Imagery within the Tragedy Othello Essay -- Othello essays

Imagery within the Tragedy Othello The grand variety of imagery in William Shakespeares tragic drama Othello serves many purposes. Let us in this paper consider the types and purposes of the imagery. In her book, Everybodys Shakespeare Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack comments on the imagery of calamitousness and how it supports the evil schemes of the ancient Just now, however, as we get word to his plans evolve, the darkness seems chiefly to be Iagos element. In the darkness of this Venetian street, he moves to disrupt Othellos marriage if he can. Later, in the darkness of a street in Cyprus, he will close his trap on Cassio, involving him in a scuffle that will cost him his lieutenancy. Still later, in the dark island outpost, he will set Roderigo to ambush Cassio, and so (he hopes) be rid of both. Simultaneously, in a darkness that he has insinuated into Othellos mind, Desdemona will be strangled. (134) The crude imagery of the ancient dominate the open ing of the play. Francis Ferguson in devil Worldviews Echo Each Other describes the types of imagery used by the antagonist when he slips his screen aside while awakening Brabantio Iago is letting loose the wicked passion inside him, as he does from time to time throughout the play, when he slips his masquerade aside. At such moments he always resorts to this imagery of money-bags, treachery, and animal lust and violence. So he expresses his own faithless, envious spirit, and, by the same token, his vision of the inhabited city of Venice Iagos world, as it has been called. . . .(132) Standing outside the senators home late at night, Iago uses imagery within a lie to arouse the resident Awake w... ...s, copulating horses and sheep, serpents, and toads other images, more wide-ranging in scope, include green-eyed monsters, devils, blackness, poisons, money purses, tarnished jewels, music untuned, and light extinguished. (217) WORKS CITED Bevington, David, ed. William Shakes peare Four Tragedies. New York Bantam Books, 1980. Ferguson, Francis. Two Worldviews Echo Each Other. Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprint from Shakespeare The Pattern in His Carpet. N.p. n.p., 1970. Mack, Maynard. Everybodys Shakespeare Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http//www.eiu.edu/multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No cable nos.