Othello Critical Interpretations

• Kastan believes that Shakespearen tragedies are causes of human weakness, divine retribution or arbitary fate
• Kastan believes that the uncertainity of clear answers to these questions is central to Shakespearen tragedy
• Kastan begins if there are reasons why the protagonist suffers inollerably, is it capricious fate or the consequences justifiable
• Nuttal considers the tension between pleasure and pain in tragic drama. Early audiences would have been pleased to the pain they were witnessing, while contemporary are more likely to be disturbed by it.
• Nuttal considers that it would not be suprising if an audinece were inwardly driven by envy, became delighted to see the fall of one greater than them - especially elizabethan towards Othello
• Nuttal alludes to the Nietzschean oxymoron - where 'tragic joy' is easier to accept because it fights fire with fire. Alludes to audience of Othello as they would of enjoyed the punishment of a black man being hurt
• A.C Bradely argues that Shakespearen tragedy focuses on a single character of high rank and qualities who undergoes a reversal of fortune
• AC Bradely states that no play at the end of which the hero remains alive in is deemed in full sense a Shakespearen tragedy
• AC Bradely also alludes to the sense that tragedies appealed strongly to common human sympathy, as well as a feeling of fear
• AC Bradely suggests that in Othello, he never loses consciousness of his high status and importance in what he has done in the Senate. His great fall from power produces a sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man and the omnipotence of Fortune or Fate
• Mack looks into how Shakespearen tragic heroes suffer madness as a form of divine punishment, but also allows the character to have a special insight and freedom to speak the truth
• Mack says that Shakespeare uses the theme of madness to show the characters inner turmoil and their struggle between reason and passion
• Mack notes that Othello's madness is not just an act of revenge against Desdemona, but also a way to punish himself for his own actions
• Samuel Coledridge

  "Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago"
• Lisa Jardine: Feminist Critic

  • "Desdemona becomes a stereotype of female passivity"
  • Desdemona has a lack of agency against Othello, and Jardine symbolises that Desdemona's death is the suppression of women who transgress social norms
• Coleridge argues that Iago is more than just a mere agent of evil; he is a "monster of malice", who enjoys causing pain and suffering to others
• "Iago is the most diabolically ingenious villain ever created on the stage" - Samuel Coleridge
• Salgado

  • As Othello begins to think of himself a typical blackman, the seeds of tragedy are sown
• Caryl Phillips

  • Othello's love for Desdemona "is the love of a possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war"
• New Historicism

  • Interprets Othello by understanding its historical and political context
• Leonard Tennenhouse

  • "Jacobean tragedies offer up their scenes of excessive punishment as if mutilating the female could somehow correct political corruption"
  • He believes Desdemona had to die in order to keep the rigid social hierarchy and the establishment intact, as she was the 'embodiment of power' especially in Act 1
• Helen Gardener

  • Desdemona is a "love martyr" and by her dying, she has won back Othello's love