Showing posts with label Shakespearean Tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shakespearean Tragedy. Show all posts

The Merchant of Venice: Critical Analysis of Shylock's Character; Shylock A Nation in A Man


Despite his traditional attitude toward non-Christians, Shakespeare in "The Merchant of Venice" surpasses the norms of his time in his attempt to understand his enemy and to present him as a real human being. Through the conflict between Antonio -the Christian-and Shylock -the Jew- Shakespeare is able to portray an accurate image of society in his times; mainly the conflict between Christians and Jews. 

To fully realize the scope and importance of this literary achievement, one must know something about European society all that time. The Catholic priest and social critic Erasmus says: "If it is incumbent upon a good Christian to hate the Jews, then we are all good Christians."  That was the attitude of the great majority of Christians in Europe at that time, and it is in this sense that Antonio is a good Christian. 

SHYLOCK: He hates our sacred nation. (P27) 
           SHYLOCK: You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
                                    And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, (P31)
        ANTONIO: But lend it rather to thine enemy. (P33) 

The rules and regulations made by the church, along with social circumstances in Europe, denied the Jews their right to work as farmers or in other professions except in money transactions and usury. The church also forced all Jews to wear badges like those worn by prostitutes and heretics, and profaned Christians from dealing in usury. Antonio clearly expresses this attitude by saying: "I neither lend nor borrow by taking nor by giving of excess". So Jews were set outside the legal and ethical frames of society as outcast capitalists. 

As a result, Jews flourished by dealing with Christian traders who started to depend more and more on usury in their business transactions. Thus, strange duality appeared: Jews's bad conditions as citizens on one hand, and their superior financial status that surpassed all other merchants in the 17th century on the other hand. After a while "Jew" became synonymous to "usurer" and the Jew's yellow badge became "a symbol for coins which identified the jews with Judas in the Christian mentality" as Polyakov says. Antonio in the play is a representative of these Christian bourgeois who appeared after the economical revolution in the 16th century. Loaning enterprises in Italian cities were established by these Christians determined to rid their cities of Jewish influence and drive them out of business. 

                SHYLOCK: He lends out money gratis, and brings down 
 The rate of usance here with us in Venice. (P27) 
             SHYLOCK: For were he out of Venice I can make what merchandise I will. (P95) 

Ultimately, European bourgeois ended by integrating the utilitarian Jewish mentality and finally the practical Christian became a Jew. Its also worth noting that, in the 16th and 17th century, massacres and mass evacuations of Jews swept across Europe except in Italy, perhaps that is why the play's setting is in Italy instead of England. 

SHYLOCK: I am not bid for love; they flatter me; 
                                But yet I will go in hate, to feed upon. (P61)

Shakespeare's true genius is seen in the character of Shylock, the man in whom Shakespeare drew a nation in all its pain, tradition and greed. The Jewish people started as wandering tribes, and Shakespeare noticed the strong affinity between nomadic life and trade. A shepherd working on breeding his flock is like a trader working on increasing his capital, for both sheep and money breed quickly. 

       SHYLOCK: I cannot tell, I make it breed as fast. (P31)

Having been persecuted by Christians for a long time, Jews came to realize that money is life itself. They had to buy their lives and security from kings and nobility, and in those conditions money acquired false sacredness to them.  

      SHYLOCK: Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that.
                            You take my house when you do take the prop
                          That doth sustain my house; you take my life
                                     When you do take the means whereby I live. (P157)

Jews learned from bloody experiences that coins can be easily hidden and moved quickly. They also learned that usury helps them avoid moving among hostile communities, so the person in need would have to go to the usurer's home instead. The Jewish character is the result of Jewish teachings that identifies wealth with blessing and poverty with damnation. Judaism emphasizes the sacredness of work and the virtue of frugality. 

     SHYLOCK: This was a way to thrive, and he was blest;
                              And thrift is blessing if men steal it not. (P31)
  SHYLOCK: Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day
                                             More than the wild cat; drones hive not with me, (P63) 

Jews use scripture to support their way of life, disregarding all other warnings in the Old Testament against usury. 

    ANTONIO: The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose; 

The laws which forced the ghetto life on Jews allowed them to revive their nation. Inside the ghettos, they lived their lives according to their faith in all its ritualistic aspects. 

               SHYLOCK: What says that fool of Hagar's offspring, ha? (P63)
   SHYLOCK: An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven; 
                     Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? (P145)

Separating themselves from Christians, forbidden to marry, to eat, or even to be buried with them.
                              SHYLOCK: Would any of the stock of Barabbas 
                                        Had been her husband, rather than a Christian. (P151) 
                  SHYLOCK: I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk  
                                        with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you,  
                  drink with you, nor pray with you. (P27)

Mass genocides strengthened jewish ties and deepened their feeling of alienation. 

 SHYLOCK: Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, 
                                   For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. (P31)
                    SHYLOCK: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, ... If you
                                          prick us, do we not bleed? ... If you poison us, do we
                                            not die? And if wrong us, shall we not revenge? (P91)

Judaism survived as a nation bond when the nation became a class. Inside the ghettos there was no financial competitions and no conflicts, because family and tribal bonds between Jews obliged them to help each other in financial crisis. 

SHYLOCK: Tubal, a wealthy Hebrew of my tribe,
will furnish me. (P29)

Hegel noted "Every Jew held himself responsible for the mistakes of his community and he behaved accordingly." 

                      SHYLOCK: The curse never fell upon our nation till now. (P91) 

What was important in Judaism was not the immortality of the individual but rather the immortality of Jewish people. Shakespeare brilliantly shows this when Shylock says: "Cursed be my tribe if I forgive him."  

Othello: A Critical Analysis of Shakespeare's Tragic Characters

Othello's character:
The character of Othello is comparatively simple, but it is desirable to show how essentially the success of Iago's plot is connected with this character. Othello's description of himself as: 

 One not easily jealous, but, being wrought, 
Perplexed in the extreme, ..........  is perfectly just.

He is the most romantic figure among Shakespeare's heroes, and he is so partly from the strange life of war and adventure which he has lived from childhood. He does not belong to our world, and he seems to enter it we know not whence-almost as if from wonderland. There is something mysterious in his descent from men of royal siege; in his wandering in vast deserts and among marvelous people; in his tales of magic handkerchiefs, his being sold to slavery. Othello is not merely a romantic figure; his own nature is romantic. He has not, indeed, the meditative or speculative imagination of Hamlet; but in the strictest sense of the word he is more poetic than Hamlet. 

Dangers of Othello's character:
The sources of danger in this character are revealed but too clearly by the story. In the first place, Othello's mind, for all its poetry, is very simple. He is not observant. His nature tends outward. He is quite free from introspection, and is not given to reflection. Emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect. On this side he is the very opposite of Hamlet, with whom, however, he shares a great openness and trustfulness of nature. In addition, he has little experience of the corrupt products of civilized life, and is ignorant of the European Woman(venetians).

In the second place, for all his dignity and massive calm, he is by nature full of the most vehement passion. Shakespeare emphasizes his self-control, not only by the wonderful pictures of the First Act, but by references to the past. Lodovico, amazed at his violence, exclaims:
Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate 
Call all in all sufficient? Is this the nature
Whom passion could not shake? Whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither gaze nor pierce?

Iago, who has here no motive for lying, asks:
    Can he be angry? I have seen the cannon 
      When it hath blown his ranks into the air,
And, like the devil, from his very arm
           Puffed his own brother-and can he be angry?

Lastly, Othello's nature is all of one piece. His trust, where he trusts, is absolute. Hesitation is almost impossible to him. He is extremely self-reliant, and decides and acts instantaneously. Love, if he loves, must be to him the heaven where either he must live or bear no life. If such a passion as jealousy seizes him, it will swell into a well-nigh incontrollable flood. He will press for immediate conviction or immediate relief. Convinced, he will act with the authority of a judge and the swiftness of a man in mortal pain. This character is so noble, Othello's feelings and actions follow so inevitably from it and from the forces brought to bear on it, and his sufferings are so heart-rendering, that he stirs, I believe, in most readers a passion of mingled love and pity which they feel for no other hero in Shakespeare. 

Why Othello didn't suspect Iago?
Othello, we have seen, was trustful, and thorough in his trust. He put entire confidence in the honesty of Iago, who had not only been his companion in arms, but, as he believed, had just proved his faithfulness in the matter of the marriage. This confidence was misplaced, and we happen to know it; but it was no sign of stupidity in Othello. For his opinion of Iago was the opinion of everyone who knew him: and that opinion was that Iago was before all things 'honest', his very faults being those of excess in honesty. Therefore, it would be quite unnatural in him to be unmoved by the warnings of an honest friend, warnings offered with extreme reluctance and manifestly from a sense of a friend's duty,  any husband would have been troubled by them. 

Iago does not bring these warnings to a husband who had lived with a wife for months and years and knew her like his sister or his bosom-friend. But he was newly married; in the circumstances he cannot have known much of Desdemona before his marriage; and further he was conscious of being under the spell of a feeling which can give glory to the truth but can also give it to a dream. 

This consciousness in any imaginative man is enough, in such circumstances, to destroy his confidence in his powers of perception. In Othello's case, after a long and most artful preparation, there now comes, to reinforce its effect, the suggestions that he is not an Italian, nor even European; that he is totally ignorant of the thoughts and the customary morality of venetian women; that he had himself seen in Desdemona's deception of her father how perfect an actress she could be. These suggestions are followed by a tentative but hideous and humiliating insinuation of what his honest and much-experienced friend fears may be the true explanation of Desdemona's rejection of acceptable suitors, and of her strange, and naturally temporary, preference for a black man. However, in spite all of those situations and suggestions, still he is not jealous, he furiously demands proof, ocular proof. When he gets the proof of the handkerchief; the "madness of revenge" is in his blood, and hesitation is a thing he never knew.

The Othello of the Fourth Act is Othello in his fall. His fall is never complete in this act, but he is much changed. So, in the Fourth Act 'Chaos has come', for it was necessary for Iago to hurry on; his insight into othello's nature taught him that his plan was to deliver blow on blow, and never to allow his victim to recover from the confusion of the first shock. When Othello forgot the handkerchief incident; he told him another lie that Cassio himself confessed to Iago his guilt (relation with Desdemona).

The delay till night is torture to him. Othello who enters the bed-chamber with the words:

"It is the cause, it is the cause my soul,"

is not the man of the Fourth Act. The deed he is bound to is not a murder, but a sacrifice. He is to save Desdemona from herself, not in hate but in honor and in love. His anger has passed; a boundless sorrow has taken its place.
"This sorrow's heavenly:
It strikes where it doth love."

Desdemona's character:
Innocence, gentleness, sweetness, lovingness were the salient and, in a sense, the principal traits in Desdemona's character. Coleridge, and still more the American writers, regard her love, in effect, as Brabantio regarded it, and not as Shakespeare conceived it. They are simply blurring this glorious conception when they try to lessen the distance between her and Othello, and to smooth away the obstacle which his 'visage' offered to her romantic passion for a hero. Desdemona, the 'eternal womanly' in its most lovely and adorable form, simple and innocent as a child, ardent with the courage and idealism of a saint, radiant with that heavenly purity of heart which men worship the more because nature so rarely permits it to themselves, had no theories about universal brotherhood, and no phrases about 'one blood in all the nations of the earth' or 'barbarian, Scythian, bond and free'; but when her soul came in sight of the noblest soul on earth, she made nothing of the shrinking of her senses, but followed her soul until her senses took part with it, and 'loved him with the love which was her doom.' It was not prudent. It even turned out tragically. She met in life with the reward of those who rise too far above our common level; and we continue to allot her the same reward when we consent to forgive her for loving a brown man, but find it monstrous that she should love a black one.

There is perhaps a certain excuse for our failure to rise to Shakespeare's meaning, and to realize how extraordinary and splendid a thing it was in a gentle Venetian girl to love Othello, and to assail fortune with such a 'downright violence and storm' as is expected only in a hero. It is that when first we hear of her marriage we have not yet seen the Desdemona of the later Acts; and therefore we do not perceive how astonishing this love and boldness must have been in a maiden so quiet and submissive. And when we watch her in her suffering and death we are so penetrated by the sense of her heavenly sweetness and self-surrender that we almost forget that she had shown herself quite as exceptional in the active assertion of her own soul and will. She tends to become to us predominantly pathetic, the sweetest and most pathetic of Shakespeare's women, as innocent as Miranda and as loving as Viola, yet suffering more deeply than Cordelia or Imogen. And she seems to lack that independence and strength of spirit which Cordelia and Imogen possess, and which in a manner raises them above suffering. She appears passive and defenseless, and can oppose to wrong nothing but the infinite endurance and forgiveness of a love that knows not how to resist or resent. She thus becomes at once the most beautiful example of this love, and the most pathetic heroine in Shakespeare's world.

Desdemona does not shrink before the senate; and her language to her father, though deeply respectful, is firm enough to stir in us some sympathy with the old man who could not survive his daughter's loss. 

When she is murdered, she defended her lover Othello so when Emilia asked her: 
"O, who hath done this deed?" She answered her:
"Nobody, I myself. Farewell.
Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell!"

Iago's evil character:
Evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the character of Iago. However, there is a false interpretation of his character which falls into two groups.

First group: 
1) Iago is simply a man who has been slighted and revenges himself.
2) A Husband who believes he has been wronged and will make his enemy suffer a jealousy worse than his own.
3) Ambitious man determined to ruin his successful rival.
4) A combination of these, endowed with unusual ability and cruelty.
This group contains the more popular views; however, the second group though much smaller it contains much weightier matter than the first.

Second group:
1) Iago is a being who hates good simply because it is good, and loves evil purely for itself.
2) Coleridge: His action is not prompted by any plain motive like revenge, jealousy or ambition. It springs from a "motiveless malignity", or a disinterested delight in the pain of others; and Othello, Cassia and Desdemona, are scarcely more than the material requisite for the full attainment of this delight.

Bradley opposed those criticisms and required two warnings before interpreting Iago's character:
Iago's nationality: it has been held that he is a study of that peculiarly Italian form of villainy which is considered both too diabolical for an Englishman.

Not to believe a syllable Iago utters: on any subject, including himself, until one has tested his statement by comparing it with known facts and with other statements of his own or of other people, and by considering whether he had his own or of other people, and by considering whether he had in the particular circumstances any reason for telling a lie or a truth.

Iago was a venetian soldier eight-and-twenty years of age, who had seen a good deal of service and had a high reputation for courage. We are ignorant of his origin, but he was not of gentle birth or breeding.

He was married to a wife who evidently lacked refinement, and who appears in the drama in the relation of a servant to Desdemona. His manner was that of a blunt, bluff soldier, who spoke his mind freely and plainly. Seeing that his satire was humorous, that on serious matters he did not speak lightly, and that the one thing perfectly  obvious about him was his honesty. "Honest' is the word that springs to the lips of everyone who knows him. It is applied to him some fifteen times in the play.

In fact, he was one of those sterling men who, in disgust at gush, say cynical things which they do not believe, and then, the moment you are in trouble, put in practice the very sentiment they had laughed at.

Even his wife doesn't suspect him, her nature was not very delicate or scrupulous about trifles. She never dreamed he was a villain, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of her belief that he was heartily sorry for Cassio's disgrace. Even when the idea strikes her that some scoundrel has poisoned Othello's mind, the tone of all her speeches and her mention of the rogue who (she believes) had stirred up Iago's jealousy of her, prove beyond doubt the thought Iago's being the scoundrel has not crossed her mind. Even if Iago had betrayed much more of his true self to his wife than to others, it would make no difference to the contrast between his true self and the self he presented to the world in general.

What further conclusion can be drawn from this contrast?
Iago was able to find a certain relief from the discomfort of hypocrisy in those caustic or cynical speeches which, being misinterpreted, only heightened confidence in his honesty. They acted as a safety-value, very much as hamlet's pretended insanity did. He was by no means a man of strong feelings and passions, but decidedly cold by temperament. Even so, his self-control was wonderful, but there never was in him any violent storm to be controlled. Although he was thoroughly selfish and unfeeling, was not by nature malignant nor even morose, but, on the contrary he had a superficial good-nature, the kind of good-nature that wins popularity and is often taken as the sign, of a good heart.

The tragedy of othello is his tragedy too. it shows us not a violent man, who spends his life in murder, but a bad cold man who is at last tempted to let loose the forces within him and is at once destroyed.

Iago's inner man:
He has very remarkable powers both of intellect and will.
Intellect:
- Iago's insight, within certain limits, into human nature.
- His ingenuity and address in working upon it.
- His quickness and versatility in dealing with sudden difficulties and unforeseen opportunities.
Will:
- He seems to be master of all the motions that might affect his will.
(Ex: In the most dangerous moments of his plot, when the least slip or accident would be fatal, he never shows a trace of nervousness).
(Ex:When Othello takes him by the throat he merely shifts his part with his usual instantaneous adroitness).
- He is equally unassailable by the temptations of indolence or of sensuality.
- It is difficult to imagine him inactive and though he has an obscene mind, and doubtless took his pleasures when and how he chose, he certainly took them by choice and not from weakness, and if pleasure interfered with his purposes the holiest of ascetics would not put it more resolutely by "What should I do?"

Roderigo: "I confess it is my shame to be so fond; but it is not in my virtue to amend it".

Iago answers: "Virtue! a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus
                        I all depends on our will.
                  Love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will"

- He is the lordship of the will, which is his practice as well as his doctrine, is great, almost sublime.
In intellect and in will Iago is great.

To what end does he use these great powers?
- He has a definite creed: absolute egoism is the only rational and proper attitude, and that conscience or honor or any kind of regard for others is an absurdity. He doesn't deny that it exists.
- He appears, when we meet him, to be almost destitute of humanity, of sympathetic or social feeling.
- He shows no trace of affection, and in presence of the most terrible suffering he shows either pleasure or an indifference.
- We shouldn't ignore the extraordinary deadness of feeling, but it is also important not to confuse it with a general positive ill-will. When Iago has no dislike or hostility to a person he does not show pleasure in the suffering of that person: he shows at most the absence of pain.

What is it that provokes his dislike or hostility?
Certainly he is devoted to himself. However, what is clear is that Iago is keenly sensitive to anything that touches his pride or self-esteem. He has a high opinion of himself and a great contempt for others. Whatever disturbs or wounds his sense of superiority irritates him at once. This is the reason of his jealousy of Emilia. He doesn't care for his wife; but the fear of another man's getting the better of him, and exposing him to pity or derision as an unfortunate husband. He has a spite against goodness in men, not from any love of evil for evil's sake, but partly because it annoys his intellect as a stupidity; partly, because it weakens his satisfaction with himself, and disturbs his faith that egoism is the right and proper thing, partly because, the world being such a fool, goodness is popular and prospers. But he, a man ten times as able as Cassio or even Othello, does not greatly prosper. This wound his pride. Those feelings are constantly present in him.

The rise of Iago's tragedy:
Why did he act as we see him acting in the play?
He says more than once that he "hates" Othello. He gives two reasons for his hatred. The first reason is that Othello has made Cassio lieutenant. The second is that he suspects and heard it reported, that Othello has an intrigue with Emilia. There is Cassio, he never says he hates cassia, but he finds in him three causes of offense. First, Cassio has been preferred to him. Second, he suspects him too of an intrigue with Emilia. Third, Cassio has a daily beauty in his life which makes Iago ugly.

Is the account which Iago gives of the causes of his action the true account?
The answer of the popular view "yes". (Coleridge and Hazlitt)
Iago is impelled by passions, a passion of ambition and a passion of hatred.
Coleridge says: "it is a motive-hunting."
Hazlitt says: He is an amateur of tragedy in real life."

Bradley's view: The very honor of him he has less passion than an ordinary man, and yet he does these frightful things.Iago did not clearly understand what was moving his desire; though he tried to give himself reasons for his actions. Once he appears to see something of the truth when he uses the phrase "to plume up my will in double knavery", he means to heighten the sense of power or superiority.

This seems to be the unconscious motive of many acts of cruelty which evidently do not spring chiefly from ill-will. His thwarted sense of superiority wants satisfaction. "What fuller satisfaction could it find than the consciousness that he is the master of the generals who has undervalued him and of the rival who has been preferred to him; that these worthy people, who are so successful and popular and stupid are mere puppets in his hands, but living puppets, who at the motion of his finger must contort themselves in agony while all the time they believe that he is their one true friend and comforter?

Iago's longing to satisfy the sense of power is the strongest of the forces that drive him on. Moreover, Iago's pleasure in action is very difficult and perilous, and therefore intensely exciting. The fact that a single slip will cost him his life increases his pleasure. Pleasure and action makes the hours seen short:
"By the mass, 'tis morning."

Delight in the exercise of artistic skill: He is not simply a man of action; he is an artist. His action is a plot, the intricate plot of a drama, and in the conception and exception of it he experiences the tension and the joy of artistic creation. Such then, seem to be the chief ingredients of the force which liberated by his resentment at Cassio's promotion, drives Iago from inactivity into action and sustains him through it. This force completely possesses him; it is his fate. Which is himself has completely mastered him, in the later scene, where the improbability of the entire success of a design built on so many falsehoods forces itself on the reader, Iago appears as a man absolutely infatuated and delivered over to certain destruction.

In conclusion, Iago's failure in perception is closely connected with his badness. He was destroyed by the power that he attacked, the power of love. He was destroyed by this power because he could not understand it and was not in him. Iago never meant his plot to be so dangerous to himself. He knew that jealousy is painful, but the jealousy of a love like Othello's he could not imagine, and he found himself involved in murders which were no part of his original design.

Othello: Characteristics of the Shakespearean Tragedy


What is the peculiarity of Othello? What is the distinctive impression that it leaves?
A tragic figure, according to the classic definition, is a person of noble birth whose character is flawed by a weakness that causes his downfall. Othello's flaw is a passion he cannot control, he is slow to anger, but once he is angered, his passion overwhelms his good sense. He kills his wife as a result of his passion, and eventually himself. The waste of his life, full of promise and noble intentions, represents the tragedy of the play.

Othello is a tragedy of passion, for it is the most painfully exciting and most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and dreadful expectation. 

Othello is not only the most masterly of the tragedies in point of construction, but its method of construction is unusual. And this method, by which the conflict begins late, and advances without appreciable pause and with accelerating speed to the catastrophe, is a main cause of the painful tension. 

In the second place, there is no subject more exciting than sexual jealousy rising to the pitch of passion and driven by it to a crime which is also a hideous blunder. Jealousy and specially sexual jealousy, brings with it a sense of shame and humiliation. For this reason it is generally hidden; if we perceive it we ourselves are ashamed and turn our eyes away; and when it is not hidden it commonly stirs contempt as well as pity. Nor this is all. Such jealousy as Othello's converts human nature into chaos, and liberates the beast in man; and it does this in relation to one of the most intense and also the most ideal of human feelings. What spectacle can be more painful than that of this feeling turned into a tortured mixture of longing and loathing, the 'golden purity' of passion split by poison into fragments, the animal in man forcing itself into his consciousness in naked grossness, and he writhing before it but powerless to deny it entrance, gasping inarticulate images of pollution, and finding relief only in a bestial thirst for blood? This is what we have to witness in one who was indeed 'great of heart' and no less pure and tender than he was great. And this, with what it leads to, the blow to Desdemona, and the scene where she is treated as the inmate of a brothel, a scene far more painful than the murder scene, is another cause of the special effect of the tragedy. 

The mere mention of these scenes will remind us painfully of a third cause; and perhaps it is the most potent of all, the suffering of Desdemona. She is helplessly passive. She can do nothing whatever. She She can't retaliate even in speech; no, not even in silent feeling. And the chief reason of her helplessness only makes the sight of her suffering more exquisitely painful. She is helpless because her nature is infinitely sweet and her love absolute.

Turning from the hero and heroine to the third principal character, we observe that the action and catastrophe of Othello depend largely on intrigue. Iago's plot is Iago's character in action, and it is built on his knowledge of Othello's character where he could not otherwise have succeeded. Still it remains true that an elaborate plot was necessary to elicit the catastrophe; for Othello was no Leontes, and his was the last nature to endanger such jealousy from itself. Accordingly Iago's intrigue occupies a position in the drama for which no parallel can be found in the other tragedies; the only approach, and that a distant one, being the intrigue of Edmund in the secondary plot of King Lear. Now in any novel or play, even if the persons rouse little interest and are never in serious danger, a skillfully-worked intrigue will excite eager attention and suspense. And where, as in Othello, the persons inspire the keenest sympathy and antipathy, and life and death depend on the intrigue, it becomes the source of a tension in which pain almost overpowers pleasure. Nowhere else in Shakespeare do we hold our breath in such anxiety and for so long a time as in the later Acts of Othello. 

One result of the prominence of the element of intrigue is that Othello is less unlike story of private life than any other of the great tragedies. And this impression is strengthened in in further ways. In the other great tragedies the action is placed in a distant period, so that its general significance is perceived through a thin veil which separates the persons from ourselves and our own world. But Othello is a drama of modern and contemporary life. The characters come close to us, and the application of the drama to ourselves is more immediate than it can be in Hamlet or Lear. It is less unlike story of private life than any other of the great tragedies. In great tragedies action is placed in distant period. 

The peculiarities so far considered combine with others to produce those feelings of oppression, of confinement to a comparatively narrow world, and of dark fatality, which haunt us in reading Othello. In Macbeth the fate which works itself out alike in the external conflict and in the hero's soul, is obviously hostile to evil; and the imagination is dilated both by the consciousness of its presence and by the appearance of supernatural agencies. In Othello, after the temptation has begun, it is incessant and terrible. The skill of Iago was extraordinary, but so was his good fortune. Again and again a chance word from Desdemona, a chance meeting of Othello and Casino, a question which starts to our lips and which anyone but Othello would have asked, would have destroyed Iago's plot and ended his life. In their stead, Desdemona drops her handkerchief at the moment most favorable to him, Cassino blunders into the presence of Othello only to find him in swoon, Bianca arrives precisely when she is wanted to complete Othello's deception and incense his anger into fury. When all the accident happens, there is no escape from fate, and even with a feeling, absent from that play, that fate has taken sides with villainy. It is not surprising, therefore, that Othello should affect us as Hamlet and Macbeth never do, and as King Lear does only in slighter measure. On the contrary, it is marvelous that, before the tragedy is over, Shakespeare should have succeeded in toning down this impression into harmony with others more solemn and serene.  

The Structure of Macbeth "William Shakespeare"


Before studying the structure of the play, we should mention one important point about the play. The Equivocation (theme of appearance and reality) which is central to Macbeth. Macbeth is a play about illusions where its situations are ambiguous. The murder of Duncan is the main theme of the play. Murdering Duncan is the right thing for Macbeth; however, this is the worst thing he did for himself and for his people. 

The WitchesThey appear to be predicting success, yet the prophecies appear to be disastrous for Macbeth. Their prophecies are interpreted in someway, but in fact they mean something different.

Macbeth: He seems to be a loyal hero, yet he reveals to be a traitor.

Lady Macbeth: she is not at all what she seems. Even though she appears very strong and confident at the beginning of the play, she declines (after the banquet scene) and becomes a pathetic character. At the end, she is nothing more than a mortal woman. She becomes a weak person who is suffering, feeling guilty about the pains of her conscience. 

Malcolm: he seems to be a villain, but in fact he is a hero, and he was thinking in order to rebuild his country. He is ready to give himself to Scotland and to Macduff. Although he seems to be innocent and inexperienced man, he is the one who recognizes the equivocation of the witches prophecy. 

     "Everything the witches said was only an illusion." 

Therefore, we could say that the language, the verse, and the structure of the whole play is built on this equivocation. 

Language: (images)
Macbeth is the play that has a distinguished quality because the images evoke more action than any other play. In this play, thought and consequent movement become nearly one.

Soliloquy: every soliloquy that Macbeth speaks is active, but it implies evil. There are images that are very evocative (Macduff's family). 

Supernatural elements: in Hamlet and Julius Caesar, these elements seem to add in the action of the play, for we could easily dismiss the ghost in Hamlet because the appearance of the ghost added to Hamlet's melancholy, but it was not the cause. By nature, Hamlet is melancholic. The ghost just added his melancholy (his character didn't really change with the appearance of the ghost). We could dismiss the ghost from our experience of the play. The ghost of Hamlet's father can't escape our tendency to be skeptical, irritated, and amused (it doesn't have an effect). 

The witches: they are the "weird sisters". They are not described as ghosts, and the fact that they are "weird sisters" gives them a status that is more real (natural). Their appearance makes everything weird to be more natural (domestic). The power of the witches is expressed in different ways. We can't look at the witches in the same way as we look at the ghost because the ghost is a supernatural power. 

Verse/Prose: 
Verse:
In all shakespeare's plays, the most part is written in blank verse-iambic pentameter. Occasionally, Shakespeare uses in this play rhyming couplets (the witches speech). Macbeth uses rhyming couplets more often than any other character in the play.

Prose: 
We have 4 situations: 
1) Macbeth's letter to his wife - Act 1 scene 5 
2) The porter scene - Act 2 scene 3        
3) The dialogue between Macduff's lady and her son - Act 4 scene 2 
4) The sleep walking scene - Act 5 scene 1 

Prose denotes the low social position or situation that is abnormal (sleep walking scene). 
The play is full of tumult (no calm), wherever, the witches appear, we can hear a thunderstorm. When they are absent, we can hear shipwreck, blowing down churches, trees and castles. We have profusion of storms, sounds, and tumult.

The Structure: (How the play is built)
It is the shortest play among the shakespearean tragedies, for it consists of five acts. One of the most striking aspects is the rapidity at which the action happens. It is a play that is full of events and actions. Our attention is focused on Macbeth. It is his letter that Lady Macbeth speaks. He doesn't appear in the act, but it is his letter and his character (even if he is not present).

Act 4 scene 3: It is in the English court and we have a long discussion between Malcolm and Macduff about loyalty. In addition, throughout the conversation, we can't prevent ourselves from remembering Macbeth. We know that Macbeth doesn't have any of the qualities of the king. Anyway, Macbeth is referred to throughout the play. Although Lady Macbeth is important, she disappears and never been mentioned. 

Irony:
Unlike many of Shakespeare's plays, in this play we don't have any sub plots or secondary actions. The concentration is on Macbeth and his action. In this play, Shakespeare uses fewer characters especially to comment on the central action. We have a series of contrasts (parallels) through the 'we' of the dramatic ironies. 

Act 1 scene 4: We know from the previous scene that Macbeth has intentions (because of what we know, we can't prevent ourselves from applying this talk to Macbeth).

Act 5 scene 1: Irony lies in the contrast between what is obvious and the hidden meaning of the apparition of the bloody child, yet the most striking irony in the play is the answer which Banquo gives to Macbeth.

At any of Shakespeare's plays, we have a comic relief and it is used in order to relief the atmosphere (the porter's scene in act 5). The first act of the play is speedy and very intense. At the end of act 1, we have a new Macbeth. He is confident that he can kill the king. He becomes different (change). He is confident that he can pretend to be the host. In this play, we have two parts: the first half is greater than the second one. Lady Macbeth appears more in the first half than in the second one. It is a one man play. Acts 1and 5 are speedy, for the end comes very quickly. 

It is here that all of Macbeth's hopes are stripped away: his wife died - Birnamwood seemed to move - his forces desert him - he is cornered in the castle - he is left alone. 
Finally, Macbeth will die just as the beginning (in a courageous way). So, we have the repetition of the same act, but in different purpose. Macbeth is distinguished by its simplicity although it contains a lot of images. Two great figures are Macbeth and Lady Macbeth: they are simple except being compared with Hamlet.

We have three important passages because they distract us from Macbeth:
1) In the first passage, where the porter appears, the tone changes in a way so as to give us relief. 
2) The second passage between Lady Macbeth and her son. 
3) The third passage when Macbeth receives the news of his wife's death. 

Shakespeare constructs the hero in a way that it gives a new dimension in the struggle between good and evil. Macbeth is a noble man and a soldier, but these qualities are a mere surface if we compare them to what he thinks in his mind.

The fact that Macbeth murdered the king is not just a political rebellion, but it is a violation of all the laws of hospitality, kingship and human decency. 

Chaos is defeated, order is reestablished. We find it fair to find Macbeth dead because as long as he lives there will be chaos. 

Tragic flaw:
In Shakespeare's tragedies there is always a tragic flaw of his main character. Macbeth's tragic flaw is his evil ambition. On the other hand, the tragic flaw of Hamlet is hesitation and lack of decision, whereas Othello's tragic flaw is jealousy. 

Macbeth: The Development of Shakespeare's Characters

Shakespearean Tragedy:
Macbeth is the most dramatic and tremendous play among the Shakespearean tragedies. A Shakespearean tragedy, as a rule, has a special tone or atmosphere of its own. The effect of this atmosphere is marked with unusual strength in Macbeth. The main theme of the play is ambition; however, there are other themes which are equivocation, appearance, reality and the murder of Duncan. 

Macbeth is a play about illusions where all the situations are ambiguous. In the play we have two main characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth is represented by the critics as "a coward who is cold-blooded, calculating, and pitiless who shrinks from crime because it is dangerous." However, Shakespeare presented him as ambitious man who was corrupted by his ambition to become king of Scotland. This ambition lead him to murder Duncan and order the slaying of anyone who threatens his kingship. On the other hand, Shakespeare presented Lady Macbeth as ambitious as her husband, she taunts Macbeth's courage to insure that he will murder Duncan and become king. Fear and remorse eventually cause her to go mad. Therefore, before we approach the consideration of the characters and the action we should distinguish some of the ingredients of this general effect: 

Images of darkness or blackness, broads over this tragedy. It is remarkable that almost all the scenes take place either at night or in some dark spot: The vision of the dagger - the murder of Duncan - the murder of Banquo - the sleep walking of Lady Macbeth. The blackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; and what he feels becomes the spirit of the play. In the whole drama the sun seems to shine only twice (where Duncan sees the swallows flitting round the castle of death, and when at the close avenging army gathers to rid the earth of its shame). 

Atmosphere it is not that of unknown relieved blackness. Macbeth leaves a decided impression of color;  it is the impression of a black night broken by flashes of light and color (the lights and colors of the thunderstorm-the dagger hanging before Macbeth's eyes and glittering alone in the midnight air-the flames beneath the boiling caldron from which the apparitions in the cavern rose) and above all the color is the color of blood. The most horrible lines in the whole tragedy are those of her shuddering cry:
"Yet who would have thought the old man to have had 
so much blood in him?"

Vividness, magnitude, violence of the imagery and their influence contributes to form its atmosphere (of pouring the sweet milk of concord into hell-of the mind full of scorpions).

Irony there is an ironical juxtaposition of persons and events:
The very first words uttered by Macbeth: "so foul and fair a day I have not seen"
The words of the witches in first scene: "fair is foul, and foul is fair."
When Macbeth emerging from his murderous reverie, turns to the nobles saying: "Let us toward the king" his words are innocent but to the reader have double meaning. So does the contrast between the obvious and the hidden meanings of the apparitions.

Now let us start with the a brief comparison of both characters. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are sublime, and both inspire the feeling of awe. They are never detached in imagination from the atmosphere which surrounds them and adds to their grandeur and terror. For, within them is all that we felt without-the darkness of night, lit with the flame of tempest and the hues of blood, spirits of remorse, and maddening visions of peace lost and judgement to come. These two characters are fired by one and the same passion of ambition. They are born to rule, if not to reign. They are contemptuous to their inferiors, so we observe in them no love of country, and no interest in the welfare of anyone outside their family. They have no separate ambitions, they support and love one another, they suffer together. On the other hand, they are also contrasted, and the action is built upon this contrast. Their attitude towards the projected murder of Duncan are quiet different, and it produces in them equally different effects.

On one hand, Macbeth was thought honest, or honorable; he was trusted, apparently, by everyone; Macduff loved him well. He was exceedingly ambitious, it has been so by temper and must have been strengthened by marriage. It becomes a passion. Therefore, his passion for power and his instinct of self-assertion are so vehement that no inward misery could persuade him to relinquish the fruits of crime, or to advance from remorse to repentance. What appalls him is always the image of his own guilty heart or bloody deed. His imagination bears witness against him, and shows us that what really holds him back is the hideous vileness of the deed. When the murder is done, his wife heard the owl scream and the crickets cry; however, what he heard was the voice that first cried

"Macbeth doth murder sleep"; 
"Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor"; 
"Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more." 

Therefore, whenever his imagination stirs, he acts badly, it possesses him, and is so much stronger than his reason, but when it is asleep he is firm, self-controlled and practical.


The development of Macbeth's character after the murder:
That heart-sickness which comes from Macbeth's perception of the futility of his crime, and which never leaves him for long, is not, his habitual state. It could not be so, for two reasons. The first reason, the consciousness of guilt is stronger in him than the consciousness of failure; and it keeps him in a perpetual agony of restlessness. His mind is "full of scorpions"- He cannot sleep- He "keeps alone", moody and savage. The second reason is ambition, the love of power, the instinct of self-assertion, are much too potent in Macbeth to permit him to resign, the "will to live" is mighty in him. He faces the world, and his own conscience, desperate, but never dreaming of acknowledging defeat. He challenges fate into the lists.

The result is frightful:
He speaks no more, as before Duncan's murder, of honor or pity. That sleepless torture, he tells himself, is nothing but the sense of insecurity and the fear of retaliation. The cause of his fear is Banquo. He has become his chief counsellor because the kingdom was promised to Banquo's children. Banquo, then, is waiting to attack him, to make a way for them. This is the fear that will not let him sleep, and it will die with Banquo. There is no hesitation now, and no remorse. So, some strange idea is in his mind that the thought of the dead man will not haunt him, like the memory of Duncan, if the deed is done by other hands. The deed is done, but instead of peace descending on him, his deed confronts him in the apparition of Banquo's Ghost. However, it has less power, and he has more will. Now, Macduff is the one who spoils his sleep. He shall perish. He goes to seek the witches; he has no longer any awe of them. They till him he is right to fear Macduff; they tell him to fear nothing, for none of woman born can harm him. So, he determines not to spare Macduff. The witches have done their work, and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble him no more. The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes an open tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his county.

A.C. Bradley does not agree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife's death proof of alienation or utter carelessness. "She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word," he thinks that Macbeth has no time now to feel. Only, as he thinks of the morrow when time to feel will come. In the very depths, a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it a touch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperately embraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart.

On the other hand, Lady Macbeth in the first half of the play not only appears more than in the second half but also exerts the ultimate deciding influence on the action. She is distinguished from her husband by her inflexibility of will. She knows her husband's weakness, and how he scruples "to catch the nearest way" to the object he desires, and she sets herself without a trace of doubt or conflict to counteract this weakness. To her there is no separation between will and deed, and as the deed falls in part to her, she is sure it will be done. She takes the superior position and assumes the direction of affairs, appears to assume it even more than she really can. She animates him by picturing the deed as heroic, 'this night', great business, while she ignores its cruelty and faithlessness. She bears down his faint resistance by presenting him with a prepare scheme which may remove from him the terror and danger of deliberation. She rouses him with a taunt no man can bear, and least of all a soldier, - the word "coward". Through the admiration she extorts from him, and through sheer force of will, that she impels him to the deed. Her eyes are fixed upon the crown and the means to it; she does not attend to the consequences. Her plan of laying the guilt upon the chamberlains is invented on the spur of the moment, and simply to satisfy her husband. Her passionate courage sweeps him off his feet. His decision is taken in a moment of enthusiasm. In presence of overwhelming horror and danger, in the murder scene and the banquet scene, her self-control is perfect. She helps him, but never asks his help. She leans on nothing but herself. And from the beginning to the end her will never fails her. We are sure that she never betrayed her husband or herself by a word or even a look, save in sleep. However appalling she may be, she is sublime.

In the earlier scenes of the play she seems inhuman:
- We find no trace of pity for the kind old king.
- No consciousness of the treachery and baseness of the murder.
- No sense of the value of the lives of the wretched men on whom the guilt is to be laid.
- No shrinking even from the condemnation or hatred of the world.

If Lady Macbeth of these scenes were really utterly inhuman, or a "fiend-like queen", as Malcolm calls her, the Lady Macbeth of the sleep-walking scene would be an impossibility. The one woman could never become the other. When she tries to help him by representing their enterprise as heroic, she is deceiving herself as much as him. Also, in these earlier scenes the traces of feminine weakness and human feeling, which account for her later failure, are not absent. Her will was exerted to overpower not only her husband's resistance but some resistance in herself. The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies almost wholly in courage and force of will. It is an error to regard her as remarkable on the intellectual side. To her the blood upon her husband's hands suggests only the taunt.

"My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white";
 and the blood to her is merely "this filthy witness".

The literalism of her mind appears fully in two contemptuous speeches where she dismisses his imaginings in the murder scene and in the banquet scene. Even in the awful scene where her imagination breaks loose in sleep, she uses no such images as Macbeth’s. It is the direct appeal of the facts to sense that has fastened on her memory. The ghostly realism:

 "Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him? or
 "Here's the smell of the blood still" wholly unlike her husband."

Her most poetical words "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten these little hands" are unlike his words about great Neptune's ocean.

The development of Lady Macbeth's character after the murder:
The change in her state of mind is both inevitable, and the opposite of the development we traced in Macbeth. When the murder has been done, the discovery of its hideousness, first reflected in the faces of her guests, comes to Lady Macbeth with the shock of a sudden disclosure, and at once her nature begins to sink. The first intimation of the change is given when in the scene of the discovery she faints, and when we see her, Queen of Scotland, the glory of her dream has faded. She enters, disillusioned, and weary with want of sleep. She has thrown away everything and gained nothing. She has no initiative, the stem of her being seems to be cut through. Her husband, physically the stronger, maddened by pangs he had foreseen, but still flaming with life, comes into the foreground, and she retires. Her will remains, and she does her best to help him, but he rarely needs her help. Her chief anxiety appears to be that he should not betray his misery. He plans the murder of Banquo without her knowledge (not to spare her, but because he does not need her now), and even when she is told vaguely of his intention she appears but little interested. In the sudden emergency of the banquet scene, she makes a prodigious and magnificent effort; her strength, and with it her ascendency returns, and she saves her husband at least from an open disclosure. But after this, she takes no part whatever in the action. We only know from her shuddering words in the sleep-walking scene

"The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?" 

that she has even learned of her husband's worst crime, and in all the horrors of his tyranny over Scotland, she has, no part.

Disillusionment and despair prey upon her more and more. That she should seek any relief in speech, or should ask for sympathy, would seem to her mere weakness, and would be to Macbeth's defiant fury an irritation. Thinking of the change in Macbeth, we imagine the bond between them slackened, and Lady Macbeth left much alone. She sinks slowly downward. She cannot bear darkness and has light by her continually: 'tis her command. At last her nature, not her will gives way. The secrets of the past find vent in a disorder of sleep, the beginning perhaps of madness. What the doctor fears is clear. He reports to her husband no great physical mischief, but bids her attendant to remove from her all means by which she could harm herself, and to keep eyes on her constantly. Her death is announced by a cry from her women so sudden and direful that it would thrill her husband with honor if he were any longer capable of fear. Malcolm, in the last words of the play, tells us that it is believed in the hostile army that she died by her own hand. It is in accordance with her character that even in her weakest hour she should cut short by one determined stroke the agony of her life. The sinking of Lady Macbeth's nature, and the marked change in her demeanor to her husband, are most strikingly shown in the conclusion of the banquet scene; and from this point pathos is mingled with awe.

In conclusion, she despises what she thinks the weakness which stands in the way of her husband's ambition, but she does not despise him. Her ambition for her husband and herself proved fatal to him, far more so than the prophecies of the witches; yet even when she pushed him into murder, she believed she was helping him to do what he merely lacked the nerve to attempt. The sleep-walking scene, again, inspires pity, but its main effect is one of awe. Regarding her from the tragic point of view, we may truly say she was too great to repent.