Critics - Othello

Question 1

A.C.Bradley, 1991 - The Tragic Hero

Answer 1

• But it is pre-eminently the story of one person, the ‘hero,’ or at most of two, the ‘hero’ and the ‘heroine.’
• We may speak of the tragic story as being concerned primarily with one person.
• To the medieval mind a tragedy meant a narrative rather than a play… a total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who ‘stood in high degree.’
• With members of great houses, whose quarrels are of public moment.
• His fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire; and when he falls suddenly from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a sense of contrast.

Question 2

F.R.Leavis - Othello (characteristics)

Answer 2

‘He really is, beyond any question, the nobly massive man of action, the captain of men he sees himself as being…a habit of self-approving self-dramatisation is an essential element in Othello’s make-up.’

Question 3

Kiernan Ryan - Othello (impact on Shakespearean and modern societies)

Answer 3

‘Shakespeare produced in ‘Othello’ a searing critique of racial and sexual injustice, which is more powerful now in the 21st century than it could ever have been at the dawn of the 17th.’

Question 4

Caryl Phillips - Othello and Desdemona

Answer 4

‘Othello’s love for Desdemona is the love of possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war.’

Question 5

Caryl Phillips - Othello (man of action)

Answer 5

‘Othello is a man of action, not a thinker.’

Question 6

Bonnie Greer - Othello (jealousy as the real tragedy)

Answer 6

‘It is only Othello’s jealousy, not Iago’s hatred, that is the real tragedy’

Question 7

A.C. Bradley - Othello (noble character and form of downfall)

Answer 7

‘Othello is a sympathetic and noble character whose downfall is created by a being of pure evil’

Question 8

T.S Elliott and F.R Leavis - Othello (character weakness)

Answer 8

‘Othello is responsible for his own downfall’
‘Iago simply exploits a weakness that already existed in Othello’s character.’

Question 9

Kenneth Tynan - Othello (jealousy)

Answer 9

‘Othello is the most easily jealous man that anybody’s ever written about’

Question 10

Samuel Coleridge - Othello (not killing Desdemona out of jealousy)

Answer 10

‘Othello didn’t kill Desdemona in jealousy but that it was forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago.’