Transcript William Shakespeare’s Othello

Othello
Imagery as a defining
element in the play.
The two uses of imagery…
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To communicate a vivid and immediate
effect.
To weave a ‘pattern’, drawing together
the strands of the dramatic action into a
coherent design.
Language and Imagery
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Each Shakespearean play exhibits a
characteristic patterning of images, recurring
words and phrases, which reinforce the
overall design and subtly comment on it.
While it is difficult to assess the impact of all
verbal elements it is possible to identify
dominant threads of imagery and some of the
ways they relate to the play as a whole.
Responding to the imagery…
On a linguistic level we respond to the play
in two distinguishable ways:
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As a complete dramatic action,
As a dramatic play.
In the first case the words are the dramatic
medium, in the second they are everything.
Much of the interest and the difficulty of
Shakespeare’s work is that the two cannot be
separated.
Metaphorical Imagery
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The dominant feature of the language in Othello is its metaphoric
quality.
Metaphor is not merely the comparison of two different things with
each other but their close identification.
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When Iago says “Thus do I ever make my fool my purse”
(I, iii, 381), he is not only saying that he profits financially
from the other’s foolishness; he is making an equation
between human qualities and material ones that says
something about both.
Metaphor has this highly suggestive and ambiguous
quality, which is especially important to Othello, a play in
which familiar words and ideas are constantly presented in
unlikely new guises.
Honest imagery…
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The surface level of the irony with which this
word is used is obvious: Othello constantly
refers to Iago as an honest man when we
know that he is in fact the opposite.
But the word’s role in the play is far more
complex than at first appears. Iago
frequently uses the word to describe himself.
When he says to Cassio, ‘As I am an honest
man…’ (II, iii, 258), he is sharing a joke with
the audience; and the joke is on Cassio, who
agrees with him.
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Iago enjoys these word games.
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When Iago sneers at ‘honest knaves’, (II, iii,
258) he is using the word in its proper sense to
condemn those who foolishly put virtue and
truth before self-interest, using the word as a
term of contempt.
The word takes on a complex significance
through constant repetition.
The irony with which Iago employs the word
spreads throughout the play.
Desdemona refers to Cassio’s ‘honest face’ even
though he deceives her and Othello about
Bianca, and even contributes unknowingly to her
destruction.
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Desdemona hopes that ‘my noble lord esteems me
honest’ (IV, ii, 65) even as Othello is preparing her
doom; and when Emilia insists her mistress is indeed
honest Othello refuses to believe it.
The two poles of vice and virtue in the play are Iago and
Desdemona: Iago is consistently praised for his honesty;
Desdemona is consistently suspected for her dishonesty.
Othello’s confusion about the word reaches a climax in
Act III when he concludes: “I think my wife be honest,
and think she is not” (line 384).
The word ‘honest’ at this point also has complexity by
definition: it can mean not only truthful, but also
sexually chaste.
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Besides these meanings it also has a patronising sense,
referring to social inferiors as a term of praise.
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Iago uses it in all three senses, and plays on
them.
We only have a sense of the word honest
because we have the concept of dishonesty.
The various uses of the word encourage us
to think about the different notions of
honesty explored in the play and their
relevance for the different characters.
Emilia’s notion of honesty, for example, is
very different to that of Desdemona; Emilia
has lower standards and a more relaxed
attitude to morality.
Appearance versus Reality…
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The word ‘honest’ is also linked to words and
images associated with the theme of
Appearance versus Reality.
The images associated with this theme have
recurring ideas: seeming, looking,
concealing, disguise, frankness,
misunderstanding and deception.
The distinction between being and seeming
is a major theme. Othello several times
proclaims himself as one who is what he
appears. Iago, on the other hand, exults in
concealing his true nature:
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“I am not what I am” (I, i, 65).
Truth & Deception…
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There are two poles of truth and deception, between
which the play moves, though neither is what it seems.
Othello is wrong to think that everything in our natures
can be simply manifested.
Iago is wrong to believe that we can completely conceal
our true intentions.
Both reveal aspects of their nature that they themselves
do not understand:
 Othello is seduced by his jealous frenzy,
 Iago is carried away by the exhiliration of his plotting
and scheming.
 All ways of seeming are shown up for what they are by
the light of truth at the end of the play.
Developing the theme…
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At the end of the play, the revelation of Iago’s
deception drives the villain himself into silence;
his tongue, the main instrument of deception, is
no longer of any use.
Yet until this moment, the theme of appearance
and reality is developed even at the height of the
hero’s crisis, through the language he uses.
Deceived by appearances, Othello is finally
stricken with the sight of his dead wife.
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This final appearance is irreversible reality: she
is dead, despite the appearance of life when
Emilia enters.
Emotive imagery…
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The text is filled with images of
darkness, confusion, uncertainty and
perplexity.
It is also full of violent oppositions: love
and hate; heaven and hell; light and
dark; life and death; black and white;
blood and stars; cruelty and kindness;
guilt and innocence.
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The conflicts of the play reflect the larger
oppositions of life itself.
Othello in opposition…
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In Othello’s soliloquy at the beginning of Act
V, Scene ii, he is in a state of painful
excitement – a man used to killing, but only
in war.
He is still passionately in love with his wife
and acutely conscious of her physically, yet
consumed with jealous doubts.
Through the act of murder, Othello ‘makes
sure’ of his wife. Once dead she cannot
betray him any more.
Yet to kill her is to lose the very thing he
values most.
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To satisfy his doubts he must part with
his most valued object.
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This is the play’s most emotionally charged moment. The
involved syntax of Othello’s speech reflects the tormented
twisting and turning of his mind as he moves between pity
and determination, love and hate, desire and jealousy, all
too aware of the finality of the deed he proposes to
commit.
The speech is full of those violent oppositions noted
previously.
Othello represents the human condition, when on the brink
of an inevitable and disastrous act which he knows to be
irreversible. He is drawn irresistably to destroy his own
happiness, driven to the final act of murder by unbearable
conflict.
Imagery through Oxymoron…
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Fatal sweetness, cruel tears, heavenly sorrow, murderous love:
these are all examples of oxymoron, a figure of speech popular
in 16th-century poetry, combining contradictory terms.
Shakespeare explicitly uses this type of figure of speech to
attempt to reconcile or synthesise opposites. This is especially
noticeable in the speech of Iago.
It is in this spirit of contradiction that Iago infects Othello and
turns the general’s reality on its head.
Thus, in the middle of the play Othello begins to employ the
animal and vermin imagery previously reserved for Iago.
 Oxymoron is appropriate to a play full of contradictions,
but it is one of the most subtle linguistic patterns in
Othello.
Verbal echoes & repetitions in imagery…
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Verbal echoes and repetitions are used to enforce the
play’s many interlocked themes.
Images of poisoning, the marriage bed, wealth, buying
and selling, the devil, eyes and looks, the army, sexuality
and the fickleness of women, and of animals abound.
Sometimes they are associated with one character: the
devil with Iago; purity and its opposite with Desdemona;
the monster of jealousy with Othello.
In this sense the imagery enforces the dramatic outline.
 The imagery in Othello depends upon the
ambivalent nature of language as a medium on
the one hand common to all speakers, and on
the other used by individuals for their own
purposes.