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And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand,
Cry, 'O Sweet creature!' and then kiss me hard.
As if he plucked up kisses by the roots
That grew upon my lips; and then laid his leg
Over my thigh, and sighed and kissed . . .
The passionate couple described above are not Anthony and Cleopatra or Hermia and Lysander, but Cassio and Iago (Othello, III.iii.425-29). In his film of Verdi's opera version of the play (1986), Zeffirelli superimposes lago's recounting of this incident to Othello with an image of the naked, handsome body of the sleeping Cassio who somnambulantly mouths lago's sung words. Out of Cassio's body comes lago's voice. This juxtapositioning of male voices parallels the juxtapositioning of male bodies so that the homoerotic overtones of the passage are purposefully and pointedly underscored by the film. The post-dubbing of the film, both as a product of the Italian cinema and as an opera, allowed for this use of verbal-visual montage. The homoerotic image of Cassio's recumbent body emphasizes his comparatively androgynous nature. The blond hair of the actor playing Cassio, Prince Urbano Barberini, is intended to be read in a similar manner, in stark contrast to Othello's masculine and dominant darkness. In his Autobiography, Zeffirelli specifically associates the prince's blondness with that of the actress playing Desdemona, the soprano Katia Ricciarelli (335). Zeffirelli's interpretation here is not amiss, as the dramatic structure of Shakespeare's play is little more than a homoerotic web of disrupted male bonds and jealous tensions into which the unsuspecting Desdemona innocently intrudes. After all, it is Iago, not Desdemona, whom Othello "loves not wisely, but too well" (V.ii.431).
For the better part of four centuries, the same Shakespearean scholars who have praised the bard for his almost universal understanding of human psychology have been intent on straightjacketing his concept of human sexuality into a limited and conformist heterosexual polarity. There is, quite simply, more in heaven and earth, as well as in Shakespeare, than is dreamt of in this simple-minded homophobic philosophy, as recent gender deconstructive readings of such plays as The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing and particularly Twelfth Night have indicated.1 Shakespeare's theatre far from champions homosexuality as a cause, however, and when...