Othello

1. Othello William Shakespeare

2. Tragedy • A play in which the main character (tragic hero) suffers a downfall as a result of a fatal character flaw, errors in judgment, or forces beyond human control (such as fate) • A Shakespearean tragedy usually contains the following elements: • A central character of high rank has a tragic flaw, or weakness • A chain of events, partly caused by the flaw, leads this character to disaster • Lively action creates a vivid spectacle, or public display of events • Comic scenes provide relief from the mood of sadness

3. Tragic Hero • A person of high rank who, out of hubris (an exaggerated sense of power and pride), violates a human, natural, or divine law • By breaking the law, the hero poses a threat to society and causes the suffering or death of family members, friends, and associates • In the last act of a traditional tragedy, these wrongs are set right when the tragic hero is punished or dies and order is restored

4. Elizabethan Drama • Blossomed in the late 1500s, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I • Elements: • Playwrights turned away from religious subjects • They began writing more complex plays about nonreligious subjects • They used ancient Greek and Roman plays, including tragedies, as models

5. Shakespeare’s Language • Since Shakespeare’s plays are poetic dramas, he often shifts from average word arrangements to the strikingly unusual so that the line will conform to the desired poetic rhythm • Often, too, Shakespeare employs unusual word order to afford a character his own specific style of speaking

6. Shakespeare’s Language • Shakespeare’s most frequently used types of wordplay are common: metaphors, similes, synecdoche and metonymy, personification, allusion, and puns

7. Shakespeare’s Language –Metaphor/Simile • Metaphor: a comparison in which an object or idea is replaced by another object or idea with common attributes • Similes: compare objects or ideas while using the words “like” or “as”

8. Shakespeare’s Language - Metonymy • Metonymy: a figure of speech using the name of one thing for that of another which it is associated • Example: using crown to mean the king (as used in the sentence “These lands belong to the crown”). Since a crown is associated with or an attribute of the king, the word crown has become a metonymy for the king.

9. Shakespeare’s Language - Synecdoche • Synecdoche: a figure of speech using a part for the whole • Example: using the word boards to imply a stage. Boards are only a small part of the materials that make up a stage, however, the term boards has become a colloquial synonym for stage

10. Shakespeare’s Language • It is important to understand that every metonymy is a synecdoche, but not every synecdoche is a metonymy • This is rule is true because a metonymy must not only be a part of the root word, making a synecdoche, but also be a unique attribute of or associated with the root word

11. Shakespeare’s Language • Personification: human capacities and behaviors are attributed to inanimate objects • Allusion: a reference to another author or to a historical figure or event • Puns: work through the ambiguity that results when multiple senses of a word are evoked; homophones often cause this sort of ambiguity

12. Shakespeare’s Language • Some lines are actually rhymed verse while others are in verse without rhyme; and much of Shakespeare’s drama is in prose • Shakespeare usually has his lovers speak in the language of love poetry which uses rhymed couplets • The majority of Shakespeare’s lines are in blank verse, a form of poetry which does not use rhyme (hence the name blank) • However, it still employs a rhythm native to the English language, iambic pentameter, where every second syllable in a line of ten syllables receives stress.

13. Shakespeare’s Language – Blank Verse • Blank verse contains no rhyme (hence the name blank), but each line has an internal rhythm with a regular rhythmic pattern. • The majority of Shakespeare’s lines are in blank verse • The pattern most favored by Shakespeare is iambic pentameter , where every second syllable in a line of ten syllables receives stress.

14. Shakespeare’s Language – Blank Verse • In general, Shakespeare saves blank verse for his characters of noble birth • Therefore, it is significant when his lofty characters speak in prose • Prose holds a special place in Shakespeare’s dialogues; he uses it to represent the speech habits of the common people

15. Shakespeare’s Language - Prose • Prose is the form of speech used by common, and often comic, people in Shakespearean drama • There is no rhythm or meter in the line; it is everyday language • Shakespeare’s audiences would recognize the speech as their language • Normally, when a character in a play speaks in prose, you know that he is a lower class member of society • In Othello prose is less common than verse

16. Background • Written in 1604, Othello is one of Shakespeare's most highly concentrated, tightly constructed tragedies, with no subplots and little humor to relieve the tension • Othello, with its intimate domestic setting, is widely regarded as the most moving and the most painful of Shakespeare's great tragedies