1. A C Bradley ‘Shakespearean Tragedy’ (1904)
Year 13 Othello Exploring and evaluating alternative interpretations of the play (A05)
All the quotations in speech marks are taken from the following secondary source:
A C Bradley ‘Shakespearean Tragedy’ (1904)

2. Though Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people, his book is probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published. His influence on Shakespearean criticism was so great that the following poem , by Guy Boas, Lays of Learning, 1926, appeared/;
I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley

3. Your task in pairs: Look up any words you don’t understand
What evidence is there in the play to support it? Find a quote
How can you link the quote to the presentation of love in the play?
Can you challenge the view
Feed back to the class – each pair will have 4 minutes.

4. 1. Bradley on Othello’s qualities
‘Othello is by far the most romantic figure among Shakespeare’s heroes’ ‘his own nature is romantic’
‘more poetic than Hamlet’ not even Romeo’s love is ‘steeped in imagination’ as much as Othello’s .
‘Proud of his service to the state’ ‘ unawed by dignitaries’
With Desdemona he has ‘a love as strange, adventurous and romantic as any passage of his eventful history’
‘He stirs I believe in most readers a passion of mingled love and pity’

5. 2. Bradley on Othello’s shortcomings
‘He is not observant. His mind is very simple. Emotion excites his imagination but dulls his intellect. He is full of the most vehement passion.’
‘Hesitation is almost impossible to him’
‘He was trustful and thorough in his trust; his opinion of Iago was the opinion of practically everyone who knew him as ‘honest’’

6. 3. Bradley on Iago – who opens the play in 1.1 (alongside Roderigo)
‘Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the character of Iago.’ How does this shape our view of love in the play?
“We receive at the very outset a strong impression of the force which is to prove fatal to the hero’s happiness”
This structural device is used in other tragedies: Romeo and Juliet – prologue /Macbeth – the three witches / Hamlet – his father’s ghost. How does this structural technique shape the audience’s experience of love?
Vocab: villain / Machiavellian figure / Vice figure / duplicitous / puppeteer / director / engineer / soliloquy / dramatic irony

7. 4. Bradley on Desdemona
Desdemona’s suffering ‘the most nearly intolerable spectacle that Shakespeare offers us’
‘Desdemona is helplessly passive’
‘She is helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute’
We are to undersand, innocence, gentleness, sweetness, loveingness were the principal traits in her character. She was as her father supposed her to be ‘a maiden never bold’
In contrast to Cordelia in King Lear ‘no instinctive terror of death would have compelled Cordelia suddenly to relinquish her demand for justice’

8. 5. Bradley on Emilia
‘Few of Shakespeare’s minor characters are more distinct than Emilia and towards few do our feelings change so much within the course of a play’
She was a mistreated wife:
Emilia was not treated affectionately by Iago ‘we gather than he was given to chiding and sometimes spoke sharply to her.’ ( ) Iago was unreasonably jealous – as Emilia acknowledges ( )
She was also imperceptive and misjudged her husband’s character:
‘In spite of knowing his character, Emilia did not spot Othello’s agitation about the handkerchief and assume the worst about her husband, which shows how she did not doubt her husband’ ( )
‘Her triplet ‘My husband!’ in Act 5 is a cry of astonishment and horror’

9. 6. ‘It is only in the love tragedies Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, that the heroine is as much the centre of the action as the hero. ‘
So Shakespeare was happy to create two equally central women in two other tragedies, so what does this show about his intention in Othello?

10. 7. His tragedies always concern a person of high degree: a King, Prince or leader of the state
‘Othello is no mere private person, he is the General of the Republic and ‘the consciousness of his high position never leaves him’ . His last speech shows this.
How does this idea help us understand how the marriage fails? How this becomes a domestic tragedy?

11. 8. ‘The whole constructional effect of Othello is different from the other tragedies’
Unlike all other tragedies ‘The second half of the drama is immeasurably more exciting than the first. […] the tension is extreme’
‘Othello is the most painfully exciting and the most terrible’ of the tragedies
‘accelerating speed to the catastrophe’

12. Homework – to add a slide(s) to our shared One drive Powerpoint
Homework – to add a slide(s) to our shared One drive Powerpoint. Deadline: next Monday.
Your slide(s) should include key quotes by your critic that could help you answer a ‘Love across the ages’ Shakespeare question. Include minimal commentary in your own words so meaning is clear. You will have received an reply to edit the document. Make sure you click on edit online (otherwise it won’t save)
Thomas Rhymer
Dr Johnson
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
William Hazlitt
T S Eliot
F R Leavis
Criticism from last present
useful for links