Critical Analysis & Theatre Productions AO5 Flashcards
What is significant about the National Theatre 2022 production of Othello within A3S3?
In A3S3, Desdemona is trying to persuade Othello to reinstate Cassio’s position. In this production, Othello is boxing and Desdemona steps in between the punching bag and Othello.
-This signals she is putting herself in masculine danger
-She is so devout to Othello she is willing to sacrifice herself to preserve their love
D: ‘I have no judgement in an honest face.’ (about Cassio)
O: ‘Not now, sweet Desdemon, some other time’
What is significant about the 2022 National Theatre production in A4S1?
- When Othello hits D he whistles her to come back
- Reflects a performative masculinity and how D has fallen so he treats her like an animal
- public act- makes it more severe as this affects O’s reputation
What is significant about Desdemona sleeping before Othello kills her?
At this moment, O sees Desdemona in her perfect state, which is silent. Therefore, it can be read that Othello is play about silencing women’s voices, particularly as he ‘smothers her’
How does The National Theatre 2022 production demonstrate a continuation of misogyny in Jacobean society?
- Emilia has a black eye
- In the line ‘and when they strike us’ she touches her cheek, symbolising the hopelessness of women against the patriarchy and the cruel oppression of women based on mistrust and control
- There are posters of past Othello productions on the wall suggesting a continued reiteration and history of feminine abuse and ignorance of women
What happens at the beginning and end of the National Theatre 2022 production?
- The play starts and ends with someone sweeping up blood
- This cyclical structure shows the cyclical nature of violence
How does Shakespeare subvert the strereotype of the Moor?
- Audiences at the time would expect Othello as the Moor to be at the heart of the conflict.
- However, by having Iago as the malignant villain, Shakespeare subverts this stereotype as even though Othello is partially to blame, it is Iago that causes the conflict and the tragedy
What is Thomas Rhymer’s (1693) opinion of Othello
NEGATIVE
* Plot was untrue to life due to unrealistic behaviour of soldiers
* No satisfactory moral for the audience
* A ‘warning to good housewives to look to their linen’
* ‘A noble Venetian lady is to be murdered by our poet- in sober sadness purely for being a fool’
What is Dr Johnson’s (1765) opinion of Othello?
POSITIVE
* True to life
* Othello is ‘ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution and obdurate (stubborn) in his revenge
* Play’s moral is to ‘not make an unequal match’
What is Coleridge’s (early 1800s) opinion of Othello?
- Iago is bad because he is bad - he has ‘motiveless malignity’
What is Hazlitt’s opinion on Othello?
- Iago is an aesthete of evil
What is Swinburne’s opinion of Othello?
- Othello is the ‘noblest man of man’s making’
What is A.C Bradley’s (1904) opinion of Othello?
OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE
* Othello is blameless- he is a man of intense feeling but self controlled
* The newness of Othello’s marriage makes his jealousy credible
* Othello never falls completely and we feel ‘admiration and love’ for the hero because we exult in the power of ‘love and man’s unconquerable mind’
* Love is the central idea in Othello
What is T.S Eliot’s (1927) opinion of Othello?
- In Othello’s last speech, he is guilty of trying to cheer himself up to evade reality –> ‘a terrible exposure of human weakness’
What is F.R Leavis’s (1952) opinion of Othello?
- Iago’s role is ‘subordinate and merely ancillary (supporting)’
- Othello has a propensity to jealousy and possesses a weak character, which is sorely tested by marriage’
What is Marilyn French’s (1982) opinion of Othello?
FEMINIST
* Even though Desdemona chooses her own husband, she ‘accepts her culture’s diction that she must be obedient to males’
* D is ‘self-denying in the extreme’ when she dies
* Othello, Emilia, Cassio and Roderigo subscribe to feminine values which Iago destroys, whose ‘ordinary wisdom’ of the male world comes to dominate
