Othello, also titled The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice, is a tragic play written by William Shakespeare in 1603 (as accepted by most scholars). Iago hates that he must play an innocent underling in his own plot, but at the same time he realizes that the easiest method to achieve his goals is to hide his true intentions under a cloak of innocence. May fall to match you with her country forms, Ay, let her rot, and perish, and be calm to-night; for, she shall not live. For the play's earliest readers the horrific image of an excised heart displayed outside the body and thus vulnerable to predation by carrion eaters--an image not yet blunted by familiarity--must have been particularly disturbing. Othello: Essay Topics The general's … At same time, Othello troubles attempts to construct its female characters as proto-feminist icons. His low self-esteem led him to believe in Desdemona's betrayal, but his fierce warrior conceit will force him to make sure she pays dearly for her transgression. Lie with her? However, it also unleashes a series of animal images that are part of his wider project of dehumanizing both Othello and Desdemona. Although marriage looks at first like a way for Desdemona to secure both her passionate love for Othello and a measure of independence from her father, the play is clear that she is exchanging obligation to her father for duty to her husband. Abcarian, Richard, and Marvin Klotz, eds. He then says “Put out the light, and then put out the light” (1124), trying to give himself the resolve to literally extinguish the room's light before figuratively extinguishing Desdemona's life. He is in a new city with different customs. Both Othello and Iago use many of the same literary devices and much of the same figurative language to express not only their opinions of those around them, but also their general conceptions of the workings of the universe on a more spiritual level. The intensity of the drama is heightened because all the minor characters and events are designed to highlight the protagonists and their actions. 1Othello is perhaps Shakespeare's most unsettling play.
After she is dead, he will be free to love his idealistic image of Desdemona without worry: References Montanto, whom Othello replaces as Venice's highest ranking representative in Cyprus, uses the epithet "the Moor," but he also refers to Othello by name, and his descriptions of his replacement emphasize Othello's effectiveness as a military commander.
Iago continuously makes comments about how hell is superior to heaven. Rolfe, William J. This association of the heart as a signifier of the self with domestic labor supports Iago's attack on the traditional model of service that he blames for Cassio's promotion at his expense. Othello figuratively dehumanizes not only himself but also Desdemona, leaving her unnamed, a "thing"--a mere possession of her husband, like all married women under early modern English law--and reifying her imagined role as adulteress by transforming her into a room or a building whose dark corners house illicit behavior inadvertently "kept," that is, maintained, by Othello. No, my heart is turn'd to stone. New Haven: Yale UP, 1947.
These first readers may also have been attuned to the disruptive politics of Iago's metonymic image with its substitution of the heart--the organ most closely linked in the period with private desire--for the livery badge customarily displayed on the sleeve of the household servant as a sign of his submission to the will of a wealthy master. At the same time, it's among the earliest literary works dealing with race and racism. closes with Iago giving a soliloquy introducing his plan to make Othello lose faith in his wife. Theatrical convention teaches us to expect the elaboration of plans for political rebellion or perhaps even murder from these conspirators, but in this too we are surprised as we overhear only gossip and the bitter whining of thwarted ambition.
Like his titular designation "the Moor of Venice," Othello's closing images link his life and person--his deeds, his hand, his eyes, his tears--both to Venice and to the non-Christian, non-white world beyond its boundaries.
And even Desdemona, unquestionably a victim of Iago's malicious scheming and then of her husband's murderous brutality, is not an entirely sympathetic character for many modern readers, who find in her commitment to marriage and her meekness in the face of violence signs of weakness rather than virtue. That the play's liveliest representatives of womanliness are brutally murdered by their husbands, that the institution of marriage fails rather than protects them, and that the Venetian state is either unable or unwilling to stop the violence are fictional realities at the heart of the tragedy of Othello; that they continue to find analogues in the lives of real women and men reinforces the importance of the difficult conversations they prompt. . This speech is concluded with the very Iago-like statement “this sorrow's heavenly,/ It strikes where it doth love” (1125). The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, For she had eyes, and chose me. Contact Us
Predictably, wordplay as a marker of the instability of language is often associated with Iago, for whom multiplicity of meaning and ambiguity of interpretation represent disruptive opportunity. Of her own clime, complexion, and degree. To say my wife is fair, feeds well, loves company. The Venetian institution of marriage proves similarly problematic for women. Lie.OTHELLO. Read more . Iago's suggestion of the infidelity of Desdemona provides just the excuse Othello needs to justify the destruction of the wife he believes cannot truly love him. weak man, a mere puppet in the hands of lago? . Othello allows himself to be influenced by Iago, and allows Iago to bring out his most evil characteristics. The theatre his had shares in, The Globe, staged many of his plays from 1598. . 6If the shape and pace of Othello's narrative create profoundly unsettling effects for readers and audiences, the play's subject matter and thematic preoccupations are another source of productive discomfort. Robert Greene's Selimus (1594), for example, stages the rise to power of Selim I, emphasizing his excessive ambition, his greed, and the glee with which he celebrates his vicious betrayals as he murders his brothers in order to become Sultan (see Contextual Materials: Selimus). Privacy and Cookie Policy A prolific writer of plays and poems, Shakespeare became well-known in London around 1592. Aaron, of the revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus(1594), is another Shakespearean Moor informed by early modern stereotypes yoking dark skin and moral corruption. Many events shown in the novel have been omitted and others reformulated. they have gret lyppes, and nottyd heare, black and curled; there skyn is soft; and ther is nothing white but their teth and the white of the eye. Offering the Senate a comic image of a proud military man charging into battle with a frying pan on his head, Othello implies that falling in love with women makes men vulnerable to domestic coups that put both their physical safety and their dignity at risk.
Othello is evidently enamored of Desdemona, but he is also a leader in a military community that understands the effects of love as potentially destructive for men.
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