Othello Revision Lecture Part 1

1. Othello Revision Lecture Part 1

2. J1Promotional Examination 2012 Literature Paper 3 • Othello the Moor of Venice Literature Paper 3 • The Individual and Society • From Act 1 up to end of Act 5; • Choice of one of two essay questions

3. Reading, and Readings of Othello;Interpretations of the play Different schools of literary-critical thought: • Marxist, Feminist, Post-Structuralist • Psychoanalytic; Formalist; • Conventional; Unorthodox; Radical • Regurgitations of borrowed points from run of the mill guide books • Your own Reading / Interpretation of the play, Othello?

4. Lecture Overview • Genre: Shakespearean Tragic Drama • Concept of Tragedy and the concept of Tragic Hero • Setting, Time, Atmosphere   • Critically significant Themes & Issues • Dramatis Personae: Characters and their Relationships • Plot organization and development • Dramatic Techniques re- use of Poetry and Prose;  • Dramatic Techniques re Elements of Style: Analysis of Diction, Imagery, Symbolism, Syntax, Rhythm • Dramatic Effects

5. Remember, lest you forget The essence of all drama is CONFLICT.

6. Entry Point? to the text of the play, ‘Othello’ • Through the language; (speech; dialogue) • Always through an analysis of the choice and form of the LANGUAGE of the play; • The language the characters speak to each other in speech and dialogue

7. Common causes / sources of Conflict • Money; (Money is the root of all Evil?) • Beautiful women (Desdemona) • Power; power distribution; power dynamics • Passions such as Ambition; Greed; Jealousy • Love (matters of the heart); Sex; Marriage; • Race, Religion, Ethics, and Culture • Ideology (Rival Belief and Value Systems) • Appearances, and Reality

8. Shakespearean Tragedy • ·    Tragedy? A work of fiction that plays out before us with implacable logic, for our moral edification;     • OTHELLO — a drama of Tragedy? • ·        Serious consequences arise from passions that disrupt life. • ·        E.g. Envy, Jealousy, Resentment, lack of faith • re-persona relationships. • ·        Leads to the tragic death of the main character / Hero; • also the deaths of the innocent and good.

9. Tragic Hero [whose situation changes from well-being to misfortune] • A potentially noble person • who, through some flaw in Hero’s character (what is Othello’s tragic flaw?), • helps to bring about his own tragic downfall, (hamartia—tragic error / flaw) • and who, by suffering acquires self-knowledge, and so purges his faults.

10. Setting: VENICE & CYPRUS (Knowledge of the geography of the play?) ·       Venice—first Act of the play takes place in Venice; ·        16th Century, Venice—a powerful European city-state. ·        A centre of commerce & and protector of the Christian religion against the Turks who are regarded as infidels.

11. Atmosphere e.g. the creation of an atmosphere of INTRIGUE & EVIL: • Notice how the play begins in darkness. • Symbolism? Symbolical significance? • Foreshadowing, as a dramatic technique • Interestingly, Acts 3 & 4 are staged in daylight. • Notice it is in the daylight Acts the deception of Othello takes place. Why?

12. Critically significant Themes & Issues(Central Thematic Concerns of the play): • Love / Romance; Hate; Order & Disorder; Conflict; Change; • Good & Evil e.g. Cruelty; Magic; Witchcraft; Superstition; • Appearance and Reality (Deception or Deceitful Appearance, Hypocrisy) • Jealousy, Envy, Resentment, Reputation, Trust, Honesty, Innocence, Credulity; • Power, Revenge, Fate and Free Will; Racial and Cultural differences; Miscegenation; • Race, Colour, Alienation (Important as suggested even by the title of the play). • Jealousy, the dominant theme? Would you agree?

13. Themes and Literature Paper 3‘This is Venice!’ - Brabantio The Individual and Society; (Antithesis) • Contrasting individuals; contrasting cultures • Othello, the Outsider; Othello’s Otherness • The racial, and cultural differences and also cultural distance between Othello as an African Moor and white, European Venetians such as Iago as a rival individual in Venetian society

14. Dramatic Techniques used by Shakespeare • ·        Set Speeches; • ·        Soliloquies; also Asides • ·        Patterned dialogue; • ·        Complex use of patterned imagery; • ·        Poetic language — Noble characters speak in • blank verse; note use of assonance and alliteration; • ·        Prose — lower status characters speak in prose? • ·        Atmosphere, scene setting, lighting effects, • all suggested through the power of language.

15. Language and Characterization • All speeches reveal ‘states of mind’

16. Characterization: Who is Who in the play? (Venetians & Florentines?) • Protagonists and Antagonists? • Power and influence? • Relationships: • Othello – Iago relationship? • Othello – Desdemona relationship? • Every character is partly defined by his / her relationship with other characters; • Who is Gratiano? Lodovico? Montano?

17. Characterization and Language • Characters are the language that they speak • The choice and form of language and imagery used by characters to speak about other characters reveals much about themselves, as well as those they describe; • Consider Iago’s representations of Othello, Cassio, Roderigo; and Desdemona

18. Characterization and Language • The character exists from what is spoken; • This includes not just concentrating attention on choice of words • But also on the feelings and motives around the word, as much as the word itself;

19. Shakespeare’s language —Poetry & Prose: • Mode of diction: energy of words in relation to meaning; power of words in context? • Vivid Imagery; Symbolism; Personification; Rhyme (patterned sound repetition) Rhythm (movement of thought) • Rhetoric: CopiaVerborum; All kinds of Repetition, and Enumeration (Lists); Puns; Antithesis; • Use of Irony;

20. Copia verborum (Copia) (Long speeches); • Extended dialogue

21. Diction of Shakespearean Characters • Use of Latinisms; Latinated vocabulary • More plain Saxon monosyllabic words • English slang • Vernacular • Dialect • Freely transforming nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns etc; Ungrammaticality

22. Iago • The thought whereof Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards; And nothing can or shall content my soul Till I am evened with him, wife for wife; • Till I have got even with him…

23. Fate Order & Chaos Seeming & Reality Heaven & Hell Imprisonment, of Evil Magic & Witchcraft Imagery War Nature Animal/Bestial Imagery Disease and Corruption Black & White Prejudice Clothing Light & Darkness Focusing on Imagery—Image ideas; clusters of repeated images convey themes;

26. Imagery in Poetic Drama • Imagery: Carefully developed comparisons • Arising from the sophistication and precision of the language of Shakespeare’s characters Why? To what purpose? • In order to create / implant a particular picture (image) in the mind of the audience;

27. Imagery: Iago to Roderigo in Act 2 Scene 1 p71; p73 • Her eye must be fed • What delight shall she have to look on the devil • A fresh appetite • Now…her delicate tenderness will… begin to heave the gorgeand • Disrelish and abhor the Moor

28. Some other examples of imagery • Appearance & Reality: “not I for love and duty, / But seeming so, for my peculiar end” • Disease & corruption: “a curse of marriage” “Didst thou not see her paddle with the palm of his hand?” “I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear” • Clothing: “three great ones of the city off-capp’d to him”

29. Shakespeare embodies conflict using Antithesis, and Effect • Sets word against word; Phrase against phrase, Line against line; • Speech against speech; silence with speech • Image against image; • Character against character; • Scene against scene; • Why? To keep the audience constantly engaged through varying dramatic tension.

30. Othello Revision Part 2

31. 1. Shakespeare as Dramatist • Shakespeare as Poet (Noting and commenting on elements of poetic language)

32. 2. Antithesis revisited: A black / white opposition at all levels: • Poetically; physically; psychologically; • morally; religiously; culturally; ethnically • Reflected in the play’s language; • Dark & Light; • Heaven and Hell; Love and Hate;

33. 3. Re- Themes & Issues revisited: • Miscegenation ‘O treason of the blood!’ It is only when race is connected with miscegenation—it becomes a highly charged emotional issue; • Envy • Reputation • Othello’s paranoid and pathological jealousy

34. 4. Iago’s grievances; and theories re- his villainy: A villain with a motive: Promotion of Cassio? • Unfounded suspicion Othello is having an affair with Emilia? • Envious of Othello re- Othello’s perceived superior authority; sexual potency; contentment / peace of mind? • of Othello’s goodness and innocence—the absence of envy?

35. Iago, a Machiavellian malcontent? • Iago, a motiveless villain? • Iago, not a villain? Does not recognize, only pretends to recognize conventional moral dichotomies of good and evil? • No good or bad; only strong and weak? • Iago and the will to power; might is right • Iago, a sadist? • Machiavellian language; the artful deceiver

36. What’s immoral about prevailing over others? • Evil as neither really evil nor really good • Just merely useful or counterproductive • The strong and the smart inevitably desire to dominate and destroy the weak and stupid • “And what’s he then that says I play the villain” • In Machiavellian language, virtue is power

37. 6. Language—contains the psychological shading of the characters • The awful vulgarity of Iago’s mind: • Iago’s fondness to reduce most vividly and degrade / debase all human activity— e.g. Love is merely an anatomical function— ‘a lust of the blood’. • Reputation is an ‘idle and most false imposition Oft got without merit and lost without Deserving’; • Darkness is his natural element and he dominates the three night scenes;

38. 7. Othello’s stately formal, courtly, slow moving, dignified poetic language: • Rhetoric and poetic rhetoric—Rhetorical strategy in great set speeches: • Being very consciously aware of your situation, and your objective; • Language—fundamentally a weapon in human struggles; • Appropriately formal and respectful; • Persuasion by Reason; Persuasion by Emotion; appeal to imagination;

39. Poetics—discourse that moves people artistically/aesthetically/rationally/emotionally • Rhythm—The best judge of rhythm is the ear; • The ear is offended by harshness; and soothed by smoothness; tonalities; • Accumulation of Repeated Sounds to intensify emotional impact; • Diction—use of emotionally charged words; Copia verborum—accumulating language—piling up of language to intensify emotional effect / impact and consolidate argument;

40. Structure; arrangement; sequence; Patterning; what to include / exclude; slanting; • Verbal labeling, or indexing, affects perception very significantly; • Proportion; Emphasis; Repetition for emphasis; • Anaphora; antanaclasis (punning on a repeated word to obtain different meanings); hyperbole • Repeated words, phrases, rhythms, and sounds add to the emotional intensity of a moment or scene thus heightening its dramatic effect.

41. This overwhelming richness and abundance of words—necessary to convince or enchant. • Othello is also very much aware of his rhetorical skill— • He knows it is the vehicle of his majestic authority; & the source of his power to win Desdemona. • Othello’s physical attributes and vocal endowments as made evident in the Senate Scene.

42. 8. Othello—from Page to Stage: • Drama is literature intended for performance; Audience impact; • None of the language of the play works in isolation; • Lighting, costume, sound effects, actors’ appearance, • Gesture and movement reinforce the implications of the play’s verbal texture.

43. Othello Revision Part 3

44. Preliminary Remarks • Basic knowledge / basic facts (Sound general knowledge of the play); • e.g. sequence of acts and scenes; dramatic action on stage, Now? Before? After? • Critically significant scenes / events • Critically significant speeches/soliloquies

45. Text in context • Text in context /dramatic situation / From page to stage / Visualizing the scene; • Appreciation of, and engagement with the dramatic situation, and dramatic effects; • Theatrical experience of the play for the first time, for a first time audience? • e.g. Scene 3 of Act 1 – theatrically experienced, it is a most impressive scene;

46. Text (of Act 1 Scene 3) in context • The highlight of the proceedings is Othello’s justification of what he has done; • Knows that to contradict would arouse hostility • Othello’s account of the wooing of Desdemona is a magnificent assertion of his worth; • Great dramatic tension, and suspense; • It holds us enthralled, (Dramatic effect, external) • as it does the Duke. (Dramatic effect, internal)

47. Critical thinking re- dramatic action • Critical intelligence / critical thinking; • Critically evaluating his justification; • Critical reservations (of viewer of the play)

48. Critically Thinking • Does Othello prove to the Duke he really loves Desdemona, and Desdemona Othello? • Does Othello prove to the Duke that he has done nothing wrong? Is Othello a saintly figure? • Is Brabantio completely at fault? • Is Othello completely faultless?

49. Structure of the play? Structure of an Act? Of a scene? Of a speech?Fundamental questions re- Structure • Purpose / Intention / Strategy / ‘Game Plan’ (Any hidden agenda?) • Organization: Why things are where they are—why is this here, and not there? • Emphasis re- sequence of presentation;

50. Structure: Dynamic & Symmetric • Dynamic: Consists of the sequence of events which build up a ‘cause-effect’ pattern to create the overall plot • Symmetric: (a) Through various parallels, and cross-references, repeated images, symbols • (b) and language that creates a network of threads that runs through the entire play