The Christianness of Othello

Abstract

,ozr R ANY critics of have stressed the Christianness of it, and certainly they have much ground. Shakespeare wrote for a Christian audience, was himself Christian by rearing, and gave his a Christian setting. Many of its speeches are Christian in ring and signification, as when tells Desdemona to pray, since would not kill thy unprepared spirit (V. ii. 31). Biblical echoes appear too; Iago's not what I am seems a parody of that I am, and Othello's telling himself as he stands over the sleeping Desdemona that his sorrow's heavenly. / It strikes where it doth love (V. ii. 20) suggests Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. Such biblical allusion, says Roy W. Battenhouse, is as signaling a by which to read the play. Even so it is, he thinks, less significant than biblical analogue, which he and others find in profusion. Thus Joseph A. Bryant, Jr., explains that Othello in this reflects the office of God and ... Cassio is Shakespeare's figure of Adam. Desdemona is the spotless victim (Christ) that Iago (Satan, of course) causes to slay in consequence of Cassio's fall. Irving Ribner holds a similar position: Desdemona, the audience knows, stands for mercy and forgiveness. She is a reflection of Christ, who must die at the hands of man, but out of whose death may spring man's redemption. John Vyvyan thinks it important for understanding that . the life of Judas ... might have been Shakespeare's paradigm of tragedy.... ' Plainly these views may have substance, since is Christian in a sense. But whether its Christianness will bear the full statement that some critics make of it seems open to much question. Especially we must ask how Battenhouse's Christian by which to read the play relates to the imitation. What action is an imitation of according to interpretation by the Christian dimension? Adam's? Judas'? Everyman's? Does reading by the Christian dimension ratify for the world of the the Christian revelation? A crucial point here is that a may confirm' to the audience a particular kind of ulti-