othello ao5

• Kastan on Tragedy- Overview

  He questions the origins of tragedy and whether they lie in fate, divinity of human weakness.
• Kastan on Tragedy- Inevitability?

  Tragedy is 'universal and inexplicable' and it has qualities of 'incomprehensibility' to those responsible or whether it was 'inescapable'.
• Kastan on Tragedy- Causes

  Does 'human error or capricious fate' cause tragedy? It is an 'arbitrary destiny' or a 'malignity of the heavens'?
• Kastan on Tragedy- Shakespeare's aims

  'Uncertainty is the point' and Shakespeare likes audiences to question the cause of character's downfalls. He likes his plays to 'render that preliminary understanding inadequate' and challenge perceptions.
• Honigmann on The Portrayal of Iago- Overview

  The character of Iago is complicated and the audience are torn between views of him as witty and clever or evil and wicked. Moral condemnation may conflict with the entertainment he brings audiences who come to appreciate his character.
• Honigmann on The Portrayal of Iago- Iago's complexity

  Iago is a 'liar, betrayer, mental torturer' and 'murderer' and yet his 'ambition', 'spirit' and 'intellectual activity' create conflict in audience's feelings around the character. His role as the play's 'chief humorist' leaves him further loved by audiences.
• Honigmann on The Portrayal of Iago- Audience relationship

  Shakespeare awards Iago the most lines as the play's antagonist, creating 'dramatic perspective that can even make us the villain's accomplices'. A relationship is created as Iago 'confides in us', controlling the narrative of the play and making the audience explicitly aware of his actions whilst making audiences sympathise and hate him.
• Honigmann on The Portrayal of Iago- Iago's psychology

  Iago is described as having 'essential sadism' in his antics when playing with emotion, the eventual deaths not 'scarcely mattering who kills whom' as any havoc sees his plot fulfilled. He doesn't understand 'loyalty, friendship and respect' despite his 'cleverness', leaving him unable to comprehend Emilia's betrayal in favour of Desdemona and Othello at the end of the play also.
• Leavis on The Character of Othello- Overview

  Leavis views Othello as self-dramatising and that he doesn't learn from suffering to avoid his tragic downfall. He thinks that Othello performs as he believes one should and dies playing a part.
• Leavis on The Character of Othello- Simplicity

  When he kills Desdemona, Leavis sees Othello as lacking 'tragic self-discovery' in the sin he committed and instead moves from 'noble' to 'pathetic' as he doesn't own his mistakes. His 'simple nature' leaves him subject only to his own emotions and 'pathos' as instead of facing his mistakes, he 'dies belonging to a world of action'.
• Loomba on Othello, Race and Society- Overview

  Loomba discusses how the play questions and reinforces black and Muslim stereotypes. She also talks of the cosmopolitan nature of Venice and how England would see this as a model for comparison, both good and bad.
• Loomba on Othello, Race and Society- Interracial love

  Loomba details Othello's predisposition to the 'inherent duplicity of women' and the 'fragility of an 'unnatural relationship' that Jacobean audiences would see his and Desdemona's marriage as. He becomes an 'agent of misogynist' beliefs as Shakespeare portrays him with stereotypes like 'highly emotional' and 'prone to anger and jealousy' evidenced in his 'propensity to violence' towards Desdemona.
• Loomba on Othello, Race and Society- Jacobean views

  Loomba recognises the racial beliefs held in the Jacobean era and Othello as 'godless' and 'bestial' can be seen in his physical violence at the end of the play. However, she questions whether the play advocates for a 'tolerant society' or 'issues a warning' about 'open societies who let in outsiders'.
• Nuttall on The Pleasure of Tragedy- Overview

  Nuttall considers the audience pleasure when watching tragedy and the appeal it holds for them.
• Nuttall on The Pleasure of Tragedy- Discomfort

  Nuttall expresses that 'The pleasure of tragedy is an immediately uncomfortable phrase' and yet the audience enjoy tragedies due to the 'general taste of discomfort' that it brings. Also, the 'disturbance [...] is a further mode of pleasure' and makes it feel more enticing for audiences.
• Bradley on The Shakespearian Tragic Hero- Overview

  Bradley focuses on Shakespeare's tragedy and the characters that are high rank and have exceptional qualities that experience peripeteia to lead to their death and further calamity.
• Bradley on The Shakespearian Tragic Hero- Death

  Bradley expresses the idea that tragedy often leads to 'the death of the hero' and that tragedy should focus on the 'tale of suffering and calamity conducting to a death' rather than random deaths occuring in times of prosperity.
• Bradley on The Shakespearian Tragic Hero- Characteristics

  Shakespeare awards tragic heroes the ability to 'make a whole scene a scene of woe' or act as 'the chief source of tragic emotions, and especially of pity'. Bradley discusses how they're often unaware of their fortune as they stand in 'high degree, happy and apparently secure.
• Bradley on The Shakespearian Tragic Hero- Othello

  Bradley sees the tragedy of Othello as different to other of Shakespeare's works as he is 'no mere private person' and feels the need to justify his good before madness after his decision 'to live no longer'. He says he has 'done the state some service' and dies attempting to remain in society's good favour.
• Bradley on The Shakespearian Tragic Hero- Impact

  Bradley says the fate of the hero 'affects the welfare of a whole nation' and 'his fall produces a sense of contrast' as the high status of the man juxtaposes their tragic and often pathetic deaths.
• Mack on Tragedy and Madness- Overview

  Mack notices the frequency of Shakespearian heroes' experiences of madness and how it allows them to give audience insight into their mind and freedom of speech to reveal truths.
• Mack on Tragedy and Madness- Effects

  Mack believes that madness creates a 'combination in a single figure of a tragic hero and buffoon', giving the audience the 'opposing voice' to the 'insane' character that is being presented to them. Often their insanity is dismissed as 'fiction' by others but becomes key to their fates and endings.