Othello and New Comedy

Othello and New Comedy Frances Teague Critics agree that Othello differs qualitatively from Macbeth, Lear, and Hamlet, and some trace this difference to the play's fundamentally comic structure. One approach, for example, is to point out the similarities in the plots of Othello (1604) and Much Ado about Nothing (1598-99).! Susan Snyder takes a different approach in her fine analysis of the way that "comic success precedes tragic catastrophe" in Othello.2 That the elements of comedy help to create a difference in kind is an idea implicit in what M. R. Ridley says in the Arden edition: In none of them [Lear, Macbeth, or Antony and Cleopatra] is there that implication followed by explication which Aristotle thought one of the features of great tragedy, and of which incidentally, Shakespeare was himself a master in another kind of play. The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado, and Measure for Measure have all theatrically effective plots. But Shakespeare used this form only once in high tragedy, and this is where Othello differs in structure and in effect from the others.3 Thus Ridley argues that Shakespeare uses a comic structure to achieve tragic effect in Othello. Certainly a comic structure would help to account for some of the factors that differentiate Othello from the other major tragedies: the lack of sub-plot, the smaller number of characters, and the lower social rank of those characters are all more characteristic of comedy than of tragedy. To argue that the play has a comic structure does not, however, provide any answers to certain recurring critical questions. When one studies the play, one puzzles over Iago's motivation , Othello's trust of his servant and distrust of his wife, and the play's time setting. In the theater, however, when one FRANCES TEAGUE is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Georgia. She is the author of a book on Ben Jonson as well as of articles on Shakespeare , Jonson, and other dramatists. 54 Frances Teague55 watches the play in performance, such questions are moot. In fact, the play on stage discourages such questions so thoroughly that one does not protest about inconsistencies of time or character , but rather any protest will be directed at the terrible inevitability of its ending. Thus in 1751, when the settlers in Williamsburg produced Othello to celebrate a treaty with the Cherokees, the play ended abruptly after "the Emperor and the Empress of the tribe sent their attendants to stop the killing on the stage."4 An audience accepts Iago's malevolence, Othello's credulity, and the double time in part because it has no chance to question these characteristics; Othello moves too swiftly. The pace of the play, however, does not completely account for the way that the audience accepts such inconsistencies. If one looks to Roman comedy for the dramatic techniques that give rise to problems with time and character, one may find other reasons for an audience's acceptance. The sources of Othello are well-established.5 My concern is not with the play's sources, but rather with its comic analogues in Roman New Comedy, the works which might have provided Shakespeare not with events of plot, but with dramatic technique . For example, the opening scenes of the play are disorienting . While the urban street setting may recall Shakespeare's Roman plays {Julius Caesar, for example, or Coriolanus) , the setting may also allude to Roman New Comedy. Furthermore, the play's rapid pace is set by Shakespeare's use of double time, a ploy he might have learned from a classical source, Plautus' Captivi. Finally, the audience may accept the major characters because some part of its attention recognizes a situation familiar from farce and rooted in Roman New Comedy: the mistaken sexual jealousy felt by a soldier whose emotions are manipulated by a clever underling. At first glance, the place and time settings of New Comedy seem to have no relationship to those of Othello. Plautus and Terence set their plays not in Senate chambers or on islands, but rather in Roman streets before several doors. Yet the opening scene of Othello does recall the urban settings of New Comedy...