Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Othello versus Leontes
When I started reading The Winter’s Tale, I began to see parallels between it and Othello. The two plays hardly have anything in common, but they both have one man who ruins everything by being suspicious or jealous. Both Othello and Leontes accused their wives of cheating. I’ll admit that the circumstances were different. Othello had Iago telling him what to think, while Leontes came up with the idea all on his own. Even so, it made me wonder why Shakespeare keeps reprising this theme. Did many women cheat on their husbands during his time? Did people simply like to see stories where cheating was a central element? I have no idea. All I know is that it can be irritating within a play, especially The Winter’s Tale. Even when the Oracle proclaimed Hermione’s innocence, Leontes still didn’t believe it. I actually like both plays a lot. They are good stories, and they are told in the way only Shakespeare can tell them. However, I get tired of reading about stubborn, foolish men like Leontes and Othello.
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5 comments:
I think that Shakespeare brings up the subject of jealousy and suspicion to teach his audiences a lesson. Personally, I feel that jealousy and suspicion can ruin a relationship. Shakespeare is testing the power of love by doing this. Will the man (Othello/Leontes) believe his wife or his own thoughts? There is a sticky line here because if the man believes his wife, she could lie to him about being faithful. That would be tragic. If the man believes himself or his friends, on the contrary, and his wife did not cheat on him, that would be tragic also, because he would be leaving her for a false suspicion. This is a trust issue, clearly, and it shows that marriage only works between two individuals who entirely trust each other and are faithful to each other.
Perhaps just the way that you are reading these plays and getting frustrated at the main character's and their stubborn and foolishness, the play watchers during the shakespeare's time did as well. Perhaps that was the intention of Shakespeare, to get the audience so riled up and angry that they were shouting and cheering, in essence getting really involved in the play and personally invested in the characters. I know when watching a movie if I get really into it, I will enjoy it more, and then maybe even go see it again. Perhaps Shakespeare had in mind the notion that if he could really get the audience emotionally involved and pissed off they would frequent his shows more, recommend them to their friends, etc. So was it a brilliant marketing technique or just shakespeare's style? Or maybe he was putting his own personal faults out on paper? What do you guys think.
If you consider adultery to be an aspect of love than one can argue that Shakespere has been forcing his view of love on the audience in almost all the plays we have read so far. In Midsummer Night's dream there is a clear mockery of the notion of love, Romeo & Juliet brings forth the foolishness of love, and in Hamlet love brings about the death of Ophelia. As mentioned in a previous post, Iago clearly manipulates Othello leading to its tragic ending. In most all the plays, Shakespeare puts forth a negative view of love, perhaps projecting his own cynicism.
It is interesting to note all of the jealousy, rage, and ignorance Shakespeare entwines his characters in through many of his plays. Love can easily be argued as the trigger for these actions, and I feel that Shakespeare reprises these themes to further demonstrate the blur and utter disillusionment associated with the true abstract idea of love. Love is a wonderful, happy feeling, yet can also bring upon horrible, angry feelings. Defining love is a difficult thing and cannot be proven right or wrong, similar to nearly all of Shakespeare's texts with his language and the dual meanings of many of his lines. I do not feel Shakespeare is being pessimistic to the view of love, rather by using such dark and negative themes, he is emphasizing his skepticism toward definite meanings.
I also see parallels between the two characters that frustrate me, yet their suspicions happen in completely opposite ways. Othello starts out as a good person who the audience likes but then becomes suspicious later in the play and it winds up ruining everything. Leontes is suspicious to begin with, suffers from the consequences, and becomes more likeable after he apologizes and tries to be a better person at the end. One play starts out as a happy story and ends in tragedy and the other does the opposite. I like how Shakespeare makes two similar characters and has them in plays that are completely different from each other. I don’t know how prevalent adultery was in Shakespeare’s time but these characters remind me of Henry VIII who was suspicious of his wives also. Perhaps his marriages were in Shakespeare’s mind when he wrote these plays, especially since it was a king that changed the religion of a country because of his marriage. A story that had a suspicious husband in it was probably something audiences back then were familiar with.
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