Music and the Crisis of Meaning in Othello

The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice has been called Shakespeare’s most musical tragedy, but critics examining the role of music in the play have tended to use the word in very different and even contradictory ways. This essay argues that the actual, verbal, and symbolic musics of the play cannot be kept separate—but nor should their conflation be taken for granted. In Othello, the confusion of literal and figurative music generates an interpretive crisis in which the play’s own language and the way it communicates meaning and events to an audience are implicated.