Shakespearean Critical perspectives

Critics; quotes, perspectives, views on themes for writing within Othello exam and providing further commentary on the play

Ania Loomba

Discusses the role of race and colonialism in relation to Shakespeare's plays

Specific to Othello; she questions both the sterotypes of Black people and muslims within the play, and contemporary Venecian & English society

Looma Critical Quote prompts

• ‘victim of racial beliefs because he's an agent of misogynist ones'

  • Exposing how manipulation of his hamartia, causes Othello to being inflicting his pain onto others

• ‘Venice's openness could be viewed as dangerous by a society suspicious of outsiders'

  • critcism of English society, being distrusting or rejecting of newcomers or abnormalities in society can risk causing tragedy

David Kastan

Looks at Shakespeare's tragedies as treatments of age-old questions of the causes of human suffering - critiques the development and growth of the sense of tragedy within each of his tragic plays

Kastan critical quote prompts

• ‘it is the emotional truth of the struggle rather than the metaphysical truth of the worldview at the centre of these plays’

  • Shakespeare takes exaggerated contexts, and works them to reflect real, relatable emotions, forcing readers to focus on reality and tangible outcomes

• ‘Tragedy, for Shakespeare, is the genre of uncompensated suffering'

  • Aligns with popular contemporary Calvinist and Puritanical views & the idea of fate being unknowable - as part of supernatural beliefs which were enhanced by the conflict of the reformation

A.D. Nuttall

Considers the tension between pleasure and pain within tragic drama & the contrast between how tragedies considered the pleasure and pain that audiences were seeing.

Nuttal Critical quote prompts

• ‘In the tragic theatre, suffering and death are perceived as matter for grief and fear, and after grief and fear become matter for enjoyment’

  • Within tragedies, watching matters of death, and suffering can seem become painful, but after watching can be seen as enjoyable, due to catharsis

A. C. Bradley

Argues how Shakespeare’s Othello aligns with Aristotle's definition of a Greek Tragedy & how this contributes to different elements of the play make audiences feel.

Bradley Critical quote prompts

• ‘It is only in the love tragedies, that the heroine is as much the centre of the action as the hero'

  • implying that love and romance are all secondary to the driving factors of the play

• ‘no play at the end of which the hero remains alive is, in the full Shakespearean sense, a tragedy'

Maynard Mack

Mack argues that madness is seen as a form of divine punishment - which brings forth insight and freedom to speak the truth - allowing Shakespeare to present contemporary truths of society

Mack Critical quote prompts

• ‘Madness is to some degree a punishment or doom’

  • x

• ‘madness is verbally assigned to other Shakespearean tragic heroes - containing both punishment and insight'

E. A. J. Honigmann

Honigmann Critical quote prompts

F R Leavis

Carol Neely

Harold Bloom

Professor Lisa Hopkins

Kim Hall

Michael Long

Fintan O'Toole

‘borders of individual character to become permeable’

Flanagan