria, or testimony. Of the former he writes, “there is not one[mode of persuasion] more apt, or more mighty to confirme orconfute then this, which is grounded vpon the strong foundacion ofexperience, confirmed by all times, allowed of in all places, and sub-scribed to by all men.”The effect of apodixis is rivaled, however, by thatof its counterpart, “a forme of speech by which the Orator or Speakerconfirmeth some thing by his owne experience” and thus extends hisauthority to “things remoued from the knowledge of his hearers,” aswhen a “traveler maketh descriptions of Citties and Countries, wherehee hath beene, and declareeth the sundry fashions, and strangemanners of far nations and people.” So great is the “strength” of this“graue, and necessarie” figure that Peacham warns, “it is so much themore to be regarded that it been not abused,” either “by the vntruth ofthe testimonie” or “by publishing the proofe of euill conclusions”—insuch circumstances it “is wonte to bee the roote and fountaine ofmanie vanities, and wicked errors in the World” (pp. 85, 87).

Iago’s manipulation of Othello combines the force of these twofigures: he represents Desdemona’s infidelity as common knowledge,

32. Here I would dissent from Kenneth Burke’s claim that Iago “talk[s] a language thatOthello knows as well as he” and that his insinuations establish “a common ground,” such thatOthello may doubt their truth “but . . . never for a moment doubts them as values” (A Grammarof Motives [Berkeley, 1969], p. 204). Iago does indeed draw on the language of common valuesand shared knowledge, but he slyly insists on Othello’s limited access to those values and thatknowledge: that is why Othello requires his assistance, as a kind of native informant. Ultimately,as Michael Neill suggests, Iago’s claims force Othello to regard himself as one “threatened” notsimply by the remoteness of his origins, but “with the even more radical insecurity ofplacelessness” (p. 226).



the effect of a universal female failing, but also as a secret accessibleonly to insiders. Desdemona herself becomes both the all-too-common place “subscribed to by all men”33 and the thing “remoued”from Othello’s knowledge, whose “sundry fashions,” “strange man-ners,” and secret misdeeds require Iago’s insider perspective. Forcedto regard his wife as both too accessible and utterly inaccessible,Othello for the first time betrays a sense of his own dislocation,representing himself as one whose “unhoused condition” is causenot for admiration but for pity. Any other “affliction” (4.2.50), heclaims, would have left “some place of my soul” (4.1.54) for respite,but the loss of his wife’s fidelity means exile from “there whereI have garnered up my heart, / Where either I must live or bear nolife” (4.2.59–60): “To be discarded thence” (4.2.62) is intolerable.Desdemona’s chastity, the “place” she ought to have preserved for hisuse only, has become corrupt and common: “the fountain from thewhich my current runs / Or else dries up” is now “a cistern for foultoads” (4.2.61–63). The sexual and rhetorical pollution of this placecauses Othello to regard his Venetian wife, for the first time, as astranger.

This process of estrangement and disfiguration, however, is as muchthe product of Othello’s own fantastic speech as it is of Iago’s corruptcommonplaces. Brabantio’s claims that Othello has “abused” Desde-mona (1.1.195; 1.2.93; 1.3.73) take on new significance if we considerthe frequent appearance of “abuse” in early modern rhetorical theoryas the sinister counterpart of figurative ornamentation. “As figures bethe instruments of ornament in euery language,” Puttenham warnsreaders,“so be they also in a sorte abuses or rather trespasses in speech,because they passe the ordinarie limits of common vtterance, and beoccupied of purpose to deceiue the eare and also the minde, drawingit from plainnesse and simplicitie to a certain doublenesse, whereby ourtalke is the more guilefull and abusing” (p. 159). In recognition of thisalliance between eloquence and abuse, Peacham pairs the figures andtropes in his Garden of Eloquence with corresponding “cautions tocompasse them for feare of abuse” (sig. AB4v). Cautions of this kindabound in rhetorical theory, in deference to Quintilian’s observation

33. Shakespeare elsewhere capitalizes on the association between rhetorical commonnessand female promiscuity when in Sonnet 137 he disparages his lover’s body as “the wide world’scommon place”.



that “where ornament is concerned, vice and virtue are never farapart.”34

This uneasy proximity is especially pronounced when it comes tometalepsis. When Othello claims that his far-fetched narrative is the“only . . . witchcraft I have used” (1.3.168), he means to ridicule Bra-bantio’s suspicions of “spells and medicines” (1.3.61), but both classicaland early modern rhetorical treatises ascribe an almost occult quality tometalepsis. Thomas Wilson offers as an example of metalepsis theominous image of “a dark Dungeon,” wherein “in speaking of dark-nesse, we understand closenesse, by closenesse, we gather blacknesse, &by blacknesse, we judge deepenesse” (in Menon, p. 75).The darkness ofthe image reflects the self-obscuring nature of the trope, which,because it “takes us from X to Z, noting and then ignoringY along theway,” as Madhavi Menon notes, depends on secrecy and repression.Menon cites Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, which marks metalepsis asespecially transgressive and dangerous, “a trope with which to claimacquaintance, rather than one we are ever likely to use,” and warns thatreliance upon its effects is “by no means to be commended.” Moreover,he hastens to characterize the figure as a foreign import, attributing itto “the Greeks” and insisting that it is “rarely used in Latin.” This“‘foreignness’ of metalepsis,” Menon observes, is “reflective of a tropo-logical corruption that Quintilian wants to distance himself from” (pp.73, 75)—that is, the almost underhanded way in which the figure elidesdistance and difference, while exploiting them for persuasive effect.

The corrupt power of metalepsis likewise permeates Puttenham’sdefinition of the figure, which he illustrates by quoting Euripides’Medea.When the sorceress-heroine curses her errant husband Jason bycursing “the mountain that the maste bare / Which was the first causerof all my care,” Puttenham observes, she uses metalepsis to direct herrage not at Jason himself, but “so farre off as to curse the mountain thatbare the pinetree, that made the mast, that bare the sailes, that the shipsailed with, which carried her away” to marry him (pp. 193–94). Here,the distances traversed in decoding the figure of speech recapitulateMedea’s own unhappy journey, reminding readers that Jason’s Thracianbride is as “far-fetched” as her imagery.The “strange entanglement” ofthe listener’s conceit, moreover, is implicitly likened to the occultoperation of Medea’s curse—which, as readers of the tragedy will

34. Institutio Oratoria, 4 vols, trans. H. E. Butler (New York, 1933), III, 215.



recall, effects Jason only indirectly, through the loss of his wife andsons. Jason’s suffering is paradoxically heightened by virtue of itsoccurring at a remove, in the persons of those he loves.

Medea is a resonant figure for Othello, an exotic foreigner accusedof witchcraft, whose jealous rage destroys those she most loves. Morespecifically, her use of metalepsis to curse at a distance offers a modelfor Othello’s own foray into the occult. Othello’s handkerchief is in allsenses of the word the most far-fetched element in the play, havingpassed to Desdemona by way of Othello’s mother and a mysteriousstranger identified either as an Egyptian or a sybil. Rymer, of course,singles out the handkerchief as the most improbable of Othello’s manyimprobabilities: “So much ado, so much stress, so much passion andrepetition about an Handkerchief !” he fumes. “Had it been Desdemo-na’s Garter, the Sagacious Moor might have smelt a Rat: but theHandkerchief is so remote a trifle, no Booby, on this side Mauritania,cou’d make any consequence from it.”35 Again, Rymer’s complaint isstrikingly—if inadvertently—apt: Desdemona’s handkerchief is, pre-cisely, “remote”; it is this very distance that Othello evokes in order toimpress her with its value and its potency.

In many ways, the tale of the handkerchief serves as the sequel toOthello’s speech before the Senate: it, too, “render[s] the fantasticaccessible” through “a narrative function that conflates disparate timesand places and people.”36 But like the examples given by Wilson andPuttenham, the account of the handkerchief emphasizes both the allureand the threat of the far-fetched. Declaring that “[t]here’s magic in theweb of it” (3.4.67), Othello attributes this magic not simply to the“sybil” who “sewed the work” (3.4.68, 70) but all the way back tothe “hallowed” “worms . . . that did breed the silk” (3.4.71) and the“mummy . . . Conserved of maiden’s hearts” (3.4.72–73) in which thesilk was dyed. The far-fetched quality of the handkerchief enters intothe very process of description, which metaleptically transfers themagical signification from the object itself to the worms that producedits threads. Othello’s description of the handkerchief also displays the

35. Rymer, p. 51; Boose provides the most extensive rebuttal of this particular Rymeriancritique, on the grounds that it overlooks the psychosexual significance of the handkerchief asan emblem of the marital bed; see also Harry Berger, “Impertinent Trifling: Desdemona’sHandkerchief,” Shakespeare Quarterly 47 (1996), 235–50.

36. Bruce Boehrer, “Othello’s Monsters: Kenneth Burke, Deleuze and Guattari, and theImpulse to Narrative in Shakespeare,” Journal X 3:2 (1999), 127–28.



dangerously unmoored quality of figurative language, its uncertainrelation to the truth. According to Cassio, the appeal of the handker-chief, is its figuration, the embroidery “work” (4.1.184) he asks Biancato copy. But as a figure for figuration, like Othello himself, thehandkerchief possesses an uncomfortably, even dangerously, alienquality.

Desdemona’s response to Othello’s far-fetched allegations—“Thenwould to God that I had never seen it!” (3.4.75)—conveys the uneasemetalepsis engenders.Yet she adds, “Sure, there’s some wonder in thishandkerchief ! / I am most unhappy in the loss of it” (3.4.97–98), herthoughts still strangely entangled by Othello’s fiction. Such ambiva-lence can be discerned not only in Puttenham’s account of metalepsis,but throughout his discussion of figuration. The replacement of oneword with another “not so naturall,” he writes, is the chief method bywhich we produce “pleasure” and “ornament . . . our speech,” but,“if . . . we take another, neither naturall nor proper and do untrulyapplie it to the thing we would seeme to expresse,” that is noteloquence but “plaine abuse” (Puttenham, pp. 190–91).

Into which category does the handkerchief fall, or Othello himself?At what point ought the “pleasure” of the “not so natural” give way torevulsion at that which is “neither natural and proper”? This uncer-tainty, of course, is precisely the ambiguity on which Iago founds hisdiabolical plot. Desdemona, he claims to Roderigo, “first loved theMoor for . . . telling her fantastical lies” (2.1.218–19)—this is the firstevidence of her depravity. The “phantasticall” is another category ofgreat concern to Puttenham, for it is the common property of the poetand the madman, of the rhetorical figure and its abuse: “[T]he phan-tasticall part of man (if it be not disordered) [is] a representer of thebest, most comely and bewtifull images or appearances of things to thesoule and according to their very truth. If otherwise, then doth itbreede Chimeres and monsters in mans imaginations, and not only inhis imaginations, but also in all his ordinarie actions and life whichensues” (pp. 34–35). The first of these accounts of the “phantasticall”recalls the beautifying and revelatory effect Desdemona ascribes toOthello’s early tales. Hearing his stories, she tells the Senate, “I sawOthello’s visage in his mind, / And to his honors and his valiantparts / Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate” (1.3.251–53). Later,however, the “monster in [Iago’s] thought / Too hideous to be shown”(3.3.111–12) will breed in Othello’s imagination, and Desdemona will



lament the “horrible fancy” (4.2.28) that leads him to “abuse [her] insuch gross kind” (4.3.60–61).

Iago’s own “fantasy” (3.3.303), assisted by Emilia, translates the hand-kerchief from an innocent love token to a sign of infidelity. ThusBianca sarcastically dismisses Cassio’s story that the handkerchiefsimply appeared in his bedroom as “a likely piece of work” (4.1.145–46). Unable to prove her suspicions, she resorts to a sullen rhetoricalpun: “I must be circumstanced” (3.4.196). Bianca is often read asDesdemona’s comic double, but here her dilemma ironically invertsOthello’s: confronted with a true but implausible account of thehandkerchief’s appearance, she rejects it; presented with a likely false-hood about its disappearance, he too readily consents. Bianca’s skepti-cism further emphasizes that although Rymer might have rejectedOthello on the basis of its “improbable lye[s],” within the play, improb-able truths prove far more difficult to digest.

Desdemona’s death at Othello’s hands is, Graziano exclaims, justsuch “a strange truth” (5.2.196)—horrified resistance to it prompts, asMichael Neill observes,“the most violently abrupt of all Shakespeareanendings” (p. 237). But the murder itself stems from resistance to strangetruths. As the dying Emilia reminds Othello, the play’s two mostunlikely facts have both been obscured by more plausible fictions:“Moor, she was chaste. She loved thee, cruel Moor. / So come my soulto bliss as I speak true” (5.2.256–57). A.C. Bradley’s remark that“Desdemona’s suffering is like that of the most helpless of dumbcreatures”37 disregards the vigor with which she voices her beliefsthroughout the play, but Desdemona does enact the play’s chief rhe-torical failure precisely because she remains so committed to her ownimprobable truths.

This unassimilable character of certain events, individuals, or argu-ments is, finally, the foremost concern of Othello’s investigation of thepower of rhetoric—and of the power of race. The play ends withOthello’s own attempt to do what Lodovico earlier declared impos-sible: to produce an account of his own actions that will be “believedin Venice” (4.1.237) when it has been “set down” in Lodovico’s“letters” (5.2.360, 349).The strangeness of the tale, however, defies hisefforts, forcing him to take refuge in comparisons that are increasingly,

37. A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth(London, 1991), p. 170.



literally far-fetched, “wander[ing] across an abstract and shifting meta-phorical terrain.”38 First a “base Judean” or “Indian” (5.2.356),39 then“Arabian trees,” then “a malignant and a turbaned Turk,” and finally a“circumcised dog” (5.2.359, 362, 364) stand in for the Moor. But if inhis earlier discourses, displacement was a rhetorical strategy Othellocould wield to his benefit and for the pleasure of his listeners, it hasnow become a kind of compulsion, expressive of profound self-alienation: “That’s he that was Othello. Here I am” (5. 2. 284). Theaction that punctuates the speech—Othello’s stabbing himself—is itselfboth geographically and temporally displaced, occurring both here andnow “thus!” and “in Aleppo once” (5.2.365, 361).

This concluding gesture has received a great deal of critical attention,as it appears to mark the internalization of racial difference as acataclysm that both defines and destroys the “Moor of Venice.”40 But aconsideration of the play’s rhetorical cruces, such as I have attempted,reveals that the interplay of distance and proximity, familiarity andforeignness, also sustains and challenges the Renaissance understandingof persuasion. The response to Othello’s death confirms this allianceof rhetoric and race. For his audience on stage, his suicide is a“bloody period” (5.2.366)—a violent end to a noble life, but also a

38. Bartels, “Othello on Trial,” p. 162. For additional readings of this speech, see G.K.Hunter, “Othello and Colour Prejudice,” Proceedings of the British Academy 53 (1967), 139–63;Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980), p. 252;James R. Siemon, “‘Nay, that’s not next’: Othello,V.ii. in Performance, 1760–1900,” ShakespeareQuarterly 37 (1986), 38–51; Anthony Gerard Barthelemy, “Ethiops Washed White: Moors of theNon-Villainous Type,” Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s Othello, ed. Barthelemy (NewYork, 1994),p. 99; John Bernard, “Theatricality and Textuality:The Example of Othello,” New Literary History26:4 (1995); Neill, pp. 237–68; Loomba, pp. 96–97; and Zachary Lesser, Renaissance Drama and thePolitics of Publication: Readings in the English Book Trade (Cambridge, Eng., 2004), pp. 208–09.

39. As Edward Pechter observes, the typographical variant between the quarto’s “Indean”and the folio’s “Iudean” introduces an interpretive distinction, since the former “suggests lowlyignorance rather than [the] willful evil” of a Judas Iscariot or a Herod (two possible candidatesfor the role of “base Judean”) See Othello, ed. Pechter, pp. 116, 352n. For the purposes of thisessay, it matters little which variant we accept, as both mark a literal and social alienation fromthe norms Othello has violated in murdering his wife. It is true, nonetheless, that a ratherdifferent kind of moral distance is implied in each case. For a bibliography of textual scholarshipon Othello, see Pechter’s brief essay on the subject in his edition of the play (pp. 119–22).

40. If, as Emily Bartels argues in “Othello and Africa: Postcolonialism Reconsidered,” Williamand Mary Quarterly, third series, 54 [1997], 61–66, this title initially signifies the play’s “open”understanding of racial difference, its willingness to admit Othello as “[n]either an alienated noran assimilated subject, but a figure defined by two worlds,” the possibility of such “comfortablyhyphenated hybridity” has, as Michael Neill notes, been extinguished by the play’s final act(Neill, p. 270).



defilement of the most fundamental unit of rhetorical speech, theperiodos. Othello’s self-description transgresses geographic and religiousboundaries, violates biological distinctions, and even confuses grammati-cal categories, and its metaleptic excess completes the corruption ofeloquence begun by Iago’s misleading enthymemes:“All that is spoke ismarred,” Gratiano laments (5.2.367). Ultimately, Othello’s “bloodyperiod” illustrates the impasse into which rhetoric and rhetorical theo-ries fall as a consequence of the tradition’s simultaneous allegiance to theappeal of the commonplace and the allure of the far-fetched. Othellocertainly does not rescue rhetoric from its contradictions and cross-purposes. But in the person of its hero, an unmoored Moor, it discoversan apt and moving figure for persuasion and its many places.

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Othello and the Geography of Persuasion

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