Wednesday, October 22, 2008

"If thou dost love me, Show me thy thought" (3.3)

“If thou dost love me, show me thy thought” (Othello 3.3.118).
The theme of theater as both personal and public turns problematic when the play becomes so private that Othello needs to know Iago’s thoughts, supposedly his most private assets. It opens up the question of how personal drama should drama be? In the case of Othello, there is an implication that theater goes so far as to cut a character open in order to get to his insides, which may account for the plentiful digestive imagery in the play: “I stand accountant for as great a sin—But partly led to diet my revenge” (2.3); and, “’Tis not a year of two shows us a man. They are all but stomachs, and we all but food” (3.4). References to this specific inner working of the human anatomy conjures up the images of bile and blackness, which also parallels the idea of Othello become black on the inside as well as on the outside.

Heather Finch
1C

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