1.

what could be the reasons behind the downfall of the othello prescented as a
tragic hero in Shakespeare’splay?

Answer:-
In life, heroes will arise when ever they are called for. It may be the everyday heroes that are
seen rescuing a cat from a tree or helping an old lady cross the street. It may also be the heroes
that are see in movies and books rescuing the princess from the dragon or leading their country
in battle. Perhaps the rarest hero is the tragic one. William Shakespeare has artfully crafted some
of the most prominent tragic heroes of all time. With one of the greatest being Othello. Othello is
a tragic hero because of his noble traits, his tragic flaws, and his tragic downfall.

For someone to be a tragic hero, they must first be a noble character. Othello can be considered a
noble character because he is one of high social ranking and he has a genuine heart. Othello,
despite coming from a rough past, is an honorable war hero and the general of the Venetian
army. Along with his social stature, Othello also has a noble heart. Although he is sometimes
portrayed as violent, Othello’s loving nature can be seen in instances such as when he speaks
about Desdemona. These traits are greatly admired among characters of Othello including Iago
who admits that Othello is “of a constant loving, noble nature will prove to Desdemona A most
dear husband”. Othello’s nobility is quite evident, however, he does have traits that can be
viewed as tragic flaws.
Othello is a tragic hero because of his tragic flaw. There are many undesirable traits in Othello,
like his jealousy and gullibility. However, the core of these problems and his main tragic flaw is
his insecurities. Othello being the only black character and an outsider in Venice brings upon
many insecurities. His vulnerability makes him an easy target for Iago to manipulate his mind; he
begins to believe that he isn’t good enough for Desdemona: “She’s gone, I am abused, and my
relief Must be to loathe her. Oh, curse of marriage That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites!”. Iago was easily able to convince Othello that Desdemona has been
unfaithful. However, Othello doesn’t realize his insecurities have taken over his life until it is too
late and his tragic downfall has already hit rock bottom.

What makes Othello a tragic hero is he experiences a tragic downfall. Othello’s downfall is set
into motion when the jealous Iago begins planting seeds of doubt into Othello’s already insecure
mind. Iago’s manipulative words convince Othello that his wife is unfaithful; from then on he
begins to lose his noble traits. He treats his wife with little to no respect and eventually smothers
her to death. When Iago’s plot is finally unveiled and Othello realizes his terrible mistake, it is
evident he has reached his emotional limit: “Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of this
heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulfur, Wash me in steep-down gulfs of
liquid fire! Oh, Desdemona! Desdemona! dead! Oh! Oh!” In his distraught state of mind and
with his broken heart, Othello decides to kill himself. With one fatal stab, this hero’s tale comes
to a tragic end.
Othello is a tragic hero because he is noble, he suffers from a fatal tragic flaw and he goes
through a tragic downfall. All these traits that Othello exhibits lead him to be known as one of
the most well-known tragic heroes in all of literature.
2. Critically analyze the culture of suspicion in Shakespeare’s play?

Answer:-
Many studies of Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello begin with the seventeenth century critic Thomas
Rymer’s incredulity over Desdemona’s handkerchief having a pivotal role in her tragic murder.
Nevertheless, through ‘so remote a trifle’, Shakespeare raises fundamental questions over our
knowledge of others, and the problems of distinguishing authentic evidence and testimony from
false. The tragedy’s concerns with problems of knowing are highly relevant to our contemporary
insecurities and pursuit of suspicion from counterterrorism to child protection.

Othello insists on seeing clear evidence, ‘Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore!/ Be sure
of it; give me the ocular proof’. When Desdemona loses the handkerchief, Iago is able to exploit
how Othello sees the handkerchief as symbolising Desdemona’s fidelity. In Othello’s words, ‘to
lose’t or give’t away were such perdition/As nothing else could match’. Desdemona’s
handkerchief is at the core of Iago’s dodgy dossier, which Iago creates for Othello against
Desdemona. As Iago observes, ‘Trifles light as air/Are to the jealous confirmations strong /As
proofs of holy writ’. The handkerchief may be a ‘trifle’, but comes to serve as proof of her
infidelity . The critic Rymer argues that the play Othello, ‘may be a lesson to Husbands, that
before their Jealously be Tragical, the proofs may be Mathematical’. Othello’s ocular proof in
the handkerchief proved fallible. But our post-enlightenment times also struggle with problems
of suspicions and proofs, despite our mathematical models and electronic surveillance
technology. Indeed Iago’s reduction of everything to the animal or biological has certain
parallels with modern behaviouralism or neuroscience. There has been much on dodgy dossiers
in the war on terror. At their heart is a culture of suspicion whereby the absence of evidence
merely proves the super-subtly of the suspect. Iago’s outlook of radical scepticism is destroyer of
all ideals and relationships. Just as Iago’s radical suspicions are personally and socially
destructive, they are also shown to be politically damaging. Thus Shakespeare’s tragedy
highlights the dangers of counterterrorism driven by radical suspicion. So while Rymer writing
three hundred years ago suggests that society has moved away from magic, and only accepts
scientific proofs, a culture of radical suspicion, like Iago, may transform its suspicions into
scientific-like proofs. Just as the lack of evidence was used by Iago to demonstrate how super-
subtle Desdemona was in deceiving Othello, so the very lack of evidence of Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMDs) became evidence of Saddam Hussein’s dangerous secret weapons
programme. However, radical suspicion is not confined to the war on terror, but spans the
spectrum of social problems and is questioning our most fundamental social relations. The
encroachment on our freedoms under the war on terror are not exceptional, but follow the logical
consequence of broader cultural anxieties. Nor are dodgy dossiers just confined to the war on
terror, but other policy areas, from policing football matches to child protection cases. Expanding
risk governance treats all individuals as potentially vulnerable to potentially becoming a victim
or perpetrator. The routine requirement of Criminal Record Bureau checks, now called
Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks, whose figures now run into millions, indicate how
contemporary policy follows Iago’s degraded worldview that every relationship should be
viewed through the lens of suspicion. Accordingly Scotland is appointing a Named Person to
monitor the well-being of every child in Scotland such is the official presumption of mistrust of
parents. Honest Iago constructs a dodgy dossier against Desdemona where mere suppositions
become treated as if they are firm proofs. Shakespeare’s tragedy explores how radical suspicion
corrodes trust, destroys lives and jeopardises society’s security. Equally the contemporary
culture of radical suspicion is personally and socially destructive, and conducive to irrational
responses and miscarriages of justice. Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello highlights the responsibility
for thinking for ourselves, and the dangers of not exercising proper judgement. Critically,
Othello murders Dedesmona, because he abandons moral responsibility to think and judge for
himself, and has come to rely on Iago’s suspiciously contrived proofs. Iago’s zealous pursuit
readily distort the truth. Against such suspicion, Iago’s wife Emila argues too much importance
has been placed on ‘such a trifle’ as the handkerchief Iago orders Emilia to silence over the
matter ‘Go to, charm your tongue’. However Emilia refuses, ‘I will not charm my tongue; I am
bound to speak’ And so Iago murders Emilia, and murders truth. Against Iago’s denial of human
morality, dignity and sympathy, Emilia stands for the moral courage to judge justly and aright
‘as I speak true; / So speaking as I think, I die.

3. How far do you believe that Shakespeare’s Othellois a domestic tragedy?

Answer:-
Othello, the Moor of Venice has been regarded as a domestic tragedy by some critics because it
shows how the domestic life of Othello and Desdemona is ruined by the machinations of a
villain, Iago by name. Iago through his machinations and crafty means makes Othello jealous of
Cassio and suspicious of Desdemona. He begins to doubt his innocent wife of having immoral
relation with Cassio. He suffers terrible mental tortures, and spurred on by Iago, ultimately
destroys first Desdemona and then himself. Thus it has a close resemblance with the plot of a
domestic tragedy, though it is a drama of contemporary life, having for its background a
historical event of recent occurrence. But Othello is not a private individual. He is descended
from a royal family. He is a soldier and a military general of great ability and renown. He is
considered indispensable for the defense of Cyprus and is appointed as the Governor of Cyprus
by the Duke of Venice. Thus he is a man of importance occupying a conspicuous place in the life
and affairs of the state of Venice. He can in no way be regarded as a private individual like the
hero of a domestic tragedy. By virtue of his exceptional abilities, Othello is head and shoulders
above the common run of mankind. Noble and daring, he had a romantic career and travelled
widely over distant lands. By telling his tales of travels he is able to win over the heart Of
Desdemona, a girl of exceptional beauty and grace. He can command and inspire confidence by
his honesty and frankness. When such an individual falls, his fall produces the pity and terror
proper to the bile tragedy. In a domestic tragedy, the action of the drama moves on a common
everyday level. There is neither remoteness nor any suggestion of serious, fatal forces working
against human beings. But the action of Othello does not take place in familiar England; we are
transported to romantic Venice and from there to the remote unknown Cyprus. We feel that there
is some hidden forces, malignant and hostile, Iago, the embodiment of evil, appears with all his
evil designs which fill us with foreboding. The impression of Destiny working against the hero
driving him to an inevitable doom is further strengthened by preponderance of the Chance
element.

To sum up, Othello is not a domestic tragedy but in it the commonplace has been lifted up, and
transformed to the level of a heroic tragedy. A trifle thing like the handkerchief, has been used to
bring about the catastrophe, and arouse the emotion of pity and fear. So it is a pure tragedy, truly
cathartic in its effect.

4. How critically can you evaluatc king Lear’s madness in Shakespeare’s

play?

Answer:-
King Lear can be considered as one of the most powerful tragedies written by Shakespeare.
Written nearly 400 years ago, it appeals to todays’ literary critiques, psychologists and
psychiatrists. Shakespeare’s construction of madness is so deep that psychiatrists diagnose the
type of madness King Lear suffers from with its various aspects, such as mental disorder, mania,
and dementia. One of the elements that triggers his dementia is stress which can be found in
Lear’s case due to the corrupted relationship with daughters. Lear has unsolved problems with all
of his daughters. Lear does not love them as a father, he loves them as a mother would do hence,
their abandonment leads to his collapse. In the father-dominant family model of Elizabethan
times King Lear was written, this idea is emphasized in the play further with the exclusion of a
mother. King Lear does not only maintain kingly authority but also as the only head of the family
and care-giver for his daughters, he maintains both a father’s and mother’s authority role. King
Lear does not have a wife to consult when he’s distressed and ask for comfort, however he has
his daughters. The play starts off exactly with Lear asking for consolation and love from his
daughters. Cordelia’s refusal to give a solid consolation to him results in chaos for Lear who is in
desperate need to receive affection. From the very beginning of the play, there is a fight between
chaos and order in the kingdom and in King Lear’s mind. In this chaos, madness does not only
act as the accelerating power of chaos but also as the remedy of it. In other words, the madness
in the play also leads the play back to order. When talking about madness in the play, King Lear
and Edgar come to mind as one goes mad and one pretends to be mad. This essay explores King
Lear’s madness in the light of new literary studies. It aims to look into the various aspects
madness that proceeds from chaos to order through the characters of King Lear and Edgar, and
from blindness to healthy eyesight both in metaphoric and literal sense through the characters of
King Lear and Gloucester who see better and become wiser in the end.

Despite the three-hundred-year-old debate regarding the lack of unity in the plot of King Lear, it
is one of the most readable and gripping of William Shakespeare’s dramas. The theme of filial
ingratitude is presented clearly in the depiction of two families, whom circumstances eventually
bring together as the two narrative lines converge. King Lear is not only an absorbing drama but
a disturbing one. The beauty of diction and the overwhelming pathos of the treatment given to
innocence and goodness add to the poignancy of the emotional play. Like all great tragic dramas,
the story of Lear and his folly purges the emotions by terror and pity. King Lear’s first entrance
in act 1 is replete with ritual and ceremony. He is full of authority and assurance as he makes his
regal way through the ordered court. When he reveals his intention to divide his kingdom into
three parts for his daughters, he exudes the confidence generated by his long reign. The crispness
and directness of his language suggests a power that, far from senility, demonstrates the stability
and certainty of long, unchallenged rule. From that point on, the play acts out the destruction of
that fixed order and the emergence of a new, tentative balance. In the opening scene, Lear speaks
as king and father. The absolute ruler decides to apportion his kingdom to his three heirs as a gift
rather than bequest. In performing this act, which superficially seems both reasonable and
generous, Lear sets in motion a chain of events that exposes his vulnerabilities not only as a king
and a father but also as a man. Shakespeare shows that it is foolish to divest oneself of power and
responsibility and yet expect to retain the trappings of authority. This is exactly what Lear does
when he relies with ill-placed confidence on the love of his daughters. He asks too much and he
acts too precipitously, but he is punished by an inexorable universe out of all proportion to his
errors in judgment. When he asks his daughters for a declaration of love, as a prerequisite for a
share of the kingdom, he is as self-assured a parent as he is an overbearing monarch. He credits
the facile protestations of love by Goneril and Regan because they are what he wants to hear and
because they conform to the ceremonial necessities of the occasion. Cordelia’s honest response,
born of a greater love, are out of keeping with the occasion. Lear does not look beneath the
surface. He lets ritual appearances replace internal reality; in fact, he refuses to distinguish
between the two. The asseverations of Goneril and Regan soon emerge as the cynical conceits
they really are, but by then Lear banished Cordelia and the loyal Kent, who sees through the
sham. Lear is successively and ruthlessly divested of all the accoutrements of kingship by his
villainous daughters, who eventually reduce him to the condition of a ragged, homeless madman.
Paradoxically, it is in this extremity on the heath with Edgar and the fool that Lear comes to a
knowledge of himself and his community with humanity that he never achieved while enjoying
the glories of power. Buffeted by the natural fury of the storm, which is symbolic of the chaos
and danger that come with the passing of the old order, Lear through his madness sees the
common bond that connects him to the rest of humanity.

The experience of Lear is, on a more manageable, human level, mirrored in the Gloucester
subplot. Gloucester, too, suffers filial ingratitude, but not one raised to a cosmic level. He, too,
mistakes appearance for reality in trusting the duplicitous Edmund and disinheriting the honest
Edgar, but his behavior is more clearly the outgrowth of an existing moral confusion, which is
reflected in his ambivalent and unrepentant affection for his illegitimate son. His moral blindness
leads to physical blindness when his faulty judgment makes him vulnerable to the villains. In his
blindness, he finally sees the truth of his situation.

5. Shot Notes.

Answer:-
Michael Cassio:- Othello's lieutenant. Cassio is a young and inexperienced soldier, whose high
position is much resented by Iago. Truly devoted to Othello, Cassio is extremely ashamed after
being implicated in a drunken brawl on Cyprus and losing his place as lieutenant.

Cassio is a gentlemanly Florentine soldier, a man of high manners and theoretical learning, and
one of Othello's chief lieutenants. There is a supposed rivalry between Cassio and the play's
villain, Iago. Iago claims to resent Cassio because Othello chose Cassio rather than Iago as his
lieutenant, in spite of the fact that Cassio has no practical knowledge of battle. Iago uses Cassio
in his scheme to destroy Othello; Iago insinuates throughout that Cassio is having an affair with
Othello's wife, Desdemona. Othello's jealousy is eventually stoked by Iago into homicidal rage.
In the second act, Cassio's life is nearly ruined by Iago's cunning and his own foolishness. Iago
tricks Cassio into getting drunk and then incites his friend Roderigo to start a brawl with Cassio.
The Cypriot governor Montano tries to end the fight by stepping between the two men, and
Cassio, now blind drunk, strikes out at him. As a result, Cassio loses his lieutenancy. Later in the
play, Iago persuades Roderigo to assassinate Cassio, and together they arrange an ambush.
Roderigo attacks Cassio by surprise. Cassio retaliates and mortally wounds Roderigo, but is
himself stabbed from behind by Iago. His leg is wounded, but he survives. Iago then kills the
wounded Roderigo. Before Othello commits suicide, he apologizes to Cassio for believing Iago's
lies about him.

Iago:- Iago is the play's main antagonist, and Othello's standard-bearer. He is the husband of
Emilia, who is in turn the attendant of Othello's wife Desdemona. Iago hates Othello and devises
a plan to destroy him by making him believe that his wife is having an affair with his lieutenant,
Michael Cassio.

Iago is a soldier who has fought beside Othello for several years, and has become his trusted
advisor. At the beginning of the play, Iago claims to have been unfairly passed over for
promotion to the rank of Othello's lieutenant in favour of Michael Cassio. Iago plots to
manipulate Othello into demoting Cassio, and thereafter to bring about the downfall of Othello
himself. He has an ally, Roderigo, who assists him in his plans in the mistaken belief that after
Othello is gone, Iago will help Roderigo earn the affection of Othello's wife, Desdemona. After
Iago engineers a drunken brawl to ensure Cassio's demotion, he sets to work on his second
scheme: leading Othello to believe that Desdemona is having an affair with Cassio. This plan
occupies the final three acts of the play. He manipulates his wife Emilia, Desdemona's lady-in-
waiting, into taking from Desdemona a handkerchief that Othello had given her; he then tells
Othello that he had seen it in Cassio's possession. Once Othello flies into a jealous rage, Iago
tells him to hide and look on while he (Iago) talks to Cassio. Iago then leads Othello to believe
that a bawdy conversation about Cassio's mistress, Bianca, is in fact about Desdemona. Mad with
jealousy, Othello orders Iago to kill Cassio, promising to make him lieutenant in return. Iago
then engineers a fight between Cassio and Roderigo in which the latter is killed (by Iago himself,
double-crossing his ally), but the former merely wounded. Iago's plan appears to succeed when
Othello kills Desdemona, who is innocent of Iago's charges. Soon afterwards, however, Emilia
brings Iago's treachery to light, and Iago kills her in a fit of rage before being arrested. He
remains famously reticent when pressed for an explanation of his actions before he is arrested:
"Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word."
Following Othello's suicide, Cassio, now in charge, condemns Iago to be imprisoned and
tortured as punishment for his crimes.