Othello

5. THE CRITICS

The Critics

Reading a book about another book has its dangers. You are reading one person's opinion and you may need a contrast - perhaps in the form of another critic's view. Only approach critics after thoroughly reading the text. Do not quote them unless you have a full grasp of what they are saying. Good criticism can help your understanding and enjoyment of both the text and performance of the play. Consider these contrasting comments on Othello's character: (Othello) comes to have his life crowned with the final glory of love, a love as strange, adventurous and romantic as any passage of his eventful history, filling his heart with tenderness and his imagination with ecstasy. A.C. Bradley And there is in Othello a curious and characteristic effect of self-preoccupation, of preoccupation with his emotions rather than with Desdemona in her own right. F.R. Leavis These two critics represent the two extremes of thought about the play. You could find evidence to support both views because each critic gives a different emphasis to aspects of Othello's character. Your job is to find a way of reconciling and combining the different viewpoints, to give a balanced overall view of the play. Both these aspects are part of the complex character of Othello. Shakespeare's genius lies in his ability to create complex characters that we cannot pin down in simple terms. Likewise, there is disagreement about lago. Some see him as the supreme manipulator, others as merely necessary to aggravate an existing weakness in Othello. But although critics are interested in making different points, there is ultimately an agreement about lago, as John Wain admits: With regard to lago, they agree at least in finding him repulsive. An early comment by Coleridge, talking about Iagos motiveless malignity, has caused a lot of discussion among critics. Hazlitt thought lago was motivated by 'the love of power'. Kenneth Muir thinks the secret of lago is 'a pathological jealousy of his wife', and 'a jealous love of Desdemona'. G. Wilson Knight says that lago 'hates [Othello's and Desdemona's] beauty, to him a meaningless stupid thing'. But all are united in asking the same key question: Why does lago do what he does? It is the different viewpoints held by critics, however, that encourage the reader to explore further and draw conclusions. That is the best way to make use of your critical reading. 1. At what point in the play was this photograph taken? How does it show lago as the dominant character?

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Othello
On Othello
1.

The Critics

The following two critics differ in their opinion as to at what point and how quickly Othello succumbs to lago's jealousy. Which view do you support? Give evidence for your choice. a) As for the justice of this view that Othello yields with extraordinary promptness to suggestion, with such promptness as to make it plain that the mind that undoes him is not lago's but his own, it does not seem to need arguing. ... lago's sustained attack begins at about line 90 in Act 3, Scene 3 ... ... In seventy lines Othello is brought to such a state that lago can, without getting any reply but 0 misery say 0, beware, my lord, of jealousy and use the word cuckold. In ninety lines Othello is saying, Why did I marry? F.R. Leavis, Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero b) ... any man situated as Othello was would have been disturbed by lago's communications, and ... many men would have been wildly jealous. But up to this point (III.iii.238), where lago is dismissed, Othello, I must maintain, does not show jealousy. His confidence is shaken, he is confused and deeply troubled, he feels even horror; but he is not yet jealous in the proper sense of that word. In his soliloquy (III.iii.258) the beginning of this passion may be traced; but it is only after an interval of solitude, when he has had time to dwell on the idea presented to him, and especially after statements of fact, not mere general grounds of suspicion, are offered, that the passion lays hold of him. A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy

2.

The four extracts below are comments on Othello's last words. What evidence is there to support each of them? Are they contradictory or reconcilable? What point of view do you take? a) And pity itself vanishes, and love and admiration alone remain, in the majestic dignity and sovereign ascendancy of the close. Chaos has come and gone; and the Othello of the Councilchamber and the quay of Cyprus has returned, or a greater and nobler Othello still. As he speaks those final words in which all the glory and agony of his life - long ago in India and Arabia and Aleppo, and afterwards in Venice, and now in Cyprus - seem to pass before us, like the pictures that flash before the eyes of a drowning man, a triumphant scorn for the fetters of the flesh and the littleness of all the lives that must survive him sweeps our grief away, and when he dies upon a kiss the most tragic of all tragedies leaves us for the moment free from pain, and exulting in the power of love and man's unconquerable mind. A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy b) What Othello seems to me to be doing in making this speech is cheering himself up. He is endeavouring to escape reality; he has ceased to think about Desdemona, and is thinking about himself. Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself. Othello succeeds in turning himself into a pathetic figure, by adopting an aesthetic rather than a moral figure, dramatising himself against his environment. He takes in the spectator, but the human motive is primarily to take in himself. I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed the human will to see things as they are not more clearly than Shakespeare. T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays

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Othello
c)

The Critics

At the end we know that Othello's fault is simplicity alone. He is indeed a gull, a dolt (V.ii.61), he loves not wisely but too well (V.ii.343). His simple faith in himself endures; and at the end, he takes just pride in recalling his honourable service. G. Wilson Knight, The Othello Music

d)

Of all the suicides in Shakespeare, Othello's is the most defensible morally. It is not an escape from an intolerable life but an act of justice. Anticipating the inevitable verdict of the Venetian court and accepting it fully, he declares by his act his responsibility for what he has done, and stigmatises himself as a criminal. Helen Gardner, Othello in Retrospect

On lago
1. Do you agree, disagree or partly agree with the following viewpoints? Does your acceptance of one particular view affect your attitude to the play as a whole? Does it affect your view of Othello? a) lago is subordinate and merely ancillary (to Othello). He is not much more than a necessary piece of dramatic mechanism. F.R. Leavis In Othello evil is an active force embodied in lago. He is a dramatic symbol of evil whose function is to cause the downfall of Othello. I. Ribner, Patterns in Shakespearean Tragedy lago stands supreme among Shakespeare's evil characters because the greatest intensity and subtlety of imagination have gone to his making. ... the fall of Othello is the work of another human being; nothing he says or does originates with himself. In consequence we feel pity for him but no respect; our respect is reserved for lago. W.H. Auden, The Joker in the Pack

b)

c)

On Desdemona
1. Do you agree, disagree or partly agree with these comments on Desdemona? a) [Desdemona should not be played by] an actress of the dolly type, a pretty young thing with a vapid expression. A great tragic actress is far better suited to it, for Desdemona is strong, not weak. Ellen Terry, 19th century Actress She tends to become to us predominantly pathetic; the sweetest, most pathetic of Shakespeare's women. She appears passive and defenceless. A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy c) Desdemona has been false to the purity and delicacy of her sex and condition when she married (Othello) While compassionating her melancholy fate, we cannot forget the vice of her character. John Quincy Adams

b)

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Othello
On the Play's Meaning
1.

The Critics

Do you agree, disagree, or partly agree with these comments on the play's meaning? Is it possible to accept all three approaches to the play as valid? What do you see as the meaning of the play? a) I do not think that the ramifications of deceitful appearance in Othello have ever received comment. Of course there is lago honest lago (II.iii.177) who is in truth a hellish villain (V.ii.368) but only so revealed at the end of the play. Othello is a black man, as calculated, in those times, to inspire horror as lago to inspire confidence. It was well known that the Devil frequently appeared in the form of a black man to his worshippers.' S.L. Bethel, Shakespeare's Imagery: The diabolic images in Othello b) Othello ... is a tragedy of misunderstanding. No one among the characters understands anyone else; nor are they, for the most part, very strong on self-understanding either. John Wain, Casebook Introduction c) Othello is about the wanton destruction of happiness - something so precious and so fragile that its loss is felt as quite irredeemable. This, I think, is the fundamental source of the peculiar sense of pain and anguish that this tragedy, more than any of the others, leaves in the consciousness of a spectator or a reader, and the pattern of Shakespearean Tragedy. G.R. Wibbard, Othello

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