Should we blame Iago for all the events that occur in the play?

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Should we blame Iago for all the events that occur in the play?

Shakespeare’s work has been widely acclaimed as the world’s greatest literature. Shakespeare’s plays communicate a profound knowledge of the wellsprings of human behaviour, revealed through portrayals of a wide variety of characters. “Shakespeare’s plays communicate a profound knowledge of the wellsprings of human behaviour, revealed through portrayals of a wide variety of characters. His use of poetic and dramatic means to create a unified aesthetic effect out of a multiplicity of vocal expressions and actions is recognised as a singular achievement, and his use of poetry within his plays to express the deepest levels of human motivation in individual, social, and universal situations is considered one of the greatest accomplishments in literary history.” A. Kent Hieatt

Throughout the centuries after Shakespeare’s work was published as a single collection (now called the First Folio) it became very clear that there are a number of possible readings to his plays. The traditional way of reading or teaching a Shakespeare Tragedy, like Othello, is to explore the text for what it would expose about characters, particularly the hero. Theatre critics have tried to apply an ancient Greek concept on Tragedies and assume that the tragic hero is always presented as having a mixture of admirable qualities and a “tragic flaw” which proves fatal. The hero’s plunge from grace should overwhelm the audience to pity and fear.

However, there are problems with such readings. Some may disagree strongly but there is evidence that the Elizabethan playwrights were not concerned with constructing “psychologically consistent characters”. Indeed, it seems that the fascination for “Tragic” characters emerged some time during the nineteenth century- the time when the great Victorian actor managers where interested in using Shakespeare characters as examples for moral guidance.

Shakespeare was writing his plays during the Renaissance, a time of rapid change in social, political and economic grounds, a period of European history that saw a renewed interest in the arts. The Renaissance began in 14th-century Italy and spread to the rest of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Urbanisation and trade to other countries expanded during this period leading to multicultural metropolitan societies in major cities such as Venice, the heart of the renaissance. Shakespeare used this important factor to his advantage, allowing him experiment with plot, time and place and also to introduce unique characters such as Othello.

Time and place are key elements in understanding story lines and to have a good plat one must achieve a good combination of these two factors. Greek writer Aristotle suggests that all plays should have a “unity of time, place and action.” He argues that the plot of good play should last no more twenty-four hours. If you exclude the first act, Othello was the closest play to Aristotle’s theory in those times (Only the late “The Tempest” fits into all of Aristotle’s rules. The effect of this is that it makes the tragedy more intense leaving the audience in suspense throughout. Although it has it set backs, in Othello the whole plot is squashed in forty-eight hours thus it brings about some quires in how events can fit in such a small time-scale. Examples of inconsistency in the time structure in the text which are invisible to the audience during the performance; Act 2, scene 3- Roderigo’s “money is almost spent”- yet this is only his first day in Cyprus. Act, scene 3- Emilia steals Desdemona’s handkerchief because Iago “hath a hundred times woo’d” her to steel it- yet the have all been on the island for only one day. Act 4, scene 1- Roderigo cannot endure Iago any longer, because “every day thou daffiest me with some devise…”- yet this is only their second day together in Cyprus. Act 4, scene 1- Othello receives a letter commanding him home- yet this is only his second day. This makes Othello very ahead of it time, not only that it revolves round a special character, Othello.

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As the first critical black character in English literature, Othello’s Moorish complexion, which evidently was intended to be of black African origin, would have had an instantaneous impact on the white Elizabethan audiences. Shakespeare knew that many of them would be chauvinistic and would have associated a Moor with savageness, stupidity, evil and sexual immortality. The character of Othello had both validated and denied these biased expectations of him in a number of significant ways. Although he is black and therefore magnetising the Elizabethan audience’s traditional suspicion of Moors, we see Othello is in fact sympathetically drawn. . Central to ...

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