Martin have often sorrowfully or gleefully talked of ‘killing off’ their own characters for the amusement of others Iago wishes to ruin Othello’s marriage for his own amusement or, in Hazlitt’s phrase, ‘stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui’. The whole thing is really, of course, Iago’s play, as many critics have observed: if Othello is the tragic lead in the drama, Iago is the stage-manager, director, and dramatist all wrapped up in one. Much of Othello proceeds like a comedy that takes a very dark turn at the end, when it becomes apparent that Othello will not be reconciled with Desdemona, and that the sexual jealousy and suspicion he has been made to feel are too deep-rooted to be wiped out. But in Much Ado, Hero’s fidelity is proved and Don John’s villainy is exposed, and we have a comedy. Iago, a Venetian soldier and ensign, is passed over for promotion by Othello, a Moorish nobleman who has reached the pinnacle of his career: he is general. But Shakespeare’s Iago is more dangerous still: a human, with clearly human attributes and intellect, who nevertheless derives great pleasure from causing harm to others purely because … well, because it gives him pleasure.Ĭompare, in this connection, Iago’s role in Othello with that of the villainous Don John in the earlier comedy, Much Ado about Nothing (a play we have analysed here). Like Iago, Don John wants to wreck the (upcoming) marriage between Claudio and Hero, and sets about convincing Claudio that his bride-to-be cannot be trusted. In Shakespeare’s source material for the play, a novella by the Italian author Cinthio, Iago is straightforwardly evil and devilish, intent on destroying Othello’s life, and with a clear motive. We cannot be sure why he is doing what he is doing.īut this does not mean that he is not being driven by anything. Yet Shakespeare puts into Iago’s mouth several plausible ‘motives’ for wreaking the confusion and chaos that causes Othello’s downfall and Desdemona’s death, and in providing multiple motives, Iago emerges as ‘motiveless’, to use Coleridge’s famous description (Coleridge described Iago as being possessed of ‘ motiveless malignity’). If the first rule of creative writing class is ‘show don’t tell’, the second or third rule may well be ‘make your characters’ motivations clear’.
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Indeed, he goes out of his way to make Iago as inscrutable as possible. In a concluding essay, Harold Bloom engages our attraction to both power and tragedy in his discussion of Iago, Shakespeare's "radical invention.Second, Shakespeare doesn’t make Iago, the villain, someone whose motives we can understand. Chris Oli’s new edition highlight’s the tragedy of Othello’s plight in ways no other volume of this play has. In his introduction, Raffel delves into the interpretive disagreement over Othello's origins and provides an analysis of the characters Desdemona and Iago. William Shakespeare × Chris Oli: Othello William Shakespeare Othello remains one of Shakespeares most contemporary and moving plays, with its emphasis on race, revenge, murder, and lost love. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations. Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. This extensively annotated version of Othello makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century.
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Othello (The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603. If in Iago Shakespeare created the most compelling villain in Western literature, in Othello and Desdemona he gave us our most tragic and unforgettable lovers. Othello The Tragedy of Othello, William Shakespeare. get Yale’s red-carpet treatment."- Library Journal One of the most powerful dramas ever written for the stage, Othello is a story of revenge, illusion, passion, mistrust, jealousy, and murder.
#SHAKESPEARE OTHELLO SERIES#
The Annotated Shakespeare Series allows readers to fully understand and enjoy the rich plays of the world’s greatest dramatist "A drama.