Othello - William Shakespeare - So You Haven't Read

literature gives us the opportunity to experience lives perspectives and worlds different from our own though remember friend a good story has many readings and this is but one oh man you hate your boss so much he promoted some other dude and there's rumors about him and your wife but mainly of course for other reasons so you've decided to mess with him but since you don't want everyone thinking you're some kind of um uh jerk that's it you're going to have to be pretty sneaky about it so you buyed your time nursing your hatred just waiting for fate to drop an opportunity on your lap and when Iago the villain in the situation we just described from William Shakespeare's Othello finally has an opportunity to ruin his boss's life he rains down destruction on pretty much everyone around him including himself seriously it's one of the greatest villain roles of all time so what do you think will you take the part there we go villain mode activate [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] thanks so much to worldanfill for helping us discuss important worlds in literature so you haven't read a fellow by William Shakespeare oh my friend I am so excited to share this play with you because it's truly one of Shakespeare's finest a tightly plotted machine of tragedy that churns out one of the most devastating conclusions of all drama and a look at how Elizabethan era racism and misogyny mixed to destroy a whole Community when Shakespeare wrote Othello around 1604 to the best of our knowledge there were no black actors on the main theater circuit in Elizabeth and England so the first performer to play the character of Othello a black man was white and the second person to play him and the third and a hundred more and so on in fact the first black actor to play Othello that we know of was idra Aldridge in 1825 but white actors like Lawrence Olivier Orson Welles and Anthony Hopkins continued to play Othello almost always in blackface straight up through the 1980s and of course as we described in our episode on Taming of the Shrew women also weren't allowed on stage in Elizabeth in England so just for context when the play was first performed it featured a white adult man as a fellow and a white teenaged boy as Desdemona AKA from a contemporary standpoint not the best look despite this Shakespeare took pains to make Othello a well-rounded sympathetic character who Rose from an enslaved child to a courageous tactically brilliant General through working harder and being smarter than everyone around him actually his ill-fated bride Desdemona falls in love with him because unlike her contemporaries she empathizes with some of his life experience and recognizes his true character which of course makes the inevitable tragedy all the more painful and you my villainous friend are going to be the one that brings that pain you ariago ends into Othello a general in the Venetian Army though not just any general mind you he is a more and wow you detest him maybe it's because he recently promoted another Soldier Cassio instead of you or maybe it's because he was falsely rumored to have had an affair with your wife or really let's just be honest about it you don't like him because he's black also Othello has recently secretly married desdem Mona daughter of a Venetian Senator oh you know what you could probably use that against him you sneakily get the Venetian government all up in arms because a black man has kidnapped hard air quotes there Desdemona so Othello is dragged before the Senate where he very reasonably tells the story of how he and Desdemona genuinely fell in love which she confirms and the Senate uneasily agrees that this marriage was by Mutual Choice besides you know they really need Othello to lead Venice against the war with the Turks because he's like the only one that can win this war so now Othello's crew including you and your wife are headed to Cyprus to go to battle well looks like your scheme's been foiled huh but then you have a stroke of good luck see Desdemona accidentally drops a special handkerchief that Othello had given her as a token of his love your wife Amelia innocently brings it to you but oh she doesn't know that you formulated a wicked handkerchief themed scheme using your Miss begotten spoils you launch into a plot aimed at making a Othello murderously jealous you start by planting the handkerchief on your rival Casio and then tricking Cassio into getting so drunk that he starts a riot ruining his relationship with Othello next you give Cassio advice that he should get Desdemona on his side so that she'll help him get back in her husband's good graces yeah I think I can see where this is going and lastly you start pouring poisonous words into a fellow's ear a hint about Cassio and Desdemona here and accusation there oh and would you look at that Cassio seems to have that special handkerchief I mean Desdemona must have given it to him right Othello soon the general is absolutely convinced that his faithful wife is having an affair with his good friend he then vows to murder them both and you full of fake empathy reluctantly in quotes offer to help him now you and your henchmen fail in your attempt to murder Cassio though Cassio does manage to mortally wound your minion so at least that guy won't snitch huh meanwhile a fellow goes to desdemon his room turns out the light and tells her he's going to kill her for being unfaithful she's stunned that he would think that about her but because of your poisonous words he no longer believes anything she says and he smothers her to death with a pillow in her bed and then the Venetian authorities arrive to discover you Amelia and Othello all by desdemona's corpse Othello starts to recount his justification for murdering Desdemona and as you get to the detail of the handkerchief Amelia suddenly realizes that you're behind all of this she accuses you and relates all of the facts she knows which paints you as The Mastermind of this plot so you in turn murder her in front of everyone realizing now that he's been tricked Othello wounds you in an attempt to take your life and as authorities prepare to take you and Othello away he manages to produce another knife and kills himself so just taking a moment to look at the scoreboard here Desdemona and your own wife Amelia are now dead Cassio is now going to be promoted to General and of course the war or is still going on but you got your revenge on a fellow you know revenge for him being a black man in a position of power over you cool cuckoo cuckoo cool part of the horror of this play is that Shakespeare has written Iago to be the audience's surrogate in the story he charms us like he charms the people that he manipulates in this world and what's worse he's completely honest with us about his evil intent he acknowledges that the people he's hurting are pretty blameless when kind of Revels in their misery and while he's the instigator of all of this sorrow he's able to make it all happen because he has a keen understanding of people he knows how to play on Misfortune prejudices and insecurities in ways that make others believe in absurdities and commit atrocities indeed Iago plays on Othello's jealousy so completely that the general doesn't even take a moment to reflect that there would have been no time for Desdemona and Cassio to even have an affair it's also worth pointing out that Othello is no hero himself in all of this he straight up murder his wife for her fictional infidelity and even when he realizes the truth he justifies it by saying he did it because he loved too well in quotes now the authorities don't approve of him killing his wife of course but all Shucks you know they totally understand why a noble Soul like Othello would have to do something like that if she cheated you know not to judge elizabethan's by contemporary standards of course but you know cool again cool cool Google Othello remains one of the most powerful painful examples of Shakespearean tragedy even 400 years later and sadly the story of a con manipulating people's prejudices in order to achieve his own selfish ends is still all too relevant today but when we explore this by catching a performance or reading a copy of the script we can witness for ourselves how Shakespeare captures the psychology of evil and the destructive power of hate so precisely and heck maybe if more of us climbed aboard the Othello Express to tragedyville we all might be a little less quick to jump on various hate bandwagons when they roll into a propaganda station I know that analogy wasn't the best but look we can't all be Shakespeare right go read the play it's really good and look I know that analogy wasn't the best but we can't all be Shakespeare right though truthfully I don't think we actually need to be I mean you don't have to be a literary genius to build great stories after all especially when you have super powerful tools like World anvil in your narrative crafting Corner as I'm 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Channel: Extra History

Views: 94,023

Keywords: Classics (Field of Study), So you Haven't Read, Education (TV Genre), Othello (Book), Humanities (Field Of Study), Literary Criticism (Field Of Study), Book Review (Award Discipline), Classics (Field Of Study), Literature (Media Genre), Literature Review (Literature Subject), animated, summary, explained, Analysis (Quotation Subject), reading, book recommendations, booktok, book, booktube, popular books, William Shakespeare (author), Classic books, Lago, Desdemona, classic literature

Id: rGxA51H6EpU

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2022