Aspects of tragedy Flashcards
Century the play was written
17th century
What does the play challenge
Cultural norms of what it means to be noble and moral
Genetic conventions of tragedy in the play
- A hero who is ‘great of heart’ but has an overweening pride and makes a fatal error of judgment
- A hero who is exploited by an unfathomable villain
- A hero who brings about suffering and death to others and inevitably suffers a tragic fall and dies
Aristotle’s ‘recognition’
significantly, othello’s knowledge comes too late, a key aspect of tragedy.
The play as a domestic tragedy
Othello and Desdemona have a passionate love which could be seen as a threat to the rules established by patriarchal order; their intense, emotionally charged and equal marriage challenges ideas about class, race and the conformity of women. The play ultimately suggests that if the social order is to continue, this marriage and what it represents must be destroyed.
Where the main action of the play is set
Cyprus
Where the beginning of the play is set
Venice
Venice in 17th century
Controlled by wealthy merchant classes who bought power.
Why Shakespeare uses the setting of Cyprus
It allows him to place his characters in a world without the boundaries that would be imposed upon them by an established city state.
Cyprus and religion
Cyprus is a fortified outpost of civilisation, on the edge of Christian territory, a barrier between Christian values and the infidels, the enemies of the true faith
How Cyprus leads to Desdemona’s vulnerability
Cyprus is less controlled, a bastion of male power where Desdemona, alone and isolated from her Venetian support system, is vulnerable to the machinations of arch manipulator Iago.
The effect of the war ending in Cyprus
As a result of no more war, the soldiers in their claustrophobic confines have time to turn on each other without the controlling order of Venice.
The effect that the relocation from Venice to Cyprus has on Iago’s plot
Venice is ordered, in which Iago’s attempts are easily thwarted, the relocation allows him to work more successfully, ensnaring all the weaving in his plot.
Othello’s ranking in the army and society
Holds high military rank in the Venetian army as general.
He is not a European king of nobleman so in some ways is a figure much closer to that of the ‘ordinary man’ than most of Shakespeare’s other tragic heroes.
No status in society due to his colour and race
He is a black man, a Moor and was sold to slavery
How Othello has required status for classic tragic hero
He is foreign royalty and has a culture which is exotic, mysterious and extraordinary. He is an outsider to European culture.
What does the handkerchief represent about Othello
It’s strawberry spotted with magic in its web.
In what way is Othello a worthy hero
Iago attempts to blacken his name at the start of the play and rails bitterly against what he feels is Othello’s judgement and mistreatment of him, yet when the audience meet Othello for the first time he is measured, dignified and commanding.
Othello’s language
Shakespeare gives him musical language, elevating his status.
Ways in which Othello is noble and admirable
- An excellent general
- Respects his wife and gives her voice to speak for herself
- Confident to speak of his love in public
Othello’s fatal flaw
Jealousy, which Iago exploits to the full
The effect of Othello’s flaw on the audience
His flaw connects him with audiences who also might have felt the stab of the green eyed monster.
Othello’s fate is perhaps more likely to inspire pity and fear because of that connection.
The driving tragic impulse of the play
Othello’s fall from nobility and grace, from articulate general to brainwashed puppet of Iago.
How does Othello’s tragic stature rise
When he realises what he has thrown away and that he is elevated by the quality of his speech.
What does Othello imagine before taking his own life
He imagines meeting Desdemona at the last judgement hurling his soul from heaven. He consolidates the vision by committing suicide.
How did Leavis see his final speech
He saw it as self dramatising, with its focus not on his victims, but on himself and how he will be remembered.
What does Coleridge say about Iago’s soliloqueys?
He says that they reveal ‘the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity’
Iago’s motives
- Cassio has been promoted to the post he believed was his
- He suspects Othello to have cuckolded him
- He is jealous of Cassio who has a daily beauty in his life that makes Iago ugly
What kind of villain is Iago
An opportunistic villain whose ideas gather momentum as he tastes success.
Viewing Iago from a theological position
- Most of his activities take place in darkness: he is associated with hell and night.
- Possible to see him as a devil incarnate, with his ancestors in the medieval Mystery Plays
Iago as a stage Machiavel
Possible to read him as a stage machiavel who tortures and torments those who are good, using their goodness to ‘enmesh them’.
Iago as a vehicle of the state
- Voicing its patriarchal contempt of outsiders and women.
- His self interests are the self interests of those who govern
- He understand Venetian attitudes and he becomes the state’s agent in removing those who transgress its unwritten laws
- What he achieves in the destruction of Othello and Desdemona could be seen as what the state desires.
