Misplaced Pages

#908091

112-584: The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice , often shortened to Othello ( / ɒ ˈ θ ɛ l oʊ / ), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare around 1603. Set in Venice and Cyprus , the play depicts the Moorish military commander Othello as he is manipulated by his ensign , Iago , into suspecting his wife Desdemona of infidelity. Othello is widely considered one of Shakespeare's greatest works and

224-401: A character flaw , or as a mistake (since the original Greek etymology traces back to hamartanein , a sporting term that refers to an archer or spear -thrower missing his target). According to Aristotle, "The misfortune is brought about not by [general] vice or depravity, but by some [particular] error or frailty." The reversal is the inevitable but unforeseen result of some action taken by

336-582: A handkerchief (the first gift given to her by Othello), Emilia finds it and gives it to Iago at his request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello appears and, then being convinced by Iago of his wife's unfaithfulness with his captain, vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after which he makes Iago his lieutenant. Iago plants the handkerchief in Cassio's lodgings, then tells Othello to watch Cassio's reactions while Iago questions him. Iago goads Cassio on to talk about his affair with Bianca,

448-572: A Barbary horse"; "the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou" – as do things Othello says of himself: "haply for I am black"; or "begrimed and black as mine own face". There is critical divide over Othello's ethnic origin. A " Moor " broadly refers to someone from northwest Africa, especially if Muslim, but in Shakespeare's England "Moor" was used with broader connotations: sometimes referring to Africans of all regions, sometimes to Arabic or Islamic peoples beyond Africa, such as those of Turkey and

560-417: A Christian and a black African, Othello is (as scholar Tom McAlindon puts it) both of, and not of, Venice. And actor Paul Robeson considered Othello's colour as essentially secondary, as a way of emphasizing his cultural difference and consequent vulnerability in a society he does not fully understand. In the world of the play itself, Jyotsna Singh argues that Brabantio's – and others' – objection to Othello,

672-451: A Dream , The Handmaid's Tale . Defining tragedy is no simple matter, and there are many definitions, some of which are incompatible with each other. Oscar Mandel, in A Definition of Tragedy (1961), contrasted two essentially different means of arriving at a definition. First is what he calls the derivative way, in which the tragedy is thought to be an expression of an ordering of the world; "instead of asking what tragedy expresses,

784-413: A Moor from Barbary, Leo said of his own people "they are so credulous they will beleeue matters impossible, which are told them" and "no nation in the world is so subject vnto iealousie; for they will rather [lose] their liues than put vp any disgrace in the behalfe of their women" – both traits seen in Shakespeare's Othello. And from Leo's own life story Shakespeare took a well-born, educated African finding

896-399: A comeback thanks in part to popular television shows such as Mad Men . Pocket squares are usually made in fabrics such as silk, cotton, linen or wool. As a visible fashion item there are a wide variety of ways to fold a pocket square, ranging from the austere to the flamboyant: Although it is very common practice for weddings, proms, etc., many style authorities do not recommend wearing

1008-429: A decorated and respected general, as a suitable husband for Desdemona, a senator's daughter, only makes sense in racist terms: reinforced by the bestial imagery used by Iago in delivering the news. The racist slurs used by Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio in the play suggest that Shakespeare conceived of Othello as a black African: "thicklips"; "an old black ram is tupping your white ewe"; "you'll have your daughter covered with

1120-405: A deed that is important and complete, and of [a certain] magnitude, by means of language enriched [with ornaments], each used separately in the different parts [of the play]: it is enacted, not [merely] recited, and through pity and fear it effects relief ( catharsis ) to such [and similar] emotions. There is some dissent to the dithyrambic origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between

1232-469: A fight. Montano tries to calm down an angry and drunk Cassio. This leads to their fighting one another and Montano's being injured. Othello arrives and questions the men as to what happened. Othello blames Cassio for the disturbance and strips him of his rank. Cassio, distraught, is then persuaded by Iago to ask Desdemona to persuade her husband to reinstate him. Iago persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona's relationship. When Desdemona drops

SECTION 10

#1732772815909

1344-571: A form that developed in 18th-century Europe. It was a fruit of the Enlightenment and the emergence of the bourgeois class and its ideals. It is characterised by the fact that its protagonists are ordinary citizens. The first true bourgeois tragedy was an English play, George Lillo 's The London Merchant; or, the History of George Barnwell , which was first performed in 1731. Usually, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 's play Miss Sara Sampson , which

1456-484: A handkerchief for more than style. Handkerchiefs can be made of cotton , cotton-synthetic blend, synthetic fabric, silk , or kids . Handkerchiefs are also used as an impromptu way to carry around small items when a bag or basket is unavailable. They could also serve as a substitute for a bandage over a small injury. In the United Kingdom , the habit of wearing a handkerchief with tied corners on one's head at

1568-403: A handkerchief is an important plot device in his play Othello . A handkerchief was sometimes used by Indian thugs: to take advantage of their victims, the thugs would join travellers and gain their confidence, which would allow them to surprise and strangle the travellers with a handkerchief or noose. In addition to carrying for practical purposes, handkerchiefs have long been displayed in

1680-771: A local courtesan, but whispers her name so quietly that Othello believes the two men are talking about Desdemona. Later, Bianca accuses Cassio of giving her a second-hand gift which he had received from another lover. Othello sees this, and Iago convinces him that Cassio received the handkerchief from Desdemona. Enraged and hurt, Othello resolves to kill his wife and tells Iago to kill Cassio. Othello proceeds to make Desdemona's life miserable and strikes her in front of visiting Venetian nobles. Meanwhile, Roderigo complains that he has received no results from Iago in return for his money and efforts to win Desdemona, but Iago convinces him to kill Cassio. Roderigo unsuccessfully attacks Cassio in

1792-399: A matching (i.e., identical) pocket square and tie, as it tends to look contrived, draws attention away from the wearer's face, and displays sartorial uncertainty. Instead, the two items should coordinate without matching; for example, by matching a secondary color in the necktie's pattern to a secondary color in the pocket square's pattern. A rumāl is a small loose piece of cloth, similar to

1904-491: A place at the height of a white European power. From Philemon Holland 's translation of Pliny 's Natural History Shakespeare took the references to the Pontic Sea, to Arabian trees with their medicinable gum, and to the "Anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders", elements which also featured in the fantastic The Travels of Sir John Mandeville . The terminus ad quem for Othello (that is,

2016-574: A play about race, then its history has made it one. Or, as the Oxford editor Professor Michael Neill summarises it: Anxieties about the treatment of race in Othello are a recurrent feature of both its critical and performance histories: where they once focused on the supposed scandal of miscegenation, they are nowadays more likely to address the play's complicity in racial stereotyping. In plot terms, Othello's race serves to mark him as "other". As both

2128-411: A sexual jealousy so intense that it "converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man ... the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, grasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a bestial thirst for blood." This jealousy is symbolized in the play through animal imagery. In

2240-578: A specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization . That tradition has been multiple and discontinuous, yet the term has often been used to invoke a powerful effect of cultural identity and historical continuity—"the Greeks and the Elizabethans , in one cultural form; Hellenes and Christians, in a common activity," as Raymond Williams puts it. From its origins in

2352-465: A successor of the ancient dramatists. For much of the 17th century, Pierre Corneille , who made his mark on the world of tragedy with plays like Medée (1635) and Le Cid (1636), was the most successful writer of French tragedies. Corneille's tragedies were strangely un-tragic (his first version of Le Cid was even listed as a tragicomedy), for they had happy endings. In his theoretical works on theatre, Corneille redefined both comedy and tragedy around

SECTION 20

#1732772815909

2464-409: A tight set of passionate and duty-bound conflicts between a small group of noble characters, and concentrated on these characters' double-binds and the geometry of their unfulfilled desires and hatreds. Racine's poetic skill was in the representation of pathos and amorous passion (like Phèdre 's love for her stepson) and his impact was such that emotional crisis would be the dominant mode of tragedy to

2576-441: A time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was what a chorus danced around prior to the animal's ritual sacrifice . In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus of Naucratis (2nd–3rd century CE) says that the original form of the word was trygodia from trygos (grape harvest) and ode (song), because those events were first introduced during grape harvest. Writing in 335 BCE (long after

2688-725: A warning to young girls not to marry against the wishes of their parents, and that the Italian ladies may learn from me not to wed a man whose nature and habitude of life estrange from us". Similar wording was used in one of the earliest, and most negative, critiques of the play: Thomas Rymer writing in his 1693 A Short View of Tragedy suggested that one of the play's morals was "a caution to all Maidens of Quality how, without their Parents consent, they run away with Blackamoors." Rymer, however, dryly observed that another such moral might be "a warning to all good Wives, that they look well to their Linnen" – as such his comments should be read within

2800-427: Is a devil, but not before the latter stabs Emilia to death in the scuffle. Iago refuses to explain his motives, vowing to remain silent from that moment on. Lodovico apprehends both Iago and Othello for the murders of Roderigo, Emilia, and Desdemona, but Othello commits suicide. Lodovico appoints Cassio as Othello's successor and exhorts him to punish Iago justly. He then denounces Iago for his actions and leaves to tell

2912-406: Is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character or cast of characters. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy is to invoke an accompanying catharsis , or a "pain [that] awakens pleasure,” for the audience. While many cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, the term tragedy often refers to

3024-491: Is abundant evidence for tragoidia understood as "song for the prize goat". The best-known evidence is Horace, Ars poetica 220-24 ("he who with a tragic song competed for a mere goat"); the earliest is the Parian Marble, a chronicle inscribed about 264/63 BCE, which records, under a date between 538 and 528 BCE: "Thespis is the poet ... first produced ... and as prize was established the billy goat" (FrGHist 239A, epoch 43);

3136-542: Is characterised by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune ( Peripeteia ). Aristotle's definition can include a change of fortune from bad to good as in the Eumenides , but he says that the change from good to bad as in Oedipus Rex is preferable because this induces pity and fear within the spectators. Tragedy results in a catharsis (emotional cleansing) or healing for

3248-639: Is coming for him. Brabantio, provoked by Roderigo, is enraged and seeks to confront Othello, but he finds Othello accompanied by the Duke of Venice's guards, who prevent violence. News has arrived in Venice that the Turks are going to attack Cyprus , and Othello is therefore summoned to advise the senators. Brabantio has no option but to accompany Othello to the Duke's residence, where he accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona by witchcraft . Othello defends himself before

3360-518: Is doubly unique among the extant ancient dramas. Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days. Each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play . The four plays sometimes featured linked stories. Only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived,

3472-594: Is explained by his bent of mind or imagination which was 'so encompassing, so receptive to the plurality of diverse orders of experience.' When compared to the drama of Greek antiquity and French classicism Shakespeare's forms are 'richer but hybrid'. Numerous books and plays continue to be written in the tradition of tragedy to this day examples include Froth on the Daydream , The Road , The Fault in Our Stars , Fat City , Rabbit Hole , Requiem for

Othello - Misplaced Pages Continue

3584-525: Is named – the others are simply called the Moor (the equivalent of Othello), the Ensign (Iago), the Corporal (Cassio) and similar descriptions. In its story the Ensign falls in love with the Moor's wife Disdemona, but her indifference turns his love to hate and in revenge he persuades the Moor that Disdemona has been unfaithful. The Moor and the Ensign murder Disdemona with socks filled with sand, and bring down

3696-456: Is supported by similarities to Measure for Measure , another of Shakespeare's plays often dated around 1604, and which, like Othello , draws its plot from Cinthio 's Gli Hecatommithi . This date is also supported by the possibility that Shakespeare may have consulted Richard Knolles ' 1603 The Generall Historie of the Turkes . However, evidence of an earlier date, 1601–1602, is provided by

3808-591: Is the most common form of tragedy adapted into modern day television programs , books , films , theatrical plays , etc. Newly dealt with themes that sprang forth from the Domestic tragedy movement include: wrongful convictions and executions, poverty, starvation, addiction , alcoholism , debt, structural abuse , child abuse , crime , domestic violence , social shunning , depression , and loneliness. Classical Domestic tragedies include: Contemporary with Shakespeare, an entirely different approach to facilitating

3920-487: Is usually classified among his major tragedies alongside Macbeth , King Lear , and Hamlet . Unpublished in the author's life, the play survives in one quarto edition from 1622 and in the First Folio . Othello has been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, both among playgoers and literary critics , since its first performance, spawning numerous stage , screen , and operatic adaptations. Among actors,

4032-474: The Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the open air, on the side of a hill, and performances of a trilogy and satyr play probably lasted most of the day. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, but evidence is scant. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people. All of the choral parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an aulos ) and some of

4144-457: The ekkyklêma as a theatrical device, which was a platform hidden behind the scene that could be rolled out to display the aftermath of some event which had happened out of sight of the audience. This event was frequently a brutal murder of some sort, an act of violence which could not be effectively portrayed visually, but an action of which the other characters must see the effects for it to have meaning and emotional resonance. A prime example of

4256-592: The Duke of Venice , Brabantio's kinsmen Lodovico and Gratiano, and various senators. Othello explains that, while he was invited to Brabantio's home, Desdemona became enamoured of him for the sad and compelling stories he told of his life before Venice, not because of any witchcraft. The senate is satisfied once Desdemona confirms that she loves Othello, but Brabantio leaves, saying that Desdemona will betray Othello: "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father, and may thee" (Act I, Sc 3). Iago, still in

4368-508: The Golden Age of 5th-century Athenian tragedy), Aristotle provides the earliest surviving explanation for the origin of the dramatic art form in his Poetics , in which he argues that tragedy developed from the improvisations of the leader of choral dithyrambs ( hymns sung and danced in praise of Dionysos , the god of wine and fertility): Anyway, arising from an improvisatory beginning (both tragedy and comedy—tragedy from

4480-575: The Latin verse tragedy Eccerinis , which uses the story of the tyrant Ezzelino III da Romano to highlight the danger to Padua posed by Cangrande della Scala of Verona . It was the first secular tragedy written since Roman times, and may be considered the first Italian tragedy identifiable as a Renaissance work. The earliest tragedies to employ purely classical themes are the Achilles written before 1390 by Antonio Loschi of Vicenza (c.1365–1441) and

4592-511: The Middle East , and sometimes to Muslims of any race or location. "I think this play is racist, and I think it is not." Scholar Virginia Vaughan In Shakespeare's main source, Cinthio 's Gli Hecatommithi , the character Disdemona (the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona) says "I know not what to say of the Moor; he used to be all love towards me; but within these few days he has become another man; and much I fear that I shall prove

Othello - Misplaced Pages Continue

4704-498: The Morris dance . Besides their intended use, they could be used for cleaning equipment, polishing shoes, cleaning hands and face, signaling for attention, as a sweat band, neckerchief , as protection from dust inhalation, to repair footwear, cut out pieces to patch clothes, cut up as emergency firearms cleaning patches, Molotov cocktail wick (fire-bomb), hot cooking utensil holder, a makeshift bandage, tourniquet , or arm sling. In

4816-645: The Progne of the Venetian Gregorio Correr (1409–1464) which dates from 1428 to 1429. In 1515 Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478–1550) of Vicenza wrote his tragedy Sophonisba in the vernacular that would later be called Italian. Drawn from Livy 's account of Sophonisba , the Carthaginian princess who drank poison to avoid being taken by the Romans, it adheres closely to classical rules. It

4928-621: The theatre of ancient Greece 2500 years ago, from which there survives only a fraction of the work of Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , as well as many fragments from other poets, and the later Roman tragedies of Seneca ; through its singular articulations in the works of Shakespeare , Lope de Vega , Jean Racine , and Friedrich Schiller to the more recent naturalistic tragedy of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg ; Natyaguru Nurul Momen 's Nemesis ' tragic vengeance & Samuel Beckett 's modernist meditations on death, loss and suffering; Heiner Müller postmodernist reworkings of

5040-428: The tragédie en musique is regarded as a distinct musical genre. Some later operatic composers have also shared Peri's aims: Richard Wagner 's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk ("integrated work of art"), for example, was intended as a return to the ideal of Greek tragedy in which all the arts were blended in service of the drama. Nietzsche , in his The Birth of Tragedy (1872) was to support Wagner in his claims to be

5152-636: The 16th century, people in Europe began to carry kerchiefs in their pockets to wipe their foreheads or their noses. To distinguish this kind of kerchief from the one used to cover the head, the word "hand" was added to "kerchief". This was then preferred to wiping the nose on a sleeve. King Richard II of England , who reigned from 1377 to 1399, is widely believed to have invented the cloth handkerchief, as surviving documents written by his courtiers describe his use of square pieces of cloth to wipe his nose. Certainly they were in existence by Shakespeare 's time, and

5264-467: The 17th century . Towards the close of the eighteenth century, having studied her predecessors, Joanna Baillie wanted to revolutionise theatre, believing that it could be used more effectively to affect people's lives. To this end she gave a new direction to tragedy, which she as 'the unveiling of the human mind under the dominion of those strong and fixed passions, which seemingly unprovoked by outward circumstances, will from small beginnings brood within

5376-489: The 19th century. Shakespeare's major source for the play was a novella by Cinthio , the plot of which Shakespeare borrowed and reworked substantially. Though not among Shakespeare's longest plays, it contains two of his four longest roles in Othello and Iago. Roderigo, a wealthy and dissolute gentleman, complains to his friend Iago, an ensign , that Iago has not told him about the recent secret marriage between Desdemona,

5488-551: The Bible, from contemporary events and from short story collections (Italian, French and Spanish). The Greek tragic authors ( Sophocles and Euripides ) would become increasingly important as models by the middle of the 17th century. Important models were also supplied by the Spanish Golden Age playwrights Pedro Calderón de la Barca , Tirso de Molina and Lope de Vega , many of whose works were translated and adapted for

5600-528: The French stage. Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age The common forms are the: In English, the most famous and most successful tragedies are those of William Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries. Shakespeare's tragedies include: A contemporary of Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe , also wrote examples of tragedy in English, notably: John Webster (1580?–1635?), also wrote famous plays of

5712-600: The Greek versions in their long declamatory, narrative accounts of action, their obtrusive moralising, and their bombastic rhetoric. They dwell on detailed accounts of horrible deeds and contain long reflective soliloquies . Though the gods rarely appear in these plays, ghosts and witches abound. Senecan tragedies explore ideas of revenge , the occult, the supernatural, suicide, blood and gore. The Renaissance scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484–1558), who knew both Latin and Greek, preferred Seneca to Euripides. Classical Greek drama

SECTION 50

#1732772815909

5824-465: The Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the Hellenistic period . No tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides . Aeschylus' The Persians is recognized to be the earliest extant Greek tragedy, and as such it

5936-478: The actors must have been performing Othello , at the latest, in the season preceding the bad quarto's publication. Othello was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime. The first published version of the play was a quarto in 1622 (usually abbreviated to "Q"), which was followed a year later by the play's appearance in the First Folio (usually abbreviated to "F"). There are significant differences between

6048-480: The actors' answers to the chorus were sung as well. The play as a whole was composed in various verse metres. All actors were male and wore masks. A Greek chorus danced as well as sang, though no one knows exactly what sorts of steps the chorus performed as it sang. Choral songs in tragedy are often divided into three sections: strophe ("turning, circling"), antistrophe ("counter-turning, counter-circling") and epode ("after-song"). Many ancient Greek tragedians employed

6160-406: The anonymous Arden of Faversham , Marlowe 's Doctor Faustus , and Heywood 's A Woman Killed with Kindness . These also include Shakespeare's own earlier plays Much Ado About Nothing , in which a similar plot was used in a comedy, The Merchant of Venice with its high-born, Moorish, Prince of Morocco, and Titus Andronicus , in which a Moor, Aaron, was a prominent villain, and as such

6272-525: The approach of the enemy, when he might have been combated most successfully; and where the suffering him to pass may be considered as occasioning all the misery that ensues.' In 1851, the tragedy El Palacio de Medrano , written by Pablo J. Villaseñor, was first performed at the Teatro Principal in Guadalajara on June 10th, 1851. Bourgeois tragedy (German: Bürgerliches Trauerspiel) is

6384-426: The audience through their experience of these emotions in response to the suffering of the characters in the drama. According to Aristotle, "the structure of the best tragedy should not be simple but complex and one that represents incidents arousing fear and pity —for that is peculiar to this form of art." This reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero's hamartia , which is often translated as either

6496-466: The audience; only comedy should depict middle-class people. Domestic tragedy breaks with Aristotle's precepts, taking as its subjects merchants or citizens whose lives have less consequence in the wider world. The advent of the domestic tragedy ushered in the first phase shift of the genre focusing less on the Aristotelian definition of the genre and more on the definition of tragedy on the scale of

6608-544: The beach has become a seaside postcard stereotype. From the late 18th century white handkerchiefs were waved, generally by women (men usually waved their hats), to demonstrate approval at public events such as processions or political rallies. Using handkerchiefs to accentuate hand movements while dancing is a feature of both West African and African-American traditional dance, in the latter case especially in wedding celebrations. Handkerchiefs are also traditional accoutrements in certain kinds of English folk dance, such as

6720-482: The breast, till all the better dispositions, all the fair gifts of nature are borne down before them'. This theory, she put into practice in her 'Series of Plays on the Passions' in three volumes (commencing in 1798) and in other dramatic works. Her method was to create a series of scenes and incidents intended to capture the audience's inquisitiveness and 'trace the progress of the passion, pointing out those stages in

6832-414: The ceiling of her bedchamber to make it appear an accident. The story continues until the Ensign is tortured to death for unrelated reasons and the Moor is killed by Disdemona's family. Shakespeare's direct sources for the story do not include any threat of warfare: it seems to have been Shakespeare's innovation to set the story at the time of a threatened Turkish invasion of Cyprus – apparently fixing it in

SECTION 60

#1732772815909

6944-467: The characteristics of Greek tragedy and the traditions that developed from that period. In the Foreword (1980) to a new edition of his book Steiner concluded that 'the dramas of Shakespeare are not a renascence of or a humanistic variant of the absolute tragic model. They are, rather, a rejection of this model in the light of tragi-comic and "realistic" criteria.' In part, this feature of Shakespeare's mind

7056-420: The chest pocket of men's jackets. Used in this way, they are referred to as a pocket handkerchief or pocket square . The trend of pocket squares as a fashion accessory really started during the 1920s, and continued until the 1960s. During that period, actors such as Cary Grant , Fred Astaire and Gary Cooper wore them regularly. The pocket square subsequently fell into disuse until the late 2000s when it made

7168-434: The clearest is Eustathius 1769.45: "They called those competing tragedians, clearly because of the song over the billy goat"... Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spread throughout

7280-556: The context of his overarching criticism of the play, as unrealistic and lacking in obvious moral conclusions. "For this noble lady, who regarded the mind more than the features of men, with a singularity rather to be admired than imitated, had chosen for the object of her affections a Moor, a black." Othello in Tales from Shakespeare (1807) by Charles and Mary Lamb In the nineteenth century, such well-known writers as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb questioned whether

7392-650: The daughter of Brabantio, a senator, and Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army. Roderigo is upset because he loves Desdemona and had asked her father, Brabantio, for her hand in marriage, which Brabantio denied him. Iago hates Othello for promoting an aristocrat named Cassio above him, whom Iago considers a less capable soldier than himself. Iago tells Roderigo that he plans to exploit Othello for his own advantage and convinces Roderigo to wake Brabantio and tell him about his daughter's elopement . Meanwhile, Iago sneaks away to find Othello and warns him that Brabantio

7504-416: The derivative definition tends to ask what expresses itself through tragedy". The second is the substantive way of defining tragedy, which starts with the work of art which is assumed to contain the ordering of the world. Substantive critics "are interested in the constituent elements of art, rather than its ontological sources". He recognizes four subclasses: a. "definition by formal elements" (for instance

7616-405: The drama, where tragedy is opposed to comedy i.e. melancholic stories. Although the utilization of key elements such as suffering, hamartia, morality, and spectacle ultimately ties this variety of tragedy to all the rest. This variant of tragedy noticeably had a larger number of stories that featured characters' downfalls being due to circumstances out of their control - a feature first established by

7728-445: The early acts of the play it is Iago who mentions ass, daws, flies, ram, jennet, guinea-hen, baboon, wild-cat, snipe, monkeys, monster and wolves. But from the third act onwards Othello catches this line of imagery from Iago as his irrational jealousy takes hold. The same occurs with "diabolical" imagery (i.e. images of hell and devils) of which Iago uses 14 of his 16 diabolical images in the first two acts, yet Othello uses 25 of his 26 in

7840-475: The end of the century. Racine's two late plays ("Esther" and "Athalie") opened new doors to biblical subject matter and to the use of theatre in the education of young women. Racine also faced criticism for his irregularities: when his play, Bérénice , was criticised for not containing any deaths, Racine disputed the conventional view of tragedy. For more on French tragedy of the 16th and 17th centuries, see French Renaissance literature and French literature of

7952-696: The events of 1570 . Those historical events would however have been well known to Shakespeare's original audience, who would therefore have been aware that – contrary to the action of the play – the Turks took Cyprus, and still held it. Scholars have identified many other influences on Othello : things which are not themselves sources but whose impact on Shakespeare can be identified in the play: these include Virgil 's Aeneid , Ovid 's Metamorphoses , both The Merchant's Tale and The Miller's Tale from Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , Geoffrey Fenton 's Certaine Tragicall Discourses , Kyd 's The Spanish Tragedy , George Peele 's The Battle of Alcazar ,

8064-460: The first of all modern tragedies is A Castro , by Portuguese poet and playwright António Ferreira , written around 1550 (but only published in 1587) in polymetric verse (most of it being blank hendecasyllables), dealing with the murder of Inês de Castro , one of the most dramatic episodes in Portuguese history. Although these three Italian plays are often cited, separately or together, as being

8176-420: The first regular tragedies in modern times, as well as the earliest substantial works to be written in blank hendecasyllables, they were apparently preceded by two other works in the vernacular: Pamfila or Filostrato e Panfila written in 1498 or 1508 by Antonio Cammelli (Antonio da Pistoia); and a Sophonisba by Galeotto del Carretto of 1502. From about 1500 printed copies, in the original languages, of

8288-520: The following suppositions: Corneille continued to write plays through 1674 (mainly tragedies, but also something he called "heroic comedies") and many continued to be successes, although the "irregularities" of his theatrical methods were increasingly criticised (notably by François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac ) and the success of Jean Racine from the late 1660s signalled the end of his preeminence. Jean Racine 's tragedies—inspired by Greek myths, Euripides , Sophocles and Seneca —condensed their plot into

8400-544: The genre: Domestic tragedies are tragedies in which the tragic protagonists are ordinary middle-class or working-class individuals. This subgenre contrasts with classical and Neoclassical tragedy, in which the protagonists are of kingly or aristocratic rank and their downfall is an affair of state as well as a personal matter. The Ancient Greek theorist Aristotle had argued that tragedy should concern only great individuals with great minds and souls, because their catastrophic downfall would be more emotionally powerful to

8512-453: The hero. It is also a misconception that this reversal can be brought about by a higher power (e.g. the law, the gods, fate , or society), but if a character's downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as a misadventure and not a tragedy. In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition ( anagnorisis —"knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout") about human fate, destiny, and

8624-502: The jealousy's object, snatching at ambiguities to ease the mind, dread of vulgar ridicule, and a spirit of vindictiveness. Ultimately, Othello becomes persuaded that his honour is tarnished by his wife's unfaithfulness and can only be restored through Desdemona's and Cassio's deaths. And this – a code of behaviour no longer considered valid – is one reason why modern critics rarely regard Othello among Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. As Ben Okri has said: If Othello did not begin as

8736-512: The kind of jealousy Othello suffers, or to deny it as a motive (for example, those who claim that in Russia between 1945 and 1957 only one actor portrayed Othello as obsessed by jealousy). In fact jealousy is a wide-ranging emotion and encompasses the spectrum from lust to spiritual disillusionment within which Othello's obsession must fall. And he displays many accepted aspects of jealousy: an eagerness to snatch at proofs, indulging degrading images of

8848-467: The last three acts. Not only Othello, but also Iago is consumed by jealousy: his is a kind of envy, which contemporary scholar Francis Bacon called "the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause, it is the proper attribute of the Devil... As it always cometh to pass, that envy worketh subtilly, and in the dark; and to the prejudice of good things." Sometimes critics have struggled to define

8960-685: The later years of the republic and by means of the Roman Empire (27 BCE-476 CE), theatre spread west across Europe, around the Mediterranean and even reached Britain. While Greek tragedy continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BCE marks the beginning of regular Roman drama . Livius Andronicus began to write Roman tragedies, thus creating some of the first important works of Roman literature . Five years later, Gnaeus Naevius also began to write tragedies (though he

9072-513: The latest year in which the play could have been written) is 1604, since a performance of the play in that year is mentioned in the accounts book of Sir Edmund Tilney , then Master of the Revels . A terminus a quo (i.e. the earliest year in which it could have been written) is given by the fact that one of its sources, Holland 's translation of Pliny 's Natural History , was published in 1601. Within this range, scholars have tended to date

9184-469: The leaders of the dithyramb, and comedy from the leaders of the phallic processions which even now continue as a custom in many of our cities), [tragedy] grew little by little, as [the poets] developed whatever [new part] of it had appeared; and, passing through many changes, tragedy came to a halt, since it had attained its own nature. In the same work, Aristotle attempts to provide a scholastic definition of what tragedy is: Tragedy is, then, an enactment of

9296-582: The others what has happened. Shakespeare's primary source for the plot was the story of a Moorish Captain (third decade, story seven) in Gli Hecatommithi by Cinthio (Giovanni Battista Giraldi), a collection of one hundred novellas about love, grouped into ten "decades" by theme. The third decade deals with marital infidelity. Of Cinthio's characters, only Disdemona (the equivalent of Shakespeare's Desdemona – her name means "ill-omened" in Italian)

9408-563: The play 1603–1604, within the reign of James I , since the play appears to have elements designed to appeal to the new king, who had written a poem about the defeat of the Turkish navy at Lepanto , and to the new queen, Anne of Denmark , in whose circle there was an interest in the blackface exoticism also reflected in Ben Jonson 's The Masque of Blackness , in which the queen and her ladies appeared as "daughters of Niger". That dating

9520-434: The play could even be called a "true tragedy" when it dramatized the inviolable taboo of a white woman in a relationship with a black man. Coleridge, writing in 1818, argued that Othello could not have been conceived as black: "Can we imagine [Shakespeare] so utterly ignorant as to make a barbarous negro plead royal birth, - at a time, too, when negroes were not known except as slaves? ... and most surely as an English audience

9632-562: The plot. Iago then accuses Bianca of the failed conspiracy to kill Cassio. Othello confronts a sleeping Desdemona. She denies being unfaithful, but he smothers her. Emilia arrives, and Desdemona defends her husband before dying, and Othello accuses Desdemona of adultery. Emilia calls for help. The former governor Montano arrives with Gratiano and Iago. When Othello mentions the handkerchief as proof, Emilia realizes what Iago has done, and she exposes him. Othello, belatedly realising Desdemona's innocence, stabs Iago (but not fatally), saying that Iago

9744-436: The rebirth of tragedy in the contemporary theatre, most notably in his volume Arguments for a Theatre . "You emerge from tragedy equipped against lies. After the musical, you're anybody's fool," he insists. Critics such as George Steiner have even been prepared to argue that tragedy may no longer exist in comparison with its former manifestations in classical antiquity. In The Death of Tragedy (1961) George Steiner outlined

9856-586: The rebirth of tragedy was taken in Italy. Jacopo Peri , in the preface to his Euridice refers to "the ancient Greeks and Romans (who in the opinion of many sang their staged tragedies throughout in representing them on stage)." The attempts of Peri and his contemporaries to recreate ancient tragedy gave rise to the new Italian musical genre of opera. In France, tragic operatic works from the time of Lully to about that of Gluck were not called opera, but tragédie en musique ("tragedy in music") or some similar name;

9968-410: The roles of Othello, Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia (Iago's wife) are regarded as highly demanding and desirable. Critical attention has focused on the nature of the play's tragedy, its unusual mechanics , its treatment of race , and on the motivations of Iago and his relationship to Othello . Originally performed by white actors in dark makeup , the role of Othello began to be played by black actors in

10080-608: The room, takes note of Brabantio's remark. By order of the Duke, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus , accompanied by his new wife, his new lieutenant Cassio, his ensign Iago, and Iago's wife, Emilia, as Desdemona's attendant. The party arrives in Cyprus to find that a storm has destroyed the Turkish fleet. Othello orders a general celebration and leaves to consummate his marriage with Desdemona. In his absence, Iago gets Cassio drunk, and then persuades Roderigo to draw Cassio into

10192-438: The shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre- Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested. Friedrich Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book The Birth of Tragedy (1872). Here, he suggests the name originates in the use of a chorus of goat-like satyrs in the original dithyrambs from which the tragic genre developed. Scott Scullion writes: There

10304-431: The so-called bad quarto of Shakespeare's play Hamlet , published in 1603. The theory is that the bad quarto is a memorial reconstruction of Hamlet , made by some of its actors: so where there are unintentional echoes of Othello in the bad quarto (for example "to my vnfolding / Lend thy listning eare" in the bad quarto and "To my unfolding lend your prosperous ear" in Othello – and a number of others) it suggests that

10416-402: The street after Cassio leaves Bianca's lodgings, as Cassio wounds Roderigo. During the scuffle, Iago comes from behind Cassio and badly cuts his leg. In the darkness, Iago manages to hide his identity, and when Lodovico and Gratiano hear Cassio's cries for help, Iago joins them. When Cassio identifies Roderigo as one of his attackers, Iago secretly stabs Roderigo to death to stop him from revealing

10528-425: The supposed "three unities"); b. "definition by situation" (where one defines tragedy for instance as "exhibiting the fall of a good man"); c. "definition by ethical direction" (where the critic is concerned with the meaning, with the "intellectual and moral effect); and d. "definition by emotional effect" (and he cites Aristotle's "requirement of pity and fear"). Aristotle wrote in his work Poetics that tragedy

10640-472: The times of ancient Greece and Rome, handkerchiefs were often used the way they are today. The word handkerchief derives from the word kerchief which came from two French words: couvrir , which means "to cover", and chef , which means "dead kids"; so a handkerchief is a similar cloth in the hand rather than on the head. (In the Middle Ages, kerchiefs were often used to cover the head.) Then in

10752-812: The traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a- generic deterritorialisation from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects ( non-Aristotelian drama and Theatre of the Oppressed , respectively) against models of tragedy. Taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation. The word "tragedy" appears to have been used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from Classical Greek τραγῳδία , contracted from trag(o)-aoidiā = "goat song", which comes from tragos = "he-goat" and aeidein = "to sing" ( cf. "ode"). Scholars suspect this may be traced to

10864-410: The tragedies of Shakespeare - and less due to their own personal flaws. This variant of tragedy has led to the evolution and development of tragedies of the modern era especially those past the mid-1800s such as the works of Arthur Miller , Eugene O'Neill and Henrik Ibsen . This variant of tragedy is especially popular in the modern age due to its characters being more relatable to mass audiences and

10976-412: The tragic canon, tragedy has remained an important site of cultural experimentation, negotiation, struggle, and change. A long line of philosophers —which includes Plato , Aristotle , Saint Augustine , Voltaire , Hume , Diderot , Hegel , Schopenhauer , Kierkegaard , Nietzsche , Freud , Benjamin , Camus , Lacan , and Deleuze —have analysed, speculated upon, and criticised the genre. In

11088-593: The two early editions, the most prominent of which are: There is no scholarly consensus to account for the differences between Q and F: As the Oxford Shakespeare editor Michael Neill summarises things: "The textual mystery of Othello is unlikely ever to be resolved to general satisfaction." "O beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on." Iago The influential early twentieth-century Shakespeare critic A. C. Bradley defined Othello's tragic flaw as

11200-402: The use of the ekkyklêma is after the murder of Agamemnon in the first play of Aeschylus' Oresteia , when the king's butchered body is wheeled out in a grand display for all to see. Variations on the ekkyklêma are used in tragedies and other forms to this day, as writers still find it a useful and often powerful device for showing the consequences of extreme human actions. Another such device

11312-421: The wake of Aristotle's Poetics (335 BCE), tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, whether at the scale of poetry in general (where the tragic divides against epic and lyric ) or at the scale of the drama (where tragedy is opposed to comedy ). In the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama , the tragicomic , and epic theatre . Drama, in the narrow sense, cuts across

11424-466: The will of the gods. Aristotle terms this sort of recognition "a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate." In Poetics , Aristotle gave the following definition in ancient Greek of the word "tragedy" (τραγῳδία): Handkerchief The material of a handkerchief can be symbolic of the socio-economic class of the user, not only because some materials are more expensive, but because some materials are more practical for those who use

11536-596: The works of Sophocles , Seneca , and Euripides , as well as comedic writers such as Aristophanes , Terence and Plautus , were available in Europe and the next forty years saw humanists and poets translating and adapting their tragedies. In the 1540s, the European university setting (and especially, from 1553 on, the Jesuit colleges) became host to a Neo-Latin theatre (in Latin) written by scholars. The influence of Seneca

11648-530: Was a crane, the mechane , which served to hoist a god or goddess on stage when they were supposed to arrive flying. This device gave origin to the phrase " deus ex machina " ("god out of a machine"), that is, the surprise intervention of an unforeseen external factor that changes the outcome of an event. Following the expansion of the Roman Republic (509–27 BCE) into several Greek territories between 270 and 240 BCE, Rome encountered Greek tragedy . From

11760-694: Was a forerunner of both Othello and Iago. One such influence is not a literary work at all. In 1600, London was visited for "half a year" by the Moorish ambassador of the King of Barbary, whose entourage caused a stir in the city. Shakespeare's company is known to have played at court during the time of the visit, and so would have encountered the foreign visitors at first hand. Among Shakespeare's non-fiction, or partly-fictionalised, sources were Gasparo Contarini 's Commonwealth and Government of Venice and Leo Africanus 's A Geographical Historie of Africa . Himself

11872-520: Was based on Euripides ' Hippolytus . Historians do not know who wrote the only extant example of the fabula praetexta (tragedies based on Roman subjects), Octavia , but in former times it was mistakenly attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a character in the tragedy. Seneca's tragedies rework those of all three of the Athenian tragic playwrights whose work has survived. Probably meant to be recited at elite gatherings, they differ from

11984-403: Was disposed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with a veritable negro. It would argue a disproportionateness, a want of balance, in Desdemona, which Shakespeare does not appear to have in the least contemplated." Tragedy Tragedy (from the ‹See Tfd› Greek : τραγῳδία , tragōidia )

12096-662: Was first produced in 1755, is said to be the earliest Bürgerliches Trauerspiel in Germany. In modernist literature , the definition of tragedy has become less precise. The most fundamental change has been the rejection of Aristotle's dictum that true tragedy can only depict those with power and high status. Arthur Miller 's essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949) argues that tragedy may also depict ordinary people in domestic surroundings thus defining Domestic tragedies. British playwright Howard Barker has argued strenuously for

12208-584: Was largely forgotten in Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 16th century. Medieval theatre was dominated by mystery plays , morality plays , farces and miracle plays . In Italy, the models for tragedy in the later Middle Ages were Roman, particularly the works of Seneca, interest in which was reawakened by the Paduan Lovato de' Lovati (1241–1309). His pupil Albertino Mussato (1261–1329), also of Padua, in 1315 wrote

12320-587: Was more appreciated for his comedies). No complete early Roman tragedy survives, though it was highly regarded in its day; historians know of three other early tragic playwrights— Quintus Ennius , Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Accius . From the time of the empire, the tragedies of two playwrights survive—one is an unknown author, while the other is the Stoic philosopher Seneca . Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of which are fabula crepidata (tragedies adapted from Greek originals); his Phaedra , for example,

12432-606: Was particularly strong in its humanist tragedy. His plays, with their ghosts, lyrical passages and rhetorical oratory, brought a concentration on rhetoric and language over dramatic action to many humanist tragedies. The most important sources for French tragic theatre in the Renaissance were the example of Seneca and the precepts of Horace and Aristotle (and contemporary commentaries by Julius Caesar Scaliger and Lodovico Castelvetro ), although plots were taken from classical authors such as Plutarch , Suetonius , etc., from

12544-690: Was soon followed by the Oreste and Rosmunda of Trissino's friend, the Florentine Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai (1475–1525). Both were completed by early 1516 and are based on classical Greek models, Rosmunda on the Hecuba of Euripides , and Oreste on the Iphigenia in Tauris of the same author; like Sophonisba , they are in Italian and in blank (unrhymed) hendecasyllables . Another of

#908091