DOCSLIB.ORG

SEA CHANGE in SHAKESPEARE's OTHELLO Ruth Stevenson

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
SEA CHANGE in SHAKESPEARE's OTHELLO Ruth Stevenson SEA CHANGE IN SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO Ruth Stevenson Shakespeare’s oceans and especially his seas do not, as Renaissance lore affi rmed, merely parallel the fl ora and fauna on earth, but, as the seventeenth-century poet Andrew Marvell has further explained, the ocean of the mind also “creates, transcending these,/Far other worlds and other seas.”1 Such mental waterways ebb and fl ow throughout Shakespeare’s plays, creating poem-dramas with extensive ranges of metaphorical investigation by means of seas that are “fl uent,”2 that develop “liquid surge,”3 or become “an enraged, foamy mouth.”4 Shakespeare’s seas coalesce into “eyes”5 or sink into “a stomach o’er charged with gold.”6 They produce “a rapture,”7 and they can create the transfi guration into “coral” and “pearls” of The Tempest’s explicit “sea-change.”8 In Othello,9 the sea’s liquidity suggests the associative plasticity of Shakespeare’s use of words, while its unfathomable depths and susceptibility to lunar transformation emphasize his interest in psychological probing and emotional change. In the following essay, I shall expose the water references that cumulatively become defi nitive parts of the play’s overall verbal network, clarify the “poetry of the words,” as Wallace Stevens calls it, that constructs this network, explain the pertinence of a particular fi gure of speech, synecdoche, that oper- ates within it, and, fi nally, point out the work’s metamorphic fusion in the incandescent phrasing of Act 5. In doing so, I will investigate the 1 Andrew Marvell, “The Garden,” Seventeenth-Century Verse and Prose, Vol. 1: 1600–1660, ed., Helen C. White, Ruth C. Wallerstein, Ricardo Quintana (NY: 1966), ll. 41–46. 2 William Shakespeare, Henry V, 3.7.33 in The Riverside Shakespeare, textual ed., G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: 1974). The following six references are also from The Riverside Shakespeare. 3 Timon of Athens, 4.3.439. 4 Twelfth Night, 5.1.78. 5 Romeo and Juliet, 3.5.132. 6 Pericles, 3.2.54 7 Ibid., 2.1.155. 8 The Tempest, 1.2.398; 399; 401. 9 William Shakespeare, Othello, ed. M.R. Ridley (NY: 1967), the text for all subse- quent references to the play. 454 ruth stevenson working of Othello’s mind, his verbal revisions, and his fi nal complex identity. The Verbal Network and its Principal Figure of Speech Sea references grow slowly in the play and are fi rst located outside of Othello’s consciousness in the nautical words of Iago and Roderigo about boats. Early in the fi rst scene, Iago calls himself “beleed and calmed” (1.1.30) as though he were a ship cut off from the wind. Roderigo refers to the “gondolier” (1.1.125) who transported Desde- mona to Othello, and Desdemona, herself, in Iago’s words, is a “car- rack” (1.2.50), which Othello has boarded. Her father wants to know where they have “stowed my daughter” (1.2.62), as though she were cargo in a ship’s hold. The movement from words about such surface structures of the water to those that circulate within the depths of the Moor’s mind become a unique linguistic narrative within Othello. Wallace Stevens called such a formation “the poem of the words.” “Every poem,” he says, “is a poem within a poem: the poem of the idea and the poem of the words.”10 In the latter, “the primary relation of each word . is to the other words, not to the things or actions they describe.11 That is, “between and among these words,” as Helen Vendler explains, “there grows a “network [. .], a referentiality that does not so much extend outward to some putative real world as horizontally to the inwardly-extensive world of terms or images.”12 The sea network in Othello, which started with the surface gondola, carrack, and cargo-car- rier, gradually extends horizontally to other vessels in naval formations, notably the Venetian fl eet, settles on a single part of rigging, the sail, for its fi gurative usefulness, and thereafter descends into the sub-aquatic network of the play at large. Shakespeare uses the sail as a conspicuous, clearly isolated image when the people of Cyprus cry, “A sail, a sail, a sail” (2.1.51) and then again shout, “A sail” (54) when they see Iago’s ship. They repeat their cry, “A sail!” twice more (92) as they hail Othello’s vessel (2.1.92), thus emphatically drawing our attention not only to the motif of the sea, but 10 Wallace Stevens, quoted by Helen Vendler in On Extended Wings: Wallace Stevens’ Longer Poems (Cambridge, MA: 1969), p. 1. 11 Wallace Stevens, The Practical Imagination (NY: 1983), p. 9. 12 Vendler, Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire (Knoxville: 1984), p. 54..
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Child's Two Bodies: Shakespeare, Sovereignty, and the End Of
    7KH&KLOG૷V7ZR%RGLHV6KDNHVSHDUH6RYHUHLJQW\ DQGWKH(QGRI6XFFHVVLRQ Joseph Campana ELH, Volume 81, Number 3, Fall 2014, pp. 811-839 (Article) 3XEOLVKHGE\7KH-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV DOI: 10.1353/elh.2014.0034 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/elh/summary/v081/81.3.campana.html Access provided by Fondren Library, Rice University (29 Oct 2014 14:35 GMT) THE CHild’s Two Bodies: SHAKESPEARE, SOVEREIGNTY, AND THE END OF SUCCESSION BY JOSEPH CAMPANA The king is dead. Long live the child? In a dramatic canon full of the ghosts of dead fathers, William Shakespeare offers up tragic protagonists haunted by children. Desperate for assurances about his precarious political future, the monarch-murdering usurper Macbeth seeks out a second encounter with the infamous witches who prophesied his unexpected assump- tion of sovereignty. Macbeth meets Hecate herself and experiences visions of a crowned child, an armed head, a bloody babe, and a glorious future line of Scottish kings culminating in King James VI and I of Scotland and England.1 Pivotal to Macbeth is the question of what central characters do, or do not, see: gruesome witches, killing instruments, guilt-stained hands, ambulatory trees, and prophetic visions. In act 2, scene 1, Macbeth imagines or witnesses the weapon he will later use to slay King Duncan. “Is this a dagger which I see before me,” he famously asks, “The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still” (2.1.1–3). Macbeth’s mysterious dagger, Lady Macbeth’s blood-soaked hands, Hecate’s visions of a bloody babe, a crowned child, an armed head, and a line of seven kings: the famous images that flicker in and out of sight in Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy I will describe as apparitions not of a state of mind but of the state itself.
    [Show full text]
  • For God's Sake, Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Kings … -Richard II, Act III, Scene Ii
    The Hollow Crown is a lavish new series of filmed adaptations of four of Shakespeare’s most gripping history plays: Richard II , Henry IV, Part 1 , Henry IV, Part 2 , and Henry V , presented by GREAT PERFORMANCES . For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings … -Richard II, Act III, Scene ii 2013 WNET Synopsis The Hollow Crown presents four of Shakespeare’s history plays: Richard II , Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V . These four plays were written separately but tell a continuous story of the reigns of three kings of England. The first play starts in 1398, as King Richard arbitrates a dispute between his cousin Henry Bolingbroke and the Duke of Norfolk, which he resolves by banishing both men from England— Norfolk for life and Bolingbroke for six years. When Bolingbroke’s father dies, Richard seizes his lands. It’s the latest outrage from a selfish king who wastes money on luxuries, his favorite friends, and an expensive war in Ireland. Bolingbroke returns from banishment with an army to take back his inheritance and quickly wins supporters. He takes Richard prisoner and, rather than stopping at his own lands and privileges, seizes the crown. When one of Bolingbroke’s followers assassinates Richard, the new king claims that he never ordered the execution and banishes the man who killed Richard. Years pass, and at the start of Henry IV, Part 1 , the guilt-stricken king plans a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to wash Richard’s blood from his hands.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare's Warrior Kings
    Focus: Introduction to Shakespeare Stage 5 Yr 9 Duration: 6 weeks Karen Yager - Knox Grammar School - Created for the Premier’s Literature Scholarship Shakespeare’s Warrior Kings HENRY V MACBETH RICHARD III 1 Focus: Introduction to Shakespeare Stage 5 Yr 9 Duration: 6 weeks Karen Yager - Knox Grammar School - Created for the Premier’s Literature Scholarship Concept: Perceptions & Cross Curricular Outcomes Representation Literacy ICT A student: 1. responds to and composes increasingly Shakespeare’s Warrior Language modes sophisticated and sustained texts for Kings Reading/writing/speaking/listening/ understanding, interpretation, critical analysis viewing & representing and pleasure. Deep knowledge: Texts 2. uses and critically assesses a range of How context shapes Extracts from Shakespeare’s plays: processes for responding to and composing. perspectives and Macbeth 5.transfers understanding of language concepts representations Richard III into new and different contexts. Henry V 9. demonstrates understanding of the ways texts An appreciation of others’ As well as: reflect personal and public worlds. perspectives The documentary In Search of The power of language and Shakespeare images & K. Yager’s CD rom Rationale This stage 5 unit is designed as an introductory unit to Shakespeare focusing on his representation of the warrior kings. Students begin by exploring Shakespeare’s context through a web quest, a CD-Rom and the documentary In Search of Shakespeare. The students will closely examine some of the key extracts from the plays to appreciate the textual details and features, rhythm and the perspective. The students will explore others’ perspectives of the kings and how ideas and information can be constructed. As a lawyer representing the family of the king the students will research the historical version of the king and compare their findings with Shakespeare’s representation or create a visual representation for the Power House Museum that explores different perspectives.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare's
    Shakespeare’s Henry IV: s m a r t The Shadow of Succession SHARING MASTERWORKS OF ART April 2007 These study materials are produced for use with the AN EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH OF BOB JONES UNIVERSITY Classic Players production of Henry IV: The Shadow of Succession. The historical period The Shadow of Succession takes into account is 1402 to 1413. The plot focuses on the Prince of Wales’ preparation An Introduction to to assume the solemn responsibilities of kingship even while Henry IV regards his unruly son’s prospects for succession as disastrous. The Shadow of When the action of the play begins, the prince, also known as Hal, finds himself straddling two worlds: the cold, aristocratic world of his Succession father’s court, which he prefers to avoid, and the disreputable world of Falstaff, which offers him amusement and camaraderie. Like the plays from which it was adapted, The Shadow of Succession offers audiences a rich theatrical experience based on Shakespeare’s While Henry IV regards Falstaff with his circle of common laborers broad vision of characters, events and language. The play incorporates a and petty criminals as worthless, Hal observes as much human failure masterful blend of history and comedy, of heroism and horseplay, of the in the palace, where politics reign supreme, as in the Boar’s Head serious and the farcical. Tavern. Introduction, from page 1 Like Hotspur, Falstaff lacks the self-control necessary to be a produc- tive member of society. After surviving at Shrewsbury, he continues to Grieved over his son’s absence from court at a time of political turmoil, squander his time in childish pleasures.
    [Show full text]
  • Henry V Plays Richard II
    Colby Quarterly Volume 26 Issue 2 June Article 6 June 1990 "I will...Be like a king": Henry V Plays Richard II Barbara H. Traister Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cq Recommended Citation Colby Quarterly, Volume 26, no.2, June 1990, p.112-121 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Colby. It has been accepted for inclusion in Colby Quarterly by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Colby. Traister: "I will...Be like a king": Henry V Plays Richard II "I will . .. Be like a king": Henry V Plays Richard II by BARBARA H. TRAISTER N BOTH RichardII and Henry v, the first and last plays ofthe second tetralogy, I kings engage in highly theatrical activity. Each play, however, has a very different metadramatic focus. In Richard II acting becomes a metaphor for the way Richard sees himself. The focus of audience attention is the narcissistic royal actor whose principal concern is his own posturing and who is his own greatest, and eventually only, admirer. Richard is an actor and dramatist, the embodiment of Elizabeth I's comment: "We Princes, I tell you, are set on stages, in the sight and view of all the world duly observed" (quoted in Neale 1957,2:19). However, his self-ab­ sorption and blindness to the world around him lead the audience to make few, if any, connections between him and the actor-dramatist who created him. The play is nearly empty of self-reflexive dramatic overtones despite its complex portrait of a player king.
    [Show full text]
  • 2019 Seminar Abstracts: the King's Men and Their Playwrights
    1 2019 Seminar Abstracts: The King’s Men and Their Playwrights Meghan C. Andrews, Lycoming College James J. Marino, Cleveland State University “Astonishing Presence”: Writing for a Boy Actress of the King’s Men, c. 1610-1616 Roberta Barker, Dalhousie University Although scholarship has acknowledged the influence of leading actors such as Richard Burbage on the plays created for the King’s Men, less attention has been paid to the ways in which the gifts and limitations of individual boy actors may have affected the company’s playwrights. Thanks to the work of scholars such as David Kathman and Martin Wiggins, however, it is now more feasible than ever to identify the periods during which specific boys served their apprenticeships with the company and the plays in which they likely performed. Building on that scholarship, my paper will focus on the repertoire of Richard Robinson (c.1597-1648) during his reign as one of the King’s Men’s leading actors of female roles. Surviving evidence shows that Robinson played the Lady in Middleton’s Second Maiden’s Tragedy in 1611 and that he appeared in Jonson’s Catiline (1611) and Fletcher’s Bonduca (c.1612-14). Using a methodology first envisioned in 1699, when one of the interlocutors in James Wright’s Historia Histrionica dreamt of reconstructing the acting of pre-Civil War London by “gues[sing] at the action of the Men, by the Parts which we now read in the Old Plays” (3), I work from this evidence to suggest that Robinson excelled in the roles of nobly born, defiant tragic heroines: women of “astonishing presence,” as Helvetius says of the Lady in The Second Maiden’s Tragedy (2.1.74).
    [Show full text]
  • 1 an AGE of KINGS (BBC TV, 1960) Things Have Moved on in Fifty Years
    1 AN AGE OF KINGS (BBC TV, 1960) BBC VIDEO 5 disc set; ISBN 1-4198-7901-4, Region 1 only Tom Fleming, Robert Hardy Things have moved on in fifty years. In 1960 (I was sixteen), we didn’t have a television, and I had to prevail upon my school-friends to let me cycle round to their houses every alternate Thursday to watch this series. 1 Now, I can sit in my armchair and watch it straight through on my computer on DVD, with sound coming through the headphones. I count An Age of Kings as the single most important cultural event in my entire life, more important even than being in Trevor Nunn’s first-ever Shakespeare production ( Hamlet ) the previous year. It taught me what Shakespeare was about, and I’ve never forgotten it. Over ten years ago, seeing that it was on at the NFT, I went down to see some odd bits. Approaching Michael Hayes, the director, I said, “What you did here provided me with the single most important cultural event of my life”. He looked at me suspiciously: “You seem a bit young to say that”, he said, and turned away. I went up to Peter Dews, the producer: “What you did here provided me with the single most important cultural event of my life” – “Good!” he grunted, and turned away. So much for the creative team. Were they really as boring as that in 1960? (In fact Dews died shortly after our brief chat.) Paul Daneman said in an accompanying NFT lecture that the cast spent every morning talking, and didn’t start rehearsals till after lunch.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Legitimacy and the Economy of Honor in Shakespeare's Henriad Bandana Singh Scripps College
    Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship 2018 “Your unthought of Harry”: Political Legitimacy and the Economy of Honor in Shakespeare's Henriad Bandana Singh Scripps College Recommended Citation Singh, Bandana, "“Your unthought of Harry”: Political Legitimacy and the Economy of Honor in Shakespeare's Henriad" (2018). Scripps Senior Theses. 1140. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1140 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “YOUR UNTHOUGHT OF HARRY”: POLITICAL LEGITIMACY AND THE ECONOMY OF HONOR IN SHAKESPEARE’S HENRIAD by BANDANA SINGH SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS PROFESSOR PRAKAS PROFESSOR KOENIGS 6 DECEMBER, 2017 !1 Shakespeare’s Henriad delves into questions of divine authority, political legitimacy, and kingly identity.1 While it is unknown whether Shakespeare meant for the plays to be understood as a tetralogy, each play sets up the political climate for the subsequent one. However, the Henriad also tracks a pivotal transition in the understanding and composition of kingship. Richard II paints the portrait of a king infatuated with his own divinity. Richard’s incompetency as a ruler is highlighted by two major offenses: killing his uncle Gloucester, and disinheriting his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who eventually leads a rebellion against the corrupted king. Richard’s journey from anointed king to deposed mortal captures the dissolution of his fantasy of invincibility and highlights two conflicting viewpoints on the office of kingship in relation to political theology.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Orson Welles' Three Shakespeare Films: Macbeth, Othello, Chimes At
    1 Orson Welles’ three Shakespeare films: Macbeth, Othello, Chimes at Midnight Macbeth To make any film, aware that there are plenty of people about who’d rather you weren’t doing so, and will be quite happy if you fail, must be a strain. To make films of Shakespeare plays under the same constraint requires a nature driven and thick-skinned above and beyond the normal, but it’s clear that Welles had it. His Macbeth was done cheaply in a studio in less than a month in 1948. His Othello was made over the years 1949-1952, on a variety of locations, and with huge gaps between shootings, as he sold himself as an actor to other film- makers so as to raise the money for the next sequence. I’m going to argue that the later movie shows evidence that he learned all kinds of lessons from the mistakes he made when shooting the first, and that there is a huge gain in quality as a consequence. Othello is a minor masterpiece: Macbeth is an almost unredeemed cock-up. We all know that the opening shot of Touch of Evil is a virtuoso piece of camerawork: a single unedited crane-shot lasting over three minutes. What is not often stressed is that there’s another continuous shot, less spectacular but no less well-crafted, in the middle of that film (it’s when the henchmen of Quinlan, the corrupt cop, plant evidence in the fall-guy’s hotel room). What is never mentioned is that there are two shots still longer in the middle of Macbeth .
    [Show full text]
  • Othello: a Teacher's Guide
    A TEACHER’S GUIDE TO THE SIGNET CLASSIC EDITION OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S OTHELLO By DEBRA (DEE) JAMES, University of North Carolina at Asheville SERIES EDITORS: W. GEIGER ELLIS, ED.D., UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA, EMERITUS and ARTHEA J. S. REED, PH.D., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, RETIRED A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classic Edition of William Shakespeare’s Othello 2 INTRODUCTION Othello, like all of Shakespeare’s plays, particularly the tragedies, is complex and subtly nuanced. Through its complexities and subtleties, Shakespeare makes us care about the characters who people this story. We understand their weaknesses and their strengths, their passions and their nobility. In our engagement in their lives and our pondering over what has gone wrong and why, we are given the opportunity to analyze human life both in the abstract and in the particular of our own lives. Shakespeare’s ability to involve us in the lives and fortunes of his characters is one of the best reasons for reading, rereading, and teaching Othello. Othello has particular gifts to offer to teenagers. It is a play about passion and reason. Intense feelings are exhibited here: love, hate, jealousy, envy, even lust. Teenagers struggling with their own passions can empathize with both Roderigo’s and Othello’s plight. It is also a play that examines, as do Shakespeare’s other works, human relationships and interactions. For teenagers in the first rush of attempting to understand how romantic relationships work and when and why they might fail, this text provides much to ponder. In addition, studying the play gives young people a rich literary vehicle for developing their critical thinking and analytical reading skills.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare's Henriad As Political Philosophy by Leon Harold Craig
    Digital Commons @ Assumption University Political Science Department Faculty Works Political Science Department 2017 Review of The Philosopher's English King: Shakespeare's Henriad as Political Philosophy by Leon Harold Craig Bernard J. Dobski Assumption College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.assumption.edu/political-science-faculty Part of the Philosophy Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Dobski, Bernard J. "Rev. of The Philosopher's English King: Shakespeare's Henriad as Political Philosophy by Leon Harold Craig." Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy vol. 43 no. 2 (Winter 2017): pp. 341-345. This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Political Science Department at Digital Commons @ Assumption University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Department Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Assumption University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Book Review: The Philosopher’s English King 341 Leon Harold Craig, The Philosopher’s English King: Shakespeare’s Henriad as Political Philosophy. Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2015, 296 pp., $95.00 (hardcover). Bernard J. Dobski Assumption College [email protected] Harold Bloom famously declared that Shakespeare “invented” us. Such a claim is hardly hyperbolic: Shakespeare’s plays are perennially performed in parks and theaters across the Western world, and his poetry continues to inform the television, cinema, and literature that shape our culture. It is thus no surprise that scholars and academics find in Shakespeare’s creative legacy a treasure worth plundering, publishing nearly one hundred books per year on the Bard.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare's Cymbeline and the Mystical
    International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Volume 32 | Issue 2 Article 13 7-1-2013 Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and the Mystical Particular: Redemption, Then and Now, for a Disassembled World Judy Schavrien Sofia University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies Part of the Philosophy Commons, Psychology Commons, Religion Commons, and the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Schavrien, J. (2013). Schavrien, J. (2013). Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and the mystical particular: Redemption, then and now, for a disassembled world. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 32(2), 122–140.. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 32 (2). http://dx.doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2013.32.2.122 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Special Topic Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals and Newsletters at Digital Commons @ CIIS. It has been accepted for inclusion in International Journal of Transpersonal Studies by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ CIIS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and the Mystical Particular: Redemption, Then and Now, for a Disassembled World Judy Schavrien Sophia University Palo Alto, CA, USA Cymbeline reflected Shakespeare’s late-in-life aspirations for a world redeemed. Those in baroque England, past the first burgeoning of Renaissance vision, were nevertheless making a literal New World abroad. Likewise, Shakespeare arrived at a vision both post-innocent and post-tragic. As they compared to tragic heroes, he down-sized the late play characters; still, he granted them a gentler end.
    [Show full text]