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Spirit and body become estranged through the dramatic deaths of Shakespeare’s characters in The Merchant of Venice and its thematic descendant Othello. Scholars of the latter play have recognized the central role of gender, but neglect to follow the trajectory of these plays from unstable sexual identity to consequent spirit-body dissonance. According to Phyllis Rackin’s studies of Elizabethan ideology, both foreign origins and desire for women jeopardized masculinity. As an alien living in Venetian society, Shylock the Jew (created in the 1590s) prefigures the more developed, central character of Othello the Moor (created between 1601-03). Both characters are destroyed, Shylock in soul, Othello in soul and body, because they fail to conform to the masculine-feminine spiritual dichotomy. They represent Anglican England’s struggle to escape the spiritual parentage of the nation’s Catholic past. Rackin also notes that Christian ontology, in agreement with Aristotelian metaphysics, masculinized spirit in contrast to feminized flesh. Like “virgin” landscapes awaiting the planting of a colonial standard, bodies were codified as feminine placeholders for masculine souls to possess. Material objects often serve the same passive function: as Shylock and others around him fumble their marriage rings, so Othello misidentifies his handkerchief as proof of fidelity and displaces his sexual security onto it as if transposing his soul into another “body.” The more dominant the soul or body, the more fully it gendered the individual’s existence. Cross-dressing on Elizabethan stages and the manners of discourse further destabilize gender within these plays. The most compelling sign of spirit-body gender disruption, however, is death—a device of wordplay meaning both loss of life and sexual orgasm to Shakespeare’s audiences. In death spiritual and physical, Shylock and Othello are forever sundered from the gender balance of soul and body.
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as part of a class
Faculty Involvement
Brandie Siegfried
“To Die Upon a Kiss”: Spirit-Body Gender Duality in Two Shakespeare Plays
Spirit and body become estranged through the dramatic deaths of Shakespeare’s characters in The Merchant of Venice and its thematic descendant Othello. Scholars of the latter play have recognized the central role of gender, but neglect to follow the trajectory of these plays from unstable sexual identity to consequent spirit-body dissonance. According to Phyllis Rackin’s studies of Elizabethan ideology, both foreign origins and desire for women jeopardized masculinity. As an alien living in Venetian society, Shylock the Jew (created in the 1590s) prefigures the more developed, central character of Othello the Moor (created between 1601-03). Both characters are destroyed, Shylock in soul, Othello in soul and body, because they fail to conform to the masculine-feminine spiritual dichotomy. They represent Anglican England’s struggle to escape the spiritual parentage of the nation’s Catholic past. Rackin also notes that Christian ontology, in agreement with Aristotelian metaphysics, masculinized spirit in contrast to feminized flesh. Like “virgin” landscapes awaiting the planting of a colonial standard, bodies were codified as feminine placeholders for masculine souls to possess. Material objects often serve the same passive function: as Shylock and others around him fumble their marriage rings, so Othello misidentifies his handkerchief as proof of fidelity and displaces his sexual security onto it as if transposing his soul into another “body.” The more dominant the soul or body, the more fully it gendered the individual’s existence. Cross-dressing on Elizabethan stages and the manners of discourse further destabilize gender within these plays. The most compelling sign of spirit-body gender disruption, however, is death—a device of wordplay meaning both loss of life and sexual orgasm to Shakespeare’s audiences. In death spiritual and physical, Shylock and Othello are forever sundered from the gender balance of soul and body.