genre

• Helen Gardner: the “terrible end” of Othello has a “sense of completeness”, “the most beautiful end in Shakespearean tragedy”
• Tragedy: High ranking characters make fatal errors of judgement (hamartia) due to their pride (hubris) and die fighting against fate. Catharsis has been experienced and the audience feels pathos, after which a new order is established.
• Shakespeare subverts Jacobean catharsis as the evil (Iago) remains at the end of the play.
• FR Leavis: Othello has no “tragic self-discovery” and he “is now seen as tragically pathetic”
• However, Shakespeare borrows from comedy with the stock characters of cuckolded husband, cunning slave, deceptive daughter and deceived father.
• “tragedy is the place we are not allowed to escape the consequences or price” Stanley Cavell
• Dr Johnson blames the “cool malignity” of Iago for Othello’s tragedy and FR Leavis blames Othello’s “essential make up” and propensity for “self-deception”
• Some praise Othello’s suicide as a sign of a Stoic hero
• “The story of a melodramatic villain entrapping a credulous fool” K. Muir
• “Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists are all overpowered by the prevailing social and ideological tides which sweep them unawares out of their depth” Ryan