Talk about getting hammered......just check out the laundry bill

                         
                             Cassio

"Is your Englishman so expert in his drinking?"
                             
                              Iago

"Why, he drinks you with facility your Dane dead
drunk; he sweats not to overthrow your Almain; he
gives your Hollander a vomit ere the next pottle can
be filled."

                                                                     Othello       (II, iii)


The Danes, Germans, and Dutch might beg to differ with Iago's assessment of English prowess in the tournaments of the tavern. But one thing is clear, and it's not Michael Cassio's brain: he's about to get roaring drunk, against his will and better judgement. He's also about to lose his job as Othello's right-hand man.  Iago is the instigator, the Vice of the medieval morality plays, an admirer of evil for its own sake. He's referred to as "honest" numerous times during the course of the play, yet he's anything but. Iago alone can be mentioned in the same foul breath as Shakespeare's odoriferous Richard III.

Strong drink has befuddled the brain of man since time out of mind, making him all the more receptive to the allurements of absurdity. Pictured above, in the collection of Agecroft Hall, is an English tin-glazed earthenware "fuddling cup," made in the seventeenth century, several decades after the death of Shakespeare. The three drinking vessels are connected by carefully aligned channels so that the intoxicating beverage within will spill onto the drinker's clothes if he fails to drink from each of the three vessels in the proper order.

Good for guffaws, no doubt. Shakespeare has Michael Cassio admit to being a quick drunk; but sobriety would have offered no guarantees in solving this particular riddle.

One traditional anecdote about the life of William Shakespeare is the unsubstantiated tale of how he left for the hereafter: he supposedly sat down in a tavern with fellow poets Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton and proceeded to drink himself into an oblivion that he never completely recovered from, falling ill and dying not long afterward. Perhaps he, like Cassio, did "well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment."   (II, iii)

Shakespeare's tragedy Othello will be performed at Agecroft Hall as part of the Richmond Shakespeare Festival 2013, with performances slated for July 11th through August 4th, Thursday through Sunday evenings, at 8:00 PM. By all means, come and enjoy the play, but you'll have to bring your own fuddling cup.