Othello Workshop Session

Prompt for Workshop Session a) What drives the tragedy of Othello? b) How do we know this to be true?

Iago’s first soliloquy 1.3. 375-402 What’s the effect of the switch from dialogue to soliloquy on the audience here? What does the soliloquy reveal: about Iago’s character? about Iago’s plans and motives? (n.b. in Shakespeare’s source, Cinthio’s Hecatommithi (1565) Iago is in love with Desdemona) about anything or anyone else? Iago speaks more soliloquies than Othello in the play (8 to 3). He is, in that sense, of a more “free and open nature” than the tragic hero. What’s the effect of that on our interpretation of the tragedy?

Othello’s final soliloquy 5.2. 1-22 What is the effect of Shakespeare open this scene with soliloquy (rather than, say, have an entrance followed by dialogue)? What is the function of verbal repetitions (e.g. ‘cause’, ‘Once more’) in the soliloquy? How is Othello presented through this soliloquy?

A.C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (London, 1904) the origins of hamartia as fatal flaw. Again, if we confine our attention to the hero, and to those cases where the gross and palpable evil is not in him but elsewhere, we find that the comparatively innocent hero still shows some marked imperfection or defect, -- irresolution, precipitancy, pride, credulousness, excessive simplicity, excessive susceptibility to sexual emotions, and the like. These defects or imperfections are certainly, in the wide sense of the word, evil, and they contribute decisively to the conflict and catastrophe. (2014 ed. p.23). The calamities of [Shakespearean] tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men… The centre of the tragedy, therefore may be said … to lie in action issuing from character, or in character issuing in action … What we do feel strongly, as a tragedy advances to its close, is that the calamaties and catrastope follow inevitably from the deeds of men, and that the main source of these deeds is character. (Bradley in Nevitt and Pollard, 212, 214.)