'O blood, blood, blood": Violence and

Identity in Shakespeare's Othello

Jennifer Feather

A T the moment when Othello finally becomes fully convinced of Desde-

mona's infidelity, he cries out "O blood, blood, blood."' Because early mod-
ern writers participate in a collective cultural attempt to stabilize existing
categories of difference by attaching them to fixed biological characteristics,
one might be tempted to understand the visceral and seemingly unsophisti-
cated nature of this utterance as a sign of Othello's atavistic descent into mur-
derous rage, his barbarous nature emerging from beneath his heroic self-
presentation.2 Understanding the word "blood" in this light evokes the entire
apparatus of biological determinism that develops over the course of the early
modem period in which "blood" dictates rank, culture, and identity itself.^
However, focusing on the burgeoning language of biological determinism ob-
scures the persistent centrality of violence, also implicit in the word "blood,"
in early modem constmctions of self that continue to rely on humoral ideas
of bodilyfluidity."*This single word encapsulates the tensions between these
two modes of self-understanding—one that sees blood as stable and another
that understands it as constantly in flux. Not simply a marker of barbarism,
blood and the violence it connotes is a flexible form of self-fashioning that
Othello uses to repair his understanding of the world shattered by Desdemo-
na's purported infidelity and to negotiate this tension between stability and
fluidity.
Recent critics have persuasively shown the implication of the play in a bur-
geoning racialism that focuses on skin color as a measure of moral worth.'
However, this system of difference is not yet fully instantiated and competes
with a much different understand of biology that threatens the biological sta-
bility often associated with the notion of blood. As Jean Feerick explains,
while the early modem understanding of the word "race" relies primarily on
notions of bloodlines, the physiological fluid itself is seen as in constant flux
and danger of degeneration. Thus, "Early modem racial ideologies . . . articu-
late with compelling force what modem racial ideologies seek to bury: the
ever-present prospect of racial reversibility."* Ian Smith similarly notes the
instability present in early modern racial ideologies and understands skin

240
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 241

color as a means of stabilizing categories of difference, encapsulated in the

notion of barbarism, tbat are based on varying degrees of linguistic facility.
To be a barbarian is by definition to be one wbo is lacking tbe ability to use
language and is bence, bestial. Smitb attributes focus on the "apparent bio-
pbysical fixity of color" as a means to buttress classical tropes of barbarism
"wbose inherent weakness is linguistic adaptation."' Otbello, wbose linguis-
tic facility wins over Desdemona and secures bis defense before tbe Duke, is
a prime example of tbe sort of linguistic adaptation tbat makes barbarism an
unstable category of difference. In tbis reading, Otbello retums to a barba-
rous state under pressure: lacking otber means of persuasion be resorts to
wanton violence and savage cruelty. Smitb's reading, by opposing civilized
rbetoric and barbarous violence, presumes tbat tbe play and Elizabetban cul-
ture more broadly work ultimately to stabilize modes of ascribing difference
and tbe identities on wbicb tbey are based. Tbis fixity in tum serves as tbe
foundation for bumanist ideas of selfbood as individual and autonomous.
Sbakespeare's play, bowever, dramatizes tbe tension between a social system
tbat values stability and one tbat relies on flexibility, valorizing one as mucb
as tbe otber.
Because "blood" is implicated equally but distinctly in botb tbe stabilizing
force of biological determinism and tbe fluid nature of bumoral pbysiology,
tbis single word botb bigbligbts and embodies the tension between tbese two
systems of difference—one tbat sees flexibility as dangerous and anotber tbat
acknowledges and negotiates fluidity. Surely, Otbello's cry is one of anguisb
tbat signals tbe breakdown of tbe previously firm foundations of bis sense of
bimself, assiduously constmcted tbrougb linguistic performance. However,
even as tbis cry is a recognition of Desdemona's infidelity and tbe extreme
cognitive dissonance it causes, understood in terms of cbivalric violence, it is
also solution to tbe very set of problems posed by Desdemona's infidelity.
In fact, precisely because blood is implicated in multiple overlapping and
competing understandings of corporeal and social order, cbivalric violence
serves a reparative function at tbe beart of the play. Ratber tban understand-
ing tbe play as ultimately marginalizing cbivalric virtue at tbe expense of a
burgeoning valorization of mercantile skills, tbis article demonstrates bow
Otbello deftly uses tbe cbivalric codes of combat to repair tbe damage done
by lago.
Many readers bave refuted tbe racial essentialism of tbe play but fail to
account for tbe importance of violence in tbese constructions of difference
and tbe consequent understanding of self in tbe play. For modem readers,
embedded in a culture tbat easily, almost instinctually, understands "blood"
as tbe bearer of botb inberited difference and racial essence, tbe violent con-
notations of tbe word all but disappear. However, I would argue tbat Otbello's
anguisbed cry suffers from a surfeit ratber tban a deartb of meaning, bringing
to tbe surface not Otbello's essential savagery but tbe centrality of violence
242 JENNIFER FEATHER

in early modem stmctures of meaning. If modem readers have difficulty sep-

arating "blood" as a signifier of lineage from "blood" as a signifier of race,
in an early modem context separating lineal claims and bloodshed poses as
many if not more difficulties. Whereas in modem understandings of the term
"blood" automatically signifies inheritance in both a familial and racial
sense, the echo of "blood" as "bloodshed" is almost inescapable in these
texts. Othello's attempts to restore the integrity of social identity and corpo-
real person implied by his notion of "blood" draw on chivalric notions of
combat, and thus make manifest the violent connection between word and
deed absolutely central to the Venetian social order. Othello's cry, then, is
not primarily an expression of his essential savagery but of the way that he
intends to utilize bodily damage to restore his own and Desdemona's integ-
rity.
Not only do early modem medical texts, including Robert Burton's Anat-
omy of Melancholy and Thomas Geminus's reproduction of Vesalius's Epit-
ome present blood as central to the healthy functioning of both body and
state, they emphasize both its unifying properties and its ability to connect
body and soul as sources of identity. These unifying properties reveal how
the multiple meanings of the term connect to one another. "Blood," whether
it is understood as "vital spirit," "bloodshed," "the seat of emotion," or "lin-
eage," represents the physical grounding of social identity. This physical
grounding relies not, as modem notions of race do, on a sense of biological
fixity, but on relationships between word and deed created through violence.
The term "blood" bears the weight of these multiple meanings throughout
the play.* Desdemona's supposed infidelity questions the collocation of na-
ture, will, and social status implicit in the early modem understanding of
blood, disturbing the relationship between these terms that is created through
constitutive forms of bodily damage. Though "blood" as it is used to de-
scribe Desdemona's betrayal is the source of unbearable psychic dissonance
for Othello, blood in the sense of "bloodshed" is also the solution to that
problem. In response to her purported betrayal, Othello re-imagines his sense
of integrity, basing it on the ability of violent acts to connect word and deed.
Examining the use of the word "blood" throughout the play, as I propose to
do here, reveals that the play's central issues—namely race, sexuality, and
violence—are encapsulated in this one polysemous utterance that reveals a
conception of identity rooted in violent action rather than fixed bodily es-
sence. What Othello makes manifest in murdering Desdemona is not the fun-
damental racialism of Elizabethan society that assumes he must be savage
and thus, prone to impulsive violence, but its reliance on violence to connect
word and deed, meaning and reality. His resort to violence is neither a re-
pressed racial essence surfacing nor a simple reversion to chivalric values.
Rather, it is a compromise between two social systems. By exploring how
Othello's conception of the body informs our understanding of the violent
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 243

action in tbe play, I will begin to elucidate tbe delicate balance early modem
thinkers negotiate between tbese social systems and its relationsbip to a con-
temporary discourse of tbe body.

I
Tbe conception of tbe body witb wbicb Otbello begins, and wbicb be at-
tempts to repair in tbe final acts of tbe play, bears upon bis conception of
self. Over tbe course of tbe play, lago introduces a new epistemology tbat
fundamentally relies on a fixed corporeality to determine individual identity
and bears mucb in common witb modem conceptions of race tbat figure race
as a biological essence expressed in behavior, ratber tban as an essence cre-
ated by tbat bebavior.' It is tbis conception of self tbat enables lago infa-
mously to claim "I am not what I am" (1.1.64), invoking an individual
essence from wbicb bis outward performance deviates. Many critics see tbe
play as participating in tbe emergence of sucb an idea of self and difference
in wbicb biological essence is relatively fixed, limiting tbe control tbat an
individual bas over ber self-presentation.'° Readings of tbe play that see
Othello as participating in tbe increasing resort to biological fixity as dictat-
ing racial difference see Otbello's bloody acts as sign of bis barbaric essence
emerging. However, tbis narrative elides tbe type of tbinking witb wbicb
Otbello begins tbat relies on combat to unify corporeal and social ideas of
self.
Otbello begins witb a conception of self rooted equally in cbivalric combat
and bumoral ideas of tbe body. Tbese ideas see tbe body, self, and environ-
ment as consisting of a fluid set of bumors tbat mutually influence one an-
otber. In sucb a conception, violence is not tbe mere violation of an inviolable
individuality but a means of ensuring barmony between body, self, and social
position. Otbello sees bis beroic acts as creating tbis sort of integrity, invok-
ing an idea of body and self tbat bears mucb in common witb early modem
ideas of race tbat critics sucb as Mary Floyd Wilson and Daniel Vitkus, using
geo-bumoral tbeory and narratives of conversion respectively, argue was not
nearly as stable as modem ideas of biological fixity would suggest." How-
ever, once be bas been confronted witb blood's instability in tbe form of Des-
demona's infidelity, be resorts to racialist tbinking tbat relies on biological
stability in bis searcb for "ocular proof." His fundamentally violent response
is simultaneously a product of bis desire for essence and appearance to be in
line and also for essence to be visible in performed acts, ratber tban bidden
deep in a man's pbysical being, demonstrating tbe uneasy coexistence of
tbese two competing ideas of self.
Having been confronted witb an epistemology tbat sees selfhood as dic-
tated by an intemal essence, an epistemology tbat critics, sucb as Kim Hall,
244 JENNIFER FEATHER

see in the kind of racialist thinking operating throughout the play, Othello
attempts to restore his conception of self, which sees acts rather than essence
as determinative. He does not simply wish to make interior essence visible
but to create his idea of himself in unifying acts of prowess. This response,
then, is not violent simply because he only knows how to act in a violent
fashion, either because of his race or because of his chivalric identity, but
rather because of the ways that violence specifically is able to restore whole-
ness to his fractured identity. His identity as a warrior, like his identity as a
Moor, is not significant because of its predisposition to violence but because
of its insistence on both physical and mental integrity. Thus, rather than
seeing Othello's violence as a consequence of his essential biology, either
because he is a soldier or a black man, I see his use of violence as stemming
from its unique ability to make essence and performance one and the same,
as they were for Othello prior to Iago's manipulations.'^
Othello relies on violence to repair his fractured sense of self, just as he
relies on martial prowess to unify his own identity when he is questioned
before the Duke, conceiving of blood as unifying social and individual iden-
tity. If his uttering of the word "blood" prefigures the violence against Des-
demona, it also represents the restoration of her integrity in those acts. To
reduce this conception to simple biological determinism, as the reading that
sees Othello's acts as atavism does, collapses the rich set of early modem
associations with the term "blood," obscuring the idea of identity at work in
the play. In fact, racialism—the notion that Othello posseses a racial essence
that might conflict with his social performance—is precisely the problem.
His use of violence, rather than being a regression into barbarism, is a repara-
tive measure intended to restore the unified conception of identity imagined
in the early modem understanding of "blood."

II
Starting with Desdemona's betrayal of her father, which undermines the
stability of "blood" as a source of identity, the characters in the play consis-
tently stmggle with competing conceptions of identity and difference. Othel-
lo's anguished cry encapsulates these stmggles in a single repeated word,
"blood." The twenty-one other uses of the word "blood" in the play make
manifest the stakes implicit in how one understands this one term. Brabantio
initially calls upon the multifaceted notion of blood in the first scenes of the
play to describe Desdemona's marriage to "the Moor" as a dismption of her
corporeal and spiritual integrity. He presents Desdemona's chastity as a form
of integrity that cannot be shattered except by force. This force is conceived
of in terms of "some mixtures powerful o'er the blood / . . . / that [Othello]
wrought upon her" (1.3.105-7). Taking her physical and spiritual integrity as
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 245

a fact, Brabantio uses it as incontrovertible evidence that a crime has been

committed, that coercion was necessary to get Desdemona to concede to
marry Othello. He pleads before the Duke that "It is a judgment maimed and
most imperfect / That will confess perfection so could err / Against all mies
of nature" (11. 99-101). Because her perfection is a certainty, her actions
must have been coerced to have deviated so far from the rules of nature. Her
integrity should be inviolable and can only have been breached by force. This
integrity encompasses her entire individual and social being. Brabantio won-
ders that,

A maiden never bold

Of Spirit so still and quiet that her motion
Blushed at herself; and she, in spite of nature.
Of years, of country, credit, everything.
To fall in love with what she feared to look on?
(11. 95-99)

He understands her nature, age, national origin, and reputation—in short ev-
erything about her—as functioning in complete harmony. In presenting her
abduction as an assault against her blood, Brabantio suggests that her blood
is the seat of this unified identity.
This notion of subjective harmony is in line with one of the most prominent
early modem conceptions of the way that blood functions, represented by the
works of Thomas Geminus and Robert Burton, among others.'^ According to
Thomas Geminus's English version of Andreas Vesalius's anatomy, the
blood as it is decocted in the heart is "spirite, more clearer, bryghter, and
subtyller, then is any corporall thynge, compounded of the foure Elementes,
for it is a thynge that is a meane betwene the bodye and the soule, and there-
fore the Philosophers lyken it rather to a heauenlye thynge then to a bodelye
thynge."'"• In this context, blood is that which unites the body and conveys
the identity of the soul. This conception persists into the seventeenth century
when the physician George Thomson described blood as "the immediate in-
strument of the soul . . . sweetly uniting all the parts of the Body for the
conspiration of the good of the whole." " He, thus, conceives of the blood as
the basis for both a psychological and a corporeal identity that unifies and
pervades the entire individual. He sees no distinction between what later
thinkers would understand as the psychological, what he calls the soul, and
what will become the physiological. The blood is an "immediate" instru-
ment, admitting little distinction between its material and immaterial quali-
ties. In his Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton describes blood, saying
that is "a hot, sweet, temperate, red humour . . . whose office is to nourish
the whole body, giving it strength and colour. . . . And from it spirits are first
begotten in the heart, which afterwards by the arteries are communicated to
246 JENNIFER FEATHER

Other parts."'^ As in Thomson's description. Burton conceives of blood as

dispersed throughout the body, a conception all the more powerful for its
inclusion in a work directed not at trained anatomists but at those who might
be unfamiliar with certain physiological terms." Furthermore, Burton de-
scribes the blood as the source of "Spirit... a most subtle vapour, which is
expressed from the blood, and the instrument of the soul, to perform all his
actions; a common tie or medium betwixt body and soul."'* As Burton de-
scribes it, the blood offers a physiological basis for the soul and all its ac-
tions, unifying psychological and physiological sources of identity that later
writers understand as distinct.'^
Brabantio understands the violation of Desdemona as perpetrated against
her "blood" in this comprehensive sense. The "mixtures powerful" act spe-
cifically not only against her physical body but against her blood. Othello,
then, has attacked her entire identity, both social and physical, conceived of
corporeally as her blood. This conception of the crime simultaneously figures
it as a violent assault against her person—Othello has wrought something
upon her—and as a property crime that violates the "natural," patriarchal
economy—the rules of nature have been transgressed. Bringing into relief the
almost imperceptible slippage between these two crimes, Brabantio argues
before the Duke that he has been the victim of theft. When a senator asks
Brabantio if his daughter is dead, Brabantio responds:

Ay, to me:
She is abused, stolen from me and corrupted
By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks,
for nature so preposterously to err.
(11. 60-63)

He not only responds to the senator's question affirmatively, claiming that

she is dead, but goes further to say she has been stolen and abused, envi-
sioning the crime simultaneously as a physical assault and as a theft. In fact,
the slide from assault, a violation of Desdemona's bodily person, and theft, a
violation of patriarchal order, naturalizes the patriarchal order, connecting it
to a physical reality. Thus, "blood" for Brabantio unifies identity situating
Desdemona's gender, rank, and person in biological fixity. The resort to the
unifying of properties of blood offers to Brabantio a possible explanation for
what otherwise would appear inexiplicable—the unstable erring of "nature"
presumed in Desdemona's marriage to Othello.
Only if the abuse Desdemona suffers is clearly psychological as well as
physical can Brabantio restore his conception of the relationship between De-
sdemona's character and her behavior. This idea is consistent with the same
medical texts that understand blood as uniting body and soul in one undiffer-
entiated whole. These texts also conceive of medicines as having both physi-
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 247

ological and psychological functions. For instance. Burton proposes a long

series of remedies for melancholy that include not only "Philosophical and
Divine precepts, [and] other men's examples" but also, though he warns
against their improper use, medicines and simples.^" Thus, the crime in Bra-
bantio's mind must be perpetrated against Desdemona's otherwise stable
blood as representative of her bodily but also her spiritual identity. Further-
more, in representing the crime as a theft, Brabantio figures it as an attack
against Desdemona's social identity and the communal order to which it be-
longs. The theft is a transgression of the patriarchal order that is naturalized
by treating it as an assault that attacks her person and her social position
embodied in her blood.
Whether Brabantio presents the case as a physical assault or a social and
psychological attack, the crime remains a sexual one. Infamously, Iago's call
to arms wams Brabantio that "an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe!"
(1.1.87-98). In Iago's crass admonition, the crime is understood as a problem
of miscegenation, of a mixing of bloodlines.^' Characters repeatedly associ-
ate blood with sexual passion, as when lago suggest that Desdemona's feel-
ings for Othello will fade when "the blood is made dull with the act of sport"
(2.1.225). Brabantio makes no distinction between theft, assault, and misce-
genation. Invoking the supple language of early modem physiology, he in-
stinctually calls the crime "a treason of the blood" (1.1.167)—a phrase that
draws together these multiple perceptions of the crime. He imagines Othel-
lo's action as an assault perpetrated against both the physical and social per-
son of Desdemona located in her blood. It is both a violent attack and a theft.
Moreover, it encompasses the sexual violation of Desdemona and the pur-
ported conjuring that enabled it. Sexual violation involves miscegenation and
hence a distortion of nature just as the "mixtures powerful o'er the blood"
changed Desdemona's fundamental identity causing her "perfection so to err
against all rules of nature." Both are treasonous in an early modem sense—
that is, they transgress the natural order in which Desdemona would fear to
look upon so spirited an individual as Othello. Brabantio resorts to this for-
mulation of a crime perpetrated against her blood, treating theft, assault, and
sexual congress as one crime, and thereby naturalizes the relationship be-
tween Desdemona's body, behavior, and social identity.
However, the phrase "treason of the blood" also tempts one to a more sin-
ister reading. Though Brabantio suggests that in fact treason has been com-
mitted against Desdemona's blood—that is against her social and physical
person—one could just as easily read the phrase as suggesting that her blood
has committed treason, usurping the goveming power of her otherwise stable
perfection. Early modem treatments of the blood as often usurping reason
would tend to support this reading. In certain respects, Brabantio's focus on
the supposed "mixtures powerful" that have tainted her blood subtly suggests
this reading, but subsequent uses of the term "blood," notably by lago, offer
248 JENNIFER FEATHER

an even more persuasive context for it. lago suggests tbat love is "a lust of
tbe blood and a permission of tbe will" (1.3.335-36), envisioning blood and
tbe identity it conveys as subservient to tbe will. In tbe context of sucb a
formulation, Desdemona's blood bas behaved treasonously, usurping tbe
goveming power of tbe will.
Tbis understanding of treason is readily available in tbe early modern
imaginary tbat saw an analogy between tbe king's mle over tbe common-
wealtb, a man's govemance of bis bousebold, and tbe goveming function of
reason over tbe individual.^^ Again, texts sucb as Burton's support sucb a
reading. In bis preface "Democritus to tbe Reader," Burton writes:

As in human bodies (saith [Boterus]) there be divers alterations proceeding from

humours, so there be many diseases in a commonwealth, which do as diversely
happen from several distempers, as you may easily perceive by their particular
symptoms. . . . But whereas you shall see many discontents . . . rebellions, sedi-
tions, mutinies, contentions, idleness, riot, epicurism .. . that kingdom, tbat coun-
try, must needs be discontent, melancholy, bath a sick

Following Boterus, Burton directly compares tbe pbysiological sickness of

melancholy, witb its imbalanced bumors, to a seditious nation. Tbus, Desde-
mona's body is botb a kingdom suffering under a treasonous usurpation and
pbysically ill, baving its bumors out of balance. Tbe pbrase "treason of tbe
blood" encapsulates not only tbe perception of tbe crime as botb a pbysical
assault and a tbeft but also tbe perception of it as a violent overthrow of tbe
goveming power of reason and bence, of tbe social order. Tbus, "blood"
comes to imply not just individual identity but social order. Brabantio's invo-
cation of tbe "mixtures powerful o'er tbe blood" restores bis sbattered sense
of tbe social order by relocating Desdemona's identity in ber corporeal per-
son, naturalizing tbe ideas of culture and rank tbat ber transgression disturbs.

Ill

Tbis multiplicity of meanings tbat bovers around every use of tbe term re-
lies as mucb on tbe naturalizing power of violence tbat connects tbeft and
assault as it does on biological determinism. Understood in tbis context,
Otbello's cry "O, blood, blood, blood" is far more tban a desperate and inar-
ticulate expression of pain. Ratber, it is an astute encapsulation of tbe full
import of Desdemona's supposed betrayal as well as its solution. As sucb, it
suggests tbe important role tbat violence ratber tban biological determinism
in terms of eitber lineage or race plays in securing botb individual identity
and social order. Otbello is as invested in patriarcby as Brabantio is but sees
tbat patriarcby as relying on valorous acts of combat ratber tban on sexual
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 249

purity and emerging ideas of biological difference. "Blood" for Othello does
not merely connote biological determinisim but rather implies the process by
which matter, or in modem terms biology, becomes identity through combat.
Desdemona's supposed infidelity disturbs the notion of identity fixed in vio-
lent acts that her father and Othello espouse. Having used Desdemona's infi-
delity to unravel Othello's sense of himself, lago offers an essentialist
epistemology much like the one to which Brabantio resorts, as the solution
to the dismption her infidelity poses. However, Othello ultimately rejects this
solution to corporeal instability and retums to acts of bodily damage to stabi-
lize his sense of himself.
The language of blood as "wrought upon" tends to highlight the instability
that Desdemona's sexuality makes manifest. Such language dismpts essen-
tialist notions of identity within the play by making blood a changeable ob-
ject of action rather than a stable source of identity. Whereas Brabantio's use
of the phrase is meant to evoke an image of integrity breached, two other
uses aim at describing or, what is more, effecting a psychological change,
conceived of corporeally. Upon his arrival in Cypms, Lodovico wonders at
Othello's treatment of Desdemona saying "Is it his use? / Or did the letters
work upon his blood, / And new create this fault" (4.1.274-765). As Braban-
tio did with respect to Desdemona's behavior, Lodovico assumes that a
change in blood can effect a fundamental change in personality. The letters
work on the blood to change Othello's expected bearing. Similarly, lago de-
scribes his actions against Othello as "Dangerous conceits [that] . . . with a
little act upon the blood" (3.3.329-31). Tellingly, both instances figure
words—the tool that Othello admits to using to woo Desdemona—as wreak-
ing the kind of havoc on the blood that Brabantio sees in Desdemona's
changed behavior. All three characters—lago, Brabantio, and Lodovico—
recognize actions against the blood as causing a change in personality at once
physical and psychological. Blood in these instances is not a fixed essence
but a changeable fluid.
Desdemona's marriage ultimately brings Brabantio to the horrible realiza-
tion not that blood incontrovertibly dictates her identity but, quite the oppo-
site, that her blood is not a stable marker of identity, that it can in fact be
wrought upon by mere words. His language moves from the violent over-
throw of her person to a recognition of her betrayal. She is no longer merely
stolen but has willfully and deceitfully made her "escape" (1.3.198). As Bra-
bantio famously predicts saying, "Look to her. Moor, if thou hast eyes to
see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee" (1.3.2921-13), Desdemo-
na's purported infidelity brings Othello to the same unbearable realization
that social position does not secure behavior. Othello's disquiet is clearly
caused by the instability that her infidelity implies. He vacillates in doubt,
saying "I think my wife be honest, and think she is not" (3.3.387), unequivo-
cally disturbed by his inability to fix his sense of her. In fact this inability
250 JENNIFER FEATHER

threatens the basis both of Othello's previous conception of Desdemona and

of his own masculinity. In his description of jealousy, Richard Burton writes
that " 'Tis full of fear, anxiety, doubt, care, peevishness, suspicion, it tums a
man into a woman."^'' The suspicion that lago engenders in Othello effemi-
nates him, disrupting the stability of his identity.
This instability undermines his insistence on presenting an unified identity,
ensured by violent acts that bring together social position and physical real-
ity. Much as Brabantio represents Desdemona as possessing a comprehensive
integrity, Othello originally presents himself as an integral whole. Rather
than understanding himself as having an interiorized identity which could
conflict with his behavior, he sees his identity as pervasive and undifferenti-
ated. When discovered on his wedding night, he refuses to hide, insisting,
"Not I, I must be found. My parts, my title and my perfect soul shall manifest
me rightly" (1.2.30-32). Just as Desdemona's nature, years, country, and
credit all dictate a single action that Brabantio cannot believe she did not
take, Othello insists that his parts, title, and perfect soul must show his true
nature. Even when invoking the term "blood," Othello presents his identity
as both stable and outwardly manifest. He insists upon confessing "the vices
of his blood" (1.3.125), bringing into line his identity and its corporeal
source. This sense of integrity, implied in the early modem conception of
blood, is precisely what begins to unravel because of Iago's treachery, point-
ing not to the stability of blood but to its variability.
Initially, lago disturbs the stability of "blood" as the basis of identity, but
more importantly, he offers biological determinism as a means of repairing
that identity. By questioning Desdemona's fidelity, presenting her essential
identity as hidden rather than visible in her public acts, lago creates a fissure
between social and personal identity, between what lago calls in his criticism
of Cassio's martial prowess "prattle" and "practice" (1.1.25-29). The very
language of the exchange between lago and Othello creates the kind of doubt
lago claims Othello should have. Iago's repetition of Othello's word, "hon-
est," obscures Othello's view of Iago's interior thoughts (3.3.100-109). Rhe-
torically, he creates a question out of precisely what Othello felt was
unquestionable, Cassio's honesty and Desdemona's fidelity.
Othello responds to this threat by attempting to stabilize both his own and
Iago's identity within this new system. He demands of lago "Show me thy
thought" (1.3.3.119), seeking Iago's disclosure of his essential self as a way
to stabilize Iago's identity. As he explains.

For I know thou'rt full of love and honesty

And weigh'st thy words before thou giv'st them breath
Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more.
For such things in a false disloyal knave
Are tricks of custom, but in a man that's just
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 251

They're close delations, working from the heart

That passion cannot rule.
(3.3.121-27)

At this moment, he pictures tme meaning as interior and stable. Meaning, no

longer externally visible in acts, must be discovered and uncovered. This
quest to locate interior meaning produces the idea that a stable essence exists.
Unless one is a false, disloyal knave, whose meaning and identity are never
stable, one's essence lies in "close delations . . . that passion cannot mle."
Othello fantasizes here about the stable essence hidden deep within a "just"
man that is not at the whim of the fickle passions. To know this hidden es-
sence, another man must be "shown" this man's thought. In this moment,
the epistemology, which will drive Othello through much of the play, crystal-
lizes in his mind. Not only does Othello proceed to search for hidden secrets
inside the body of Desdemona, from this point forward he also shows lago
his thought, constmcting himself as just the kind of just man he believes lago
to be. Like an anatomist, he attempts to locate the tmth about Desdemona in
her physical being and his repetition of the word "blood" in one sense sug-
gests this strategy. "Blood," as ideas of biological determinism, would sug-
gest, is a stable, interior essence—a physical guarantor of behavior. However,
as we have seen, the notion of blood operating in the early modem period
cautions us against a solitary reading of Othello's approach, urging us to ex-
plore the equally prevalent notion of "blood" as a unifying principle associ-
ated as much with the power of bloodshed as with biological essence.

IV
Rather than wholly accepting Iago's introduction of essentialism as a solu-
tion to the unstable meaning of Desdemona's identity, Othello uses violence
not to uncover Desdemona's essential identity but in fact, to stabilize her
identity. Drawing on his sense of "blood" as capable of unifying psychology
and corporeality, he reconstructs Desdemona's integrity just as he constmcts
his own. Othello's consistent presentation of pervasive integrity is fundamen-
tally grounded in physical acts of violence. Rather than these acts of violence
being the performance which manifests some stable interior, as lago would
have it, Othello sees action and essence as one in the same. What the undoing
of Othello reveals is that this integrity is produced for Othello not by "blood"
in the sense of heredity but by "blood" in the sense of heroic, violent action.
Many scholars have noted the anatomical epistemology that lago intro-
duces, which seeks truth in fixed and interior physical evidence, under-
standing Othello's descent into murderous rage as a failure of Othello's
interpretive capabilities, as I do above. This confrontation with a new episte-
252 JENNIFER FEATHER

mology grounds Othello's introduction to an individualized and interiorized

notion of self.2' For instance, Mark Rose argues that Othello is caught be-
tween mercantile values and the absolute world of chivalry, lago representing
the former. As he explains it, "In the transitional culture of the early modem
period the concept of the soul is also affected by the hegemonic principle of
property. Now a soul is something a person has as well as something a person
is."'^^ Identity thus becomes a possession as well as an all-encompassing
being. Though I agree that Othello finds himself poised between two worlds,
one based on martial might and the other based on securing private property,
Rose's characterization ofthat previous world as superstitiously supematural
and one in which "the cosmos is a single vast text and [in which] knowledge
is a form of interpretation, a matter of reading mystic signatures written in
things" misunderstands the relationship between matter and meaning in the
period, seeing the two as entirely separate. Rose continues claiming that
"There is finally no difference between language and nature, authority and
observation."2' Even as Rose sees no difference between language and na-
ture, he also suggests a hidden meaning separate and apart from physical
reality that must be uncovered. At the same time that Rose's notion of "read-
ing" implies an analogy between word and deed, or "language and nature,"
it also implies a disjunction between the two. "Blood" in its multiplicity of
meaning provides a far more fertile analogy for this relationship. In fact, in
the period, it serves not as a mere analogy but as the mechanism whereby
the relationship between things and ideas, identity and bodies, occurs and is
perceived.^*
In his self-assured defense before the Duke, Othello explicitly refuses the
kind of interpretive process Rose claims marks his chivalric identity. Othello
constmcts his identity by valorizing the very interpretive lack characteristic
of his martial identity, promising that because he is mde in his "speech, and
little blest with the soft phrase of peace, . . . [he will] a round unvamished
tale deliver of [his] whole course of love" (1.3.82-91). He connects his "rude
speech" both with his heroic identity and with the honesty of his "round
unvamished tale." His heroic identity, his martial prowess, is in direct oppo-
sition to perfidious speech, and his heroic actions make him incapable of ut-
tering "the soft phrase of peace." Martial prowess, as much as barbarism, is
associated with a lack of linguistic sophistication. He can only present a
"round, unvamished tale" that admits no distinction between surface and es-
sence. By pointing to his martial identity, Othello authenticates the claim of
individual and social integrity he made in insisting on being found, insisting
on the integrity of his "parts," "titles," and "perfect soul." His social presen-
tation and his individual identity must be one and the same, just as Desdemo-
na's were. As a solider he has little eloquence, and therefore, his tale must
necessarily be without deception or inconsistency. His martial acts are neces-
sary to maintain his integrity.
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 253

Moreover, he argues that he has no identity beyond that of a soldier, that

nothing is hidden from view. His words cannot and do not require interpreta-
tion, though they do rely on physical acts for their significance. He presents
Desdemona's love for him as based on his soldierly qualities. As he says
before the Duke, "She loved me for the dangers I had passed" (1.3.168). He
claims not that his eloquence wooed her but that the history itself did.
Though Othello is actually quite linguistically sophisticated and gains access
to Brabantio's house through his words, he insists upon a lack of verbal skill
that implies plainness much as Henry V does in Shakespeare's depiction of
his wooing of Katharine of Valois.^» Others agree with his self-perception. As
lago muses, "The Moor is of a free and open nature / That thinks men honest
that but seem so" (1.3.398-99). lago believes that Othello lacks the guile to
suspect other men, precisely because he lacks the guile to be deceptive him-
self. His very guilelessness indicates his understanding of himself as an inte-
grated whole.
The opposition between Othello's method of securing identity through
martial violence and the biological determinism lago propounds is perhaps
best articulated in Iago's description of Cassio to Roderigo. He says:

Forsooth a great arithmetician.

One Michael Cassio, a Florentine
A fellow almost damned in a fair wife.
That never set a squadron in the field
Nor the division of battle knows
More than a spinster—unless the bookish théorie.
Wherein the togaed consuls can propose
As masterly as he. Mere prattle without practice
Is all his soldiership; but he, sir, had th'election.
And I of whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on other grounds
Christened and heathen—must be be lee'd and calmed.
(1.1.18-29)

Here lago makes a distinction between practice and performance, essence and
appearance, that defines early modem gender identity. Heroic deeds are set
against theory that is no more related to military reality than the female work
of the spinster. Martial action, which lago calls "proof," is set against "book-
ish théorie," as lago makes a gendered distinction between representation and
actual practice. Practice, as the basis for identity, consists of deeds whose
reality is unquestionable because of their bloodiness. Not only does lago
question Cassio's masculinity, comparing him to a spinster whose work is
not only feminine but discontinuous, he implies that no substance underlies
his military title. He is "mere prattle without practice" just as a spinster is
dismissed as both female and lacking steady work.'" Soldiership, then, serves
254 JENNIFER FEATHER

as the ultimate basis of masculinity because it is a practice that unifies iden-

tity, connecting titles to prowess through corporeal acts of bodily damage.
Othello's defense before the Duke does not acknowledge a distinction be-
tween his tales and the trials themselves. What Othello, then, represents is
practice as essence. He does not allow the kind of difference lago creates
between "prattle" as a false performance, and "practice" as a tme essence.
As evident in Iago's slander of Cassio, this kind of bounded integrity is cen-
tral to masculine identity.^' As Robert Burton explains, love melancholy, of
which jealousy is a type, effeminates because it is "immoderate, inordinate,
and not to be comprehended in any bounds. "^^ Having a bounded identity
created by military feats is central to masculine identity. Othello's acts of
martial prowess fundamentally unify his identity by realizing his self-
presentation, grounding his identity in physical reality—the physical reality
of prowess rather than the physical reality of lineage or race.

Othello ultimately resorts to bloodshed because of the ability of blood to

unify his fractured sense of himself in visible acts of prowess. Othello's vio-
lent response to Desdemona's purported infidelity is a strategy that partakes
of both the recently accessible anatomical literature and the more pervasive
fluid conception of the body, bolstering the faltering connection between self
and self-presentation. Understood in the context of the polysemous utterance
that marks Othello's realization of betrayal, his ultimate actions restore the
social significance of blood. Throughout the initial scenes of the play,
"blood" comes to signify the coherence of physiology, action, and social po-
sition. In separating blood from will, lago made manifest to Othello the pos-
sibility that these forms of selfhood might be at odds and that blood might
not stably signify identity. However, rather than resorting to Iago's essential-
ist model, seeking merely to uncover Desdemona's lascivious nature, Othello
ultimately embraces the unifying power of bloody action.
The solution lago offers to blood's instability is a notion of blood as con-
veying a physiological essence apart from will, an idea that becomes increas-
ingly common in the seventeenth century as evidenced in early modern
medical texts." lago creates for Othello the necessity for firsthand knowledge
as Othello searches for and demands "ocular proof" of Desdemona's infidel-
ity, indoctrinating Othello in an anatomical epistemology. The impact of this
epistemology extends beyond inciting in Othello a need for visible evidence,
however. It introduces an entire new conception of the body and its relation-
ship to identity. Anatomical literature of the period, as Jonathan Sawday has
explained, begins a process whereby "the body became objectified; a focus
of intense curiosity but entirely divorced from the world of the speaking and
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 255

thinking subject. Tbe division between tbe Cartesian subject and corporeal
object, between an T tbat tbinks and an 'it' in wbicb 'we' reside, bad become
absolute."''* Tbougb I question tbe absolute nature of tbis split, certainly be-
fore and even after Descartes, it is precisely tbe split tbat lago introduces to
Otbello. Tbe subject, once evenly dispersed tbrougbout tbe body in tbe blood
is now isolated in its interior, or better yet in tbe will as lago would bave it.
Again, lago calls love "merely a lust of tbe blood and a permission of tbe
will," invoking a guiding consciousness absolutely in control of tbe animal
nature contained in tbe blood. lago bere anticipates William Harvey's discov-
ery of tbe circulation of tbe blood, wbicb understood blood, not as tbe seat
of identity or as tbe source of "animal spirits . . . brougbt up to tbe brain, and
diffused by the nerves, to tbe subordinate members, giv[ing] sense and mo-
tion to tbem all" as Burton bad, but as simply anotber part of tbe mecbanical
body.'''
Tbis fundamentally different sense of tbe body creates an understanding of
identity as bidden and in need of discovery and, according to many, is re-
sponsible for Otbello's tragic end. Botb Micbael Neill and Patricia Parker
bave noted tbe similarity of tbe epistemology lago presents bere to tbe project
of anatomical texts of tbe period.'*" However, tbe compromise tbat Otbello
develops between tbis system of meaning making and tbe cbivalric one is
more subtle tban eitber these autbors or Mark Rose would suggest, combining
elements of botb systems in a way similar to tbe one presented in early mod-
em anatomies. Rose is representative of scbolars who see Otbello as tragi-
cally overtaken by a new system of meaning. Otbello's tragic demise, tben,
is a result of bis inability to adapt to tbe development of a new form of bero-
ism. As Rose explains, "Tbe arts of tbe modem bero must be to govem and
give laws . . ." not to engage in violent action." Ultimately, Rose feels tbat
Otbello's deatb partakes of a cbivalric nostalgia typical of Elizabetban tilts
and tbat tbe play explores tbe playwrigbt's role in tbe demise of tbe cbivalric
world. Tbus, Otbello and Desdemona become tbe tragic victims of a sbifting
notion of the place of tbe body.
However, I would argue tbat Otbello more or less successfully negotiates
tbis shifting scenario, despite his deatb, by restoring tbe social significance
of blood and providing a workable model for bis Venetian comrades. Tbis
model uses violence to autbenticate self-representation, actually repairing tbe
split lago bas suggested to bim between behavior and identity. Tbougb
Otbello and Desdemona are indeed victims of tbe tensions tbe play invokes,
we bave every reason to believe tbat Otbello's compromise is adopted by tbe
society around bim, suggesting tbe ultimate triumph of bis model even in tbe
face of bis deatb. Otbello begs of Lodovico, "Speak of me as I am. / Notbing
extenuate nor set down augbt in malice" (5.2.340-41). Tellingly, bis greatest
concem is bow be will be presented, betraying bis preoccupation witb unify-
ing bis body and bis social identity. He autbenticates tbe narrative tbat be
256 JENNIFER FEATHER

suggests—that he was one who loved "not wisely but too well" (5.2.342)—
by stabbing himself to which Lodovico responds "O bloody period"
(5.2.354) and Gratiano replies "All that's spoke is marred" (5.2.355). One
could understand Gratiano as exclaiming that the deaths of Desdemona and
Othello mar all the power of Othello's speech, but it seems at least as likely
that Gratiano indicts speech in general here, especially given Othello's wor-
ries about the distortion of his story. The "bloody period" ensures that Othel-
lo's identity is fixed in his actions. He uses a bloody deed to tie the narrative
of his identity to his physical person, just as he initially "confesses the vices
of his blood" bringing action and identity in line through blood.
He demonstrates this notion of identity construction early on when he arbi-
trates the conflict between Montano and Cassio. Upon seeing the uproar, he
admonishes Montano that, "My blood begins my safer guides to rule / And
passion, having my best judgment collied, / Assays to lead the way"
(2.3.201-3), suggesting precisely the split that lago does between "blood"
and will. However, his identity does not reside in these passions but in the
ability to rule them. This ability, not an essentialized notion of the passions,
separates Christians from barbarians. A hundred lines earlier he demands:

Are we tumed Tbrks? And to ourselves do that

Which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites?
For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl;
He that stirs next, to carve his own rage.
Holds his soul light: he dies upon his motion.
(2.3.166-70)

What separates the Turk from the Christian is not racial essence but a lack of
heroic values—allowing personal rage to interfere with social order. More-
over, in behaving like Turks, Cassio and Montano not only draw Othello's
wrath jeopardizing their physical life, they place their souls in jeopardy.
Again, Othello uses violence to make psychological truth—they will lose
themselves in behaving like barbarians—into physical reality—they will lose
their actual lives. His masculinity resides in his ability to govem the "blood"
that attempts to behave treasonously and rule his "safer guides." Othello not
only articulates his sense of identity but secures it by using violence to bring
physical and psychological realities together.
His murder of Desdemona too speaks of the unifying properties of bloody
action. Just before strangling Desdemona, Othello explains to himself the ur-
gency and inevitability of what he must do saying,

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul!

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars.
It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 257

And smooth as monumental alabaster:

Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
(5.2.1-6)

Here Othello refuses to cause a breach of Desdemona's corporeal integrity,

insisting on keeping her "blood" intact, yet the possibility of her betraying
more men demands her death. He wants to freeze her in a state of corporeal
integrity to prevent the unbearable fragmentation of identity implicit in her
supposed sexual perfidy.
This sexual perfidy is intimately connected to the notion of blood. The
blood that should serve as the basis of a coherent social identity, one in which
Desdemona would never commit such an infidelity, has actually caused Des-
demona, according to the fantasy that lago creates, to behave in direct opposi-
tion to her essential nature as defined by her social position. In fact, it has
been treasonous. The blood, then, rather than being the stable basis for social
position, is the uncontrollable essence of nature, making nature and social
structure unbearably incongment and fractured. By keeping her blood con-
tained, he does not, like the anatomist, search for a stable essence but keeps
her body both intact and filled with unifying blood. Rather than choosing to
reveal her essence, he uses her murder as a means of stabilizing her blood,
containing it within her corporeal integrity.
Though Iago's understanding may be more and more visible in
seventeenth-century texts, the older conceptions persist, and early modem
anatomists work out a compromise similar to the one Othello does. Perhaps
no better example exists than Andreas Vesalius and his English "borrowers."
While little original anatomical work is published in England before the six-
teenth century,'* several versions of Vesalius overseen by a Flemish engraver
named Thomas Lambrit (who used the pseudonym Thomas Geminus) appear
in 1544,1553, and 1559 respectively. The text, when it is in English, is drawn
not from Vesalius but from a fourteenth-century manuscript, itself a compila-
tion of several medieval anatomists. These works and the works of English
anatomists, such as Thomas Vicary whose Anatomy of the Bodie of Man
draws from the same fourteenth-century manuscript, present a conception of
the body and identity much like Othello's. Geminus's version of Vesalius
describes blood in much the same way Burton did, saying, "And by hyt [the
blood from the heart] are refreshed and quickened all the membres of the
bodye syth the spirite that is receyued in them is the instmment and treasure
of the virtue of the soule."'' Again, the blood is the source of the spirit which
not only nourishes the body but is "virtue of the soule" and thus, determines
identity. As in both Burton and Othello's conception, blood is responsible for
keeping the different parts of identity in harmony.
Othello's murder of Desdemona and his eventual suicide show blood serv-
ing a similar function, connecting the narrative of identity Othello produces
258 JENNIFER FEATHER

specifically to the body. Cassio immediately exclaims that but for the fact
that he believed Othello to be weaponless he would have expected such a
bloody end "For [Othello] was great of heart" (5.2.359). Cassio's expecta-
tions constmct Othello as a heroic figure, reinstating the integrity which is
central to his masculine identity. Because Othello is "great of heart," he pre-
fers to proclaim his integrity through his suicide than to preserve his physical
life. Cassio locates Othello's heroism in his heart, situating his identity in the
organ that purifies the blood with its unifying properties."" Thus, Cassio ex-
tols Othello's blood and remarks upon it as the source of a unified identity.
Violence connects Othello's narrative to his physical body, defining him as
the proud and honorable individual he is. However, this body is neither the
mechanistic body that Sawday locates in the work of William Harvey nor the
essentialized racial body that lago suggests but the body permeated by blood
and the spirits it produces. As we have seen time and again, Othello uses
violence to create an identity at once rooted in the body and non-
essentialized. This conception of identity provides a sense of pervasive integ-
rity but only through acts of violence.
Othello's actions in the end of the play unify word, deed, and social status,
knitting together the discrepancies which lago revealed to him. They are nei-
ther, as some suggest, the last gasp of a romantic heroism soon to be replaced
by a mercenary mercantilism, nor are they the projections of a racialist epis-
temology but a subtle negotiation between the two. Employing the early mod-
em conception of blood, Othello uses action to cement his and Desdemona's
identities, repairing the integrity breached in Desdemona's supposed actions,
in her "treason of the blood." Othello specifically describes Desdemona's
murder as a sacrifice (5.2.65), and I would suggest that his own suicide is a
sacrifice as well. His death, as he suggests of Desdemona's, will make the
cmcial and violent connection between body and identity. After Cassio's en-
comium, Lodovico reorders the scattered Venetian state by proclaiming the
social meaning of the dead bodies. He demands that lago "Look on the tragic
loading of this bed: / This is thy work" (5.2.361-62). unmistakably joining
Iago's deeds to the bodies themselves. He begs Gratiano to enforce justice
against lago, explicitly associating the bodies with Gratiano's goveming ac-
tions. The social order, disturbed by Desdemona's "treason," is restored
using the model Othello enacts. In this model, violence connects social iden-
tity and the body. Unlike an essentialist model that understands the body as
innately determining identity, Othello's understanding connects social iden-
tity and the body through bloody action. Thus, Othello's final actions, rather
than revealing his innate barbarism and the play's racialism, manifest one
solution to the tension between a mechanistic and a fluid identity. In fact,
these actions like the utterance that prefigures them are not atavistic but the
basis for restoring social order. Othello's anguished cry explains the neces-
sity of the violent actions of the end of the play. Rather than following Iago's
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 259

instruction, Othello uses martial violence and his polyvalent understanding

of blood to unify physical, social, and psychological bases for identity.

Notes
Previous versions of this article were presented at the October 2006 Ohio Valley
Shakespeare Conference (Marietta, OH) and at the April 2002 Symposium on Vio-
lence, Politics, and Culture in Early Modem Europe at the University of Mississippi
(Oxford, MS). I would like to thank the participants at each for their comments and
suggestions. I would also like to thank the members of the Mellon Workshop on issues
of embodiment at Brown University (2005-6) and the members of the Folger Shake-
speare Library Seminar on Early Modem Embodiment led by Valerie Traub for help-
ing develop the project. Finally, I would like to thank Coppélia Kahn and Michelle
Dowd for their careful reading of the many drafts of this article.
1. 3.3.454. All citations are taken from William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. E. A. J.
Honigmann (New York: Arden, 2001).
2. For a discussion of various iterations of this argument, see Virginia Vaughn,
Othello: A Contextual History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), esp.
68.
3. This reading contends that the pressures of living as a cultural and social mi-
nority in Venetian society drive Othello to revert to the stereotypical behavior to
which the Elizabethan mind thought he was predisposed. In other words, the strain of
Desdemona's infidelity causes his racial essence violently and visibly to emerge from
undemeath his composed exterior. Michael Neill has suggested that this type of read-
ing is, indeed, the "most common twentieth-century strategy" to deal with the issue
of race. Michael Neill, "Unproper Beds: Race, Adultery, and the Hideous in Othello,"
in Critical Essays on Shakespeare's Othello, ed. Anthony Gerard Barthélémy (New
York: Macmillan, 1994), 216-38, esp. 191 first printed in Shakespeare Quarterly 40
(1989): 383-412, esp. 393. In rejecting this narrative, I follow the work of Natasha
Korda who argues that such a conception "deñne[s] him as irremediably other."
Korda, "The Tragedy of the Handkerchief: Female Paraphernalia and the Properties
of Jealousy in Othello," in Shakespeare's Domestic Economies (Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, 2002), 129.
4. For the reliance of ideas of difference on humoral distinctions and the flexibil-
ity implicit in this system see Mary Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in
Early Modern Drama (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Daniel Vit-
kus, Tuming Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean 1570-1630
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Ania Loomba suggest that it was in fact the
problem of conversion that "catalysed the development of 'biological' ideas of race,"
suggesting that new, racialist discourses were created in response to the inadequacy
and instability of existing racial discourse Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 26. For further evidence of a "climatological
but non-essentializing discourse" of difference, see Carol Thomas Neely, "Hot
Blood: Estranging Mediterranean Bodies in Early Modern Medical and Dramatic
260 JENNIFER FEATHER

Texts" in Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modem Stage, eds. Stephanie
Moss and Kaara L. Peterson (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 55-68, esp. 58.
5. See, for example, Lara Bovilsky, Barbarous Play: Race on the English Renais-
sance Stage (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and Sujata Iyengar,
Shades of Difference (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). Wbile
Bovilsky insists that an idea tbat we can understand as racialization tbat later becomes
embedded in scientific racialism operates in tbe early modem period, Iyengar, follow-
ing Raymond Williams, belpfuUy distinguishes between tbe residual, dominant, and
emergent structures of feeling, arguing tbat a residual mytbology of color competes
witb an emergent mythology of race over the course of tbe sixteentb and seventeenth
centuries.
6. Jean Feedck, Strangers in Blood: Relocating Race in the Renaissance (Buffalo,
NY: University of Toronto Press, 2010), esp. 31.
7. Ian Smitb, Race and Rhetoric in the Renaissance: Barbarian Errors (New
York: Palgrave, 2009), esp. 130.
8. Tbe Oxford English Dictionary cites multiple meanings of the word "blood"
operating in the seventeenth century. Particularly frequent are references to blood as
"taking of life, manslaughter, murder, death" (Def. 3a), "The vital fluid; hence, tbe
vital principle, that upon wbich life depends; life" (Def. 4a), and "The supposed seat
of emotion, passion;. . . Passion, temper, mood, disposition; emphatically, bigb tem-
per, mettle; anger" (Def. 5). In addition, it bears the sense of familial kinship. How-
ever, the Oxford English Dictionary distinguishes between the definition of blood
that is "popularly treated as the typical part of the body wbich cbildren inberit from
tbeir parents and ancestors; hence that of parents and children, and of the members of
a family or race, is spoken of as identical, and as being distinct from that of other
families or races" (Def. 8) most popular in the nineteenth century and the notion of
blood as "Blood-relationsbip, and esp. parentage, lineage, descent" (Def. 9a) more
prevalent in tbe seventeenth century.
9. Botb Emily Bartels and Michael Neill suggest that lago is responsible for insti-
tuting a racialist epistemology. As Bartels explains, "It is lago and not tbe play itself
tbat attempts to fix the terms of difference, and Iago's terms not Othello's difference
that come under fire." Bartels, "Making More of the Moor: Aaron, Otbello, and Re-
naissance Refashionings of Race," Shakespeare Quarterly 41, no. 4 (Winter 1990):
433-54, esp. 448. Michael Neill, "'Mulattos,' 'Blacks,' and 'Indian Moors': Othello
and Early Modem Constructions of Human Difference," Shakespeare Quarterly 49,
no. 4 (Winter 1998), 361-74, esp. 362.
10. What follows is by no means an exhaustive list of discussions of race as calling
on an increasingly fixed idea of biology in Othello. However, it should serve to offer
some exemplary instances. Arthur A. Little, Jr., for instance, argues tbat
"Blackness... is an individual body or soul that creates and gives meaning to already
present cultural meanings." He points back to the stability of tbe body as a foundation
for cementing cultural meanings. Little, "'An Essence tbat's Not Seen': The Primal
Scene of Racism in Othello," Shakespeare Quarterly 44, no. 3 (Autumn 1993): 304-
24, esp. 322. Similarly, Karen Newman invokes tbe notion of "stock prejudices
against blacks" implying tbe existence of a relatively stable racial discourse. New-
man, " 'And wash the Ethiop white' : Femininity and the Monstrous in Othello, " Criti-
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 261

cal Essays in Shakespeare's Othello, ed. Gerard Anthony Barthélémy (New York :
G. K. Hall, 1994), 124-43, esp. 128. This discourse, which figures black men as
overly preoccupied with sex, is one that Anthony Barthélémy argues even representa-
tions of non-villainous Moors confirms. Barthélémy, "Ethiops Washed White: Moors
of the Non villainous Type," Critical Essays in Shakespeare's Othello, ed. Gerard An-
thony Barthélémy, (New York : G. K. Hall, 1994), 92-104. Kim Hall argues that the
use of the terminology of black and fair cannot be ignored as evidence of a racialized
discourse. As Hall puts it, "The language of faimess and darkness is always poten-
tially racialized." Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early
Modem England, (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1995), 261. In a similar vein,
Dympna Callaghan argues that "black skin is at once immutable and superficial,"
expressing a sense of racial essence, even if that essence is on the surface. Though
these critics are right to point out the burgeoning racial discourse, to impute this sense
to Othello himself or even to the broader Venetian community seems problematic.
11. See note 4.
12. For examples of the idea that Othello's occupation drives him violently to re-
store a world of absolutes, see Vaughn, Othello, 50 and C.F. Burgess, Shakespeare
Quarterly 26, no. 2 (Spring, 1975): 208-13.
13. Not all early modem medical texts operate with the same conception of the
body. In addition to a burgeoning discourse of the mechanistic body, both Galenic
and Paracelsan model compete in these texts. See Stephanie Moss, "Transformation
and Degeneration: The Paracelsan/Galenic Body in Othello," in Disease, Diagnosis,
and Cure on the Early Modem Stage, eds. Stephanie Moss and Kaara L. Peterson
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), 55-68, esp. 58.
14. Andreas Vesalius, Compendios a totius anatomie delineatio, aere exarata: per
Thomam Geminum (London: 1553), 15r. The ascription of this text to Vesalius is
somewhat misleading. Geminus copied plates from Vesalius's De Humani Corporis
Fabrica but appended a Fourteenth-century manuscript. See also page twenty six
above.
15. Quoted in Gail Kem Paster, The Body Embarrassed (Ithaca, NY: Comell Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 65.
16. Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. and trans. Floyd Dell and Paul
Jordan-Smith (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1927), 128-29.
17. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 127.
18. Ibid., 129.
19. For further discussion of this distinction, see John Sutton, Philosophy and
Memory Traces: Descartes to Connectionism (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), esp. 57.
20. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 540. In early modem medicine, a "simple" is
any medicine that is formed of a single constituent. See Oxford English Dictionary,
"Simple" (Def. 6).
21. For a further discussion of the importance of miscegenation in the play see
Newman, "And wash the Ethiop white."
22. For further explication of the analogy between commonwealth, individual
household, and individual health see Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society:
Gender and Class in Early Modern England (New York: Blackwell, 1988) and
262 JENNIFER FEATHER

Frances Dolan, Dangerous Familiars : Representations of Domestic Crime in

England, 1550-1700 (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1994).
23. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 65.
24. Ibid., 728.
25. For examples of this reading see Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge in Six
Plays of Shakespeare (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Mark Breitenb-
erg. Anxious Masculinities in Early Modem England (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1996), and David Hillman, Shakespeare's Entrails: Belief, Scepticism and
the Interior of the Body (New York: Palgrave, 2007), esp. 1-57. For its relationship to
Othello's interiorized sense of self see also, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Inwardness
and Theater in the English Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)
and Howard Marchitello, Narrative and Meaning in Early Modem England: Browne's
Skull and Other Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
26. Mark Rose, "Othello's Occupation: Shakespeare and the Romance of Chiv-
alry," English Literary Renaissance (Autumn 1985): 15, no. 3 293-311, esp. 305.
27. Ibid., 305.
28. Richard Sugg argues that anatomy, at least in its early forms, tends to make the
connection between body and soul literal rather than one of mere analogy. Richard
Sugg, Murder after Death: Literature andAnatmoy in Early Modem England (Ithaca,
NY: Comell University Press, 2007), 89.
29. For more on Othello's verbal acumen in relation to race see Ania Loomba,
"Shakespeare and Cultural Difference," Altemative Shakespeares, Vol. 2 (New York:
Routledge, 1996) 164-91, esp. 174.
30. "Spinster," like blood, is a polyvalent term in early modem England, denoting
altemately an occupation, a criminal category, or a sexual category. As an occupation,
spinning could not be the sole means of support, and hence, Iago's invective dispar-
ages not only Cassio's masculinity but also his professional stature. See Fiona Mc-
Neill, Poor Women in Shakespeare (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007),
esp. 31-34.
31. See, for instance. Paster, The Body Embarrassed , esp. 64-112 and Susanne
Scholz, Body Narratives: Writing the Nation and Fashioning the Subject in Early
Modem England (New York: St. Martin's, 2000), esp. 15-38.
32. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 655.
33. For a further discussion the split between mind and body circulating in early
modem medical texts see Sugg, Murder after Death, 130-159.
34. Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in
Renaissance Culture (New York: Routledge, 1996), 29.
35. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 29. Though William Harvey published "On
the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals" in 1628, most of the work for it was
completed in 1616. Gail Kem Paster describes the understanding that preceded Har-
vey saying that "In the conceptual linking of blood flow, both arterial and venous,
with neural transmission, blood, spirit, and sensation become nearly indistinguishable
in action and properties," indicating that blood was not merely the purveyor of nutri-
ment but the substance of identity. Gail Kem Paster, "Nervous Tension: Networks
of Blood and Spirit in the Early Modem Body" in The Body in Parts: Fantasies of
Corporeality in Early Modem Europe, eds. David Hillman and Carla Mazzio (New
York: Routledge, 1997), 107-25, esp. 113.
 "O BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD" 263

36. Michael Neill, ¡ssues of Death: Mortality and ¡dentity in English Renaissance
Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Patricia Parker, "Othello and
Hamlet: Dilation, Spying, and the 'Secret Place' of Woman," in Shakespeare Reread:
The Texts in New Contexts, ed. Russ MacDonald (Ithaca : Cornell University Press,
1994) 105-46.
37. Rose, "Othello's Occupation," 308.
38. For a discussion of English anatomical studies in the sixteenth century see
C. D. O'Malley and K. F. Russell, introduction to ¡ntroduction to Anatomy ¡532: A
Facsimile Reproduction with English Translation and an ¡ntróductory Essay on Ana-
tomical Studies in Tudor England, by David Edwardes (Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 1961), esp. 24.
39. Thomas Geminus: Compendiosa totius anatomie delineation A Facsimile of the
First English Edition of ¡553 in the Version of Nicholas Udall with an ¡ntroduction
by CD. O'Malley (London: Dawson's of Pall Mall, 1959), A.6.
40. Tellingly, Katharine Park points out the heart rather than the brain was the
locus of selfhood until the eighteenth century. Katharine Park, Secrets of Women:
Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York: Zone Books,
2006), 264. For the significance of the heart, see also William Slights, The Heart in
the Age of Shakespeare (New York: Cambridge, 2008).
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