Hamlet & Othello as a Character

To evaluate my assignment click here

Hamlet                     HAMLET AND OTHELLO AS A CHARACTER

  Department of English (M.K.B.U.)

  Parmar Dipali K.

  Roll No: 30

  M.A. Sem. 1

  Batch: 2015-’17

  Email Id: dipaliparmar247@gmail.com

 

                                  Preface

               Shakespeare’s tragedy is a work of outstanding interest and genius, and the tragic hero is universally attractive and fascinating. Here are two great hero’s comparison is tried to do.

•   Othello in ‘Othello’:

               Othello is the first great black protagonist in Western literature, and still one of the most famous. The play dramatizes this hero's fall from grace – Othello begins as a noble guy, but, by the end of the play, Othello has become an irrational, violent, and insanely jealous husband who murders his own wife after Iago convinces him that Desdemona has been unfaithful.

• Hamlet in ‘Hamlet’:

              About thirty years old at the start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical, full of hatred for his uncle’s scheming and disgust for his mother’s sexuality. A reflective and thoughtful young man who has studied at the University of Wittenberg, Hamlet is often indecisive and hesitant, but at other times prone to rash and impulsive acts.

• Othello's in Venice:

              A black man from North Africa, Othello has traveled the world, been sold into slavery, escaped, and ended up as the military commander of the Venetian military, guard to a powerful Italian city-state. Othello's status in Venice is pretty complicated – he's both an insider and an outsider. On the one hand, he is a Christian and experienced military leader, commanding respect and admiration from the Duke, the Senate, and many Venetian citizens. On the other hand, being a black Moor and a foreigner in Venice also subjects Othello to some overt racism, especially by his wife's father, who believes Desdemona's interracial marriage can only be the result of Othello's trickery.

• Hamlet’s in Denmark:

              Hamlet is extremely melancholy and discontented with the state of affairs in Denmark and in his own family—indeed, in the world at large. He is extremely disappointed with his mother for marrying his uncle so quickly, and he repudiates Ophelia, a woman he once claimed to love, in the harshest terms. His words often indicate his disgust with and distrust of women in general. At a number of points in the play, he contemplates his own death and even the option of suicide.

• Othello's Suspicion:

             Despite the taboo of an interracial marriage, Othello and Desdemona are pretty happy and in love at the beginning of the play. So, what the heck happens? Why does Othello become convinced that his faithful wife is cheating on him? We know that Iago manipulates Othello with his lies about Desdemona, but Iago never actually offers up any real proof of Desdemona's "affair," which suggests that Othello is pretty gullible.

             There are a couple of ways we can read Othello's eagerness to believe the worst about his wife. Some literary critics suggest that Othello believes that all women are inherently promiscuous. This seems to be the case when he says things like all men are destined to be cuckolded by their wives. Other critics argue that Othello begins to absorb the racist attitudes that surround him in Venice. In other words, Othello begins to believe that

1. He's not good enough for Desdemona because he's black and
2. As a black man, his relationship with his wife may "soil" her

• Hamlet’s Delay in Revenge:

              Most interpreters of Hamlet start with the assumption that the tragic hero has a clear and sacred obligation to kill Claudius and to do so without delay. The basic question, then, is why does so much time elapse before the young Prince avenges? It is argued that, if Hamlet had acted promptly instead of verbalism in which he repeatedly berates himself for procrastination, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Laertes, and – most important – Hamlet himself would have survived…

But then Shakespeare would not have achieved tragedy and the resulting work would have been no more than a potboiler.

     Reasons for his delay…

*   Hamlet, the victim of External Difficulties

*   Claudius was too powerful and only once before the final scene placed himself in a defenseless position.

*   How could Hamlet convince the people that he justifiably has executed revenge?

• Self-Absorbed Othello:

               We may also want to consider another possibility. The one Othello loves "too well" isn't Desdemona – it's himself. Jealousy is an intensely self-centered emotion, and Othello spends much of the play obsessed with how Desdemona has hurt him and trying to get back at her for it. He's obsessed with his feelings, the way that her cheating reflects on him.

               Scholar Marjorie Garber suggests that Othello's self-absorption starts way before Iago gets to him. She points out that Othello equates his inner, personal life with his outer, professional life. He can't draw any boundaries between them. Most people may not believe, as Othello does, that a problem in their personal life could destroy their ability to function in their careers. But in Othello's scene with the Senate, he's eager to assure the senators that he won't let his marriage get in the way of his career. And when Othello thinks Desdemona has cheated on him, his first reaction is to declare, "Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars… Othello's occupation's gone" (3.3.401, 409).

               Othello's destructiveness, his determination to punish Desdemona for cheating on him, stems from his rage that Desdemona's immoral actions have also damaged him. What makes Othello so furious, Garber suggests, is that, when it comes to himself, Othello is a perfectionist. This all reflects rather poorly on Othello.

                But let's take a step back. Why is Othello a self-obsessed perfectionist in the first place? Othello's dangerous perfectionism may stem from his position as an outsider, a black man in white Venetian society. Othello only could have risen to his position of power through incredible self-discipline. To be fair to Othello, we have to consider carefully why he is so obsessed with his own self-image, and why he is so easily persuaded that Desdemona would tire of him and move on to another man. To the extent that these factors are the result of Othello's outsider status and the prejudice he constantly has to overcome, we may want to cut Othello some slack.

•  Hamlet, the Sentimental Dreamer:

*   Leading Romantic critics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw Hamlet as  a young man, attractive and gifted in many ways, but incapable of positive action.

*   Goethe – 
                   "Hamlet is a young man of lovely, pure and moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero".

*   A.W.Schleger – 
                  "No firm belief either in himself or in anything else … in the resolution which he so often embraces and always leaves unexecuted, his weakness is too apparent … his far-fetched scruples are often mere pretexts to cover his want of determination…".

*   Coleridge –  
                   "Hamlet suffers from an “over-balance of the contemplative faculty” and, like any man, “thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation and loses his power to action".

*   William Hazlitt – 
                   "At other times, when he is bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and skeptical, dallies with his purpose, till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretense to relapse into indolence and thoughtfulness again".

*   In the 20th century, Arthur Quiller-Couch – 
                 "Hamlet’s character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical … He is full of purpose, but void of that quality of mind which accomplishes purpose".

Conclusion

                 Here I have tried to compare Hamlet and Othello as a character. There is a limited points that I have discussed here. If anyone want you can compare both characters with more points also. Othello and hamlet both are characters whom we find at some extent that if we inter-change their place there would be no tragedies in both’s life.

References

www.shamoop.com>Literature

D:\Drive E\Eng literature\MA part 1\Hamlet\print character of hamlet ophelia calud gert.docx

To evaluate my assignment click here