Opening Scenes in Othello

The opening scene of a play is arguably the most important, for it sets the tone for all that is to follow and creates the proper atmosphere, begins the themes, and draws the audience into the interplay that follows. The opening scene in Othello introduces the characters and the situation, evokes the desire on the part of Iago for revenge, and foreshadows much of what is to come. Different film versions of the play treat this scene in different ways, but each seems to recognize that the scene itself sets a tone. This means that each film uses the opening scene to indicate what sort of treatment the play will receive thereafter. This is evident in the recently revived film from 1952 by Orson Welles and in the 1965.

In Othello, race is an issue from the first in much the way it would be today. Othello is an important general and so is revered and admired, but at the same time there is resentment because he is a Moor and resentment because he has married a white woman. This fact underlies much of the action of the play even when it is not mentioned directly, but race plays a divisive role just the same. The sexual nature of much of the resentment many feel toward powerful black men like Othello is apparent in the way Iago uses racism as a goad to cause others to do his bidding, as when he calls up to Brabantio in the first scene,

Your heart is burst, you have lost half your soul;

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram

Is tupping your white ewe (I.i.97-99).

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cumstance seems fitted to a ruler, but it also has a strong sense of the tragic, as if this death brought great sorrow and great suffering to the kingdom as a whole. Additionally, Welles suggests that there has been a villain in this death as Iago is dragged forward by solders and placed in a cage, which is then raised above the throng, the curved walls behind the cage suggesting a deep pit. The whole scene has a sense of the medieval, with the stark black-and-white photography, the stone walls, the armored soldiers, and the black-robed monks. There is no dialogue or spoken sound at all--the scene takes place as if in a masque, creating a strong atmosphere leading to the telling of the story showing how this final scene came to pass. As the film moves into the story proper, it also diverges from the text with an introductory narration telling how Desdemona has fallen in love with Othello, how she fled her father's house in the middle of the night, and introducing Iago and Roderigo as we find them in the street leading to Brabantio's house. Much of the dialogue in the first scene is delivered in shadow so that we do not see directly who is speaking and instead are left to follow these two and pick up what they say as we might

Category: Literature - O