The word 'slubber' appears twice in Shakespeare in metaphorical contexts (Mev. 2.8.39, Oth. 1.3.227) while a literal instance of 'beslubber' appears once (1H4 2.310). Unprepossessing as it may be in sound and meaning, the word holds a strong clue to the question how Shakespeare thought about the consummation of the marriage of Othello and Desdemona.
It takes a little detour to get to that point. The successful lover falls asleep in the arms of the beloved, as in the famous story in the Iliad, where Hera tricks Zeus into an afternoon rendezvous. After they have made love and he has fallen asleep, Poseidon helps the Achaeans, which was Hera's plan all along.
A variant of this story pattern underlies the story on which Shakespeare based his Merchant of Venice. A young man by the name Giannetto goes on a voyage and against the advice of his friends sails into the harbor of the Lady of Belmont. She is famous for challenging her visitors to a wager: she will marry the man who can stay awake in her bed but whoever falls asleep before possessing her will be stripped of all his possessions and sent away.
Like his predecessors, Giannetto falls asleep and is sent away. He returns with goods and another ship and falls asleep again. When he returns a third time, a servant takes pity on him and advises him not to drink. He follows the advice, stays awake, and to his own and the Lady's delight possesses her.
Shakespeare turns the Circe of this story into the eminently respectable Portia, "nothing undervalued / To Cato's daughter, Brutus' Portia" (Mev. 1.1.165-166), and he transforms the triple attempt by a single suitor into the separate attempts of three different suitors. Some remnants of the old story remain, however. There is just a touch of Circe in Portia's instruction to put "a deep glass of Rhenish wine on the contrary casket" for the "young German"(Mev. 1.2.96, 85). More importantly, Shakespeare retains in a different guise the motif of deferred consummation. His Bassanio has to wait, if only a little. The news of Antonio's arrest intervenes between Bassanio's guessing right and the consummation of the wedding. Portia insists on their getting married, but defers the consummation:
First go with me to church and call me wife,
And then away to Venice to your friend;
For never shall you lie by Portia's side
With an unquiet soul. (Mev.
3.2.303-306)
And she repeats the point emphatically when she says "Come away! / For you shall hence upon your wedding day" (Mev. 3.2.310-311).
This motif of deferred consummation serves to prevent premature closure (we are only in the beginning of the third act), but it also introduces into the play as a minor theme the rejected major theme of the source story.
The word 'slubber' occurs in The Merchant of Venice when Salerio tells the ominous story of Antonio's and Bassanio's farewell. The latter had promised to return quickly from Belmont, but Antonio replied:
"Do
not so,
39 [Slubber] not business for
my sake, Bassanio,
40
But stay the very riping of the time;
41
And for the Jew's bond which he hath of me,
42
Let it not enter in your mind of love.
For the retrospective reader, the slubbered business clearly refers to the interrupted wedding. In Othello the word occurs in a very similar narrative context when in the Council scene of the first act the Duke says:
Othello, the
fortitude of the place is
223
best known to you; and though we have there a substitute
224
of most allow'd sufficiency, yet opinion, a
225
sovereign mistress of effects, throws a more
226 safer voice on you. You must
therefore be content to
227 slubber the gloss of your new
fortunes with this more
228
stubborn and boist'rous expedition. (Oth. 1.3.222.228)
Othello has been married to Desdemona, but the gloss of this new fortune is "slubbered" by a sudden emergency.
As soon as one thinks of Othello as a tragic Giannetto, whose consummation is forever deferred, the structure of the entire drama reveals itself as a massive contrapuntal variation on the theme that Shakespeare had largely excluded from his source story in The Merchant of Venice. The sleepyhead Giannetto reappears in Othello as the insomniac suitor who never finds rest in the arms of his beloved. The counterpoint works systematically and in unexpected ways. Thus the entry of Giannetto into the harbor of the Lady of Belmont, a prominent narrative motif in the short story, reappears almost as a hieros gamos or cosmic wedding in Cassio's prayer for the safe arrival of Othello:
Great Jove, Othello guard,
And swell his sail within thine own powerful breath,
That he may bless this bay with his tall ship,
Make love's quick pants in Desdemona's arms,
Give renewe'd fire to our extincted spirits,
And bring all Cyprus comfort (Oth. 2.1.77-82)
Even Circe's cup makes a displaced appearance in the hands of the lover Cassio, in whom it becomes a source of rude awakening rather than sleep.
To see Othello as a tragedy about the triple failure of the lover to find sleep in the arms of the beloved lets one sidestep a determinate answer to the question whether the marriage of Othello and Desdemona was ever consummated. Nelson (1983) and Bradshaw (1992) have made very persuasive arguments to the effect that the marriage was never consummated. But readers may find it unsatisfactory or distasteful to seek a yes/no answer to the question. On the other hand, there is little doubt that the motif of deferred consummation, inherited from the Merchant of Venice, is greatly elaborated in Othello. The odd use of 'slubber' is a peculiarly precise piece of evidence how Shakespeare associated the versions of the motif.