INTERPRETING A MARRIAGE

Othello begins not just with the elopement of Othello and Desdemona but with the readings imposed on that elopement by Iago and Brabantio. We know what they think of it before we ourselves have a clear view of what has happened; and what they see is an act of violation as shocking in its own way as what happens to Lavinia. Iago warns Brabantio that his house has been broken into: “Look to your house, your daughter and your bags! / Thieves, thieves!” (I.i.79). Brabantio's “How got she out?” (I.i.167) suggests that for Desdemona to have left the house at all is an outrage. Iago's order to Roderigo to raise the sort of clamor that is made “when by night and negligence the fire / Is spied in populous cities” (I.i.75–76) makes the elopement sound like a threat to the whole city. The stage picture confirms this sense of disruption, as Brabantio enters in his nightgown, accompanied by servants with torches, an old man dragged out of his bed at midnight. As the assault on Lavinia is also a Gothic assault on Rome, the attack on Brabantio's house seems linked with the political action: the Duke and Senators are also called up at night to deal with the impending Turkish attack on Cyprus. The Turks threaten a Venetian possession; Desdemona is a local girl carried off by an alien.