ABSTRACT
Supporters of the view that Shakespeare is propounding something like the traditional problem of other minds have sometimes argued that he finesses the essential hiddenness of mind by the device of soliloquy: but this strategy is a mistake. All communication, including soliloquy, carries with it the possibility of deception; but that possibility, on the stage as in real life, does not undermine the fundamental and predominant success of ‘mind reading’. The chapter examines Desdemona’s famous words ‘I saw Othello’s visage in his mind’, and argues that the odd, inverted expression (we would expect it to go the other way round) supports the interpretation of Shakespeare that has been defended so far. Othello and Desdemona begin the play by seeing into each other’s minds. The trial scene in Act 1 exhibits the visibility of mind in behaviour in an interesting way, and there is an instructive comparison to be made with the similar trial scene in Act 1 of Kleist’s play Käthchen von Heilbronn, where some of the motifs of Othello are explored and extended. In Othello, although the possibility that Othello has bewitched Desdemona is explicitly raised by Brabantio, her statement is simply believed; the possibility that her words cannot be trusted because she is bewitched is not raised. That possibility is raised in the corresponding scene of Käthchen, but it is dispelled by observation of Käthchen under close questioning. In other words, the thought is that what informs us whether a piece of behaviour is genuine or supposititious is more behaviour. Sooner or later, the mind will reveal itself in behaviour.
