http://www.clydefitchreport.com/?

p=5216

Hereticʼs Foundation XVIII: Goats and

Monkeys or Why did the author of
Shakespeare visit the small town of
Bassano?

Monday, December 14, 2009

By John Hudson, 
darkladyplayers@aol.com


Special to the Clyde Fitch Report

Nearly 400 years after Shakespeare’s death, his strange

expression about goats and monkeys as images of lust
continue to draw attention. The Milwaukee Shakespeare
company even chose, in forming a new group out of the ashes
of the defunct one, to use it as their name. But where does this
strange image come from? It appears in Othello both as a curse
but also as a kind of metaphor in Iago’s speech in Act 3, Scene
3, which is worth quoting in full:

What shall I say? Where’s satisfaction?
It is impossible you

should see this,
Were they as prime as goats, as hot as
monkeys,
As salt as wolves in pride, and fools as gross
As
ignorance made drunk. But yet, I say,
If imputation and strong
circumstances,
Which lead directly to the door of Truth,
Will give
you satisfaction, you may have’t. (III.iii.404-411)

Neither the Arden nor the New Variorum editions of

Shakespeare have anything helpful to say about where this
imagery comes from or what might conceivably link these
peculiar concepts of goats, monkeys, salt, drunken ignorance
or a “door of Truth.” But I do want to draw your attention to a
brilliant, certainly obscure piece of research by Dr. Roger Prior,
formerly of Belfast University. It appeared, unfortunately, in the
Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies, published by the University of
Malta, which means it is almost impossible to get through
interlibrary loan and even of the eight U.S. libraries that carry
the journal, not all have the 2008 volume in which it appears.

Prior’s work concerns the small Italian town of Bassano, north

of Venice. In the main square, there was an apothecary known
as “the Moor,” after the large sign of a moor’s head that hung
outside. There was also another apothecary in the square,
which until 1591 was run by a man named Giovanni Otello.
Several other members of the Otello family lived in the town
and two of them, both notaries, ordered pictures from Jacopo
Bassano, the town’s most famous artist.

A smaller square in the town was known as the Piazza of Salt.

Prominent in this square was the rather dilapidated building
depicted in the black and white photograph above. Covering
the front was a remarkable fresco. It could only be properly
seen in the early morning when there was good light and all
the window shutters were closed. When opened, these
shutters, known as gelosie (literally jealousies), would have
blocked out much of the artwork. The fresco was painted in
1539 by Bassano. Until 1583, the house was owned by the
philosopher Zuanne Corno, an ambassador to the Venetian
senate, whose title was the Count Palentine and was known for
writing a sonnet about weeping. His surname, Corno, meant
“Mr. Horns,” the Elizabethan image of cuckoldry. His son-in-
law Zanetto, a salt merchant, operated his shop out of one of
the ground floor storefronts.

The fresco is divided into several bands. At the top is a series

of animals, with a prominent sheep. Next to it, a large goat
underneath which there is seated a monkey. (The theme
reflects the New Testament warning that people will be divided
into sheep and goats.) Roughly underneath this monkey is a
large painting of a naked woman — Truth — who stands
between two of the arched windows. She can only be seen, of
course, when the shutters are closed; at other times, the
shutters form a door and cover her over. To the left of Truth is
another large allegorical figure, with two faces and a snake
around her arm, signifying Prudence. Finally, beneath Truth is
a painting of the Drunkenness of Noah, and to the left, the
daughters of Lot after their escape from Sodom.

The connections between Othello and the town of Bassano

begin, therefore, with the character of Othello, who supposedly
uses drugs and medicines to seduce Desdemona and can be
traced to Otello’s apothecary in the main square.

Iago’s speech, meanwhile, suggests the author of Othello had

actually seen this fresco and associates it with the theme of
cuckoldry that dominates the play. As if moving vertically down
the fresco, Iago’s account begins with the goat and the
monkey, then it refers to the figure of Truth as being covered
with the shutter doors, or “jealousies.” The salt refers to the
salt shop on the ground floor and “ignorance made drunk”
refers to the drunken Lot having sex with his daughters and to
the drunken, naked Noah. The author’s interest in this fresco
— a Biblical allegory, in which Truth is concealed by jealousies
— is compatible with the other Biblical allegory in the play.

The problem, of course, is that if he ever went to Italy at all,

why would the man from Stratford visit the small Italian town
of Bassano, which was not on the usual tourist trail? It makes
much more sense — as indicated in my last column — that the
author of the play was Amelia Bassano Lanier. She would have
had every reason to visit her family hometown. Indeed, three of
her cousins — the sons of Anthony Bassano — took a leave of
absence from their jobs in the recorder troupe from September
1593 to March 1594, which normally meant they would have
traveled abroad. In my view, their companion on this journey
was their first cousin Amelia, and it was during this trip that
she developed the firsthand knowledge of Italy that she later
incorporated into a dozen of the plays.

John Hudson is a strategic consultant who specializes in

new industry models and has helped create several
telecoms and Internet companies. He has recently been
consulting to a leading think tank on the future of the
theater industry and is pioneering an innovative
Shakespeare theory, as dramaturge to the Dark Lady
Players. This fall he is Artist in Residence at Eastern
Connecticut State University. He has degrees in Theater
and Shakespeare, in Management, and in Social Science.