Critics Flashcards
(15 cards)
Marjorie Garber - Shakespeare After All, 2004
> Othello’s tragedy stems from his impulse to deny his private self
becomes hyper self-conscious and ashamed for human traits - sexual desire, strong emotions
Iago unleashes what Othello tries to supress (human desire)
“The play offers us a glimpse of what happens when extremes of reason that deny passion are confronted with extremes of passion that deny reason”
“He has to prove that he is more than a man, that he must compensate for his own ordinary humanity.”
“Iago is not only a figure of hatred and resistance but also as a figure of desire”
Emma Smith - This is Shakespeare, 2019
> tragedy built on the structure of comedy - sycophantic servant, dropped item is a comic prop
artistically experimental play
knowledge that Iago is evil from beginning makes Othello’s trust in him seem ridiculous
“In focusing our attention on Iago, rather than Othello, it makes us complicit in the Moor’s downfall.”
Laurence Olivier’s 1964 performance
> at the point when he hears about Desdemona’s supposed infidelity, he gets into a rage and rips a cross from his neck
return to his native religion
subconscious association of Islam with madness and murderous rage
religious connotations bound up in Othello’s characterization as a moor
Stephen Greenblatt, 1980
> projects fabricated identity that is too humanly, morally ambitious
motivated by sexual anxiety - consciousness to conform with Christian mores in Renaissance Venice
Othello sees his marriage as illegitimate (irrational)
obsessed with notions of sexual purity - conflicts status as a married couple (natural to have desires)
Othello’s tragedy - wrong about who he needs to be in order to survive in a foreign land
(For Othello) “sexuality is a menacing voyage to reach a longed-for heaven; it is one of the dangers to be passed”
“Othello’s identity depends upon a constant performance of his “story”
“The Moor at once represents the institution and the alien”
“Iago knows than an identity that has been fashioned as a story can be”
A.C Bradley
> on Iago - as a supreme villain; acts out of a love for power and destruction
brilliant manipulator
“Iago stands supreme among Shakespeare’s evil characters”
A.C Bradley
Early 20th Century (Romantic/Humanist Approach)
> believes it is a “tragic waste” - Othello is destroyed for no reason
downfall caused by human malice, not fate or supernatural forces
he is fundamentally noble and admirable— downfall is not due to an internal defect/ traditional hamartia
trust is exploited by Iago but is not a weakness in itself
tragedy is that Othello should not have fallen at all—he was deceived by “the whisperings of a liar.”
Othello “stirs in us the deepest sorrow”
F.R Leavis
Early to Mid-20th Century (Modernist Approach)
> Othello has an egoistic, self-regarding love, and his downfall is due to his own weaknesses, not just Iago’s deception
Unlike Bradley, Othello falls too easily - insecure and prone to jealousy
tragedy is Othello’s own doing
“Othello’s love is composed very largely of self-approval and pride”
“Iago’s prompt success is not so much Iago’s diabolic intellect as Othello’s readiness to respond.”
T.S Elliot
Mid-20th Century (Formalism & Anti-Romantic Approach)
> final speech is self-dramatizing; he lacks true self-awareness, downfall is his own responsibility
attempt to rewrite his own story in a noble light
rejects Bradley’s romanticized view of Othello as a purely noble hero
(In final speech) “has ceased to think about Desdemona and is thinking about himself.”
“The terrible exposure of human weakness […] is not to be dismissed”
Thomas Rymer
> Rymer had racial prejudices - heavily influenced
criticised Othello’s gullibility - downfall made little sense
handkerchief as a weak plot device; small object should not drive the tragedy
intense jealousy as uncharacteristic of a true soldier and, therefore, an unconvincing trait for a tragic hero
“The Tragedy of the Handkerchief?”
Kate Ashdown 2006
“The violence of his actions is directly proportionate to the passion of his love”
Samuel T Coleridge
Romantic poet
> believes himself to be executing divine justice
intense internal conflict between love for Desdemona and her fall into sin
Iago inherent love for evil
tragedy of deception, not weakness
“Othello’s belief that she, his angel, has fallen from the heaven of her native innocence wrought a civil war in his heart”
“[Iago’s] motiveless malignity”
Samuel Johnson
reactions fluctuate, may come close to sympathizing with a villain, dramatic perspective can make us
“The character of Iago is s conducted, that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised”
Charles Lamb on the portrayal of Iago
“We think not so much of the crimes they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity which prompts them to overleap those moral fences”
W.H Auden on the portrayal of Iago
“the joker in the pack”
play’s chief humourist, humour either intends to give pain or allows him to bask in his sense of superiority - rarely at his own expense, enjoys godlike sense of power
Loomba
> fantasy of interracial love and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence
Othello predisposed to believing Iago’s pronouncements of female duplicity because he knows Desdemona’s love for him is ‘unnatural’
“Othello is a victim of racist beliefs primarily because he becomes an agent of misogynistic ones”
