ANALYSIS OF OTHELLO FROM OUTSIDER STANDPOINT IN THE COGNOMINAL PLAY BY SHAKESPEARE
As much as any character, Othello exemplifies how polarizing reactions to an outsider can be in Shakespeare, with the play`s great interest-and indeed Othello was from the beginning one of the most frequently performed and written about-resulting from strong and often opposite emotions. Critics have focused on his blackness or, recently, his condition as a Moor , and the particular associations of these categories in his society are important to the play. Yet it shows how fluid the outsider position in Shakespeare can be that Othello is not certain whether his blackness is more important than his age or his inexperience in high Venetian society. The complexity …show more content…
A tawny colour would emphasize his Islamic background more, and make him seem more alien to an English audience. Along with his colour, his religious history is one of many facts about Othello that the play leaves ambiguous, not telling us when he became a Christian, what, if any, was his previous religion, how he got to Venice, where he came from.
The negative images of Othello that come from Iago and Roderigo focus more association with lustful animality rather than violence, though the two are related. Othello has more animal imagery than any other Shakespearean play, and it begins with Iago`s labeling Othello an `old black ram`. Iago also describes him to Roderigo as lascivious and changeable, and in one soliloquy imagines him usurping his place in bed with Emilia.
Shakespeare had long imagined characters using `blackness` language not only to insult but also to question dominant ideals of beauty and how love relates to them, and he had begun to explore the protest of the dark speaker who is excluded by those ideals. But not until Othello does he explore an arc of psychological development in the voice of a black man who begins with the pride in his ancestry as well as to a new community and cannot maintain both, or the voice of a white woman who loves across race and defends her love of the
As much as any character, Othello exemplifies how polarizing reactions to an outsider can be in Shakespeare, with the play`s great interest-and indeed Othello was from the beginning one of the most frequently performed and written about-resulting from strong and often opposite emotions. Critics have focused on his blackness or, recently, his condition as a Moor , and the particular associations of these categories in his society are important to the play. Yet it shows how fluid the outsider position in Shakespeare can be that Othello is not certain whether his blackness is more important than his age or his inexperience in high Venetian society. The complexity …show more content…
A tawny colour would emphasize his Islamic background more, and make him seem more alien to an English audience. Along with his colour, his religious history is one of many facts about Othello that the play leaves ambiguous, not telling us when he became a Christian, what, if any, was his previous religion, how he got to Venice, where he came from.
The negative images of Othello that come from Iago and Roderigo focus more association with lustful animality rather than violence, though the two are related. Othello has more animal imagery than any other Shakespearean play, and it begins with Iago`s labeling Othello an `old black ram`. Iago also describes him to Roderigo as lascivious and changeable, and in one soliloquy imagines him usurping his place in bed with Emilia.
Shakespeare had long imagined characters using `blackness` language not only to insult but also to question dominant ideals of beauty and how love relates to them, and he had begun to explore the protest of the dark speaker who is excluded by those ideals. But not until Othello does he explore an arc of psychological development in the voice of a black man who begins with the pride in his ancestry as well as to a new community and cannot maintain both, or the voice of a white woman who loves across race and defends her love of the