Eponymous: Perfect “Title” and the Emblazoned Name in Othello

This article examines the cultural history of the name in early modern England, focusing in particular on the laudatory surname, anonymity, and un-naming in Othello. Reading across generic boundaries, Shakespeare’s play text is aligned with John Ferne’s 1586 treatise, The Blazon of Gentrie; Robert Tofte’s 1615 annotated translation, The Blazon of Jealousy; and Sir Edward Dering’s seventeenth-century alteration of a thirteenth-century heraldic roll of arms, the “Dering Roll.” A masterwork of semiotic freeplay, Othello presents a broadly diffused inquiry into the potential for destruction embedded in the name’s vulnerable manipulability. Through a reading of the play’s engagement with the form of the blazon, described by Ferne as a means to “open up and spread out” the subject’s identity, the analysis explores how deep-seated anxieties surrounding the early modern name combine with acts of misrepresentation to appropriate, subvert, or utterly destroy that specialized sign’s considerable cultural power.