Othello Critical Responses

Toril Moi

Femininity and masculinity are artificially invented cultural and social constructs.

Judith Butler

Gender is not just a social construct but a performance, as you modify and alter it according to the particular situation you’re in.

Thomas Rhymer

Said Othello wasn’t a proper tragedy because it didn’t have enough poetic justice and because it was unrealistic.

Samuel Johnson

Impressed by: “the fiery openness of Othello”, “the cool malignity of Iago.”, “the soft simplicity of Desdemona”

Romantic Approach

Approach of the late 18th and early 19th century

Less concerned with morality, more with psychological states

How individuals could be affected by isolation, melancholy, personal misery

Relate Othello to tragic heroes

Admired Shakespeare’s presentation of emotion

Samuel Coleridge - Othello

Othello didn’t kill Des out of jealousy, but because of Iago’s manipulation. Othello isn’t to blame. Iago is “a being next to devil”, his monologues are “the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity”. Iago has no reason to be evil but he’s evil anyway.

William Hazlitt

Othello has great “depth of passion”, evokes a lot of pathos. Sympathizes with Othello, says he’s “noble”. Iago is only evil because he knows how to exercise his intellect more than anyone else.

Algernon Swinburne

Agrees with Coleridge that Iago’s evil was “fathomless and bottomless”

A.C Bradley

* The Tragedy of the play is that Othello is “exceptionally noble and trustful” and is manipulated by Iago.
* Othello is a “great man”
* Othello is “the most romantic” of all of Shakespeare’s characters, his intense emotions means he can’t think clearly about Desdemona. This is his downfall.
* Any other man in Othello’s situation would have reacted the same way.
* Iago has “supreme intellect” and that makes him dangerous
* Iago is angry because he’s overlooked because he’s not a good person, “Goodness therefore annoys him”
* Iago is tragic because his intellect and skills backfire and hurt him
* Iago is “a thoroughly bad, cold man” who is “supremely wicked”

T.S Elliot

* Othello is deeply flawed
* Eliot said that Othello’s final speech was a “terrible exposure of human weakness”
* The final speech was weak because it was full of “an attitude of self-dramatization”, Othello is too aware of the audience and the other characters = less realistic
* Othello tries to escape reality at the end, doesn’t face up to what he’s done.
* Othello grieves himself more than he grieves Desdemona “and is thinking about himself”

F.R Leavis

* Othello was deeply flawed
* Othello’s downfall was because of his own weakness, not because of Iago
* Iago’s success isn’t due to his “diabolical intellect” but due to Othello’s weakness and hubris
* Othello gives in too quickly
* Othello is self centered

Marilyn French

* Othello is a masculine play because it rejects female sexuality and freedom
* Men hold all the power in the play reflects how men hold all the power in society.
* Desdemona accepts that because of her society “she must be obedient to males”
* All women are destroyed by Iago

Lisa Jardine

* Elizabethan drama as a whole only presents a male point of view.
* Desdemona is punished for being “too-knowing” and “too-independent”
* Desdemona’s death is her being taught a lesson in what happens if you go against the patriarchy

Leonard Dennerhouse

* Desdemona’s death = silencing a rebellious female voice.
* Elizabethan/Jacobean tragedies use violence against women to challenge the patriarchy
* Women who die in these plays blame themselves for their death
* Desdemona as a character must die because she is “the embodiment of power” when she first arrives in Act 1

Bonnie Greer

It is only “Othello’s jealousy, not Iago’s hatred, that is the real tragedy”.

Valerie Wayne

“Iago is the presence of misogynist discourse during the Renaissance”

Andy Serkis, who played Iago in 2002

He is not the devil. He’s you or me being jealous and not being able to control our feelings.”

Freudian Interpretation

“Iago’s pain and distrust is caused by his repressed, homosexual desire for Othello that is completely unrequited.”

Kenneth Tyan

“Othello is easily the most jealous man that anybody’s ever written about.”

Karen Newman

“Possession of a woman’s handkerchief was considered adultery”

Anita Loomba

“Women and blacks exist as the “other”.

Michael D Bristol

“Othello is a test of racial and sexual persecution.”

Valerie Wayne

Handkerchief - “an emblem of Desdemona’s body.”

Harry L Warnken

“His thoughts and feelings echoes Iago’s”

Frank Kermode

Iago’s deception of Roderigo depends on the young man’s willingness to believe Desdemona is sexually corruptible.

Loomba

'love and violence in the play are crucially cut up' \n 'Othello is both a fantasy of interracial love and social tolerance'

Granville Barker

“a tragedy without meaning”

Hugh Quarshie

‘racist by omission, not commission’

Raatzch

‘the phonetic affinity between ego and Iago’

Lisa Jardine

‘Renaissance women were often seen as suffering martyrs.’'

John Wain (1971)

"a tragedy of misunderstanding" \n "\[Othello\] does not see \[Desdemona\] as a real girl, but as something magical that has happened to him" \n \~ contention is that none of the characters understand each other and that is why everything goes wrong

JW (1971)

Act 3 Scene 3 "shows Iago's fall as well as Othello's. At the beginning... they are both sane men; at the end, they are both mad and in the grip of the same madness" \~ Iago does not foresee "the holocaust" at the end, because he doesn't understand his own tendencies or Othello's love for Desdemona \n he has "a patchwork of motives"

Robert Swinburne

‘the noblest man of man’s making’

Robert B. Heilman

‘the least heroic of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes’

John E. Seaman

It is a Christian tragedy \~ Othello's fall is a version of Adam's, while Desdemona's is an inversion of Eve's

F.R. Leavis

Tragedy is due to Othello's shortcomings e.g. \n - his feelings for D 'it may be love but it can only be in an oddly qualified sense of love of her' \n - habit of self-idealisation \n - heroic way of seeing himself in widescreen, cinematically \n 'the disguise of an obtuse and brutal egotism

G.I. Duthie

‘the tragedy is caused by 'two forces working in conjunction: it is caused by an external force of evil deliberately bringing itself to bear on a noble figure which has within it a seed of evil’

J. Wain

'the assassination of love by non-love' Iago being 'less than a complete human being because love had been left out of his composition' \n 'it is only the loveless heart that cannot learn'

Kenneth Muir

'The secret of Iago is not a motiveless malignity, nor evil for evil's sake, nor a professional envy, but a pathological jealousy of his wife, a suspicion of every man who whom she is acquainted, a jealous love of Desdemona which makes him take vicarious please in other men's actual or prospective enjoyment of her at the same time as him

Bradley - Desdemona

'the "eternal womanly" in its most lovely and adorable form, simple and innocent as a child, radiant with the heavenly purity of heart which men worship the more because nature so rarely permits it to themselves' \n 'a childlike boldness and persistency, which are full of charm but are unhappily united with a certain want of perception'

Mrs Jameson - Desdemona

'less quickness of intellect and less tendency to reflection than most of Shakespeare's heroines' but has 'the unconscious address common in women

Heraud (1685)

'there exists fiction in whatever is romantic. She suffers from illusion and loves to be deluded' \n 'she frequently evades the truth, when attention to its strict letter would raise difficulties'