of evil plotted by Iago.
Othello does not recognize the omen of the storm: "If after every tempest come such calms/ May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!" (Othello, Act II, Scene 1, 183-184). Othello here believes that he is safe in Desdemona's arms, but he does not see that Iago will undermine his serenity, playing to his own distrust and jealousy. Morally, Othello fails to see that the external dangers of weather disturbances are omens, and that the greater danger is his own lack of trusting love for Desdemona. As he is misled by the nature of the storm, he will be misled by the external trappings of Iago's plotting.
Later, Othello calls on heaven and its powers to strike Iago: "Are there no stones in heaven/ But what serves for the thunder?--Precious villain!" (Othello, Act V, Scene 11, 242-243).
Othello fails to recognize his own evil, the dark force within himself that made it possible for Iago to work his evil ways in the first place. He does not recognize that he has called the symbolic stones of thunder from heaven upon himself through the fatal flaw of his jealousy.
The weather disturbances in Othello, then, are meant to signify evil at work --- in Iago, and in Othello's own love-poor heart and soul.
In King Lear, we find similar uses by Shakespeare of the weather and its violent disturbances to symbolize both the moral flaws of the King as well as the dramatic shifts in the movement of the play and the fall of the major character.
Gloucester looks with fear upon the significance of "These late eclipses in the sun and moon" which "portend no good to us" (King Lear, Act I, Scene 11, 106-107).
Edmund immediately pounces on this "astrological determinism" and points out that he is a fool who believes that we are pawns of the stars and the weather: "This is the excel
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