It’s impossible to imagine a world without Shakespeare, none of Shakespeare's plays intersects with the hot issues of our time more accurate than Othello. Militarism, racism, gender, spousal abuse, colonialism, the occult, the pathology of the inexplicably evil person, these are all woven into the web of the play, .and they are among the issues that haunt the world at the end of the twentieth century. Even our most sensational crime, the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and the trial of o. J. Simpson, with significant differences, replays the Othello story to a remarkable degree, down, to an almost identical cast of characters. Othello is almost perfect for a case history of how one might usefully connect today's headlines …show more content…
When Shakespeare wrote Othello, about •1604, his knowledge of human beings and his ability to dramatize it in language and action was at their height. Othello is probably the most constructed of Shakespeare's plays. Every character is, for example, balanced by another similar, or contrasting character. Desdemona is balanced by her opposite Iago; love and concern for others at one end of the scale, hated and concern for self. The true and loyal soldier Cassio; balances the false soldier lago. These balances and contrasts throw into relief the essential qualities of the characters. Desdemona's love, for example, shows up a good deal more clearly in contrast to lago’s hate, and vice versa. The values of contrast are increased and the full range of human nature displayed by extending these simple contrasts into developing series. And this is what this essay is all about, the manipulative and darkest of Shakespeare’s all time characters, …show more content…
He neither regards moral excellence as observed in Desdemona, nor the fantastic nobleness of the relentless souled Othello. Everything unadulterated and honorable in their inclination are viewed as far underneath his "educated soul." As Mr. Hudson says, Iago is "seriously introversive," and is just fulfilled by dunking what is great into his own particular abhorrence and delivering it stinking in the rottenness of his own shrewd nature. The purest of all slants is, in his psyche, a negligible "desire of the blood and a consent of the will." It is completely unfamiliar to his temperament; in reality, we can't consider lago's adoring anything. As in Macbeth, we may, maybe, respect the "Bizarre Sisters" as the embodiment of the shrewdness existing in Macbeth's psyche, so lago might be viewed as the exemplification of all underhanded, the superlative level of malice, of which the Witches are simply the positive. We see cold, malicious brains acquired contact with honesty and effortlessness. The nuance and sly, the understanding into Othello's psyche here appear to be practically heavenly. lago urges Othello on by proposing to his mind what he wishes him to accept. Here, as well, we see lago's energy of influencing the good to appear to be evil. We should recollect that if we were in Othello's place we would presumably feel and act just like he did. He has never had any motivation to associate the trust-worthiness and steadfastness with lago; he