Term Paper on "Shakespeare at First Glance, Shakespeare's Othello"

Term Paper 5 pages (1775 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Shakespeare

At first glance, Shakespeare's "Othello" and "The Tempest" could not be more unlike. "Othello" is a tale rooted very firmly in the here-and-now, the actual city of Venice, an important and central location for the Renaissance man; "The Tempest" is a fantasy taking place on a "marvelous" island. However, a closer look reveals that Venice, too, is marvelous, and is, moreover, the perfect link between the civilized and the savage. It is no wonder, then, that the story of the 'noble savage' in the character of "Othello" was placed there. Nor is it any wonder that the less noble savage, Caliban, is found on an island that, while not straddling the literal old and new world orders, nonetheless bears on its shell representatives of each. Both "Othello" and "The Tempest" are indeed exemplary of the statement "The Europeans' contact with people of other cultures during the Renaissance period had a disorienting effect, as it raised the question of who was truly 'civilized,' and who was truly 'savage.' Shakespeare seems to answer that question in both plays, often in ways that may at first, like the true meaning of Venice, be hidden.

The Tempest"

The Renaissance was about discovery, artistic, scientific and geographic. The geographic discoveries led to European's 'finding' new lands -- although the lands had clearly been there long before any Europeans sailed to them -- and thus to European culture bumping into cultures far different. The Europeans, since they had 'discovered' those other people, found it easy to set themselves up as superior to the discovered populations; that being the case, they then began to colonize the natives of those places, to civilize them (or, as one might say in a more politically sensitive age, Europeanize them, although that sounds even more paternalistic than colonizing).

Cefalu argues that hierarchy was central to the European concept of civilization; any culture that lacked masters and subordinates was, therefore, uncivilized. Such as the culture found in "The Tempest"; it paralleled, Cefalu argues, the lack of stratification in the American colonies at the outset (Cefalu 2000).

In addition, feudal relations had fallen away in Europe, but had not been replaced in a methodical fashion by capitalism. "The Tempest," a compressed working out of history (Cefalu 2000), is able to take a culture from disjointed -- split between the civilized Prospero and the 'savage' (although veneered with civility to a point) Caliban -- to homogeneous in the few hours it takes to present the play. Caliban proved his savagery when he attempted to destroy Prospero's books. Although Caliban can speak, he cannot read; to him, books are magical objects (Taylor 1993), a concept that is certainly laughable to civilized Europeans. Although, at the time, commercial printing was in its infancy, Europeans had had some access to books for centuries because of the illuminated manuscripts produced by learned monks in abbeys dotting the landscape.

Cefalu notes that "one finds... The narratives of process unfolding in dramatic texts like "The Tempest" more so than in historical writing proper...' (2000). In addition, such works as "The Tempest" "obscure and suppress" the unsettling realities inherent in contact between the so-called civilized societies of Europe and the savage ones Europeans identified everywhere else. "Straddling both feudalism and capitalism, "The Tempest" performs a bypass on diseased history, clearing from its path any masterless impediment that might halt seamless economic transformation" (Cefalu 2000). Whether or not one accepts the feudalism becoming capitalism viewpoint, there was still a process underway; that process involved incorporating the exotic, or savage, into the civilized world of the European.

While neither Cefalu nor Taylor imbues his description of the differences between the civilized and savage cultures represented in "The Tempest" with much passion, other critics find the juxtaposition to be packed with incendiary meaning. One, Gloria Naylor, goes beyond the new critics' quest to interpret "The Tempest" "as an allegorical attempt to justify European colonial activities in the 17th century: (Storhoff 1995). Naylor proposes that "The Tempest" reveals the unethical basis of European patriarchy, expressed through expansion into native lands and the eventual 'taking' of those lands. She decries, as well, the "exclusively Protestant view of nature, the Eurocentric construction of the 'Other' and other New Critical justifications for colonialism and slavery" (Storhoff 1995).

Naylor interprets "The Tempest" in an even more negative way than the New Critics had done. They posited "The Tempest" as a "covert ideological argument in favor of the European colonizing project of the seventeenth century. In discussing the play, New Critics habitually tended to reduce the drama to an allegorical tract about the benefits of colonialism -- often with racially insensitive and politically obtuse consequences" (Storhoff 1995). It is difficult to determine whether Storhoff meant that Shakespeare was insensitive and obtuse, or that the New Critics, in searching for a scapegoat for European colonial zeal, are insensitive and obtuse. In fact, it is not of much import which they mean. It is certainly fair to say, in Shakespeare's defense, that he could hardly have known of the apparently eternal strife England's involvement in the slave trade would not bring about, nor what modern critics would read into his work based on current conditions.

Drama depends on change, and in "The Tempest," virtually all the characters change except Caliban. Naylor's view is that Caliban cannot accept a different interpretation of reality, one that -- in the Renaissance -- includes knowledge, order, reason and structure as valuable to civilization, something Naylor regards as "identifiably European" (Storhoff 1995).

On the other hand, without conflict, there would be no drama. While Shakespeare knew extremely little of other cultures, compared to what is known in today's post-Margaret Mead studies of 'others' both inside and outside European (also including North American) cultures. What he knew, he used to create drama. It would seem churlish, however, to attempt to prove any motives on his part beyond that. Actions based upon concepts of what was savage and what was civilized behavior did, surely, have societal consequences in Shakespeare's day. However, those consequences were far different ones than would be produced today. Then, concepts of civilized and savage produced justification for colonialism; today, they produce justification for guilt over colonialism, an activity which, however mistakenly, Europeans at the time saw as right and proper.

Othello"

Moreover, Shakespeare's representations of 'savages' range from Caliban (a character of no particular worthiness in a European sense) to "Othello," a man who, like the city he lives in -- Venice -- straddles the old and new worlds with at least some success, despite the tragedy in the end. Shakespeare's savages are no more monolithic than were the reasons for colonialism or the bases of his plays. While Caliban cannot accept 'civilization' and therein lies tragedy of sorts, "Othello," to some extent, has accepted European civilization...and therein lies tragedy to a great extent.

Othello," a Moor, straddles the gap between the outposts of the Elizabethan world: those outposts include "Turks, barbarism, disorder, and amoral destructive powers" (Platt 2001). Venice, with its seafaring tradition, is a jumping off point to all that, or, alternatively, a gateway to all that is civilized. The play moves from Venice to Cyprus, a barely civilized place dangling at the edge of a sea beyond which, symbolically at least, true savagery reigns (North Africa). One could make the point that "Othello" reaffirms his roots in the Muslim/Berber culture of North Africa, exported to Spain and, arguably, 'civilized' along the way. In short, one might argue that one can take the savage out of the savage landscape, but one cannot take the savage culture out of the man. Or, again, one could argue that the fact of "Othello" was simply a dramatic device Shakespeare needed to make his points about love and fealty and betrayal and fear and ignominy and so on.

Young (2004) noted that, in fact, "Othello" exemplifies the highest virtues of Western Christendom fortitude, courtesy, devotion to duty, and sexual delicacy -- in a character who seems, to some observers, their antithesis: a black African who could routinely be associated with Islam or with barbarism." Gable (1998), too, found in "Othello" a worthy man "obsessed with purity and duty" and regarding heaven, not earth, as the foundation of reality, or in short, he was an idealist. Shakespeare seems to say that it is not Othello's civilized virtues that are at fault, but his propensity to take them too far, at least for a 'civilized' world in which absolutes are disappearing. Indeed, that might be at the heart of the question about the disorienting effects of contact with other cultures. All this is conjecture, however, and it seems sensible to propose that Shakespeare used the character of a 'noble savage' simply because it was so dramatically potent to do so. Besides, the possibility of using such exotic characters was fairly new in the European history of the world. Then, as now, newness sells.

That European contact with other cultures during the Renaissance is very likely responsible for a… READ MORE

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