In “On the Tragedy of Othello”, John Hughes speaks of how the story affected him personally and how he interpreted the story in his own means. He talks of how he receives feelings of nostalgia after seeing or reading one of Shakespeare’s plays, and he loves to see how others react to the plays as well. Hughes believes that the true subject of the play is the passion of jealousy. He uses Iago as an example of a man who was driven by his jealousy. which turned Into a burning passion for him to take up revenge against Othello and Cassio, who had previously taken Iago’s job. Othello is also used as an example as well, as his passion for Desdemona was quickly turned into jealousy and hatred. My interpretation of this article is that the author is trying to tap into the human nature of emotions In the story of Othello. It is human nature to possess jealousy. and the Author does a very fine job pulling the details of the jealousy from the story.
While jealousy is a strong emotion, I do not think it would lead to hatred and the will to murder as quickly as it actually did in the story as the Author tells it but over time jealousy can definitely be brewed into hatred, but I don‘t think that was the case in the story. I believe it to be more of a panic on Othello’s part in which he killed Desdemona rather than immediate hatred. In “Othello: Modern Criticism and Critical Controversies”, the Author of the article looks to find the insecurities and feelings possessed by the characters in the play. and how these emotions had an effect on their actions. As written, Othello is the finest character to use as an example of self-insecurity. The fact that Othello was tricked so easily of his wife’s betrayal of him on the surface seems like a knee-jerk reaction on Othello’s part, but digging deeper into this we can find that Othello truly doesn’t believe that he is worthy to Desdemona, leading to his fear of other men taking her away from him.
This makes lago‘s job much easier as Iago had obviously seen these insecurities appear beforehand while working closely to Othello, and knew that he could easily tap into them, thus leaving Othello to the mental anguish that would lead to his own demise. This article, in my interpretation, makes the most sense to the story. Othello clearly had a weakness which was his insecurity about himself, and the article exemplifies on this fact. It truly shows the evils and depths that Iago is willing to sink to just to take his petty revenge against Othello with, and by exposing this man’s insecurities cost several lives in the end, in which were a direct result of lago’s manipulation and evil actions upon Othello himself.
In “The Descent of Iago”, R. A. Foakes shows readers the little details in the story of Othello that could have been looked over entirely. An example the Author used was what the true context of the story of Othello was. R. A. Foakes believes that Othello can be compared and/or contrasted to a “Dark Comedy”, in which the play has a humorous tone, but builds on these with dark themes. The Author uses Iago as their example. in which lago’s character seemed unrealistic to them, therefore they found humor in what his character was. The same could have been said about Othello and how he so quickly turned from a lover to a person who wants to murder his wife.
The Author of this article believe that the plot and characters of the story are so ridiculously written that it is humorous, but with the scenes of killing and murder, it still entails a dark tone to it. My interpretation of this lies within disagreement. I do not believe that Shakespeare had intended for his readers to interpret the play as a comedy, even with dark tones in it. Granted, some scenes and plot lines in the story are very questionable, but they were not to be taken in a comedic manner, and rather in a serious tone. The reasons for the characters actions are well defined as having to do with insecurity. jealousy, passion, and hate, all when mixed with each other can entail drastic results. so the intention of the story definitely was not comedic.
