Cassio: O, behold! The riches of ship is come on shore! You men of Cyprus, let her have your knees. Hail to thee, lady! and grace of heaven, Before, behind thee, and on every hand, Enwheel thee round! (1) Peter Milward calls Cassio's speech welcoming Desdemona to Cyprus a remarkable echoing of Gabriel's greeting of at Annunciation. Robert Hunter responds to it, Ave Desdemona gratia plenae. (2) If Cassio's extraordinary salutation and praise of Desdemona were only Marian allusion in play, we would probably write it off as courtly extravagance of one of curled darlings of Venice. (3) The play is packed, however, with references to Desdemona's likenesses and dissimilarities to Virgin of religious art, mystery plays, and associated Reformation controversy. Iago casts Desdemona in controversial Marian role of intercessor, then imputes intensity of her intercession for Cassio to her fallen sexuality. Even when he challenges Desdemona's condition it is often with sexual words that are packed with theological implications about Virgin mother of Christ. (4) Mystery plays like Troubles of and Trial of and may also inform Shakespeare's representation of Desdemona's detraction and defense and Othello's consideration of her imputed guilt, especially in Iago's likenesses to Mary's backbiters or detractors and in Othello's dissimilarities to a Joseph who also thinks himself abused by a younger wife. Othello's grotesque misjudgment, first of Desdemona, then of himself, also evokes in its persistent considerations of Desdemona's virtues and faults both central merit-grace issue of Reformation and plays and paintings of just judgment, especially their mutual emphasis on intercession and psychostasis, verbal and/or visual weighing of merit and demerit. Even when Othello attempts to respond to Iago's poison which turns her virtue into pitch, he unconsciously weighs Desdemona's imagined demerits against her known merits by using many of religious lyrics' traditional images of Marian praise. I hope to show that this complex system of analogy and allusion informs Othello with a psychological and a theological depth that has too often eluded its post-enlightenment audience. (5) Iago, Blessed Virgin, and Intercession The Virgin Mary's best-known and most controversial attribute during Reformation is arguably her reputed power to intercede for mercy with her son judge and redeemer now and at hour of our death. Luther's central tenet of sola fide, sola gratia, salvation by faith or grace alone, minimized importance of intercession of all kinds as part of its downplaying of merit, works, in process of salvation. But mediation itself was also problematic, since reformers thought individual worshiper had access to Christ's mercy without intervention of a priest or a saint. John Donne speaks to this controversy both when he calls Marianists rather idolaters of blessed Virgin Mary, then worshipers of Christ and when he complains of the semi-gods [and] sesqui-gods of Romane church, especially any that must be more then God, and receive appeals from God, and reverse decrees of God, which they make office of Virgin Mary This idea of Marian intercession not only relegated to roles of just judge and severe justicer instead of chief and only mediator, merciful intercessor with Old Testament God of Judgment for remission of sins. Because it gave a sacramental and an eschatological role virtually coequal with Christ's, it also encouraged Marian idolatry. Such fears help explain official suppression of Marian imagery and praise during Shakespeare's time, and therefore its paradoxical prominence through resultant controversy. …