changing places in 'othello' - Fairfield High School English Department

mithi, Iago's equivalent, the Ensign, is motivated not
by thwarted ambition, but by lust; it is not his rival's
rank that the Ensign covets, but his favour with
Disdemona. It is worth asking why Shakespeare,
who seems to have worked with a version of Giraldi
beside him and who otherwise seldom departs from
his original without good reason, should have
chosen to make * place' the point at issue in this
way.5 Kenneth Muir's explanation (fairly representative
of those critics who have troubled to pose the
question) is that it is merely a device to complicate
the villain's motives. The loss of promotion is one
of three stings of envy which have lodged in Iago: it
combines with * pathological jealousy of his wife'
and 'a jealous love of Desdemona' to arouse his
hatred of the Moor; but in Muir's estimate it is the
least important of the three because it' is not directly
mentioned after the start of the play, except once'.6
I should argue that the sheer dramatic prominence
given to the lost lieutenancy by the opening dialogue
establishes it as so much an essential donnee of the
action that it scarcely needs reiteration — particularly
since Iago's nagging consciousness of the slight is
registered in a self-lacerating punctilio over Cassio's
title of rank. He uses the word * lieutenant' more
often than all the other characters of the play
together: fifteen of its twenty-five occurrences are
from his mouth, where it increasingly sounds like a
kind of sarcastic caress. Just as tellingly it is Othello's
'Now art thou my Lieutenant' (3.3.475) - perhaps
the weightiest half-line in the tragedy — which
announces Iago's moment of supreme triumph. Far
from being a mere aggravation of the villain's
envious disposition, the question of place lies at the
very heart of the play: properly understood it is the
only begetter of that' monstrous birth' which issues
from the fertile womb of Iago's resentment.
At the same time as he made the question of
promotion the focus of Iago's bitterness, Shakespeare
also elected to change his rival's rank. In Giraldi,
Cassio's counterpart is called 'the Captain'. The
alteration may, at first sight, seem trivial, but its
inherent improbability makes it virtually certain that
it was done with deliberate purpose: for .while
captain was a long-established military rank, lieutenant
was still something of a novelty; in Shake-
SHAKESPEARE SURVEY
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speare's own plays where ' captain' is commonplace,
'lieutenant' is relatively rare, occurring only nine
times in the rest of the canon. In six of these cases it
appears to denote a specific grade of officer, more or
less equivalent to the modern rank, in the others it
carries its older, more general sense of' deputy' or
' substitute'; only in Othello does it seem to describe
a rank immediately below that of general, corresponding
to the modern lieutenant-general. Clearly,
then, the word had not yet stabilized to its modern
meaning and still carried a good deal of its original
French sense, 'one holding [another's] place' (lieu
tenant); and in a play so ferociously preoccupied with
place it inevitably develops the force of a peculiarly
bitter pun.7 For Iago in particular it acts as a constant
reminder that Cassio is not merely the man appointed
to deputize in the general's place, but the one who
is standing in his own. While Cassio is in the
ascendant, Iago probes the word as one might an
aching tooth, goading the pain of his own deprivation;
and then, as his rival's star begins to wane,
' lieutenant' becomes a term of contempt, a covert
sarcasm anticipating their change of places. Thus the
high point of Iago's vindictive pleasure in the
drinking scene is reached with Cassio's stumbling
recognition that he is behaving in a fashion 'unworthy
of his place' (2.3.96), and registered in Iago's
softly crowing response,' It's true, good Lieutenant'
(1. 100). His triumph is confirmed by Montano's
sober expression of disappointment.
'tis great pity that the noble Moor
Should hazard such a place as his own second
With one of an ingraft infirmity. (2.3.133—5)
5 See M. R. Ridley (ed.), Othello, the Arden Shakespeare,
paperback edn. (1965), Appendix 1, p. 238.
6 See the introduction to his New Penguin edition, pp. 20,
15-
7 It is just possible that the pun was emphasized by
Shakespeare's preferred pronunciation of the word, since
the alternative spelling 'lieftenant', which is thought to
represent the usual seventeenth-century pronunciation,
occurs only once in the canon (in the Quarto text of 2
Henry IV, 5.5.95). That Shakespeare was thinking of his
titles of rank in this way is given some independent
confirmation by the apparent play on Iago's rank (ancient/
ensign) at 1.1.157-8: ' I must show out a flag and sign of
love, / Which is indeed but sign'.