Othello on the Rack

In Othello’s pivotal act three, scene three, Othello twice accuses Iago of torturing him. Although Iago does not assault the general’s body, this essay argues that Iago does subject Othello to a form of psychological torture. Accordingly, it examines the play in light of the historical circumstances surrounding torture’s resurgence and application in early modern England. Drawing on the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and their early modern interlocutors, this essay describes torture as the extralegal application of summary justice in exceptional settings, including hybrid military-domestic contexts such as the one invoked by Shakespeare’s Cyprus. This contextual approach is paired with a careful reading of the play’s sources, Giraldi Cinthio’s “Un Capitano Moro” and Gasparo Contarini’s The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, as well as a more recent source describing the methodology and aims of psychological torture, the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual—a notorious handbook produced by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in 1963. This eclectic approach sheds new light on the cognitive mechanism whereby Iago “breaks” Othello, offering a darker interpretation of the play’s portrayal of sovereignty and identity formation, which are described here in terms of coercion and forced conversion.