Othello’s Copious Imagery Essay -- Othello essays

Othellos Copious Imagery Lets learn into Shakespeargons drama Othello and admire the proliferation of imagery with which the playwright has decorated the play. In the Introduction to Shakespeares Othello The Harbrace Theatre Edition, John Russell Brown describes some slight images in the play The elaborate soliloquy spoken by Othello as he approaches his sleeping wife (V.ii.1-22) contains some splendid images, such as chaste stars, monumental alabaster, flaming minister, and Promethean heat, but its key words are simple and used repeatedly cause, soul, blood, die, light, love, and weep. In his last sustained vocabulary (V.ii.338-56), the images are fewer and approached through the simplest words (Speak of me as I am) and most blatant antitheses (loved not wisely, but to a fault well). (xiv) H. S. Wilson in his book of literary criticism, On the Design of Shakespearian Tragedy, discusses the influence of the imagery It has indeed been suggested that the logic of events in t he play and of Othellos relation to them imp crafts Othellos damnation, and that the implication is pressed home with particular military unit in the imagery. This last amounts to interpreting the suggestions of the imagery as a message of comment by the author the analogy would be the choruses of Greek tragedy. (66) The unrefined imagery of Othellos past dominates the opening of the play. Standing outside the senators home late at night, Iago uses imagery within a lie to arouse the occupant Awake what, ho, Brabantio thieves thieves thieves / Look to your house, your daughter and your bags When the senator appears at the window, the ancient continues with coarse imagery of animal lust ... ...ore Evans. Boston, MA Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. Kernan, Alvin. Othello and Introduction. Shakespeare The Tragedies. Ed. Alfred Harbage. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall Inc., 1964. Mack, Maynard. Everybodys Shakespeare Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Muir, Kenneth. Introduction. William Shakespeare Othello. New York Penguin Books, 1968. Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The galvanising Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http//www.eiu.edu/multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos. Spurgeon, Caroline. Shakespeares Imagery and What it Tells Us. Shakespearean Tragedy. Ed. D. F. Bratchell. New York Routledge, 1990. Wilson, H. S. On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy. Canada University of Toronto Press, 1957.