Othello's Weakness

At the beginning of Shakespeare’s Othello we are given evidences to the great warrior Othello has been in the past.  These are given through the way he speaks and how others speak to him and of him.  Unfortunately, these strengths as a general do not transfer over into his personal life.  The entire play is an evidence of Othello’s weakness in marriage as a husband.

Even though Iago hates Othello, he still respects Othello as a great general.  Why else would Iago be so jealous that Othello chooses Michael Cassio to be his second-in-command?  It is not just Iago who respects him, apparently his strength is well known.  Othello himself boasts that Bronatio can accuse him of whatever he wants because the “services which [Othello] has done the signiory shall out-tongue his complaints” (1.2.20).  This means that the governing body of Venice recognizes all the fine military services Othello has accomplished for them and that even if Brobantio’s accusations were true, they would defend Othello.

Othello used his strength as a war general to gain his wife.  He told her war stories to woo her: “These things to hear would Desdemona seriously incline” and “she’d come again, and with a greedy ear devour up [Othello’s] discourse” (1.3.170-174).  If it weren’t for his strength in battle, Othello would have never won Desdemona, would never have married, and wouldn’t have found his true weakness that eventually led to several deaths including his own and Desdemona’s.

Othello’s biggest weakness in marriage, I believe, is that he doesn’t put enough trust in his wife.  When two people get married, they are agreeing to put each other above everyone else.  Othello fails at this, as he always goes to Iago first for advice and not to his wife, Desdemona.  He takes all his information second, third, fourth hand from Iago instead of just asking his wife and getting the firsthand account.  This is just really confusing.  Is it that Othello doesn’t trust his wife?  He probably trusts his wife at the beginning, or he wouldn’t have married her, but he is so scared of being hurt that he won’t take any risks.  He’d rather get false information from “honest” Iago than take a risk and confront his wife.

Othello does a little foreshadowing in Act 3. Sc. 3 before all heck actually breaks loose:

“Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul

But I do love thee! And when I love thee not,

Chaos is come again” (3.3.100).

Othello is slightly frustrated with Desdemona at this point, but Iago hasn’t been in his head yet.  When Othello says “chaos is come again” I don’t believe he’s plotting her murder and his suicide at this point.  What I think he means is that his life would be chaos without her in it.  It’s just a romantic little thing to say.  Unfortunately, when he no longer loves her, chaos does come, out of Othello’s own weakness in putting too much trust in the not-so-honest Iago and not his guiltless wife.

            When Iago plants the idea in his mind that Desdemona is cheating on Othello with Cassio, Othello is too quick to believe him.  He tries to act cool, to give his wife the benefit of the doubt—“Make me see ‘t, or at least so prove it That the probation bear no hinge nor loop To hang a doubt on, or woe upon thy life!”—but his needing solid proof with no room for doubt and his death threats to Iago last a very short time.  Very quickly, Othello goes mad with jealousy and vengeance towards his innocent wife.

            It’s unfortunate to watch a person who is so strong at giving orders and commanding respect become so gullible and desperate.  Othello’s past cannot redeem him from how he reacted to rumors and false accusations.  He treated his marriage like a battlefield, his wife like the enemy.  If Iago says she’s sleeping around, she must be and if she is I must kill her—perhaps this is what Othello thinks as he carries out his devious plan.

Othello puts far too much trust in the one person who is vying for his demise.  Iago is the antagonist; he’s the driving force that makes everything fall to pieces.  Yet, Othello trusts his word absolutely.  He does not believe his own wife when she says she is innocent.  Instead, with his veins pulsing with rage, he smothers her to death.  Only after she is dead do the pieces begin to fall into place in Othello’s mind that Iago is dishonest and his wife, Desdemona, was true.  By then it is way too late.

Tragedy vs Comedy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

While A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy itself, it also encompasses the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe.  These elements of comedy versus tragedy are an important part in A Misummer Night’s Dream.  The first scene of the first act of the play could really set it up to be either a comedy or a tragedy.  In fact, the way love is defined in the beginning is a tragic view. 

Hermia’s father, Egeus, come to Theseus demanding that he make her marry Demtrius, and not Lysander, or else:  “As she is mine, I may dispose of her.  Which shall be either to this gentleman, or to her death.” This threat does not sound in any way comedic.  Another example of how love is portrayed tragically is when Lysander gives his speech about love, “the course of true love never did run smooth,” he says.  He talks about all the things that stand in the way of people falling in love—or staying in love—Lysander continues, “[Love is] momentary as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as a dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night.” His meaning is tragic, but his words are flowery, eventually rhyme enters in, and the feeling of the play remains merry.  This is a comedy, and as much as the tragedy tries to come through, the comedy smothers it and comes up victorious, making this play comedic. 

The attempts at tragedy are just that: failed attempts.  The way this play is written, the way it is meant to be, is comedic, and the characters and situations do not allow for tragedy to take over or even really take shape in the plot.  The biggest attempt at giving this play a tragic undertone is in the production and rehearsals of Pyramus and Thisbe.  The content of this inner play is totally tragic, but the characters playing the actors are just too foolish and incompetent to make it tragic.  Everything they do strips the tragedy away and makes their rehearsals and production funny.  The entire production is hilarious because the actors just don’t have a tragic bone in their bodies.

The way they are cast is especially funny.  At first Bottom wants to play every role himself, and then they start adding extra roles for inanimate objects.  They decide they will have somebody play the moon, up onstage, holding a lantern.  Then they decide that the wall will be played by a person holding his fingers out for them to talk through.  Snug, who plays the lion, doesn’t want to scare the ladies, so they show his face through the neck of his costume.  And then, just in case anyone in the audience might feel sad about how Pyramus and Thisbe both end up dead, they’ve written a prologue:

“If we offend, it is with our good will.

That you should think, we come not to offend,

But with good will. To show our simple skill,

That is the true beginning of our end.

Consider then we come but in despite.

We do not come as minding to contest you,

Our true intent is. All for your delight

We are not here. That you should here repent you,

The actors are at hand and by their show

You shall know all that you are like to know.”

This prologue is long and unnecessary to the Pyramus and Thisbe play, but it does provide some importance to the lager play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The prologue seems to prove that this production will be in no way sad, as it was written, the actors, whether consciously or not, have seen to that.  Just from this prologue, before the play even really begins, the audience at the wedding knows what to expect. Theseus’ comment on the prologue is actually true of the entire production when he says, “His speech was like a tangled chain—nothing impaired, but all disordered.”  Meaning that there is nothing wrong with the play, it serves its purpose, which is to entertain, but it accomplishes this through foolish disorder.  The tragic words of the script or Pyramus and Thisbe are buried under the foolish and silly actors.

Tragedy continuously comes out the loser in this play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Fools and love and fools in love take over and encompass the inner tragedies in comedy and merriment.  This is how the play was intended to be, simply a comedy, and it fulfills that role very well by turning what could have been sad things into hilarious situations.

Hamlet's Use of Language

Hamlet is intimidating, head-strong, and stubborn.  This is made obvious through his choice of words and uses of metaphors, irony and puns throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  The tongue sparring is found throughout the play, but mostly when Hamlet is speaking to the King (Claudius, his uncle), Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.   Less frequently, he turns his words against others like his mother and Ophelia.  He enjoys turning deserving people’s own words against them and making them squirm with the very things he says.   

            The first time we hear Hamlet he uses verbal irony against the King, Claudius.  When Claudius calls him cousin—meaning relative, Claudius is Hamlet’s late father’s brother—and son—for Claudius is now married to Hamlet’s mother—Hamlet retorts, “A little more than kin, a little less than kind.”  He says he is “too much in the sun,” not really referring to the celestial body but to the homophone “son.”  Claudius is abusing the term “son” in Hamlet’s eyes, for Claudius has quickly married his widowed mother and Hamlet is not yet done mourning his birth father’s death.

            Hamlet’s abusive language does not go unnoticed.  Even the dim-witted Polonius seems to notice: “How pregnant sometimes his replies are!” he says, “A happiness that often that madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.”  Once Hamlet gets sparring he doesn’t slow down.  This is what he enjoys doing, it excites him, and he’s good at it.

            Often Hamlet speaks with double meanings, irony or puns, but not always.  Hamlet doesn’t waste his good wit on the dull Polonius, he just says things to mess with him.  When Polonius says the play is too long, Hamlet says his beard is too long.  Hamlet messes with Polonius and Polonius takes it.  An example of this is when Hamlet is looking up the clouds he says he sees one that looks like a camel.  Polonius agrees it looks like a camel.  Then Hamlet changes his mind and says it looks like a weasel and then a whale.  Each time Polonius agrees.   It doesn’t take a genius to realize that camels, weasels and whales look nothing alike, but Polonius, eager to please Hamlet, who is just proving his wit, takes it all in stride, oblivious to the fact that he is Hamlet’s joke.

            Most of the time, Hamlet makes his mean remarks to those the reader would usually deem deserving: Claudius, Polonius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  Occasionally, however, Hamlet will turn around Ophelia’s words or those of his own mother.  One example is when Hamlet and Gertrude are in her chambers talking Gertrude says, “Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.”  She means he has offended Claudius with his bad attitude and harsh words.  Hamlet says almost the same exact words back to her, but coming from Hamlet they have a very different meaning.  “Mother, you have my father much offended.”  They are not talking about the same man.  Hamlet is speaking of his late father, brother of Gertrude’s current husband, and he is accusing her.  Hamlet genuinely loves his mother, but not even she can escape his harsh tongue.

            Hamlet’s use of metaphor is almost as impressive as his use of irony.  He can use metaphors, too, to insult his victims.  He calls Rosencrantz a sponge because he “soaks up the king’s countenance, his rewards, his authorities. . . . When he needs what [Rosencrantz] has gleaned, it is but squeezing [him], and [the sponge] shall be dry again.”  Rosencrantz likely has no idea what Hamlet is talking about, but with a little investigation the meaning becomes clearer to the readers.  To Hamlet, Rosencrantz is sucking up the king’s attentions and when the king no longer requires his assistance, he will take those attentions back.  All this meaning can be found in Hamlet’s simple metaphoric image of a wet sponge being wrung out after use.

            Hamlet sometimes carries his metaphors and puns a little too far.  When the setting is gone dark and all other characters are distraught, Hamlet keeps a cool head and keeps the irony flowing from his mouth.  He has just killed Polonius and stashed the body, which is serious business indeed, but when asked where the body is hidden, Hamlet replies with two words only: “At supper.”  Claudius falls right into Hamlets verbal trap and asks, “At supper where?”  Hamlet then launches into one of his most vivid speeches and carries his pun through:

            “Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.  A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him.  Your worm is your only emperor for diet.  We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.  Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. . . . A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that fed of that worm. . . . [And this is] how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.”

            Basically, this is one of the biggest insults anyone could ever give a king, and Hamlet says it all so matter-of-fact like.  Hamlet has just told his father in law that worms are above him on the food chain, for when Claudius is dead the worms will eat him.  And a king and a beggar are the same meal to a maggot.  This is very insulting, as a king would never want to be thought of as being anything near a beggar.  And then Hamlet says that a beggar could be higher than a king on the chain if he eats the fish that ate the worm that ate the king.  Hamlet knows exactly what he is doing.

Hamlet is brilliant at come-backs and insults.  He always abuses and often accuses through his use of irony, metaphors, and puns.  He uses his language to drive his point hard into the ears of his victims, to make them squirm under his glance.  Hamlet’s language is what makes him who he is.  His language is what intimidates.