Othello (possible spoilers)

[Carol]

Kemper wrote:
>
> Since Main, Movies and OT are pretty quiet, I thought I'd talk about
an issue that's been gnawing at me.
> 
> Recently, I went to Oregon's Shakespeare Festival where I saw
Othello along with the best Midsummer's I've seen (five total) as well
as a horrible contemporary play.  
> 
> I have never seen nor read Othello prior my most recent trip to the
> Festival nor did I ever hear anyone discuss its plot or its ending. 
> Sometime in the first two acts of Othello, I got the distinct
> impression that Iago had a thing for Othello.  
> 
> The following passage's general interpretation is that Iago thinks
> Othello has slept with his (Iago's) wife, Emilia:
> Iago: '... I hate the Moor:
> And it is thought abroad, that 'twixt my sheets
> He has done my office: I know not if't be true;
> But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
> Will do as if for surety. He holds me well;'
> 
> Instead of 'office' I heard 'orifice'.  I know.  It's a stretch. 
But Shakespeare is a tricky willie when it comes to language. So that
changed the meaning. <snip>

Carol responds:

I saw "Othello" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1999 and didn't
get any such impression. It could, of course, have been another actor
playing the role, but I didn't hear "office" as "orifice" or any other
hints of homosexuality. Then, again, I'd read the play more than once,
and I have no "gaydar" whatever (unless, of course, I'm reading
Shakespeare's sonnets, where the competing attractions to the
beautiful young man and the Dark Lady are spelled out for me). One
critic (I can't rememeber which one at the moment, but it was decades
ago) referred to Iago as "a motiveless malignancy," and that's how I
think of him. Unlike Shakespeare's (completely unhistorical) Richard
III who is "determined to be a villain" because he's so foully
deformed or Macbeth, who's willing to commit murder because of his
ambition to be king, or Edmund in "King Lear" who is a bastard and
consequently has no rights of inheritance, or Shylock ("Hath not a Jew
eyes? . . . . If you prick us, do we not bleed?"), Iago has no clearly
identifiable motive (except jealousy and possible racial prejudice).
He's been passed over for a promotion, and he refers to Othello as
"the old black ram" in connection with Othello's beautiful young wife,
Desdemona, suggesting that Desdemona will soon grow tired of her and
look for someone younger. Iago is married, and he seems sexually
attracted to Desdemona rather than Othello, whose friend he pretends
to be. (Or maybe he once was a shallow sort of friend; it's been a
long time since I read or saw the play.)

BTW, I recommend reading the play, preferably an annotated edition by
critics *not* of the "queer theory" school of criticism. Please don't
attack me for the term: it's used by its own proponents. But you need
an ideologically neutral edition by a respected scholarly publisher. A
Norton Anthology of English Literature will do if you took any
university literature classes and kept your textbooks!

Carol, who thinks that Iago is a villain without justification and
that the "love" Othello feels for him and Iago pretends to feel in
return has no sexual component