Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible as Mainstream Modern Midrash on Pride & Prejudice

Ellen Moody wrote:  “Reviewed by a polite reviewer in the Washington Post, by the time you get to the end you realize this is an awful concoction, calculated trash like pop substitutions which jar with imitations of Austen's language that make the prose style stilted:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/eligible-a-modern-retelling-of-pride-and-prejudice/2016/04/13/04147e3e-0183-11e6-9d36-33d198ea26c5_story.html     “

Ellen, I also would call Ron Charles’s review of Eligible (which actually consists of both a video clip and a text review, both of them excellent) polite, but I want to explain how. I see Charles as adopting an amusedly tolerant stance, via his zany Andy-Rooney-like stylings combined with astute literary insight. In this way, he politely and wittily gets across, in a gentlemanly way, that Sittenfeld doesn’t really succeed in channeling Austen. What Charles also demonstrates, is that he channels Austen very well, as he seems to capture the inspired juveniliac wackiness which never left Austen’s fiction, but she just tucked neatly just under the surface.

But, in fairness to Sittenfeld, she deserves considerable benefit of the doubt, because she has bravely and voluntarily put herself in the middle of the crosshairs of a few million wary rifles aimed at her novel by Janeites (like myself). We’re naturally skeptical of any other writer with the stones to adapt the most popular Austen novel—indeed, in 2016, arguably the most popular novel ever written. So I quickly read a few of the short opening chapters in Eligible, and I found Sittenfeld’s writing style to be reasonably light, bright and sparkling in its own right---nowhere near Austen’s, of course, in any of those categories, but it did not strike me as a jarring imitation, nor did it have the look of calculated trash.

More substantively, what became clear (and was not at all surprising) was that Sittenfeld (who is not a Janeite herself--more on that below) was not ambitious enough to attempt to capture the complex irony that oozes off every page of Austen’s fiction, especially P&P. Sittenfeld’s handling of point of view seems, at first blush, fairly conventional, and in particular it does not seem to derive anything from the deliberate blurring of the subjective reality of the heroine and the objective reality of the narrator, the free indirect discourse of which Austen was an ultimate master.

In short, then, upon very first impression, Eligible seems to be a good effort at a modern romcom novel which just happens to closely hew to the plot structure and characters of P&P.

Nor, apparently, did she seem to expose any subtextual insights into P&P, other than…..

 [SPOILERS AS TO ONE CHARACTER, ALREADY DISCUSSED IN REVIEWS I’VE READ]

….turning Wickham into a transgendered person. My guess is that this twist might have been inspired by Lydia’s vivid description of the transvestitism (which of course is not the same as transgender) of the militiaman Chamberlayne:

“…We dressed up Chamberlayne in woman's clothes on purpose to pass for a lady, only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked! When Denny, and Wickham, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, they did not know him in the least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs. Forster. I thought I should have died. And that made the men suspect something, and then they soon found out what was the matter."

I fear we’ll never know whether “they soon found out what was the matter” was JA’s way of referring to anything more than cross-dressing, but maybe Sittenfeld saw something in the text of P&P that I haven’t so far?

I base these (admittedly) snap judgments, not only on my browsing in Sittenfeld’s novel and Charles’s review, but also upon the following as well:

I read a sampling of online reviews, including this withering, savage pan, courtesy of Ursula LeGuin (who seems to be spot-on in her condemnation, but who adopts a curmudgeonly, censorious tone which sounds unnervingly--and surely unintentionally--similar to the tone of Lady Catherine de Bourgh!):

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/21/eligible-curtist-sittenfeld-review-modern-retelling-pride-and-prejudice-novel?CMP=twt_gu

Here’s the heart of LeGuin’s complaint with Eligible:     “The five Bennet sisters and their parents speak to one another only in this style: peevish and self-assertive, relentlessly striving for wit through mere insult. Any differentiation of character is hard to perceive through the artificiality and monotony of the dialogue. Lydia and Kitty can be shown as more disagreeable than Liz and Jane only by the slightly greater coarseness of their language. If I were tempted to feel any sympathy for any of them – for Mary, perhaps, the plain, bookish, feminist one – I would be forestalled by the author…”

That will be one point I will focus on, if I do wind up reading Eligible – I would have no problem with Sittenfeld having the Bennet girls speak saltily like many women in 2013, if she otherwise succeeds in differentiating their characters.

Then I read Sittenfeld’s recent article in support of her novel’s release here:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/20/jane-austen-feminist-pride-prejudice-curtis-sittenfeld?CMP=twt_gu    “Was Jane Austen a feminist? The answer is in her stories”

Here’s one comment Sittenfeld made that stood out for me: “That Austen herself never married (despite a proposal she accepted before turning it down a day later) is treated as such a noteworthy fact that it seems to be the exception that proves the rule.”

I think it was a missed opportunity for Sittenfeld not to have dug into Austen’s bio more deeply, and to have realized that Jane Austen, at least after her early twenties if not all along, really did not want to be married to a man. Sittenfeld also clearly had no idea that Austen alluded to Wollstonecraft’s writings in all her novels, and that (as I see it) Austen was more radical in her feminism than Wollstonecraft!

Then I listened to the interview of Sittenfeld by NPR’s Diane Rehm that aired this morning:

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2016-04-21/curtis-sittenfeld-eligible

The interview will seem thin in Austenian substance to Janeites, but was still fun to listen to. As you will gather from it, Sittenfeld speaks of Janeites as a group she herself does not belong to, nor did she give any sign of having read intensively on Jane Austen’s biography.

And there I will close for now, but will probably followup at some point in the future.

[Added 5:09 pm PST]

This is a good, thorough interview with Sittenfeld that covers a lot of bases:

https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/curtis-sittenfeld-pride-and-prejudice-then-now/?platform=hootsuite

 

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Juliet's Nurse & Mrs. Bennet: Shakespeare’s & Austen’s matronly “sisters” in vexed quiverings

5 ½ years ago, I wrote the following passing comment about resonance I noticed between Romeo & Juliet and Pride & Prejudice: 

“It is interesting to think about Juliet's parents pressuring her to marry Paris, the way Mrs. Bennet pressures Lizzy to marry Mr. Collins; and Darcy and Lizzy, like Romeo & Juliet, meeting at a big dance, but [then the contrast of] how JA depicts Lizzy and Darcy being mutually attracted, but fighting it from the start, [whereas Romeo & Juliet immediately fall for each other].”

At that time, I searched, and was very surprised to find only one Austen scholar who had ever recognized any sort of veiled allusion to R&J in P&P—Park Honan, who in his 1989 Austen bio, wrote:

“Darcy's visible disgust with a Meryton society lacking in grace, culture and variety has deeply allied him with her at first. 'Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance,' Mercutio had said in Romeo and Juliet. Mr. Bingley's first words to Darcy echo the Shakespearean scene: "Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance."…Darcy, like Romeo, is a self-obsessed spectator, and Bingley is like Mercutio the reveler…”

Then, in 2014, while posting about the allusion to Romeo & Juliet that I detected in Persuasion, I noted, in passing, yet another Darcy-Romeo parallel:

“I have often posted about JA’s sexual puns on the word “pen”, and I am also far from the first to point to the phallic resonance of Wentworth’s “pen” which drops, and the debate about who holds the “pen”, etc., in Persuasion, and also, e.g., in Darcy’s preference to “mend” his “own pen”, despite Caroline’s offer to do it for him. Well, R&J also has an amazing sexual pun on “pen” in a similar masturbatory sense when we first hear [from Montague], in Act 1, Scene 1, about [his son] Romeo pining away for Rosaline before he meets Juliet:

Many a morning hath he there been seen,
With tears augmenting the fresh morning dew.
Adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs;
But all so soon as the all-cheering sun
Should in the furthest east begin to draw
The shady curtains from Aurora's bed,
Away from the light steals home my heavy son,

AND PRIVATE IN HIS CHAMBER PENS HIMSELF
Shuts up his windows, locks far daylight out
And makes himself an artificial night:
Black and portentous must this humour prove,
Unless good counsel may the cause remove.

As I look back today at the above with the benefit of 5 ½ years of hindsight, I now add another strong parallel I see between Shakespeare’s tragic lovers and Austen’s romantic lovers: that the relationships between the two couples both ignite and progress in defiance of the strong opposition of powerful family members (Juliet’s parents and Lady Catherine, respectively).

And I also notice an irony in the history of English literature, which is that, in 2016, Elizabeth and Darcy, and Romeo and Juliet, are regularly mentioned in the same breath, as both being at the top of the general reading public’s list of the most romantic fictional couples. And yet, other than Honan’s brief catch, and my own short contributions, above, despite diligent searching the past 2 days, I can’t find, in the past two centuries of Austen criticism, any other detections of JA, in 1812-3, writing P&P with Shakespeare’s great early romantic tragedy in mind as one of her many literary allusive sources.

I mention all this because the other day I fortuitously happened upon yet another striking and specific textual parallel between R&J and P&P --- one which is so obvious, that it has me slapping my head “Duh!” for not noticing it sooner, given that I’ve studied both texts very carefully over the years. It is a very specific parallel between Juliet’s Nurse and Mrs. Bennet----two characters who, when you think about it, could not be more similar, right? --- a textual parallel which, I claim, cannot possibly have arisen by chance. Let’s see what you think.

Please first read the following passage, in which the Nurse engages in sharp, but playful, repartee with the Capulet household servant Peter, immediately after Mercutio has just mocked the Nurse’s appearance while engaging in very pointed sexual repartee:

NURSE   An a' [i.e., Mercutio] speak any thing against me, I'll take him down, an a' were lustier than he is, and twenty such Jacks; and if I cannot, I'll find those that shall. Scurvy knave! I am none of his flirt-gills; I am none of his skains-mates. And thou must stand by too, and suffer every knave to use me at his pleasure?

PETER  I saw no man use you a pleasure; if I had, my weapon should quickly have been out, I warrant you: I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side.

NURSE  Now, afore God, I AM SO VEXED, THAT EVERY PART ABOUT ME QUIVERS. Scurvy knave! …

Surely every Janeite reading the ALL CAPS portion of the Nurse’s last line in that excerpt immediately made the connection to Mrs. Bennet’s agitated statements to Elizabeth and Jane about Lydia’s elopement with Wickham, right after the former has just arrived back at Longbourn from Pemberley with the Gardiners:

“…And, above all, keep Mr. Bennet from fighting. Tell him what a dreadful state I am in, that I am frighted out of my wits—and have such TREMBLINGS, such FLUTTERINGS, all over me—such SPASMS in my side and pains in my head, and such BEATINGS at heart, that I can get no rest by night nor by day….”

Notice not only the striking parallelism of language between the Nurse’s and Mrs. Bennet’s speeches, but also the striking parallelism of context on not one, but seven different points---i.e., both of these speeches are spoken by (1) an older woman  (2) who is a “mother” to the heroine, an older woman who (3) unrestrainedly and graphically (4) complains about her nervous psychosomatic symptoms, and then, as part of the conversation, (5) the topic of an older man close to that older woman (6) fighting a duel with (7) a smooth-talking young buck, is raised.

And I’d be remiss not to add that “vexed” is not only the verb which Juliet’s Nurse uses to describe her emotions which accompany her “quiverings”, it just happens to be Mrs. Bennet’s favorite verb to describe her own feelings during all those memorable moments when her “nerves” pay her a visit, as we see in the following four passages (the last one being Jane Austen’s narrator describing Mrs. Bennet’s feelings):

"Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in VEXING me. You have no compassion for my poor NERVES."

“…First of all, he asked Miss Lucas. I was so VEXED to see him stand up with her! “

"I beg you would not put it into Lizzy's head to be VEXED by his ill-treatment, for he is such a disagreeable man, that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him….”

She was now in an IRRITATION as violent from delight, as she had ever been FIDGETY from alarm and VEXATION.  

Now, of course, I acknowledge that there is also an enormous contrast here---even a reversal--between these two passages, Shakespeare’s and Austen’s. The R&J passage involves the Nurse’s comic raillery at an early stage of the story, when there’s no imminent threat of the tragedy to come when (another parallel to R&J in P&P) two impetuous young lovers scheme to get out of town and live together elsewhere in defiance of community mores. Conversely, in P&P, Mrs. Bennet is seriously upset at the elopement, which portends social tragedy for the Bennet family, as to which Mr. Collins (inadvertently parodying Juliet’s suicide) observes “The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this.”  

Based on all of those parallels, I believe there can be no reasonable doubt that Jane Austen meant to pointedly remind her readers of Juliet’s inimitable Nurse when she wrote that memorable dialog for the equally inimitable Mrs. Bennet. In that regard, other Austen scholars, including myself, have previously noticed and described the subliminal allusive presence of Juliet’s Nurse in the psyches of both Mrs. Norris and Miss Bates—both of them sharing the Nurse’s garrulous verbosity and intrusiveness—but for some odd reason, nobody before me the other day has noticed that Mrs. Bennet is actually the most direct descendant of Juliet’s Nurse.

And I also wonder whether Jane Austen also meant for us to notice the following Miss-Bingley-like sexual innuendoes by Mercutio to the lovesick Romeo….

I conjure thee by Rosaline's BRIGHT EYES,
By her high forehead and her scarlet lip,
By her fine foot, straight leg and QUIVERING THIGH  (Shakespeare’s wink at the Nurse’s quiverings)
And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,
That in thy likeness thou appear to us!

…when we repeatedly hear in P&P about Darcy’s fascination with Elizabeth’s fine, brightened eyes.

I conclude by pointing out that the allusion to Romeo & Juliet which is so powerfully tagged in Mrs. Bennet’s nervous vexations, takes on much, much greater significance still, when viewed through the lens of the dark shadow story of P&P I’ve been sketching out during the past decade. Most of all, there’s a troubling parallel between Romeo and the dark Darcy of the shadow story of P&P, which, as I initially noted, is winked at in their sharing both an initial reluctance to dance at big balls, as well as a penchant for solitary “mending” of their respective “pens”.

In “Wherefore Art Thou Tereu? Juliet and the Legacy of Rape” in Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 127-156, Robert N. Watson and Stephen Dickey persuasively spell out the numerous literary allusions which Shakespeare slyly wove into the character of Romeo, which all converge on the very disturbing and anti-romantic image of Romeo as a predatory rapist instead of lovestruck young man.

I see Elizabeth’s married life with Darcy as a parody of Juliet’s tragic death, because it will be no walk in the park for her to be married to the dark Darcy of the shadow story, who does not actually repent and reform after she rejects his first proposal, but merely pretends to do so, because he is a man who cannot take no for an answer, and who does not hesitate to use his considerable resources to stage an extended experience for Elizabeth during the latter half of P&P, which destroys her (healthy) resistance to him.

But if you find that a door you don’t wish to walk through with me today, then I hope at least that you will still enjoy the comic pleasure of thinking about Mrs. Bennet and Juliet’s Nurse, as Austen’s and Shakespeare’s “sisters” in vexed quiverings!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode  on Twitter

Even more on Iago disguised as Othello's Clown

 Laurie, let me start by thanking you very much for your considered, respectful, and probing disagreements with my (admittedly radical and unprecedented) claim that Iago is disguised as the Clown in 3.1 and 3.4 of Othello. It’s exactly the kind of reply I hope to receive, whether in agreement or disagreement, because I must sharpen my argument to keep it viable.

Laurie wrote: “I recall that something very like this was posted in response to Larry Weiss. I admit at the time that I was in transit from Australia to New Orleans for SAA, so I skimmed it, but my memory served me well in thinking that you had not yet addressed 3.1, Arnie”

Laurie, as you discerned, in my early reply to Larry, I wrote “3.4” when I meant to write “3.1”, and I only became aware of the typo when reading, and responding to, your previous reply to me---hence my (silent) correction of that typo in that reply. I apologize for any confusion, and I’m glad you went on to reply to my claim as I originally intended it.

That confusion has an inadvertent silver lining, as it suggests to me another line of rebuttal to your critique of my argument re Iago’s wearing a disguise as a Clown that Iago could readily remove and re-don in a very short time period.  I.e., while it appears that the situation in 3.4 is different from that in 3.1 in terms of time lapse, upon examination it is not materially different at all, as I’ll now explain:

On the one hand, in 3.4 there’s clearly plenty of time between the Clown’s exit and Iago’s entrance, to allow Iago to discreetly remove and stow away his disguise as Clown. I imagine that disguise to have consisted of a face-concealing beard---like the one Iago specifically directs Roderigo to wear while in Cyprus----together with some appropriate loose-fitting Clown garb, which  Iago could’ve worn right on top of his usual clothing. Such a disguise would have been very easily and quickly removed, and would also have provided an additional benefit—it would’ve concealed Iago’s actual trim soldier’s body shape, making his build appear huskier. And the rest of Iago’s disguise, such as change of voice and gait, would obviously have been instantaneously shed.

In 3.1, on the other hand, it might seem at first glance that there’s not enough time for Iago to pull off the same quick-change, when we read this sequence:

CASSIO   Prithee, keep up thy quillets. There's a poor piece of gold for thee: if the gentlewoman that attends the general's wife be stirring, tell her there's one Cassio entreats her a little favour of speech:
wilt thou do this?

CLOWN   She is stirring, sir: if she will stir hither, I shall seem to notify unto her.

CASSIO   Do, good my friend.

Exit CLOWN

Enter IAGO

In happy time, Iago.

IAGO   You have not been a-bed, then?

CASSIO  

Why, no; the day had broke
Before we parted. I have made bold, Iago,
To send in to your wife: my suit to her
Is, that she will to virtuous Desdemona
Procure me some access.

It’s easy to take the path of least resistance, and read “Exit Clown  Enter Iago”, as if only a few seconds elapse between these two stage events. However, I suggest that would be an assumption based on no actual evidence. Going further, if we study the above passage, I say it’s more plausible and realistic if there’s a gap of about 30 seconds between that exit and entry. Why?

On the upper side, a gap of more than 30 seconds without spoken dialog or significant action would begin to feel like dead air on the radio—but for 30 seconds, I think it would be dramatically quite effective if, after the Clown enters the castle, we watch Cassio nervously pacing back and forth a half dozen times. Cassio would not expect Emilia to appear instantaneously, because it would take time minutes for the Clown to get to her, to speak to her, and then for her to make her way down to the castle entrance. But Cassio would be very agitated, and every second would feel like a minute to him. That would make good theater, don’t you think? The absence of dialog for 30 seconds would work perfectly.

And then, when Iago suddenly shows up after only 30 seconds, instead of a few minutes, Cassio would be pleasantly surprised, which neatly explains why he says “In happy time, Iago”. This would translate today into “Even quicker than I expected, and just the guy I needed to talk to as well.”

And, in the same vein, there’s nothing in Iago’s “You have not been a-bed, then?” that suggests that Iago, who presumably  emerged from Othello’s castle the same way the Clown entered, has encountered the Clown, or that suggests that Iago has any idea that Cassio was going to be there when he walked outside. Yet if Iago and the Clown had bumped into each other, you’d think that the Clown would’ve immediately passed Cassio’s message on to Iago, to in turn pass on to Iago’s own wife, Emilia, right?

And, getting to my main point, if 30 seconds have elapsed between the Clown’s exit and Iago’s entrance, that gives Iago plenty of time to shed his Clown disguise and stow it away safely in a dark hall corner near the castle entrance, where he can quickly get at it again (which he will need to do so after he leaves Othello’s room at the castle at the end of 3.3). And so Iago can then bolster his disguise as the Clown by speaking to Cassio as if he did not bump into the (imaginary) Clown in the hall inside.

Laurie also wrote: “You begin the revised comment with “What if…,” which always concerns me when it is offered for an explanation of what is supposed to be true for the play (in this case, that the Clown’s true identity is Iago). The moment we have to supplement the explicit content of the play with a “what if” explanation to cover what isn’t there, we are moving away from the play, I suggest. “

As I think I’ve already made clear in the first part of this reply, above, when I wrote “What if”, I wasn’t suggesting a departure from what is written in the text of the play, so much as I’m suggesting a departure from reading the stage directions too passively, and assuming Shakespeare always wrote them to be as complete and clear as possible.

I’d also like to answer by presenting my specific claim in larger context.

First, apropos my claim that it’s a normal part of Shakespearean stagecraft for performers to have to answer questions like “how much time to leave between exits and entrances”, correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t believe it was common for Shakespeare to micromanage so closely, as to specify time lapses between the exit of one character followed without intervening event by the exit of another character. My recollection is that Shakespeare did not do this, not because it is unimportant, but because he expected the performer to examine the context of the scene, and to determine what sort of time lapse would make sense. Just as the greatest musical composers left a great deal to the interpretive imagination of the performer in their musical notations.

Second, think about all the careful analysis that any actor must engage in, in order to determine how to deliver lines – again, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe there are many speeches in the Shakespeare canon in which he micromanages by, e.g., telling actors which lines are meant to be delivered ironically, and which are to be delivered straight.  Why is that silence any different from the silence I see regarding time lapses and other similar issues pertaining to entrances and exits?

While it’s beyond the scope of this thread of posts, my research over the past decade has repeatedly suggested to me that, in some very significant aspects, Shakespeare deliberately wrote his stage directions with “significant silences”. By this I mean, he didn’t explicitly say there was an implicit gap in those directions to be filled in, but he was (like Iago at the end of Othello) going “to never speak word” about that, one way or the other. That leaves it up to the reader of the play to discern what is implicit.

This is the very same methodology that Iago often used, where, like the devil he was, he was happy to avoid outright lying if he could achieve his deceptions by letting his victims make their own false assumptions about what he was telling them. And it’s also the same methodology as is employed by many other Shakespearean characters, like Viola, who, while still in disguise as a man, speaks truthfully but cryptically to Olivia and Duke Orsino about her gender.

In other words, I see myself as extending an old and rich strand of Shakespearean criticism that has seen Shakespeare engaging in metafictional games with his readers. By this I mean, Shakespeare conceived the relationship between himself as playwright, and his readers, as involving the same Machiavellian  manipulations of point of view as are employed by a number of his most memorable characters. And there is no character more that way than Iago, so therefore it is particularly fitting that Shakespeare should engage in such subtle misleading in the way Iago is presented to the audience.

In short, then, I attribute to Shakespeare a didactic motive in leaving silences and gaps in his play texts which invite the sort of inquiry I’ve made in this case, and which provide a great payoff in discovering major, surprising aspects of his greatest characters.

Laurie also wrote: “Yet let us go further. The explanation goes on to say that upon the direction to “exit,” the actor playing the Clown/Iago would not leave the stage, but would still be seen “at the extreme side of the stage, behind some sort of wall …” – I’d be curious to find out where else in the early modern dramatic canon a stage direction to “exit” was expected to be a direction to not leave the stage. This would seem to be a significant departure from the practice of entrances and exits as they have been understood. Even where there have been debates about where an entrance or exit is to be made (Fitzpatrick vs Gurr and Ichikawa, for example), I’ve never heard it said that an exit was actually not an exit at all. I’m also unsure that “some sort of wall” might be built to erect on the Globe stage, or the Blackfriars’ stage, or at court, for the sole purpose of allowing this switch to be made on-stage: does the play offer other situations in which this set element would be used?”

I would guess that there have been such stagings and usage of props, and I ask anyone else reading this with knowledge of stage history (that I lack) to chime in if you know of any.

But let’s assume for purposes of argument that you are correct, Laurie, that my suggestion regarding an exit not being a full exit vis a vis the audience would be unprecedented in the staging of Othello. That doesn’t make it incorrect, it may just mean that no one who has previously staged Othello has read the stage directions of the Clown’s exit followed by Iago’s entrance from the metafictional perspective I put forward, above. I.e., perhaps my interpretation has always been implicit in the text, but has been hiding patiently in plain sight for four centuries, waiting to be recognized.

But, as I think about it further, my interpretation does not depend upon an exit of the Clown being a partial exit – I can also readily imagine, instead, that Iago (disguised as the Clown) makes his exit, then  discards the disguise entirely offstage, and then enters within 30 seconds, appearing as himself. I believe that the actor playing Iago/Clown could easily do things gesturally that would clue the audience into that disguise. For example (and I imagine an experienced actor could think of several ways of pulling this off), Iago, while disguised as the Clown, might have walked with a limp (a fitting idea, given Othello’s later imagining he sees Iago’s hooves!) in order to further distance the Clown’s appearance from Iago’s. But then, as the Clown exits, and Cassio is not looking at him, he might instantly stop limping and give a significant look at the audience as he walks off. 

But….I still prefer the idea of the exit that is not entirely an exit, because I still believe it would be more dramatic.  Speaking of which….

Laurie also wrote: “I’m sorry, Arnie, but I don’t think that the pause required for the shedding of a disguise (since nothing else happens on stage while this is supposed to take place) lends itself to an electrifying dramatic moment, but that’s a difference of opinion.”

Yes we do disagree, But I guess neither of us will really know unless and until my version is enacted before a real audience, and we observe their reaction!  ;)

Laurie also wrote: “Of more interpretive importance, I think, is the suggestion that a costume or at least mask and prop change constitutes the “same sort of duping” Iago inflicts on others. I simply don’t see this as anything like the sort of duping to which he subjects other characters in the play, where his arsenal is routinely verbal.”

But you forget---Iago deploys Roderigo in physical disguise as his secret agent! Doesn’t that totally rebut your point, since it shows that Iago’s “toolkit” of deception does include physical disguise? And then, it’s a distinction without a difference between Roderigo in disguise at Iago’s direction, and Iago in disguise at his own direction.

And even if it weren’t for that, I’d still aver that knowing Iago to be a master of deception in verbal ways  does make it more likely that he’d also achieve deception in nonverbal ways as well.

Laurie also wrote: “The final concern I have relates to the added comment in response to my query: “it’s a giant hint to a creative director” = first, this suggests Shakespeare foresaw the advent of the director as a focus for creative oversight of a production….”

And I reply: that’s another distinction without a difference! In every staging of a Shakespeare play, going back to his own, someone, whether Shakespeare himself, or a director, or an actor, has to decide how to make performance questions like this one. So whether you want to think of it as a hint to a director, or to an actor, or to whomever else you like, it’s a hint. Sometimes silences can be deafening.

Laurie concluded with: “As I say, then, I’m yet to be convinced.”

If you will favor me with another substantive reply, addressing my further arguments, above, I will be honored. Perhaps I will nudge you a step or two closer to convincing.   ;)

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter