Private and Public Tensions in Othello
The public and private domain, and the perception of Othello’s often-duplicitous characters’ language and actions within these spheres, builds the audience’s insight into their true personalities. The tension between the public and private is made explicit primarily through the character of Othello, but also through subsidiary characters and Shakespeare’s deliberate use of setting.
Othello is an essentially public man placed within the framework of a domestic tragedy; the Turkish invasion and machinations of the Venetian state provide the backdrop to an essential private heartbreak. As a public leader, Othello experiences delight and success amidst the ‘pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war’. The imagery commonly associated with the noble Othello is suggestive of power and bravery; images of the sea and military heroism abound. Desdemona echoes Othello’s dignified description of his illustrious career, in military terminology, with the declaration that her ‘downright violence… may trumpet to the world’ as her ‘heart [is] subdued’ by ‘her lord’. By using the terminology of war to describe her love we see that the heroine is ‘well tun’d’ with her husband (it is fitting that he describes his as her ‘fairy warrior’) but his language, and the violence that is always explicit in sea and military imagery, acts as ominous dramatic irony for Othello’s ‘bloody thoughts with violent pace’ which are chilling immersed with similar natural imagery. It is this inability to separate his public and private life in the name of his romance with Desdemona proves to be his downfall.
The Essay on Clinton Trial Media Public Private
Josh Innes English Final Draft The Clinton Trial The Clinton scandal is finally over, the publicity, the accusations, the lawsuits, but now that its all over who is going to pay for it. Ill bet it will be you and me, the average american tax payer. After reading an article in the Times Magazine, the Clintons attorney fee which is $8, 000, 000. Where does this money really come from The money comes ...
The private man has been almost wholly concealed, even from himself, for he has had little need to explore it. This and our lack of knowledge about Othello’s past leave us ignorant of the private Othello. His ‘role-playing’ increases our difficulties, not only in his narratives: the calm voice of authority as he responds to a crisis speaks for the senior officer, not necessarily the inner man. The almost egoistic Othello is constantly looking for an audience for his dignified rhetoric and responds with all the eager alacrity of a natural man of action; ‘keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust’em’.
Othello’s public quality, his military ethic of magnificence, pride and bravery, does not equip him for more private problems. When he meets those, to quote F.R Leavis, one of the biggest critics of the Moor’s nobility, ‘Othello’s inner timbers begin to part at once the stuff of which he is made begins to at once deteriorate and show itself unfit’. When this inner man emerges under pressure we see the savage Othello; the barbarian stripped of his wishful thinking, who gives himself up to jealousy black magic and cruelty. We see the man who coarsely announces of his wife that he will ‘chop her into messes’ and significantly, the man who debases his magnificent oratory by borrowing shamelessly from Iago’s lecherous vocabulary. His gradual adoption of Iago’s type of language is one of the most chillingly effective graphs of his deterioration. Othello’s fractured sense of self outside of his role as military commander is conveyed through lexis and syntax, previously referring to himself with the nobility of third person but now reverting to personal pronouns. Disjointed prose, imbued by passion and oaths of ‘zounds!’ more at home in Iago’s poisonous vitriol replaces his composed flowing poetic eloquence, which he used to describe love and his military career in the same vein. Most ironically, at his lowest point preceding his epileptic fit, Othello declares ‘it is not words that shake me thus’. The events of the play and the violence in his outburst here suggest quite the opposite.
The Essay on Othello – A Racist Play?-
Othello - A Racist Play?- Although there are lots of things to suggest this is a racist play I don't think that racism actually dominates the play, even though it has a racist theme. There is a romantic union between black and white which gets destroyed because most people think the relationship is wrong. At the time the play was written, 1604, even the Queen of England was racist so there must ...
The tensions between public and private chaos are played out in public and private settings and this use of dramatic structure plays a large part in creating tension. There are two principal locations, Venice and Cyprus, but gradually our attention becomes fixed on a single bedroom, creating a feeling of claustrophobia typical of Shakespearian tragedies. The outer world becomes insignificant as the hero becomes monomaniacal, obsessed with a single private concern.
The use of Venice as a location is significant; the capitalist Italians were thought to be worldly and Venice in particular was associated with everything that was culturally sophisticated; it was a location that suggested power, order and wealth to the audience. Initially, Othello publically appears to have succeeded in Venice on its terms; he has gained both power and wealth. However, he is also an outsider and vitally struggles to earn status in Venetian society and the play explores what happens when he is made to feel this. It is appropriate that the Machiavellian trickster Iago should originate in an Italian setting before being transported to Cyprus. The war with the Turks and the uneasy tension of the Cypriot garrison town – a ‘halfway house’ between civilisation and the heathen world is also dramatically significant. The war has an isolating effect on, the heroine from everything and everyone she knows and Othello feels his difference and isolation in Cyprus where he is ‘perplexed in the extreme’. Here, in this strnage setting, with the threat of danger lurking, passions are unleashed and order is destroyed. The storm helps to establish and reflect the fear and violence the characters will feel in Cyprus while also being a symbol of Othello and Desdemona’s love.
The sense of claustrophobia is heightened by the fact that there is no subplot in Othello. The action of the play focuses very closely on Iago’s role and Othello’s reaction to his ‘reports’. Even the characters who seem to have other ‘lives’ are closely linked to the married couple in some way; Roderigo’s foolish hopes and Cassio’s relationship with Bianca provide us with some points of comparison with the Othello – Desdemona match. We are also aware that we are observing a microcosm of characters; they exist in a tightly knit social network where each person has a clearly defined position and a role and a view of each other member of the group. Iago threatens the order and harmony of the network because he is able to manipulate the views of the most powerful group member, Othello. The single plot intensifies dramatic tension; we are never given a moment’s respite to look away from Iago’s progress as he pushes Othello towards tragedy.
The Term Paper on Imagery In Othello Play Desdemona Iago
The function of imagery in the mid-sixteenth century play Othello by William Shakespeare is to aid characterization and define meaning in the play. The antagonist Iago is defined through many different images, Some being the use of poison and soporifics, sleeping agents, to show his true evil and sadistic nature. Othello's character is also shaped by much imagery such as the animalist ic, black ...
At the end of the play, confronted again with a personal rather than a public disaster, he breaks down into raving, regaining his composure only with the resolution of suicide. His final magnificent speech is an evasion of his present private tragedy as he looks back to his earlier public glories; he has ‘won the state some service, and they know’t.’ But the speech manages to suggest also the breadth and nobility of soul of that public figure, ‘Of one that lov’d not wisely, but too well/ Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought’, whatever his private insufficiencies. So Othello dies as he has lived throughout the action of the play, a public man bewildered by the tension of private conducts and private judgments, the simplest but not the least moving of all the great tragic heroes.
