Othello’s Themeland - 3037 Words

Othello’s Themeland Built on a broad base of multiple themes, Othello is one of William Shakespeare’s most popular tragedies. Let’s sift through the themes and try to rank them in significance. In the Introduction to The Folger Library General Reader’s Shakespeare, Louis B. Wright and Virginia A. LaMar consider the arch-villainy of the ancient to be the most potent theme: Othello has been described as Shakespeare’s most perfect play. Critics of dramatic structure have praised it for its attention to the main theme without irrelevant distractions. Many Elizabethan plays had rambling subplots and much extraneous detail to amuse the groundlings. Othello avoids all irrelevancies and the action moves swiftly†¦show more content†¦Heilman discusses the ancient’s instinctive reaction to the love-theme of the play: Before coming directly to the forming of the love-theme that differentiates Othello from other Shakespeare plays that utilize the same theme, I turn arbitrarily to Iago to inspect a distinguishing mark of his of which the relevance to thematic form in the play will appear a little later. When Iago with unperceived scoffing reminds Roderigo, who is drawn with merciless attraction to the unreachable Desdemona, that love effects an unwonted nobility in men, he states a doctrine which he â€Å"knows† is true but in which he may not â€Å"believe.† Ennoblement by love is a real possibility in men, but Iago has to view it with bitterness and to try to undermine it. (333-34) The theme of hate is the theme on which the play opens. Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes indicates this hate in the opening scene: It is then on a theme of hate that the play opens. It is a hate of inveterate anger. It is a hate that is bound up with envy. Othello has preferred to be his lieutenant a military theorist, one Michael Cassio, over the experienced soldier Iago, to whom has fallen instead the post of â€Å"his Moorship’s ancient†. Roderigo questions Iago: Thou told’st me thou didst hold him in thy hate. And the reply is a torrent of proof of the hatred for Othello that has almost exceeded the envy of Cassio