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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.2297  Wednesday, 29 December 1999.

From:           Clifford Stetner <cstetner@liu.edu>
Date:           Thursday, 23 Dec 1999 12:38:08 -0500
Subject: 10.2268 Re: Iago's Name
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.2268 Re: Iago's Name

Martin Meuler's suggestion that:

<snip>  The three suitors of Portia, Morocco, Bassanio, and Arragon,
return
>as the suitors of Desdemona: Othello, Cassio, and Roderigo: the
>distribution of
>'r', 's' and 'o' marks the pattern of  exotic hero, hometown boy, and fool.

confirms my suspicion that the two ss's in the name Bassanio are a
reference to the Earl of Essex, the quintessential Elizabethan hometown
boy; my further suspicion that the B...o at the name's extremes are a
reference to Giordano Bruno and that he is a representative of
Anglicanism in a contest against Islam and Catholicism (the play is not
really about Jews at all) will, however, require other support.

Clifford

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