Lecture 1

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Lecture 1 Othello the Moor of Venice by William
Shakespeare

• World of Othello Othellos World

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Areas of focus

• Introductory remarks, and Conflict
• A different time a different place
• Historical and cultural factors
• A word on Shakespeares Theatre
• Shakespearean Drama
• Shakespearean Tragedy and Tragic Hero
• Literary, linguistic, rhetorical elements
• Key Concepts

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Introduction Note the title

• Othello
• the Moor of Venice

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Introduction (cont)

• To study Shakespeare enables you to acquire all
  kinds of knowledge, ideas, insights, skills, and
  most of all, wisdom
• Increased vocabulary, and use of English
• Enriched historical cross-cultural awareness
  and intellectual understanding
• Enhanced personal developmentgrowth of self
  confidence and self-esteem

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Drama and Conflict

• In Othello, as with any play
• Conflict is the essence of drama.

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Introduction Studying and Enjoying

• Shakespeare wanted his plays to entertain and to
  be enjoyed
• A play like Othello should be treated as a script
  to guide a live performance on stage
• For active, imaginative, and co-operative
  inhabitation of Shakespeares world
• His language is an invitation to imaginative,
  dramatic enactment
• Play reading visualizing the script of the play
  in your mind

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A different time, different place

• Clearly a different world
• The Elizabethan England of Shakespeare
• Distinguishing clearly between Shakespeares
  English world and the European world of his play
  Othello Venice, the Hollywood of 16th
  century West
• Venice glamorous, daring, brilliant, wicked
  citya city of pearls and perils

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The world of Shakespeare's Othello

• Notice the names of the characters Roderigo
  Brabantio Cassio Iago Othello
• Clearly, Italian sounding names
• (though name Iago is Spanish for James)
• Venice (Venetian) Florence (Florentine)
• Venicea powerful European city-state
• Important commercial centre and to the whole of
  Christendom as a protector of the Christian faith
  against Turkey

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The city of Venice

• Venice is the landless city where different kinds
  and races meet each other
• The sea is the medium of their wars as money is
  the medium of their wealth
• Venice is for Shakespeare an anthropological
  laboratory
• suspended between sea and sky, it receives and
  utilizes all kinds of people

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This is Venice Brabantio

• Audiences had good reason to see Italy as a
  natural background to sensational dramatic events
• On the one hand, Italy, and more particularly,
  cities like Venice and Florence were centres of
  civilization
• Earliest home of the European Renaissance
• A model of learning and sophistication

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Moors? and Othello, the Moor

• Issue of Othellos race Arab or Negro?
• Moor (standard definition) a member of the mixed
  Arab and Berber people of Morocco (North Africa)
  and the Barbary coast
• However, evidence for the kind of Moor Othello is
  in the play is difficult to interpret
• In any case, a dark, or black / white opposition
  is built into the play at every level

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Theatre in Shakespeares time

• Shakespeare's theatre did not possess the complex
  stage machinery of modern theatre
• to create elaborate sets, lighting, and sound
  effects
• He therefore had to create atmosphere and setting
  through language
• Scene painting done in words
• Lighting effects achieved through language

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Re- Theatre (cont)

• Fullest experience of any Shakespearean play was
  created through words
• In Othello, for instance, language is used to
  evoke tempests
• Language is used to create a sense of place

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Features of Shakespearean Drama

• Every play has its own distinctiveness
• Much of his plays written in poetry verseblank
  verse
• As well as in prose
• Blank verse is a very flexible medium like
  normal English speech, capable of a wide range of
  tones Speaking Shakespeare
• Iambic pentameterdivide into five feet

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Features of Shakespearean drama (cont)

• High life characters speak in poetry
  low life characters speak in prose
• Five act plays, divided into scenes
• Soliloquies, Asides, and set speeches
• Long speechesCopia Verborum (abundance,
  plentiness of words)
• The nature of Shakespeares stage directions

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A sense of Shakespearean Tragedy

• Genre? Kind / type of play Othello is a tragedy
• In Tragedy (tragic drama), there is always a
  fall the playwright is concerned with
  its causes, the way it works, its effects
• Associated with Tragedy is the notion of the
  boomerang
• The effect of the Tragic Heros actions on
  himself totally different effect to that
  intended

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The Tragic Hero

• For the tragic hero,
• there is also the concept of the acquisition of
  self-knowledge
• This refers to the knowledge of himself that
  comes to the Tragic Hero through suffering

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In Tragedymust be a Tragic Hero

• Whose situation changes from well-being to
  misfortune
• Brought upon him by some error of judgment on his
  part, arising from a flaw in his character, some
  human weakness
• Essential he contributes to some extent to his
  own downfall
• Who must suffer for his wrong-doing on this earth
  until he has expiated his offences

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Definition of Tragic Hero

• The Tragic Hero is a potentially noble person
• Who, through some flaw in his character
• Helps to bring about his own downfall, a
• And who by suffering acquires self-knowledge
• And so purges his faults

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Literary elements

• Rich and varied use of poetic imagery
• Symbolism e.g. the tempest
• Personification
• Rhythm e.g. the steady rhythm of Othellos
  earlier blank verse
• Sound repetition Assonance, Alliteration, and
  onomatopoeia Rhyme
• Puns The Elizabethans delighted in wordplay
• Dramatic irony Irony of situation irony of
  speech

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Literary elementswe note Iago uses

• bombastic, patterned, balanced language,
  abounding in latinisms
• when he is speaking to Roderigo
• For example, it was a violent commencement, and
  thou shalt see an answerable sequestration
  Iago in Act 1, Scene 3, lines 345-346
• Use of patterned dialogue

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Linguistic elements

• Use of pronouns You and Thee
• Shakespeares use of thee, thou, thy, thine
• Thou can imply either closeness or contempt
• You is more formal and distant form of address
  suggesting respect for a superior or courtesy to
  a social equal
• Use of transitive verbs
• Use of aptly chosen adjectives

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Shakespearean / Elizabethan English

• Tush - rubbish Sblood - by Gods blood
• Forsooth
• Hath
• Full hard
• Marry (swears by the Virgin Mary)
• Hotly - urgently
• Moons - months
• Prithee - pray you
• Haply - perhaps
• Note Words that have changed in meaning

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Rhetoric Art of Persuasion

• All the ways of using language to convince
  others, or move someone to action
• Use of particular linguistic techniques to gain
  the confidence of listeners, appeal to their
  reason, their emotions, and their imagination
• In Othello, as in all plays, powerfully
  persuasive voices are heard as characters try to
  convince other characters

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Rhetorical techniques / devices

• Lengthy speechescopia verborum
• Bombast (inflated language)
• Powerful antithesis Hyperbole
• All kinds of repetitions, and lists (enumeration)
  
• Anaphora the same words beginning successive
  sentences
• Epizeuxis repeating words in immediate
  succession
• Antanaclasis punning on a repeated word to
  obtain different dramatic effects

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Some central Concepts

• Individual Outsider Society Culture
• Conflict Tragedy (Shakespearean Tragedy)
• Tragic hero Concepts of Heaven and Hell
• Concepts of Good, and Evil Love and Hate
• Concepts of Appearance and Reality
• Concept of Belief and Knowledge
• Concept of Cause Reason and Evidence
• Concepts of Order and Chaos
• Concept of Antithesis

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Finally, remember???

• Read the playcarefully and thoroughly
• In reading the play, (may I suggest) you acquire
  and use a CD aural dramatization to enable you to
  follow and make better sense of the context of
  the plays text.
• Seek opportunities to see the play in
  performance to experience it theatrically
• Seize opportunities to read literary criticism
• Seek opportunities to discuss the play