Author Question: What event does the plays action look forward to? What will be an ideal ... (Read 90 times)

jace · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

What event does the plays action look forward to?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Does the downfall of Othello proceed from any flaw in his nature, or is hisdownfall entirely the work of Iago?

What will be an ideal response?

DHRUVSHAH · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

The play focuses on the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, announced in the opening scene and celebrated in the final one. In some sense every major action in the play suggests, illuminates, or contrasts with this event. The entire play can be read as an exploration of the nature of marital love and union. The reasonable and conciliatory behavior of the two royal lovers, who overcome their previous animosity to marry, also provides perspective on the comic adventures and misadventures of the other couples.

Answer to Question 2

This is a classic (or clich) problem, and perhaps there is no better answer than Coleridges in his Lectures on Shakspere:

Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iagosuch a conviction as any man would and must have entertained who had believed in Iagos honesty as Othello did. We, the audience, know that Iago is a villain from the beginning; but in considering the essence of the Shaksperian Othello, we must perseveringly place ourselves in his situation, and under his circumstances. Then we shall immediately feel the fundamental difference between the solemn agony of the noble Moor, and the wretched fishing jealousies of Leontes.... Othello had no life but in Desdemona: the belief that she, his angel, had fallen from the heaven of her native innocence, wrought a civil war in his heart. She is his counterpart; and, like him, is almost sanctified in our eyes by her absolute unsuspiciousness, and holy entireness of love. As the curtain drops, which do we pity the most?