Fate

Question 1

A.C. Bradley (reverse of fortunes)

Answer 1

A total reverse of fortune appealed strongly to common human sympathy and pity… It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, the plaything of an inscrutable power”

Question 2

A.C. Bradley: a fatal tendency…

Answer 2

“A fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion or habit of mind. This is … for Shakespeare, a fundamental tragic trait”

Question 3

A.C. Bradley on chance

Answer 3

“Shakespeare… allows for chance or accident an appreciable influence.. any occurrence which enters the dramatic consequence neither from the agency of a character, not from the obvious surrounding circumstances”

Question 4

Kastan on Shakespeare’s tragedies

Answer 4

“Shakespeare’s tragedies.. starkly prevent any confidential attribution of meaning or value to human suffering”

Question 5

Kastan on tragic world

Answer 5

“characters may commit themselves to a confident sense of the tragic world they inhabit, but the plays inevitable render that understanding inadequate”

Question 6

F.R. Leavis

Answer 6

“Othello’s self-idealisation, his promptness to jealousy and his blindness are shows as the disguise of an obtuse and brutal egoism” that is the drive to catastrophe