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Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages

Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like It
Hamlet
Henry IV (Part I)
Julius Caesar King Lear Macbeth
The Merchant of Venice
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
The Sonnets
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest Twelfth Night

Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages

OTHeLLO

Edited and with an introduction by

Harold Bloom

Sterling Professor of the Humanities
Yale University

V o lume Editor

Neil Heims

Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages: Othello

Copyright © 2008 by Infobase Publishing Introduction © 2008 by Harold Bloom All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For more information contact:

Bloom’s Literary Criticism An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Othello / edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom ; volume editor, Neil Heims. p. cm. — (Bloom’s Shakespeare through the ages)
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7910-9575-1 (acid-free paper) 1. Shakespeare, William,
1564-1616. Othello. 2. Othello (Fictitious character) I. Bloom, Harold. II. Heims, Neil. III. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616. Othello. PR2829.O77 2008

  • 822.3’3—dc22
  • 2007026815

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CONTENTS

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Series Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Introduction by Harold Bloom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Biography of William Shakespeare. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Summary of Othell o. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Key Passages in Othello . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 List of Characters in Othello. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

CRITICISM THROUGH THE AGES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 t฀Othello in the Seventeenth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

1666—Samuel Pepys. From e Diary of Samuel Pepys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  46 1693—omas Rymer. From A Short View of Tragedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  47

1694—Charles Gildon. “Some Reflections

on Mr. Rymer’s Short View of Tragedy and an Attempt

at a Vindication of Shakespeare,” from “Remarks on the

Plays of Shakespear” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  75

t฀Othello in the Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

1710—Sir Richard Steele. “On the Funeral of Betterton,”

from e Tatle r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  85

1713—John Hughes. “On the Tragedy of Othello,”

from e Guardian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  86

1717—Lewis eobald. From e Censor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  89 1733—Voltaire. “e Orphan,” from Philosophical Letters . . . . . . . . . . . .  90

1765—Samuel Johnson. Othello (notes), from

e Plays of William Shakespea r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  93

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Contents

1775—elizabeth Griffith. From e Morality

of Shakespeare’s Drama Illustrated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  94

t฀Othello in the Nineteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

1809—August Wilhelm Schlegel. “Criticisms on Shakspeare’s Tragedies,” from Lectures on Dramatic

Art and Literatur e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

1811—Charles Lamb. “On the Tragedies

of Shakespeare,” from e Reflector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

1817—William Hazlitt. “Othello,” from Characters

of Shakespear’s Plays  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

1818—Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Notes on Othello,”

from Lectures and Notes on Shakspere and Other English Poets . . . . . . . . 113

1836—John Quincy Adams. “e Character

of Desdemona,” from The American Monthly Magazine . . . . . . . . . . . 117

1864—Victor Hugo. From William Shakespear e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126

1880—Algernon Charles Swinburne. From A Study of Shakespeare 127 1897—George Bernard Shaw. “Mainly About

Shakespeare,” from London Saturday Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

t฀Othello in the Twentieth Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

1904—A. C. Bradley. “Othello,” from Shakespearean Tragedy . . . . . . . 138 1927—T. S. eliot. “e Hero Cheering Himself Up,” from

“Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

1930—G. Wilson Knight. “e Othello Music,”

from e Wheel of Fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

1936—William empson. “e Best Policy,” from Life

and Letters To-Day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

1951—Harold C. Goddard. “Othello,”

from e Meaning of Shakespeare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

1951—Kenneth Burke. “‘Othello’: An essay

to Illustrate a Method,” from e Hudson Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224

1956—Robert B. Heilman. “Othello: e Unheroic

Tragic Hero,” from Magic in the W e b: Action and

Language in Othello. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

vii
Contents

1961—W. H. Auden. “e Joker in the Pack,”

from Encounte r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

1983—A. D. Nuttall. “Othello,” from A New Mimesis:

Shakespeare and the Representation of Reality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

1992—Harold Bloom. “Introduction,” from Iago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292

t฀Othello in the Twenty-first Century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

2000—Frank Kermode. “Othello,”

from Shakespeare’s Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

SERIES INTRODUCTION

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Shakespeare Through the Ages presents not the most current of Shakespeare criticism, but the best of Shakespeare criticism, from the seventeenth century to today. In the process, each volume also charts the flow over time of critical discussion of a particular play. Other useful and fascinating collections of historical Shakespearean criticism exist, but no collection that we know of contains such a range of commentary on each of Shakespeare’s greatest plays and at the same time emphasizes the greatest critics in our literary tradition: from John Dryden in the seventeenth century, to Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century, to William Hazlitt and Samuel Coleridge in the nineteenth century, to A.C. Bradley and William empson in the twentieth century, to the most perceptive critics of our own day. This canon of Shakespearean criticism emphasizes aesthetic rather than political or social analysis.
Some of the pieces included here are full-length essays; others are excerpts designed to present a key point. Much (but not all) of the earliest criticism consists only of brief mentions of specific plays. In addition to the classics of criticism, some pieces of mainly historical importance have been included, often to provide background for important reactions from future critics.
ese volumes are intended for students, particularly those just beginning their explorations of Shakespeare. We have therefore also included basic materials designed to provide a solid grounding in each play: a biography of Shakespeare, a synopsis of the play, a list of characters, and an explication of key passages. In addition, each selection of the criticism of a particular century begins with an introductory essay discussing the general nature of that century’s commentary and the particular issues and controversies addressed by critics presented in the volume.
Shakespeare was “not of an age, but for all time,” but much Shakespeare criticism is decidedly for its own age, of lasting importance only to the scholar who wrote it. Students today read the criticism most readily available to them, which means essays printed in recent books and journals, especially those journals made available on the Internet. Older criticism is too often buried in out-of-print books on forgotten shelves of libraries or in defunct periodicals. erefore, many

ix

Recommended publications
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    M A R K T H O M P S O N VERSIONS OF PLURALISM: WILLIAM EMPSON, ISAIAH BERLIN, AND THE COLD WAR* Mark Thompson Seventy or eighty years ago the credo of value-pluralism1 was much rarer than 6it is today, and no literary figure in English modernism voiced it with more thoughtful zest than the poet and critic William Empson.2 Openness to plural meanings in words implies a liberal openness to plural values. This implication in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) set off warning bells among some reviewers, though Empson’s pluralism was already clear in his student journalism of the ’20s, praising books that “gratify our strong and crucial curiosity about alien modes of feeling, our need for the flying buttress of sympathy with systems other than our own.”3 This early insight contained an ethical precept that he never abandoned, reminding readers in the ’60s of our “need to feel that, whatever we do with our own small lives, the rest of the world is still going on and exercising the variety of its forces.”4 Such was his conception of “world-mindedness.”5 Other systems (cultures, values, ways of doing things, “modes of feeling”) exist; their variety is valuable in itself; a sympathetic sense of their differentness is essential to our equilibrium; defending the former, we strengthen the latter. The notion of this sympathetic interest presupposes a humanist outlook, “recommending happi- ness on earth and so forth.”6 Here lay the humanistic common ground where altruism and self-interest could merge. While this notion was not derived from literature, it is borne out by literature and in literature more intensely than in other kinds of communication.
  • Style, Wit and Word-Play

    Style, Wit and Word-Play

    Style, Wit and Word-Play Style, Wit and Word-Play: Essays in Translation Studies in Memory of David Hawkes Edited by Tao Tao Liu, Laurence K. P. Wong and Chan Sin-wai Style, Wit and Word-Play: Essays in Translation Studies in Memory of David Hawkes, Edited by Tao Tao Liu, Laurence K. P. Wong and Chan Sin-wai This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Tao Tao Liu, Laurence K. P. Wong and Chan Sin-wai and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3571-4, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3571-8 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................... vii Tao Tao Liu, Laurence K. P. Wong and Chan Sin-wai INTRODUCTION............................................................................................ ix “STYLE, WIT AND WORD-PLAY” – REMEMBERING DAVID HAWKES (1923-2009) Tao Tao Liu A TRIBUTE TO BROTHER STONE ................................................................... 1 John Minford WHAT IS THE POINT OF MAKING TRANSLATIONS INTO ENGLISH OF CHINESE LITERATURE: RE-EXAMINING ARTHUR WALEY AND DAVID HAWKES ......... 15 Tao Tao Liu SURPRISING THE MUSES: DAVI D HAWKES’ A LITTLE PRIMER OF TU FU ...... 33 Laurence K. P. Wong MIND THE GAP: THE HAWKES-MINFORD TRANSITION IN THE STORY OF THE STONE ..................................................................... 115 Chloë Starr THE TRANSLATOR AS SCHOLAR AND EDITOR: ON PREPARING A NEW CHINESE TEXT FOR THE BILINGUAL THE STORY OF THE STONE ................
  • Seventy-Eight Ways of Looking at John Milton Author(S): Tobias Gregory Reviewed Work(S): Source: Modern Philology, Vol

    Seventy-Eight Ways of Looking at John Milton Author(S): Tobias Gregory Reviewed Work(S): Source: Modern Philology, Vol

    Seventy-Eight Ways of Looking at John Milton Author(s): Tobias Gregory Reviewed work(s): Source: Modern Philology, Vol. 109, No. 4 (May 2012), pp. 544-562 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665254 . Accessed: 28/06/2012 13:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern Philology. http://www.jstor.org REVIEW ARTICLE Seventy-Eight Ways of Looking at John Milton TOBIAS GREGORY The Catholic University of America The essay anthologies called ‘‘companions’’ or ‘‘handbooks’’ must count among the successes of British academic publishing in the past two de- cades. There are the slim, ubiquitous Cambridge Companions, a series with 472 titles to date on subjects from Homer to the literature of Los Angeles.1 There are the bulkier, more comprehensive Blackwell Companions and Oxford Handbooks. For editors and contributors, these volumes offer an attractive way to put one’s stamp on a field, since they reach a somewhat broader audience than do journal articles or monographs. Students con- sult them to start a research paper or to prepare for graduate exams; teach- ers consult them to enrich a lesson plan or to refresh their memory; spe- cialists consult them to track the latest developments and bibliography or to survey an unfamiliar subfield.