Ironically, Cyprus was also revered as the birthplace of Venus Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who was reputedly born in ocean foam and washed ashore near Nicosia. This is a savage, warlike milieu in which such admirable military virtues as quick decision making and an inflated sense of honor work strongly against Othello and his bride. Infinitely more barbarous, it is a bastion of male power where Desdemona, alone and isolated from her Venetian support system, is vulnerable to the machinations of a highly skilled manipulator like Iago. The other, Cyprus, a fortified outpost on the edge of Christian territory, is a very different world than Venice. Polluted by prostitution and other social ills, Venice was an over-civilized, licentious, ingrown society that carried with it the potential for its own destruction. Characterized, on one hand, by Baldassare Castiglione’s The Courtier (1528), a testament to the importance of civilized, courtly demeanor, it also produced Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince (1514), a cynical, pragmatic, amoral treatise on the uses and abuses of political power. At the same time, it symbolized the depths of political intrigue, decadence, and moral depravity that were unfortunately typical of Italy during the same time period. A major Mediterranean seaport and center of commerce, it was also home to the incredible richness of literature, painting, architecture, music, and all the other art forms that flourished during the Italian Renaissance.
One of these locations, Venice, was the crown jewel of sixteenth-century Italy.
Caught between the two markedly different locales of Venice and Cyprus, the events of the script give proof to the old adage that “people change places, and places change people.” Such characters as Othello, Desdemona, and Iago are forever transformed by their journey through these disparate worlds, just as these dramatic places are permanently altered by the characters’ presence. The concept of geography plays a major role in Shakespeare’s Othello, as it does in many of his plays.
0 kommentar(er)
