Othello’s Ranking Now and Then :: Othello essays

Othellos Ranking Now and Then From Burbages day till the present, the Shakespearean drama Othello has ranked high on the charts. But how high? And when? And why? Kenneth Muir, in the Introduction to William Shakespeare Othello, explains the popularity which this number had at the time of its creation Richard Burbage, the leading actor in Shakespeares company, contend the part of the grieved Moor and it was integrity of his greatest successes. We are told by Shakespeares neighbor, Leonard Digges, that audiences were bored with Jonsons tragedies They prized more Honest Iago, or the jealous Moor. (12) The be of this famous play is not cut and dried, tot whollyy clarified and undebated. A. C. Bradley, in his book of literary criticism, Shakespearean Tragedy, describes the equivocal ranking which some critics circulate this play Or is there a justification for the fact a fact it certainly is that some readers, while acknowledging, of course, the immense power of Othello, an d pull down admitting that it is dramatically perhaps Shakespeares greatest triumph, still regard it with a certain distaste, or, at any rate, hardly allow it a posterior in their minds beside Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth? (173-74) To many of the audience, Othello would appear to have a dish ab bring out it which is hard to match thus ranking the play high. Helen Gardner in Othello A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune touches on this beauty which enables this play to stand above the other tragedies of the Bard Among the tragedies of Shakespeare Othello is supreme in one quality beauty. Much of its poetry, in imagery, perfection of phrase, and steadiness of rhythm, soaring and firm, enchants the sensuous caprice. 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 alike remarkable for another kind of beauty. Except for the trivial scene with the clown, all is immediately releva nt to the central issue no scene requires life-sustaining justification. The play has a rare intellectual beauty, satisfying the desire of the imagination for order and harmony between the parts and the whole. Finally, the play has intense example beauty. It makes an immediate appeal to the moral imagination, in its presentation in the manakin of Desdemona of a love which does not alter when it alteration finds, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.