Critical Anthology AO5

Question 1

Who are the Critical Anthology critics?

Answer 1

Tragedy:
Kastan
Nutall
A.C. Bradley
Mack

Othello
A.C. Bradley
Leavis
Loomba

Iago - Honigmann

Question 2

Kastan on tragedy (4 points)

Answer 2

‘Tragedy’s power is universal and inexplicable’

‘For Shakespeare…the uncertainty is the point’

‘the genre of uncompensated suffering’

Tragedies have a ‘desolating controlling logic’

Question 3

Nutall on the pleasure of tragedy

Answer 3

‘In the tragic theatre…grief and fear become…matter for enjoyment’

‘Pleasure not need occupy the foreground of consciousness.’

Question 4

A.C. Bradley on tragedy (2 points)

Answer 4

[Tragedy] is essentially a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death

[The suffering and calamity] are ‘unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness or glory’

Question 5

Mack on tragedy and madness (3 points)

Answer 5

The excess of any passion approached madness

Madness is to some degree a punishment or doom

Both Othello and Hamlet can be privileged in madness to say things…which Shakespeare could hardly have risked apart from this license

Question 6

A.C. Bradley on Othello

Answer 6

The consciousness of [Othello’s] high position never leaves him

Question 7

F.R. Leavis on Othello

Answer 7

There is no tragic self-discovery - overshadowed by his performance

Question 8

Loomba on Othello

Answer 8

Othello is a victim of racial beliefs precisely because he becomes an agent of misogynist ones

Black-skinned people were usually typed as godless, bestial and hideous

Question 9

E.A.J. Honigmann on Iago

Answer 9

Iago excels in short-term tactics, not in long-term strategy

Emilia’s love of Desdemona is Iago’s undoing