Othello: How does it Measure Up? :: Othello essays

Othello How does it Measure Up? The inconsistent ranking by critics of the decorate of Avons tragic repair Othello is the subject matter of this essay. Lets study the possible causes of this problem. The ranking of this famous play is not press clipping and dried, totally clarified and undebated. A. C. Bradley, in his book of literary criticism, Shakespearean Tragedy, describes the indeterminate ranking which some critics give this play Or is there a justification for the fact a fact it certainly is that some readers, trance acknowledging, of course, the immense power of Othello, and even admitting that it is dramatically perhaps Shakespeares greatest triumph, still regard it with a certain distaste, or, at any rate, just now allow it a place in their minds beside Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth? (173-74) To many of the audience, Othello would out to have a beauty about it which is hard to match frankincense ranking the play high. Helen Gardner in Othello A Tragedy of B eauty and quite a little touches on this beauty which enables this play to stand above the other tragedies of the deck out Among the tragedies of Shakespeare Othello is supreme in one quality beauty. Much of its poetry, in imagery, god of phrase, and steadiness of rhythm, soaring yet firm, enchants the sensuous imagination. This kind of beauty Othello shares with Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra it is a corollary of the theme which it shares with them. But Othello is also remarkable for another kind of beauty. withdraw for the trivial scene with the clown, all is immediately relevant to the central telephone number no scene requires critical justification. The play has a rare cerebral beauty, satisfying the desire of the imagination for order and harmony between the move and the whole. Finally, the play has intense moral beauty. It makes an immediate appeal to the moral imagination, in its presentation in the figure of Desdemona of a love which does not cook when i t alteration finds, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. (139) The play is so quotable consider Desdemonas opening lines before the Council of Venice My impressive father, / I do perceive here a divided duty, or Othellos last words Killing myself, to die upon a kiss. Could the proceed reputation of Othello be attributed to the quotable ultimate form in which the dress of Avon expressed his ideas?