Context

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Historical Context

The Renaissance

The Renaissance (Rebirth) saw a revival of artistic and intellectual endeavour, which began in Italy in the 14th century. It spread gradually northwards across Europe and is first detectable in England in the early 16th century in the writings of the scholar and statesman Sir Thomas More and in the poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.

Its keynote was curiousity in thought which challenged old assumptions and traditions. There was a new confidence in human reason and in human potential which challenged old convictions.

Classical texts and the culture of Greece and Rome were rediscovered and, with this rediscovery, the 'golden age' of English Literature began, of which Shakespeare's play is part.

Shakespeare's drama and the Renaissance

Shakespeare's drama is innovative and challenging in exactly the way of the renaissance. it examines and questions the beliefs, assumptions and politics upon which Elizabethan society was founded.

Although his plays conclude ina restoration of order and stability, Shakespeare subverts traditional values, as we see in Othello, where a tragic hero is a black man and the heroine an assertive young woman.

Critical, rebellious, mocking voices, like Iago's, are heard in Shakespeare's plays.

Because of censorship, any criticism Shakespeare makes of the way those in authority behave, or questions he asks about race and nobility, has to be muted or oblique. Direct criticism of the monarch or contemporary English court would not be tolerated. This has something to do with Shakespeare's plays are always set either in the past or abroad, as is the case with Othello.

In 1600, John Pory published a translation of John Leo's 'A Geographical Historie of Africa', which Shakespeare may have consulted when writing Othello. Leo was a Moor who had been brought up in Barbary. He described his countrymen as being honest, credulous, 'proud and high-minded', and wrote that 'no nation in the world is so subject unto jealousy; for they will rather lose their lives than put up any disgrace in the behalf of their women.'

Nationalism and Xenophobia

Italy had what Norman Sanders has called a 'double image'. On the one hand, it was a land of refinement and romance, a model of civilisation. Venice, Europe's centre of capitalism, was a free state and renowned as one of the most beautiful cities in Italy.

On the other hand, Italy was a country associated with decadence, villainy and vice. Venice itself was suspect, because it was, as Norman Sanders put, 'a racial and religious melting pot.'

Elizabethans were against mixed marriages and viewed 'blackamoors' with suspicion. Elizabeth I issued edicts demanding their removal from England because they were considered an 'annoyance'. What we would now deem racist views were common, and many believed that black people were fit only to be slaves.

Religion In Shakespeare's England

The nationalism of the English Renaissance was reinforced by Protestanism. Henry VIII had broken with Rome in the 1530s and in Shakespeare's time there was an independent Protestant state church.

Shakespeare's plays are free from direct religious sentiment, but their emphases are Protestant. Othello has converted to Christianity and the preoccupation with good and evil in the play suggests its religious context. The central figures of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Othello, are frequently individuals beset by temptation and the lure of evil.

Shakespeare's heroes have the preoccupation with self and the introspective tendencies encouraged by Protestantism. In Act 3 scene 3 we see that Othello starts to doubt his looks as a husband.

Shakespeare's tragic heroes are haunted by their consciences; they agonise over their actions as they follow what can be understood as spiritual progress towards heaven and hell. This is exactly the psychological journey Othello goes on. See evidence of Othello's tormented conscience both before and after he kills his wife

Female Subordination

Women remained in subordinate roles, their lives controlled by patriarchy uring the Renaissance. Women expected to be ruled by men, as Desdemona's submission to Othello demonstrates. Women expected to be ruled by men, as Desdemona's submission to Othello demonstrates. Women had few legal rights.

They were entitled to inherit property, but if they married, everything they owned passed to their husbands for their daughters, as Brabantio does in Othello

Intellectually, women were thought to be inferior to men, and incapable of rational thought. They rarely received an education. Assertive and argumentative women were seen as a threat to the social order and were punished for their behaviour with forms of torture such as the ducking stool, the scold's bridle or 'carting'.

However, European visitors to Englan commented that English women have more freedom than was the case in many other European countries. Shakespeare's wife successfully managed a home and property, as well as her family, for twenty years while Shakespeare was pursuing his career in London.

Shakespeare's audiences included women, and he wrote a large number of parts from strong-minded female characters, like Desdemona.

Shakespeare's Theatre

The form of the Elizabethan theatre dervived from the inn yards and animal-baiting rings in which actors has performed in the past. They were circular wooden buildings with a paved country yard in the middle of this yard.

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Racism, misogyny and 'motiveless malignity' in Othello

Themes: Tragedies, Ethnicity and Identity

The basic idea of the play is so well known that it's easy to forget the startling boldness of Shakespeare's decision to take Cinthio's brief tale of a doomed mixed-race marriage and transform it into a heart-breaking tragedy. In a country where few people outside London would ever have seen a coloured perosn, and centruies beofre the problems that fuelthe tragedy become as ubiquitious and pressing as they are today, Shakespeare produced in Othello a searing critique of racial and sexual injustice, whihc is more powerful now in the 21st century than it oculd ever have been at the dawn of the 17th.

Desdemona and Othello- In their eyes and in Shakespeare's there's nothing illicit about their love, to which they regard themesleves and the play regards them, as they are fully entitled.

In the shape of Iago, the venomous rage of society whose foundations are rocked by the mere fact of their marriage

If we turn a blind eye to this outrage, Brabantio argues in effect, we're treating our inferiors as our equals, which means there's nothing to stop the subhuman underclass or heathen outcast of society taking our place and having power over us. Shakespeare makes it plain from the start that it's not just Iago the newly weds are up against but the status quo and a view of the world which Iago merely embodies in its most lethal form.

By pointing to the deep-seated racism that posions the Venetian view of Othello and even Othello's view of himself. The colour of Othello's skin is a crucial factor in his down fall, beucase his visibly allen racial identity makes him and his bride far more vulnerable to the plot of Iago than if he were an equally accomplish and indispenable white man.

Othello's vulnerablity as an black outsider, who unconsciously shares the white perception of his blackness, is inseparable from thraldom to a patricarchal concept of masculinity and misognistic concept of marriage that are just as dendemic as racism in Venetian culure.

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Daughters In Shakespeare

Themes: Tragedies, sexuality, courtship and marriage

Brabantio sees Desdemona's actions as nothing less than treachery. He can hardly believe she managed to 'escape' from the house, let alone deceive him in this way. In fact, he finds her actions so uncharacterstic of his quite and diffident daughter he takes some convincing that Othello has drugged her.

Unlike Juliet, Desdem

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Othello Staging History:

Staging Practices:

The Shakespearean stage there was very little in the scenery and props- there was nowhere to store them, nor any way to set them up. Productions had to be transportable for performance at court or at noble houses.

Therefore the stage was bare, which is why characters often tell us where they are.

Location in Shakespeare's play can be symbolic description of places are used to creates a specific dramtic mood or situation. The storm in Cyprus that opens in act 2 is decribed verbally by the characters on stage, to create a mood of tension for the the audience.

During night scences characters may mention they cannot see what is going on to establish a sense of danger, as happens in act 4 and 5 of Othello. Torches, tapers and candles would have been used to signify night to the audience

When Othello strangles Desdemona; It would have dominated the stage. Although Othello's violence against Desdemona is shocking, it needs to be considered in context. The Elizabethans lived in an violent world. Domestic abuse was not uncommon and except in cases if extreme cruelty, not considered unacceptable.

The stage history of Othello:

The diarist Samuel Pepys saw the play twice and noted how the audience called out in horror when Desdemona was killed. In the 18th century, partly becuase of the presence of women on stage and in the audience, it was felt neccessary to make refinements to the text so that Othello met comtemporary standards of decorum. For example, Desdemona's Willow Song was removed becuase it was thought unladylike, and Othello's speeches were cut to emphasise his nobility. The tradition of cutting the play contiued into the 19th century, by which time there were two types of Othello on stage: controlled, dignified Moor or what Norman Sanders describes as the 'blazing portrayal of torrential sexual passion and wild jealousy '

!870s involved the Italian actor Tommaso Salvini Italian actor who spoke all of his lines in Italian while the other characters spoke in English. Salvini's Othello was noted for his eroticism and savagery. He prowled around stage like a tiger, punced on Desdemona in act 5 scene 2 and dashed her across the stage and through the curtains.

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Contemporary Approaches

Feminist Readings Of Desdemona

Explore the gender politics of Othello. A feminist critic would consider the roles of the male and female characters in relation to the patriarchal context of the play. Many feminist critics have noted how female characters in Jacobean tragedies are victims who have limited power and are punished for their sexuality.

Lisa Jardine (Still Harping on Daughters) (1932) She suggests that the stage world of Jacobean drama is wholly masculine and argues that a there is only a male viewpoint on offer. Jardine asserts the view that Desdemona proves 'too-knowing, too-independent' and because of her waywardness she is is punished by patriarchy. Jardine suggests that Desdemona becomes a stereotype of female passivity.

Marxist Readings

New Historicist Readings

Commenting on the violence against female characters in the drama of the Jacobean period, Leonard Tennenhouse asserts the view that 'Jacobean tragedies offer up their scenes of excessive punishment as if mutilating the female could somehow correct political corruption. The female in question may be completely innocent... yet in the play, she demands her death or else claims responsibility for her murder." Tennenhous suggests Desdemona has to be destroyed because she is subversive. Unlike many feminists critics, Tennenhous suggests that Desdemona is 'the embodiment of power' as she defends her right to choose her husband.

Francis Dolan, 'Revolutions Petty Tyranny and the murderous Husband' considers Othello in relation to its historical context. She notes how Shakespeare's society, murdering one's spouse was considered a threat to the social order. Dolan also comments on how Jacobean drama reflects 17th-century anxieties about the racial 'other', the traitor 'inside', the plotting subordinate and abusive authority figures. Dolan says that Othello can be linked to all these 'spectres of disorder'. Dolan defines him as a 'domestic tyrant who murders his wife on spurious grounds'. She also suggests Othello is an ambiguous position because of his race. He cannot hold on his authority with any confidence or security because he is different from the Venetians. For Dolans, Othello races would have undermined his heroism: "By making the protagonist black, Shakespeare prepares his original audience to question Othello's authority, to suspect that he might misuse it groundlessly".

Post- Colonial Readings

Ania Loomba suggests the central conflict in Othello 'between the racism of white patriarchy and the threat posed to it by both a black and a white woman'. For Loomba, women and black exist as 'the other' in this play. Loomba argues that Othello has a spilt consciousness and is 'near schizophrenic hero' his final speech 'graphically portrays the spilt- he becomes simultaneously the Christian and the infidel, the Venetian and the Turk, the keeper if the state and it's opponent'. Loomba suggests Othello is an honorary white at the beginning of the play but comes a 'total outsider' because of his relationship with Desdemona, which ruptures his precarious entry into the white world.

Karan Newman- the play explores the 'fear of racial and sexual difference' of Renaissance culture. Newman argues the white male character in Othello, especially Iago, feel threatened by the 'power and potency of different and monstrous sexuality' which Othello represents. Newman looks at the play concerning Elizabethan stereotypes of the black male, in particular worries about mixed marriages. Shakespeare's contemporaries feared "the black man had the power to subjugate his partner's witnesses'. This makes the black male monstrous. However, Newman suggests 'by making the black Othello a hero, and by making Desdemona's love for Othello... sympathetic', Shakespeare's play challenges the racist, sexist and colonialist views of society.