A Fury in the Words Love and Embarrassment in Shakespeare's Venice [Hardcover]

Shakespeares two Venetian plays are dominated by the discourse of embarrassment. The Merchant of Venice is a comedy of embarrassment, and Othello is a tragedy of embarrassment. This nomenclature is admittedly anachronistic, because the term embarrassment didnt enter the language until the late seventeenth century.

To embarrass is to make someone feel awkward or uncomfortable, humiliated or ashamed. Such feelings may respond to specific acts of criticism, blame, or accusation. To embarrass is literally to embar: to put up a barrier or deny access. The bar of embarrassment may be raised by unpleasant experiences. It may also be raised when people are denied access to things, persons, and states of being they desire or to which they feel entitled.

The Venetian plays represent embarrassment not merely as a condition but as a weapon and as the wound the weapon inflicts. Characters in The Merchant of Venice and Othello devote their energies to embarrassing one another. But even when the weapon is sheathed, it makes its presence felt, as when Desdemona means to praise Othello and express her love for him: I saw Othellos visage in his mind (1.3.253). This suggests, among other things, that she didnt see it in his face.

The great benefit of Berger's juxtaposition of 'Merchant' and 'Othello' is to highlight the contrast between Portia-Bassanio and Othello-Desdemona relationships.

The energy, penetration, and inventiveness of Bergers thought in
this book are astonishing. Embarrasment has rarely seemed so
dangerous a thing. By myriad directions and indirections he leads the
reader back into the surprise and the strangeness of the Venetian
plays, and of Shakespeares mind at large. A masterwork.

A Fury in the Words shows Bergers sophisticated conceptual framework and intensive close readings in their most lucid, accessible, and human form. Bergers analysis takes us slowly, step by step, deep into the inner logic of the charal3A