I have always felt that I have never read a more terrible exposure of human weakness - of universal human weakness - than the last great speech of Othello. After quoting Othello 's valedictory utterance, Eliot went further to say: What Othello seems to me to be doing in making this speech is cheering himself up. He is endeavouring to escape reality, he has ceased to think about Desdemona, and is thinking about himself ... Othello succeeds in turning himself into a pathetic figure, by adopting an aesthetic rather than a moral attitude, dramatising himself against his environment. He takes in the spectator, but the human motive is primarily to take in himself. I do not believe that nay writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare (1951, 130). Perhaps with this in mind, A. L. Rowse in Shakespeare 's Globe considered Othello an ass or a beast of burden like the cow that is notorious for its stupidity. Indeed Othello manifests "bovarysme" (narcissism or self-love) as a human weakness the white people - particularly Iago and Desdemona 's father who calls him a black ram - refuse to tolerate. The main reason is because it always underlies his relationships, activities, and value judgements. More than other Shakespearian characters such as Caliban (anagram of cannibal) and Aaron, the alienated Moor of Venice touched Eliot 's imagination and intellect before his graduation from Harvard University. At the same