Othello and the End of Comedy

Summary

Othello begins at the moment when comedies end, with a happy marriage. It begins, too, where The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night leave off, with the question of ethnic or social outsiders - Shylock, Malvolio - as the catalysts for the destructive elements within society. It might seem that here the terms are reversed, with the dangerous alien now the hero, while the mysterious, incomprehensibly malicious, diabolical villain is the insider, one of us. But in fact, the insider/outsider dichotomy is really a false one, because just as Shylock is essential to Bassanio's wooing, and Malvolio is essential to both Olivia's household and ultimately even to the marriage of Viola and Orsino, so is Othello essential to the safety and prosperity of the Venetian state. The tragedy is not that Othello is essential to Venice, but that Iago is essential to Othello.

We have, historically, focused on the interracial marriage as the crucial source of tension and tragedy in the play. But the larger issue in Othello has to do with the tragic implications not of miscegenation but of patriarchy on the one hand, and patronage or gender bonding (not limited to males in this case) on the other. I begin with the first: patriarchy is an issue that often provides both the principal motivation of comedy and a strong tragic element within it - as in the cases of Celia's villainous father in As You Like It and the obdurate Egeus in A Midsummer Night's Dream.