EROS KÁI THÁNATOS

Here's the plot about the possible origins of Othello and its characters I had settled for writing this month. The bunny came to be at the beginning of October 2015, but I had to leave the project on hiatus for a fortnight. At last it's complete! (Pops her Moët and lounges back in her chair).

Oh, and Wriothesley (the surname of the young aristocrat who inspired Shakespeare for Cassio) is pronounced "Risely." That's how strange English surnames and place names can get (aside from Featherstonehaugh, pronounced "Fanshaw"!).

EROS KÁI THÁNATOS

Dedicated to Ser Uttam Paudel

with all of my sincere affection

Written in October 2015

for my friend Uttam

and for anyone else who dares to live free

1604.

The first commandment of royal courts reads: Thou shalt please the ruler.

And pleasing the Stuarts had become William’s way of life now that he acted the plays he had written at Whitehall. Surely the company was now patronized by the Crown, which, considering that Will and the lads had once, two or three decades ago, acted on a run-of-the-mill stage in suburban London, was the epitome of success.

When he retired, William would return to Stratford self-made, with a coat of arms of his own, and purchase a brand new great grand mansion to live there with his Anne, and with the girls, if Anne hadn’t married them off and they had flown the coop already.

The first tragedies he had written were particularly all alike.

The tragedies of this new courtly stage of life broke each one different moulds. The latest success at Whitehall was inspired by the death of Hamnet, the boy of the fraternal twins, and by the plot of an Icelandic saga he had read translated via the French and the German.

The one in which the strangely widowed queen remarried a fellow who was a traitor and a usurper, and her only son the crown prince went insane…

Reading the saga, Will was inspired to think of what would have happened if it had been his own death, instead of his son’s, that had shattered the family unity. Anne would surely forget her late husband and find herself another (maybe the real father of his “children”?), regardless of what a bastard this new flame was. Theirs had been, after all, a marriage of convenience. And Hamnet would surely become a brooding young curmudgeon with stepfather issues, overprotected and weary of everything.

Thus, in the pseudo-Norse tapestry William unfurled, Queen Gerda… no, Gertrude, for Gerda was too short and common a name for royalty… was the alternative Anne who had remarried. And Prince Havelock… Hamnet… the best of all his changes was that he had fused both names and created a third one that identified the Scandinavian royal with the alternate brooding Hamnet.

The Shakespeares of what-could-have-been, a fact known only to Will, appeared on stage as Norse royalty. And Will himself had appeared as the traitor, the stepfather, the usurper, given as ironic a name as “Claudius”, as in “Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus”, the most sensible ruler of the Roman Empire.

This was the first time he played a villain on stage, a not-that-convincing villain but nevertheless one, for his part, the new sharply-dressed and cultured Whitehall William, was the one who had killed old Stratford William and usurped his place. Taking Gertrude (Gerda+Anne) by storm after poisoning her husband, and seeing her boy shy away and stay on his own, dressed in black, in a rather suspicious manner. Then trying to hold on to a broken stepfamily, with as much violence and guile as was possible.

Of course Will had also doubled as the ghost. The Ghost of William Past, of his Stratford self, appearing to Ham(n)let and telling him the truth, urging his lad from beyond to defeat the usurper. Such irony. Only one scene in which he appeared as his old self, and that to avenge how his new self, Whitehall Will, had killed Stratford Will, poisoning the victim with the alluring and sweet guile of courtly culture, and then taken his place on the world’s great stage.

For the fact was that Stratford Will was still alive as a ghost. Haunting and warning at night as ghosts are used to do. What was most interesting was that the ghost had become his muse.

The first tragedies he had written were particularly all alike.

The tragedies of this new courtly stage of life broke each one different moulds.

The newest tragedy, the one scheduled for Elector Frederick’s visit in November, would break the streak completely. No courtly halls or battlefields, no royalty, not any significant conflict between realms. The story took place entirely within the confines of an outpost, a community crowded within narrow walls, and focused on the relationships between the members of its officer class at the end of a war.

Once more, Will perused his resources on the table. “A Moorish General,” by Giambattista Giraldi, via French by Gabriel Chappuys. The legend of Itha, the unfortunate Countess of Toggenburg. The similar tale of Genevieve of Brabant. The chapbook about Corsican sellsword colonel Sampiero, whose story, like that of Itha, he had once heard by a warming campfire somewhere in Flanders. The one who, in the days of the constant wars Charles V and Francis I fought for hegemony, killed his beloved lady wife, thinking that she was having an affair with the children’s tutor, a Catholic priest who had tricked the colonel into thinking that he (the tutor) was eloping with Vannina… In the Giraldi story, and in that of the Countess, however, the alleged lover and the chessmaster were two different characters.

In the unlikely marriage of a fair maiden to a mysterious, dreaded foreigner who is deceived into thinking of her as unfaithful, there would be a cautionary tale for His Electoral Highness, who would visit Whitehall to get to know the Stuart princess bride meant for him. The elector was still a little boy, so the parable would make a lasting impression on his eight-year-old mind… Frederick was bound to Elizabeth from childhood by their parents’ decrees. Just like, to quote that the same applied to commoners, William was unfortunately bound to Anne. Anne, who also appeared in this play by another name, not as a sexy and airheaded queen, but as a sarcastic and down-to-earth army wife. This was the Anne whose letters he now read. And, in this outpost fortress, William’s character and Anne’s had had no children at all. It was conveniently part of his ongoing fantasies of an alternate order of things that he had given her no offspring.

The setting had very little to do with the grand palace halls and vast battlefields of yore.

The outpost in the play was a little castle that towered above a seaport village on the isle of Cyprus. The land of the goddess of love. The frontier of two realms, the utmost reach of both Asia and Europe. A place used to war, recently saved and in peace due to a providential tempest, which made the Turks share the fate of the Spanish Armada (for Will remembered the storm that shattered Philip II’s endeavour of conquest). The enemy without had been put to rout, but the enemy within was carrying out his schemes in the shade, always unseen. And it was the person everyone least expected.

That person was the play universe’s counterpart of William himself. No longer only Stratford Will or Whitehall Will, but one that fused together both his selves: fortyish, elusive as a courtier or an actor, yet blunt as a provincial or a soldier, unhappily married, unhappily in forbidden love… The sum of all of Will’s experiences in Stratford and in London, at court and on the war front, and on stage, his true self, but letting out the dark side he had always concealed for fear of ostracism, the rack, and the stake.

Everyone in the play but the Moorish general and his spouse had a counterpart in real life. Not only William and Anne, but also Earl Wriothesley, who was no longer young Harry, but a fortyish married man as well, though the lives that a Peer and a playwright led were as different as lives could be, and, if the same rules for marriage applied for royalty and for commoners, they applied for nobility as well. Will had his farm girl Anne, and Wriothesley had his court lady Countess Elizabeth. Both couples had children of their own. Neither one had chosen the one they loved.

But once, during the reign of Good Queen Bess, Will had been the ragged lad from Stratford who nearly froze to death by falling asleep on the snow in the threshold of a London inn. And Harry… “Gentle Wriothesley, Southampton's star,” to quote a poem that had been dedicated to the attractive lordling. Fresh out of Cambridge University, fatherless and in possession of an impressive fortune, the fair-haired and blue-eyed lordling had cut a figure at the royal court, and it was clear that the Virgin Queen had taken a shine to him. Harry was still betrothed to his Elizabeth (while Will had left a married and pregnant Anne behind) when he took in the starving and freezing dark-haired stripling from the provinces under his wing. Noblesse oblige.

Thus, William dedicated his verses to him, spoke of a certain “fair youth” or “fair lord” in his sonnets, though many other writers vied for his affection and dedicated works of theirs to the young earl. It was Harry who had taught Will about other realms and widened his horizons, for the younger Stratfordian’s inspiration to rise, in the estate library. Strange nations lived and spoke to William, and, as he spoke to them, he learned their language. It was Harry who had introduced Will to Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, to the lad who had married a shrewish wife, and to many other characters which would be preserved from decaying by being rewritten as characters in dramatic stage-plays.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate."

Thus had Will written one of his sonnets to Harry, the lordling who shone like the evening star.

In those days, he (Will) had been more careful when writing drama than when writing poetry, being a less experienced playwright than poet, to reveal his feelings. Thus he had refashioned himself into for example Juliet Capulet, sure that, as a pubescent stripling, of the opposite sex but in love with the heir to the enemy faction, Will himself would debut playing that part on stage, wearing a wig and petticoats. Concealing his true identity out of fear of the cold shoulder and the stake. The whole stage would believe William/Juliet was the completely opposite thing of what he really was.

“I am not what I am.”

As the years went by, Will created new masks and parts, all of them female and attractive, for himself to play. Rosalind, the court maiden turned outlaw. Portia, the learned lady turned lawyer. Strong and dynamic young women who had to dress as young men to live out their dreams of freedom and of reaching true love. Like Will himself had to dream of being female in real life for the passion that seared his flesh not to be censored or threatened with the sanction of the stake. Anyway, there were secrets and lies, there were wigs and petticoats, and thus there was hope for the boy actor and the earl his protector and more than friend, as long as they were tête-à-tête.

Then, stark naked, the golden-haired lord was Zeus and the dark-haired bard was Ganymede. Under the covers, in the dark, sometimes even backstage.

But at the end of the day, when things suddenly changed and chance swept one of them into its maelstrom, neither of them would any longer be the same.

Indeed, one evening at court, Harry was involved in a drunken brawl with one of the Queen’s personal squires. Willoughby had ordered Wriothesley to leave the presence chamber, where fair Harry had been playing a game of cards, after His Majesty had retired for the evening). The young earl, then in his cups (he had been persuaded to drink more than he could hold), struck the squire in a fit of rage, and, in response, Willoughby pulled Wriothesley’s flowing, wavy golden locks, and told him something about his fiancée, who was then but his mistress, the loveliest of the Queen’s maids-of-honour. The lordling, irate, struck his opponent again. And the end of it was that Elizabeth Tudor, the First of her Name, banned Wriothesley from her court, though he would soon regain Her Majesty’s favour, but seized the opportunity to leave on a diplomatic mission to the court of France, where the young earl would remain for two months.

It was then that William fled abroad as well. To the Low Countries, where stern Philip II and the Iron Duke of Alba were constantly oppressing and repressing a Protestant uprising. For English troops were sent to the aid of the rebels of Orange. Perchance he would, though born a commoner and never meant to be an officer, find his fate, be it glory in life or falling for the cause of fighting the good fight, upon a foreign battlefield.

Thus he spent what would one day be known as his lost years.

Thus he would glean valuable first-hand experience of military life, which would inspire a stream of new themes for his plays, including the one he was writing.

Ensign Shakespeare, the flag-bearer of his company. He could hold no higher rank: the lieutenancy right above him was held by a stripling of the landed gentry who looked like a younger and more provincial version of his fair lover Wriothesley.

In the days of religious warfare, wars did make ambition virtue. Not merely to the rulers and the officers who waged those wars, but also to the lower-rank commoners who fought them. Such was the power of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war in those days. If one fell upon the battlefield, one died for a righteous cause, after all.

It was then that one could learn what was it like to charge into a tercio, to wake by a campfire, to lie on the flint-and-steel couch of war with a cold, hard breastplate on, which rank was which and what differences there were between the Spanish and the English and Dutch hierarchies… There were no lieutenants in the tercios. The rank simply had no Spanish equivalent in those days.

Lieutenant… left-tenant… love-tenant. How much the stripling in the breastplate and frilled collar resembled Wriothesley was just a coincidence. Yet this was no courtier with a decadent taste for poetry, strong drink, and gambling, but an eager young officer who would always perform his duty. Yet his second-in-command was sure that there was also something sinful of the Fair Lord in this other Harry. Yes, the lieutenant was even the earl’s namesake.

Lieutenant… left-tenant… love-tenant.

Incidentally, he had entered this war which was not his from the start to distance himself from the one he loved. How ironic.

And there was Yago. One of the few Spanish Protestants who had managed to escape the stake, the scarred and more experienced ensign of another company. It was Yago who showed William the ropes of a new life in camp and on the battlefield. It was Yago who found the rank of lieutenant strange and strove to pronounce it correctly.

Lieutenant… left-tenant… love-tenant. Ensign Yago said “love-tenant,” the way it sounds. His wife’s name was Emilia, a homely and down-to-earth thirtyish camp follower who reminded Will of Anne, whom he had left worlds away. Yago and Emilia were childless, too busy each one with affairs of their own to have time for love.

When Will returned home to the sceptred isle, the first thing he did was informing himself about his still beloved Harry. Earl Wriothesley had, indeed, married his mistress, had a spat with the now old Queen, had a spat with his new stepfather, and he was behind bars in the Tower for having attempted against Her Majesty’s life. Since his role had not been that prominent in the conspiracy as those of other traitors, he would not be put to death, but sentenced to lifetime imprisonment.

This “lifetime” imprisonment actually lasted for a year, within which the aged Queen Bess went forth to meet her maker and a ruler from a new dynasty, Jamie Stuart, came over from beyond the Wall.

Then, Earl Henry Wriothesley was set free and once more able to live a courtier’s easy yet treacherous life anew, in company of his Elizabeth and their children.

This was the current Wriothesley, no longer the young lordling a golden-haired demigod in appearance, neither was William the rugged stripling from Stratford, but an actor who had grown out of petticoats and was finally fit for wearing breeches.

Both of them had come of age, they did not look as lovely as the decade before (neither one did), and though both of them lived at Whitehall as courtiers, they led separate lives, having completely forgotten their star-crossed love of yore, as if the peer and the playwright had awakened from a dream.

But it could have ended another way.

Often, Will had had the same recurring daydream, of what could have happened if, after Harry’s disgrace in that drunken quarrel, he had chosen to accompany the young lord into France. Right off the start, Will himself, at Whitehall, had been the one who coaxed Harry to drink more than he could hold, as the young lord’s cupbearer, filling the convenient slot of Ganymede, which would lead to the quarrel with the squire and Harry’s fall from grace. William, feeling guilty as never before, would escort his secret lover across the Channel. There were a French courtier of the Louvre and his younger wife involved, fair Harry taking a shine to Madame so passionately that he completely forgot Will, like Nix Nought Nothing forgot the Master Maid in the old nursery tale. There had to be something to be done. And William-in-the-alternate-timeline did not know what to do to set his lover free. The rival bride in the folktale was forced by Nix’s parents to remove the spell, but Lady Wriothesley was worlds away from her eldest son across the Channel.

“If I can’t have you within my reach…!”

Was redemption the only way out? Was revenge the only way out? Could there be a scheme that secured revenge upon the fair-haired, comely Wriothesley, who had begun in the real timeline to be sweet on ladies, his wife and others, upon leaving the Tower at the start of the new reign?

It was upon reading the sources for Elector Frederick’s play that it dawned. Like a flash of lightning. William-in-the-alternate-timeline just had to coax Monsieur into believing that Madame and Harry, that lovely and well-spoken foreigner, were one another’s lovers. If His Fair and Blue-Eyed Lordship died as a result of the plot, still Will would have felt empty and regretful, brokenhearted, and, regardless of that he was to commit the deadliest among sins, throw himself headlong off Charenton Bridge into the Seine.

Drown himself? Drown kittens! Rather hang himself like Judas Iscariot, another traitor who had made himself famous by kissing another man. That was more convenient, wasn’t it?

“It must not be: if Cassio do remain,

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly…”

That was how the daydream ended more frequently. Harry still alive, but crippled and/or pale with blood loss. William keeping his dark secret love to himself, dying in the most inglorious of ways, but keeping his lips shut, his throat sealed, and the reason why within ere he was still forever.

“Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word.”

“Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word.”

In both real life and his daydream of an alternate history with the French couple in it, William would never speak word of his first love. It was obvious that his character’s last words would be those, though he had left a trail of breadcrumbs as clues in the lines he told, subtle and fine as Ariadne’s thread:

“A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife;

That never set a squadron in the field,

Nor the division of a battle knows

More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,

Wherein the toged consuls can propose

As masterly as he: mere prattle, without practise,

Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election…

He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,

And I--God bless the mark!--His Moorship's ensign.”

“I follow him to serve my turn upon him:

We cannot all be masters, nor all masters

Cannot be truly followed.“

“Others there are

Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty,

Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,

And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,

Do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats

Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;

And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,

It is as sure as you are Roderigo,

Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:

In following him, I follow but myself;

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,

But seeming so, for my peculiar end:

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, 'tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve...

I am not what I am.”

“Though in the trade of war I have slain men,

Yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience

To do no contrived murder: I lack iniquity

Sometimes to do me service: nine or ten times

I had thought to have yerk'd him here under the ribs.”

“Cassio's a proper man: let me see now:

To get his place and to plume up my will

In double knavery--How, how? Let's see:--

After some time, to abuse Othello's ear

That he is too familiar with his wife.

He hath a person and a smooth dispose

To be suspected, framed to make women false.”

“I have it. It is engendered. Hell and night

Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light.”

“It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours,

And thus she is delivered.

If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,

The one's for use, the other useth it.”

“Ay, smile upon

her, do; I will gyve thee in thine own courtship.

You say true; 'tis so, indeed: if such tricks as

these strip you out of your lieutenancy, it had

been better you had not kissed your three fingers so

oft, which now again you are most apt to play the

sir in. Very good; well kissed! an excellent

courtesy! 'tis so, indeed. Yet again your fingers

to your lips? would they were clyster-pipes for your sake!”

“The lieutenant tonight watches on the court of

guard:--first, I must tell thee this--Desdemona is

directly in love with him.

Now, sir, this granted,--as it is a most

pregnant and unforced position--who stands so

eminent in the degree of this fortune as Cassio

does? a knave very voluble; no further

conscionable than in putting on the mere form of

civil and humane seeming, for the better compassing

of his salt and most hidden loose affection? why,

none; why, none: a slipper and subtle knave, a

finder of occasions, that has an eye can stamp and

counterfeit advantages, though true advantage never

present itself; a devilish knave. Besides, the

knave is handsome, young, and hath all those

requisites in him that folly and green minds look

after: a pestilent complete knave; and the woman

hath found him already.”

“I'll not be far from you: do you find

some occasion to anger Cassio, either by speaking

too loud, or tainting his discipline; or from what

other course you please, which the time shall more

favourably minister.

Sir, he is rash and very sudden in choler, and haply

may strike at you: provoke him, that he may; for

even out of that will I cause these of Cyprus to

mutiny; whose qualification shall come into no true

taste again but by the displanting of Cassio.”

“That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it;

That she loves him, 'tis apt and of great credit:”

“Tis here, but yet confused:

Knavery's plain face is never seen till used.”

“If I can fasten but one cup upon him,

With that which he hath drunk to-night already,

He'll be as full of quarrel and offence…

Now, 'mongst this flock of drunkards,

Am I to put our Cassio in some action

That may offend the isle.--But here they come:

If consequence do but approve my dream,

My boat sails freely, both with wind and stream.”

“...there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved.

IAGO

It's true, good lieutenant.

CASSIO

For mine own part,--no offence to the general, nor

any man of quality,--I hope to be saved.

IAGO

And so do I too, lieutenant.

CASSIO

Ay, but, by your leave, not before me; the

lieutenant is to be saved before the ancient. Let's

have no more of this; let's to our affairs.--Forgive

us our sins!--Gentlemen, let's look to our business.

Do not think, gentlemen. I am drunk: this is my

ensign; this is my right hand, and this is my left:

I am not drunk now; I can stand well enough, and

speak well enough.

All

Excellent well.

CASSIO

Why, very well then; you must not think then that I am drunk.”

“God's will, lieutenant, hold!

You will be shamed for ever.”

“He, swift of foot,

Outran my purpose; and I return'd the rather

For that I heard the clink and fall of swords,

And Cassio high in oath; which till to-night

I ne'er might say before. When I came back--

For this was brief--I found them close together,

At blow and thrust; even as again they were

When you yourself did part them.

More of this matter cannot I report:

But men are men; the best sometimes forget:

Though Cassio did some little wrong to him,

As men in rage strike those that wish them best,

Yet surely Cassio, I believe, received

From him that fled some strange indignity,

Which patience could not pass.”

“What, are you hurt, lieutenant?”

“As I am an honest man, I thought you had received

some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than

in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false

imposition: oft got without merit, and lost without

deserving: you have lost no reputation at all,

unless you repute yourself such a loser. What, man!

there are ways to recover the general again: you

are but now cast in his mood, a punishment more in

policy than in malice.”

“Come, you are too severe a moraler: as the time,

the place, and the condition of this country

stands, I could heartily wish this had not befallen;

but, since it is as it is, mend it for your own good.”

“And, good lieutenant, I think you think I love you.”

“CASSIO

You advise me well.

IAGO

I protest, in the sincerity of love and honest kindness.”

“And what's he then that says I play the villain?

When this advice is free I give and honest,

Probal to thinking and indeed the course

To win the Moor again?

How am I then a villain

To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,

Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!

When devils will the blackest sins put on,

They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,

As I do now.”

“I dare be sworn I think that he (Cassio) is honest.

Why, then, I think Cassio's an honest man.”

“Good my lord, pardon me:

Though I am bound to every act of duty,

I am not bound to that all slaves are free to.

Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false;

As where's that palace whereinto foul things

Sometimes intrude not? who has a breast so pure,

But some uncleanly apprehensions

Keep leets and law-days and in session sit

With meditations lawful?”

“I do beseech you--

Though I perchance am vicious in my guess,

As, I confess, it is my nature's plague

To spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy

Shapes faults that are not--that your wisdom yet,

From one that so imperfectly conceits,

Would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble

Out of his scattering and unsure observance.

It were not for your quiet nor your good,

Nor for my manhood, honesty, or wisdom,

To let you know my thoughts.”

“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands:

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.”

“I am glad of it; for now I shall have reason

To show the love and duty that I bear you

With franker spirit: therefore, as I am bound,

Receive it from me. I speak not yet of proof.”

“Though it be fit that Cassio have his place,

For sure, he fills it up with great ability…”

“I do not like the office:

But, sith I am enter'd in this cause so far,

Prick'd to't by foolish honesty and love,

I will go on. I lay with Cassio lately;

And, being troubled with a raging tooth,

I could not sleep.

There are a kind of men so loose of soul,

That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs:

One of this kind is Cassio:

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!'”

“IAGO

Nay, this was but his dream.

OTHELLO

But this denoted a foregone conclusion:

'Tis a shrewd doubt, though it be but a dream.

IAGO

And this may help to thicken other proofs

That do demonstrate thinly.”

“OTHELLO

Within these three days let me hear thee say

That Cassio's not alive.

IAGO

My friend is dead; 'tis done at your request.”

“OTHELLO

Now art thou my lieutenant.

IAGO

I am your own for ever.”

“Cassio came hither: I shifted him away,

And laid good 'scuse upon your ecstasy,

Bade him anon return and here speak with me;

The which he promised. Do but encave yourself,

And mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns,

That dwell in every region of his face;

For I will make him tell the tale anew…”

“As he shall smile, Othello shall go mad;

And his unbookish jealousy must construe

Poor Cassio's smiles, gestures and light behavior,

Quite in the wrong. How do you now, lieutenant?

CASSIO

The worser that you give me the addition

Whose want even kills me.”

“IAGO

I never knew woman love man so.

CASSIO

Alas, poor rogue! I think, i' faith, she loves me.

OTHELLO

Now he denies it faintly, and laughs it out.

IAGO

Do you hear, Cassio?

OTHELLO

Now he importunes him

To tell it o'er: go to; well said, well said.

IAGO

She gives it out that you shall marry her:

Do you intend it?

CASSIO

Ha, ha, ha!

I marry her! what? a customer! Prithee, bear some

charity to my wit: do not think it so unwholesome.

Ha, ha, ha!

OTHELLO

So, so, so, so: they laugh that win.

IAGO

'Faith, the cry goes that you shall marry her.

CASSIO

Prithee, say true.

IAGO

I am a very villain else.

CASSIO

She is persuaded I will marry her, out of her own love and

flattery, not out of my promise.

And, by this hand, she falls me thus about my neck--

OTHELLO

Crying 'O dear Cassio!' as it were: his gesture

imports it.

CASSIO

So hangs, and lolls, and weeps upon me; so hales,

and pulls me: ha, ha, ha!”

“How does Lieutenant Cassio?

IAGO

Lives, sir.”

“O, no; he goes into Mauritania and takes away with

him the fair Desdemona, unless his abode be

lingered here by some accident: wherein none can be

so determinate as the removing of Cassio.”

“He sups to-night with a harlotry, and thither will I

go to him: he knows not yet of his horrorable

fortune. If you will watch his going thence, which

I will fashion to fall out between twelve and one,

you may take him at your pleasure: I will be near

to second your attempt, and he shall fall between

us. Come, stand not amazed at it, but go along with

me; I will show you such a necessity in his death

that you shall think yourself bound to put it on

him. It is now high suppertime, and the night grows

to waste: about it.

RODERIGO

I will hear further reason for this.

IAGO

And you shall be satisfied.”

“It must not be: if Cassio do remain,

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly; and, besides, the Moor

May unfold me to him; there stand I in much peril:

No, he must die. But so: I hear him coming.”

“IAGO from behind wounds CASSIO in the leg, and exit

CASSIO

I am maimed for ever. Help, ho! murder! murder!”

“IAGO

What are you here that cry so grievously?

CASSIO

Iago? O, I am spoil'd, undone by villains!

Give me some help.

IAGO

O me, lieutenant! what villains have done this?

CASSIO

I think that one of them is hereabout,

And cannot make away.

IAGO

O treacherous villains!

What are you there? come in, and give some help.”

“IAGO

Lend me a garter. So. O, for a chair,

To bear him easily hence!

BIANCA

Alas, he faints! O Cassio, Cassio, Cassio!

IAGO

Gentlemen all, I do suspect this trash

To be a party in this injury.

Patience awhile, good Cassio. Come, come;

Lend me a light. Know we this face or no?

Alas my friend and my dear countryman

Roderigo! no:--yes, sure: O heaven! Roderigo.”

“How do you, Cassio? O, a chair, a chair!

A chair brought in

O, that's well said; the chair!”

“Kind gentlemen, let's go see poor Cassio dress'd.

Come, mistress, you must tell's another tale.

And tell my lord and lady what happened.

Will you go on? I pray.

Aside

This is the night

That either makes me or fordoes me quite.”

“CASSIO

Dear general, I never gave you cause.

OTHELLO

I do believe it, and I ask your pardon.

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devil

Why he hath thus ensnared my soul and body?

IAGO

Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:

From this time forth I never will speak word.”

Surely, that love story was a thing of the past, only meant for remembering. As sure as the fact that Earl Wriothesley would see his comely and beloved younger self in Lieutenant Cassio, like in a fuzzy mirror which displayed vague reflections. Elizabeth Wriothesley was Bianca, the dashing lieutenant’s mistress and fiancée. Anne of Stratford was the unhappily married Emilia, for whom her husband never had a word of love. And both Williams, the Stratford upstart and the Whitehall courtier, were combined into the villain of the piece, a part he had decided to create for himself as his greatest challenge and finest hour.

To kill not fair Lord Wriothesley, but at least to disgrace and disable his counterpart, to state that their romance was now, for once and for all, a thing of the past, beyond the reach of both and forgotten by one of them, but still haunting the other.

Once more, like he had done in his previous play, he had spun on his daydreams of the past. To find himself and the one he really was, new facets, mostly of the dark side of his thoughts and of his passions.

This was the crown jewel of the male parts, or rather of all the parts he had created for himself. Iago surpassed Claudius exceedingly, and that for a good reason: Iago was no longer only Stratford Will or Whitehall Will, but one that fused together both his selves: fortyish, elusive as a courtier or an actor, yet blunt as a provincial or a soldier, unhappily married, unhappily in forbidden love… The sum of all of Will’s experiences in Stratford and in London, at court and on the war front, and on stage, his true self, but letting out the dark side he had always concealed for fear of ostracism, the rack, and the stake.

And why? For William Shakespeare wanted to make his feelings clear, though veiled not to risk the stake, about a love that he had kept a secret for half a lifetime and he had finally accepted as something gone forever and ever.

Thus he had lost, and started again at his beginnings, and would never breathe a word about his loss.

FINIS.