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ABSTRACT
In Othello's pivotal act three, scene three, Othello twice accuses Iago of torturing him. Although Iago does not assault the general's body, this essay argues that Iago does subject Othello to a form of psychological torture. Accordingly, it examines the play in light of the historical circumstances surrounding torture's resurgence and application in early modern England. Drawing on the political philosophy of Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agamben, and their early modern interlocutors, this essay describes torture as the extralegal application of summary justice in exceptional settings, including hybrid military-domestic contexts such as the one invoked by Shakespeare's Cyprus. This contextual approach is paired with a careful reading of the play's sources, Giraldi Cinthio's "Un Capitano Moro" and Gasparo Contarini's The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, as well as a more recent source describing the methodology and aims of psychological torture, the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation Manual-a notorious handbook produced by the United States Central Intelligence Agency in 1963. This eclectic approach sheds new light on the cognitive mechanism whereby Iago "breaks" Othello, offering a darker interpretation of the play's portrayal of sovereignty and identity formation, which are described here in terms of coercion and forced conversion.
Othello appeared at a time in England 's history when torture had come to the fore in the country's homeland security politics, legal debates, and popular culture.1 At a pivotal moment in the play's famous "seduction" scene, Othello twice says that Iago tortures him: "thou hast set me on the rack!" (3.3.335); "If thou dost slander her and torture me, / Never pray more" (3.3.368- 69). This essay scrutinizes these declarations by assessing them not only on the basis of what happens in the play, but also through Shakespeare's adaptations of his sources and through the lens of the play's historical moment. Notably, in Giraldi Cinthio's "Un Capitano Moro," the source of Othello's plot, the Venetians physically torture the Moor: "The Signoria . . . with many tortures . . . sought to draw from him the truth" about why he murdered his wife, "a lady of their city" (388). In this version of the story, "no confession could be drawn from" (388) the Moor, who is exiled, and then killed, by the lady's family. Shakespeare transforms the...