Paul Hammond, ​The Strangeness of Tragedy

‘Shakespeare: ​Othello’​

143 - ‘Othello is a drama about estrangement...Othello and then Desdomona are translated into
a fictionalised time and space.’
Hammond goes on to suggest Iago and Othello are almost indistinguishable

144 - Hammond looks at the use of ‘extravagant’ in the play.

OED: 1. A. That wanders out of bounds; straying, roaming, vagrant. Obsolete
exc. after Shakespeare.
3. Spreading or projecting beyond bounds; straggling. ​Obsolete​.
The characters are ‘drawn by Iago into the creation of a narrative which wheels
himself and Desdomona into monstrous new forms’

146 - ‘Grammatically, Othello is inclined to conditional utterances, which transpose life out of the
indicative mood, and the present tense, as when he greets Desdomona in Cyprus after their
separation at sea’

O my soul’s joy,
If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have wakened death,
And let the labouring barque climb hills of seas
Olympus-high, and duck again as low
As hell’s from heaven. If it were now to die,
‘Twere now to be most happy; for I fear
My soul hath her content so absolute
That not another comfort like to this
Succeeds in unknown fate.

159 - Othello’s tragic story ‘has entailed the blurring of the boundaries between his self and
Iago...As he is drawn into this bond with Iago, he is drawn into his own singularity of time and
space where no one but Iago - his author - can reach him.’