What good is Shakespeare to soldiers and sailors? A lot of good.

Shakespeare can be inspirational. Our departmental SEAL, an LT and a former student of mine, tells of quoting, or at least echoing, the famous St. Crispin's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V to his fellow SEALs as they were about to disembark in the Middle East.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.

This has been quoted often to soldiers waiting to go into battle, and probably always effectively. What group of determined, shivering, fierce men waiting to do a dirty and possibly fatal job that needed doing can have failed to take courage from the notion of a “band of brothers”?

Sometimes the quoting continues from the text, though the specificity of the situation in Shakespeare counts against its effectiveness as motivation with non-English troops:

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

But Shakespeare has more than inspiration for soldiers and sailors. He has warnings. Some of these are to be found in a work that might not seem quite so obvious a choice as the source of this famous “band of brothers” speech: The Tragedy of Othello.

Oh yes, you say, the jealousy play. “The green-eyed monster.” But also a play, as I teach it anyway, about some dangers intrinsic in the military “band of brothers.” (The poet Keats wrote movingly about Shakespeare's uncanny ability to articulate both sides of a situation at varying times and in varying characters, what Keats called his “negative capability.”)

Othello is a hired gun in an age and place where that carried no negative connotation. He's a “Moor” from southern Spain or North Africa—it's unclear how dark he is—hired as an Admiral by the maritime city-state of Venice. More to the point, he's a man's man, who's spent his whole life humping the boonies with the guys. As he puts in:

Since these arms of mine had seven years' pith [strength],
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
Their dearest action in the tented field;
And little of this great world can I speak
More than pertains to feats of broils and battle.

Nine months ago, he's telling us, he came to Venice. Its inhabitants are described as “super-subtle”; Othello is aware that he lacks their refinements, and it makes him insecure. He's a fish out of water, and his water is the military. A source of Othello's later misinterpretation of what's going on (or rather, what isn't going on) between his wife, also a Venetian, and Cassio (whom he's gone and made XO, much to the fury of the next in line, Iago), is that he misinterprets the elaborate politeness rituals of these city-dwellers as being inappropriately lewd. No one else sees anything wrong with the way Cassio plays elaborate word games with Desdemona, Othello's wife, or holds her hand—much as in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a kiss-the-hand and a click of the heels was the way a well-bred officer greeted a lady. But Iago, out to destroy Othello, assures him it is inappropriate, something only lovers would engage in. Othello, in his ignorance of Venetian ways and his eagerness to believe someone who plays upon his insecurities by evoking the language of the military, believes Iago. (Iago points out that Cassio, who's too good looking for his own good, has no battle experience.)

Othello seems scared stiff at the fact that he's not in the tented field, but in Venice, among strangers. Perhaps they're even a bit foppish; their best men are described as “wealthy curled darlings.” Worse, he's suddenly married—to a woman. He's never dealt with women before. He's eager to have Iago explain them to him. According to Iago, they're all carnal desires, lust and nothing more. Othello is horrified.

Predictably, this marriage was rash: they've eloped, much to her father's fury. It's all happened so quickly Othello himself doesn't seem to believe his good fortune, or that the marriage can last. Iago points out to him that Desdemona has deceived her father to elope with Othello, and suggests that for that reason she's deceiving him. To Othello, it sounds convincing. If the married Iago says women are like that, they are.

It's consistent that, as Shakespeare makes clear, Desdemona was the instigator of all this, not Othello. Othello used to come by and tell her father war stories: they were drinking buddies, we might say. The daughter liked his stories too. He'd never have been forward enough to proposition her. She has to do it, albeit indirectly. Desdemona tells Othello that if he has a friend who can tell stories like his, she could really fall for him. As Othello recounts, she says that “If I had a friend that loved her,/ I should but teach him how to tell my story, / And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake.”

When given the choice between trusting the diabolical Iago, a warrior with many kills under his belt, or his new wife Desdemona, the Venetian, Othello doesn't hesitate. He goes with what his officer says: soldiers don't lie. They're men, and you have to trust them. Othello has so bought into the “band of brothers” notion that he clutches like a drowning man at Iago's version of things. Desdemona's betrayal in, as Othello believes, sleeping with the officer Cassio is greater than that of his XO, who of course would only be getting a little on the side.

Here's the lesson for the military: the reason Iago achieves Othello's destruction so easily is that Othello is uncomfortable with the civilian world, women in general, or indeed anything but the “tented field.” In fact his wife has been faithful, and his by now de-facto XO Iago (who has managed to discredit Cassio) unfaithful. For Othello, brought up on the “band of brothers” mentality, that's just too big a switch to contemplate. He smothers his wife and kills himself in remorse when Iago's villainy is uncovered.

Othello is a cautionary fable about fleeing the outside world for the warmth of the military's band of brothers who never, Othello thinks, lie to each other. It's also a fable about too-great credence in what we call belief, thinking that the way things seem to you have to be the way they are. (More on this in a later column.) Othello the man is morally innocent: Iago's wife calls him “dull”.

Othello the play is about the dangers of too-great innocence. Learn to question. People you're used to aren't necessarily right. The conclusions you want to draw from what you see aren't always the right ones. If those aren't useful lessons for soldiers and sailors—or for that matter anybody—I don't know what are.