I
n general, a play is a collection of speech acts accompanied by gestures and actions. The priority of the speech acts is determined by the progress of the play from the playwright’s pen to the stage. In the classical or neo-classical style of writing the quality of the speech acts must be appropriate to the social status of the characters as well as the genre of the play: decorum must be observed. And, of course, as Hamlet knew from his humanistic studies at Wittenberg, the players should suit the actions to the words. For Othello, then, Olivier was correct to demand for his Iago (as Berry reports)‘a solid, honest-to-God N.C.O’.2 The basis of Olivier’s choice was not, as Berry claims, Iago’s rank as Ensign because in the Elizabethan military code his rank was only one step below Cassio’s. Iago is identified as a ‘non-commissioned officer’ (in modern terms) by the properties of his speech acts.
If this needed to be made clearer than it seems in the first scene of the play, Shakespeare provided as a contrast to Iago a gentleman and a different style of speech. The linguistic differences between Cassio and Iago are the focus of this essay.
Drama is a special kind of discourse in which speeches are directed from speaker to hearer and to an attendant audience at the same time. In drama such as Shakespeare’s the speakers of the play and the listeners in the audi-ence inhabit different linguistic milieus. M.H. Short has shown convincingly
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that the text rather than performance provides suitable material for discourse analysis, which rescues ‘dramatic criticism from the variability of performance analysis on the one hand and the inadequacy of traditional textual analysis on the other’.3 Nevertheless, while he recognizes ‘the general embedded nature of drama, because features which, for example, mark social relations between two people at the character level become messages about the characters at the level of discourse which pertains between author and reader/audience’ (p. 188), his analysis takes little account of the playwright’s obligation to convey informa-tion to the audience, and neglects to consider that the audience may lack information that is ostensibly implicated by the dialogue that would enable them to complete the circuit of communication. The application of discourse theory to drama has, therefore, a complexly double function: to describe the properties of the utterances between characters in the play, within that special communicative context, and then, to identify the information that the audi-ence should receive from the communicative exchange. This last function falls within the scope of the traditional literary criticism.
Moreover, since a play is an artificially constructed complex of conver-sations controlled by the playwright’s design for the work, one may possibly identify quite readily the ‘cooperative principle’ that H.P. Grice suggested was involved in conversations, and note the application of the accompany-ing regulative conventions that he called ‘maxims’.4 I can summarize them briefly. The maxim of quantity (1) relates to parsimony: speeches should sup-ply neither too little nor too much information. The maxim of quantity (2) requires speakers to believe that their contributions to conversations are true.
The maxim of relation (3) requires relevance, and the maxim of manner (4) suggests the avoidance of prolix, obscure, ambiguous and disorderly speech.
Fortunately for the sake of linguistic variety and the fictions of drama, the maxims are frequently broken. Sites of dislocation can point to significant variations in the relationships of dramatic characters, as the ensuing discus-sion shall reveal.
In apparently the only monograph devoted to the subject, Shakespeare and Social Class, Ralph Berry declares that ‘class as motivation is the principle of Othello. In the relations between military rank and social class lie the causes of the tragedy’ (p. 112). In Cinthio’s story, the Moorish Captain, the Ensign and the Corporal operate on the company level and the spread of social class is not great, nor is it insisted on. The Ensign lusts after Disdemona and it is on account of his rejection that he plots against the Corporal and Disdemona.
(The Moor is his confederate, not the object of his hate.) In Othello, as is well known, the situation is remarkably different. Although his military relations with his officers seem to be those of a captain of a company, the Moor is also the commander of the Venetian forces. His lieutenant, Cassio, besides his
U and Non-U: Class and Discourse Level in Othello 109 immediate responsibilities within the company, has capabilities as an officer that warrant his appointment from Venice to succeed Othello as the military governor of Cyprus. By enlarging the military dimension of the play, Shake-speare thickened the motivational texture of the source in a manner that makes the class relationships of the principal characters freshly significant.
Declaring that ‘Rank goes with class’, Berry elaborates the distinc-tion that Iago himself draws in the opening of the play: ‘this counter-caster (accountant)’ Michael Cassio,
A fellow . . .
That never set a squadron in the field, Nor the division of a battle knows
More than a spinster—unless the bookish theoric, Wherein the toged consuls can propose
As masterly as he.
(I, i, 21–6)5
Iago’s words can elicit surprising sympathy amongst naive readers and lis-teners. He voices the common antipathies between doers and thinkers, men of affairs and mere scholars, workers and bosses, common soldiers and their officers, and frontline soldiers and base staff in a speech directed to the
‘silly gentleman’, Roderigo. Iago’s complaint is motivated by hatred and fed by envy and resentment and is therefore intrinsically unreasonable. Even in our egalitarian society it is not expected that soldiers who have fought ‘At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds, / Christen’d and heathen’ (I, i, 29–30) even with distinction6 are thereby qualified for command positions, or that staff officers should possess all the experience and military expertise of the, men under their command. To serve and to command entail different abilities and responsibilities.
If Berry is correct to assert that the causes of the tragedy lie in the rela-tions of rank and class, then we must believe that Iago’s initial and foremost motivation is to secure military promotion. Then it follows that Iago would discredit Cassia to obtain the promotion he was denied originally, or he would seek to destroy Othello to punish him for choosing Cassio in his place.
Iago does indeed succeed to Cassio’s place and Othello is indeed destroyed, but these events do not occur for the reasons Berry’s statement suggests. It seems to me that he neglects Bradley’s warning about the intrinsic unreliabil-ity of Iago’s communications and ignores the circumstances that influence his speeches in Act I, i.7 The play opens at a crucial and stressful point for Iago.
He has cultivated the wealthy young gentleman, Roderigo, on the pretext that he can further his courtship of Brabantio’s daughter, Desdemona. (Why he
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believes that Iago has access to her the play does not explain.) Their relation-ship is that of Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night.
Indeed, the first thing that Shakespeare tells us about the two is that Iago has had Roderigo’s purse as if the strings of it were his, that is, at command (I, i, 2–3). As well, we learn later that Iago has been pocketing the gifts Roderigo has given him to deliver to Desdemona. In short, Iago has found the gullible Roderigo a rewarding source of undeclared income:
Thus do I ever make my fool, my purse;
For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane If I would time expend with such a snipe But for my sport and profit.
(I, iii, 383–6)
On Desdemona’s elopement with Othello this profitable arrangement seems about to be ended.8 Unless Iago is to forfeit it, Roderigo must be persuaded first, to persist in his courtship of the now-married Desdemona, and second, to continue to employ Iago as his agent. In Bertrand Evans’s words,
Seizing on Roderigo’s convenient cue . . . ‘Thou told’st me thou didst hold him in thy hate,’ he assures his victim that such is indeed the case, for has not the Moor unjustly passed him over in favour of the incompetent Cassio? . . . Reconsidering the circumstances in which these protestations are made—Iago’s dire need of sudden, dramatic speech and action if he is to keep his fish now that Desdemona has married—we are obliged to question the truth of everything spoken by the villain.9
In particular, we may suspect the truth of Iago’s statement that ‘Three great ones of the city, / Off-capp’d to him [the Moor]’ (I, i, 8–10) for his promo-tion because there is no other evidence in the play for the event. However, we cannot doubt the priority of Iago’s hatred of Othello to his attempt to be promoted (if in fact that occurred at all) because Roderigo refers to an earlier occasion when Iago ‘toldst me thou didst hold him in thy hate’ (I, i, 7). Cassio’s promotion is brought in to provide a circumstance that will assure Roderigo that he hates Othello for a good reason and therefore may be trusted to work against his commander for Roderigo’s benefit.10
It is clear from Iago’s self-serving speeches that he is deeply hostile towards Cassio; the hostility is driven by class antagonism. Setting aside the prior questions about Iago’s chances of promotion and the expedience of his statements to Roderigo, Shakespeare in quite few words has prepared us to
U and Non-U: Class and Discourse Level in Othello 111 meet a Cassio who is substantially distinguished from Iago. From Iago’s own words we have learned that Cassio is the kind of man who achieves high staff rank, and Iago is not.11 Shakespeare has reversed the relative military standing of the two from his source and widened their class differences in a number of crucial passages. Noticing that ‘relations between Cassio and Iago are continuingly tense’, Berry maintains that Cassio knows ‘perfectly well that his subordinate has in some respects a better claim to the post’ (p.
113). The play gives no sign that Cassio knows anything of the kind nor would any Elizabethan suspect it. Elizabethans knew well from campaigns in Ireland, the Netherlands and at Cadiz the hazards of inexperienced gentle-men being appointed to command positions. However, that did not lead to widely experienced common soldiers being put over their social superiors but only to pleas for the appointment of more competent gentlemen: ‘Rank goes with class’ (Berry, p. 113) or more clearly, class governs rank.12 Gentlemen volunteers may have been expected to trail pikes in Elizabethan armies,13 but they remained gentlemen, with different expectations and opportunities than the likes of Bates, Williams, Bardolph, Pistol, Bullcalfe and Shadow. The play does not present, as Berry has it, a Cassio ‘naturally wary and also compensa-tory’ (p. 113) but rather, a Cassio who acts like the gentleman he is and on that count unsuspectingly gets into very deep trouble with the one character in the play whose ungentleman-like qualities are insisted on. Othello is not about class nor otherwise are motivations closely related to class. Neverthe-less, it is the single-most important and defining aspect of the relationship between Iago and Cassio. The truth of this is revealed by examination of the language of their exchanges in the play.
Berry gets close to the point when he notes in Cassio’s ‘address a scarcely veiled policy of putting Iago down’ (pp. 113–14) in social situations.
Nevertheless, Cassio does not act from ‘policy’: that is Iago’s forte. He acts according to his status as a gentleman: simply the thing he is makes him live.
Shakespeare discloses the clear-cut difference between them in a passage that seems to have been neglected by commentators, including Berry. In Act I scene ii Iago, apparently professing ignorance of Othello’s marriage, asks him about it (I, ii, 11).14 Iago was not in Othello’s confidence in the busi-ness, a situation that contrasts forcefully with what we later learn of Cassio’s role. Then Cassio enters, bearing an urgent summons to attend the Duke.
Othello enters the house, presumably to say farewell to Desdemona, leav-ing Cassio and Iago together on the stage at Cassio’s first entrance. Because Othello could well have gone to the Senate immediately without attracting our attention, or occupied Cassio and Iago with other business, Shakespeare must have had some special purpose in mind for the ensuing exchange between Iago and Cassio.
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Cas. Ancient, what makes he here?
Iago. Faith, he to-night hath boarded a land carract.
If it prove lawful prize, he’s made for ever.
Cas. I do not understand.
Iago. He’s married.
Cas. To who?
(I, ii, 49–52)
The first point of observation is that Cassio initiates an exchange in which he pretends not to know that Othello is married, flouting Grice’s maxim of quality. He first asks what Othello is doing in that place, which may appear to be an innocent request for information. But, the question that ends the conversation (‘To who’) reveals rather more than a shaky grasp of verb/object agreement. At III, iii, 96 we learn that Cassio went between Desdemona and Othello in his courtship ‘from first to last’, and, in the historic rather than the dramatic time of the play, was Othello’s confidante. We could take Cas-sio here to be respecting confidentiality, not knowing that at the start of the play Iago knew of the elopement and had since had it confirmed by Othello himself. However, the overall tenor of the passage and its consistency with other exchanges between Othello’s two officers indicates that Cassio is pur-posefully reticent. In fact, because he initiated the exchange we can call this a deliberate prevarication: Cassio pretended to seek information about Othello when he was privy to Othello’s actions and whereabouts all the time.15
However, the most significant feature of this passage is that it reveals that Cassio and Iago have a communication problem: ‘I do not understand,’
Cassio replies to Iago’s first speech. Iago has breeched the maxim of quantity;
instead of the simple ‘He’s married’ of line 52, he shrouds his communication in metaphor, thus flouting the maxim of manner as well. Cassio’s response is an almost inevitable response to Iago’s failure to cooperate in their conversa-tion. It provides Cassio’s second prevarication or, if one prefers, downright lie. In fact, he responds with those words simply because he understands Iago.
Once commentators learned that a ‘carract’ was ‘a large trading ship’ (Evans), no one found any difficulty with Iago’s words. Cassio understands Iago very well but he rejects the register of the discourse and its attempt to situate Cassio within Iago’s linguistic milieu. ‘Unless I am mistaken,’ Bradley wrote
‘[Iago] was not of gentle birth or breeding. . . . for all his great powers, he is vulgar’ (p. 213–14). It is as a vulgarian, a charter member of the ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ school of barrack-room raconteurs that Iago talks about Othello’s marriage-night. Besides suggesting that the marriage is Othello’s opportu-nistic move to better himself (‘he’s done all right for himself, hasn’t he?’),
U and Non-U: Class and Discourse Level in Othello 113 the metaphor of a rich merchant ship taken as a prize by pirates barely con-ceals the suggestion of despoliation. It ‘debases Othello’s marriage’, in Nor-man Sanders’s words: he points out that ‘“Boarded” has a sexual connotation’, which Iago intends to convey.16 This language is, of course, characteristic of Iago’s part throughout the play. Citing this passage, Ifor Evans remarks that
‘Instead of beauty there is a continuous and emphatic imagery that renders gross and contemptible the sexual act on whose contemplation the action of the play depends.’17 When Cassio claims not to understand Iago’s com-munication, he rejects the offensive code employed by someone of a lower social status. Not only do gentlemen not use such language; they do not allow themselves to be addressed in such a manner. Iago simply does not know how to talk to a gentleman, and the well-born Cassio feels no obligation to accom-modate himself to his vulgar colleague. We may suspect that Iago adopted that tone deliberately, as an assault on the sensibilities of a man he despises, but that is not important. The main point is that Cassio and Iago employ dif-ferent speech codes based on social class, a fact that Shakespeare established in the play as early as he could.
Cassio takes the social offensive when next we see him in Iago’s com-pany, in an exchange where it is almost possible to sympathize with Iago. In Act II scene i Cassio’s is the first of the ships to arrive at Cyprus, followed by Desdemona and Emilia, with Iago and Roderigo. Cassio greets Iago with unexceptional words, and then Emilia:
Let it not gall your patience, good Iago, That I extend my manners; ’tis my breeding That gives me this bold show of courtesy.
(II, i, 97–8)18
Shakespeare confirms Cassio’s social superiority to Iago by making him act like a boor. It is one thing to extend gentlemanly courtesies to the wife of a colleague of lower social class; it is another to comment on the gaping social gulf between them, as if Iago were incapable even of understanding the basis of Cassio’s attention to Emilia. Then, significantly, Cassio is silent during Iago’s rather clumsy foolery with Desdemona until he answers her question:
How say you, Cassio? is he not a most profane and liberal counsellor?
Cas. He speaks home, madam. You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.
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This is the second time Cassio has distinguished his class superiority to Iago, the third if the opening passage (I, ii, 44–52) be counted. In fact, that is all that he has done with Iago to this point in the play. After this speech Iago is left isolated on the stage, well placed for his extended aside:
Iago. He takes her by the palm; ay, well said, whisper. With as little a web as this will I ensnare as great a fly as Cassio. Ay, smile upon her, do; I will gyve thee in thy own courtship. You say true, ’tis so indeed. If such tricks as these strip you out of your lieutenantry, it had been better you had not kiss’d your three fingers so oft, which now again you are most apt to play the sir in.
Very good; well kiss’d! an excellent courtesy! ’Tis so indeed . . . (II, i, 167–77)
Iago here is observing Cassio with Desdemona. Berry remarks that ‘Behav-iour appropriate to rank looks like bad acting to those of lesser station, placed as audience’ (p. 115) but ‘the concentrated viciousness of his com-mentary’, as Berry describes it, draws fundamentally on Cassio’s ‘put down’
and is merely fuelled by Cassio’s further demonstration of his breeding. His
‘well kiss’d’ refers to the earlier occasion with Emilia as well as Cassio’s
‘well kiss’d’ refers to the earlier occasion with Emilia as well as Cassio’s