Summary Read the following text carefully.

The Brazilians have a jewel for all the world to envy – a veritable Kohinoor among writers of fiction – Machado de Assis. More than any other people, those of the English-speaking world envy Brazil. This writer who so constantly used Shakespeare’s model – so neatly fused into his own stories, the characters, the plots, and ideas of Shakespeare – that they may flatter themselves that only they can truly appreciate the great Brazilian. Since Machado himself referred many of his recurring ideas to Shakespeare, I have tried to trace such references to their source.

Machado’s first novel appeared in 1872. Twenty-eight years later, he published his masterpiece, Dom Casmurro – perhaps the finest of all American novels. In both books, the reader witnesses this struggle of love and jealousy for possession of a man's heart, with love going down to tardy but complete defeat. Jealousy never seized to fascinate Machado de Assis. Throughout his works, in articles as well as fiction, he often paused to stick a leisurely scalpel into some new manifestation of jealousy. Jealousy has a fat part in seven of his nine novels; the plots of 10 stories turn upon the ugly passion – though in seven of the latter, to be sure, it receives an ironic, if not rudely comic, treatment.

Shakespeare's Othello is brought into the argument of twenty-eight stories, plays, and articles. Othello is not the only play of Shakespeare that Machado de Assis hitched to his starry wagon. Romeo and Juliet serves as a plot for one novel and two short pieces. The character of Hamlet has a way of creeping in – even into his Othelloes. Ophelia, Jaques, Caliban, Lady Macbeth, and others turn up miraculously in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. But let us stay for the present with Othello and Dom Casmurro.

Machado de Assis turned over the narration of Dom Casmurro to a figment of his imagination – it's hero Bento Santiago, a 57 years old recluse living in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Santiago calls himself an “Othello”, but his disengaging air of frankness, calm impartiality and reasonableness more nearly resembles the bluff style of “honest Iago” than that of the impassioned Othello.

It is immediately apparent that Santiago is a subtle man, and a lawyer into the bargain, whose words the reader will do well to weigh carefully. It is he who discloses that his story is that of Othello, but with a certain important difference – his Desdemona is guilty.

There are other less important differences. Our Brazilian Othello, at the beginning of his tale, is not a man of mature years, a proud dusky warrior in strange, rich dress, who had seen men with their heads growing beneath their shoulders. He is a 15 year old boy given to daydreams that perhaps equaled in color and vividness the marvels the Moorish Othello knew. There is nothing hard and warlike about Santiago – he is even cowardly: witness the position in which we first find him, hiding behind a door. He was Christian and Catholic, with an aversion to bloodshed, the only child of a wealthy widow, and tied to his mothers’ apron strings.

His Desdemona is the girl next door. Capitolina, or Capitú for short, only 14 but tall and well developed for her age – in fact, she was a little taller than her hero. She is not a highborn Venetian, but a rather poor girl; and, though like the other Desdemona she gazed upon her beauty in a mirror, it was a cheap little mirror bought for fifteen cents.

Shakespeare’s Michael Cassio is Santiago’s classmate Ezequiel Escobar. Like Cassio, Escobar is a great “mathematician”, handsome, courteous, ingratiating. Like Cassio, he has a hand in Santiago's wooing, urged on the love affair between the young lovers, and acted as a go-between for their letters.

The Iago of the story, according to our hero, is José Dias, a trusted dependent of the Santiago household. Like his Shakespearean prototype, he devotes his energies to giving freely of his advice: he has no other regular occupation. Santiago says that he does it “just to make trouble”, and this was the opinion of Cousin Justina, a poor relative, who acts as companion to Santiago's mother.

José Dias’s ties begins to weave the plot, in which we identify the Othello in Santiago. He not only implants the seeds of love in Bento by his “informing”; he also implants the suspicion that Capitú would entrap and deceive him, with the remark about her “gypsy eyes”. While Bento is in the seminary, although he goes home on many occasions, José Dias reports to him that, in his absence, Capitú is gay and carefee as usual, and that she will probably “hook” one of the young nobles in the neighbourhood and marry him. The thought that Capitú is happy while he is sad and lonesome, and that she is flirting with some handsome noble, turns Santiago’s vague feeling of suspicion into definite jealousy. From this point on, Othello-Santiago takes over the role of Iago as well, and manipulates his own handkerchiefs to fan his own jealous passion.

Years later, Bentinho eventually marries Capitú, but spends a lifetime doubting her faithfulness. In their son’s face, Ezequiel, he claims to only see Escobar’s features. He ends up banishing his wife and son to Switzerland, where Capitú, after several years, dies alone, away from her family. Like Desdemona, she dies praising her Othello. She had spoken much of Bento to their son, praised him as “the finest man in the world and the most worthy of being loved”.

As for Santiago, the conclusion to which he gradually leads the reader is that the deceit perpetrated against him by his dearly loved wife and dearly loved friend wrought upon him and changed him from the kind loving, ingenious Bento into the hard, cruel and cynical Dom Casmurro. Santiago tells us that the big difference between his story and Othello’s is that Capitú is guilty. But there is a more obvious difference, one that arises perhaps from Santiago’s own nature. The “accessory” – the “handkerchief of Desdemona” – in Dom Casmurro is the resemblance, or fancied resemblance, of Santiago’s son, Ezequiel, to Escobar. Santiago’s putative Iago, José Dias, had abandoned the role long before this resemblance made its appearance. It is Santiago who discovers this resemblance; it is Santiago who manipulates this “handkerchief”. Machado’s formula for dramatic action could be read as the following: the jealous soul of Othello-Santiago, the perfidy of Iago-Santiago, and the guilt (or innocence) of Desdemona-Capitú – these are the principal elements of the action. The drama exists because it is in the natures, passions, and spiritual condition of Othello-Santiago, Iago-Santiago, and Desdemona-Capitú; the resemblance between Ezequiel and Escobar does not control these three characters, from whose passions the action flows.