52William Empson, ‘Honest in Othello’ (1951) | ‘The fifty-two uses of honest and honesty in ‘Othello’ are a very queer business; there is no other play in which Shakespeare worries a word like that.’ |
obsessionWilliam Empson, ‘Honest in Othello’ (1951) | ‘Everybody calls Iago honest once or twice, but with Othello it becomes an obsession.’ |
criticism of the wordWilliam Empson, ‘Honest in Othello’ (1951) | ‘Most people would agree with what Bradly, for example, implied, that the way everybody calls Iago honest amounts to a criticism of the word itself;’ |
MachiavellianWilliam Empson, ‘Honest in Othello’ (1951) | ‘The delight in juggling with the word here is close to the Machiavellian interest in plots for their own sake, which Iago could not resist and allowed to destroy him.’ |
motive-huntingWilliam Empson, ‘Honest in Othello’ (1951) | ‘But a good deal of the ‘motive-hunting’ of the soliloquies must, I think, be seen as part of Iago’s ‘honesty’; he is quite open to his own motives or preferences and interested to find out what they are.’ |
vanity and love of plottingWilliam Empson, ‘Honest in Othello’ (1951) | ‘Bradley’s answer is in brief that Iago is tempted by vanity and love of plotting. Iago says he likes ‘to plum up his will / In double knavery’, to heighten his sense of power by plots, and Bradley rightly points out that this reassurance to the sense of power is a common reason for apparently meaningless petty cruelties.’ |
Critics: William Empson, ‘Honest in Othello’ (1951)
August 26, 2019