critics about characters Flashcards
Coleridge argued that Iago is driven by “motiveless malignity”, he suggested that Iago operates without any adequate motivation, he is bad because he is bad.
Iago has been considered an example of a typical stage Machiavel who “personifies… self-interest, hypocrisy, cunning” according to Leah.
A.C Bradley presented a positive analysis of Othello, whom he saw as blameless. Bradley also argued that the newness of his marriage makes Othello’s jealousy credible.
He believed that Othello never falls completely and suggested that at the end we feel “admiration and love” for the hero. However, Eliot argued that it is a “terrible exposure of human weakness”. Leavis also argued that Othello has a propensity for jealousy and weak character, which is sorely tested by marriage. His love is “composed very largely of ignorance of self as well as ignorance of Desdemona”.
Othello’s act of suicide
Othello is damned when he commits suicide because he has sinned against God’s law, he has also been accused of other soul-destroying sins. Leavis commented that Othello’s final speech shows his discovery of the mistake, “but there is no tragic self-discovery”, Othello remains “un-self-comprehending” and that the play “doesn’t involve the idea of the hero’s learning through suffering”.
Othello affirms a morality that is consistent with Christianity
The play presents a positive view of love and faith and shows us that vengeance is wicked and pride dangerous.
feminist readings of Desdemona
- French suggests Desdemona “accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males” and is “self-denying in the extreme” when she dies
- Jardine asserts the view that Desdemona proves to be “too-knowing”. Because of her waywardness she is punished by patriarchy, she suggests D becomes a stereotype of female passivity.
- Tennenhouse “Jacobean tragedies offer up their scenes of excessive punishment as if mutilating the female could somehow correct political corruption. The female in question may be completely innocent, yet in play after play she demands her own death or claims responsibility for her murder.”
importance of the handkerchief
Callaghan sees the handkerchief as a “miniature of the nuptial lines” and suggests it is crucially important to the stability of the marriage of Othello and Desdemona.
Dolan defines Othello as a “domestic tyrant who murders his wide on spurious grounds”.
She suggests Othello is in an ambiguous position because of his race. He can not hold on his authority with any confidence or security because he is different from the Venetians.
Othello’s heroism undermined by his race
“By making his protagonist black, Shakespeare prepares his original audience to question O’s authority, to suspect that he might misuse it groundlessly.”
Marsh suggests that Iago is a typical malcontent or Machiavel, a dissatisfied and cynical man who will not stay in his place.
“tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or thus” as proof of his subversive qualities
Loomba suggests the central conflict in Othello is “between racism of a white patriarchy and the threat posed to it by both a black man and a white women” women and blacks exist as “the other”.
Loomba - the play should be used to examine and dismantle” ideas about racism and sexism.
the portrayal of Iago:
-Dr Johnson “The character of Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene to last hated and despised”.
-Bradley “burning hatred and burning tears”
however, Lamb notes “we think not so much of the crimes which they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity which prompts them to overleap those moral fences.”
” Dramatic perspective can even make the villain’s accomplices: he confides in us”.
true!! Iago’s asides and soliloquy draw us into his plans - morbid fascination
-When Honigmann refers to ‘dramatic perspective’, he means the privileged position that we as an audience have over other characters in the play. Often lago reveals his plans to the audience, while other characters remain oblivious to his devices. This creates dramatic irony, thus bringing the audience closer to lago than the likes of Othello or Cassio, because he lets us in on his secrets.
HOWEVER this also increases out antipathy and fury, frustration towards him
-nature of theatre
-the audience is indirectly manipulated by his character
Kind gentlemen, let’s go see poor Cassio dress ‘d. Come, mistress, you must tells another tale.
Emilia run you to the citadel, And tell my lord and lady what hath happ’d.
Will you go on? I pray.
[Aside] This is the night That either makes me or fordoes me quite.
Iago’s speech and tone are incredibly different when talking to the other characters of the play compared with his aside. This difference is emphasised by the blank verse of his speech, followed by the rhyming couplet of his aside. This again creates a bond between lago and the audience, allowing us to know him better than any of the other characters, by seeing the side of him which he doesn’t reveal to anyone else. This intimacy could make audience members, as Honigmann writes, ‘come close to sympathising with the villain’.
Auden’s loose labels really identifies one of Iago’s convenient masks not the inner man, and may blind readers to Iago’s essential sadism. His humour either intends to give pain or allows him to bask in his sense of his own superiority.
-frames him as a sadist
-pleasure in inflicting pain on others
-perverted reactions when he encounters love and emotions highlight his inability to act in love
-we as the audience as fooled by his masks
Honigmann here seems to disagree with the view of the poet and critic W H Auden that lago plays the role of a diabolical practical joker; instead, Honigmann claims that any sense of humour lago may seem to possess is simply a disguise for the cruelty of his character.
The fact that lago’s humour can be interpreted in multiple ways again shows how multifaceted his character is as a whole.
When lago famously says the line, I am not what I am’ (1.1.71), we see that his character is never honest nor straightforward. Thus, his humour does not ‘blind readers to lago’s essential sadism’, but simply reveals another of his many character traits.
“He enjoys a godlike sense of power”
While lago is godlike in the sense of his control and manipulation of other characters, he is also found out and punished at the end of the play, implying he is not so infallible as he thinks he is.
