Relating Things to the State

From “honest” to “dilate,” from “what's the matter?” to “My husband?” Othello has been shown to be home to a number of aurally and thematically resonant expressions, expressions that ramify in significance even as they impress themselves reiteratively upon the ear, contributing to what G. B. Shaw, writing of Othello, termed “the splendor of its word music” (135). ¹ One is reminded of such expressions by the collocation whose occurrence, and recurrence, draw the attention of this essay, namely, “the state.” On the face of it, to be sure, the interpretative possibilities annunciated by “the state” seem modest. Lacking the ironic power that builds in the numerous variations we hear on the word “honest,” and less susceptible to the revealing paranoumasic dissonances that Patricia Parker has heard in “delate” and “dilate,” references to “the state” seem to be what their contexts suggest: collectively an ellipsis for Venice the city-state, metonyms for the Venetian polity, for Venice in its governing authority and power. Indeed, context would seem to render it difficult to hear in the phrase a reference to “state” as “condition”; we do not hear anyone complain that there is something rotten in, or with, the state of Venice. Nor is the word “state” paired off against its etymological and phonological kin, “estate,” which does not occur in the play. Instead, with the long vowel of its iamb giving it insinuatingly easy entree to the rhythms and sound of both prose and verse, ² references to “the state” make the domain and claims of public affairs audible and rather talismanic presences in the opening act of the play and in its closing minutes: the claims of “the state” set the geographical agenda of the play; the recollection of service done “the state” brings the play to its “bloody period”; the intent to “relate” what has happened to “the state” brings the play to its smoothly rhyming close.