Comparing Power in The Tempest and Othello
Comparing Power in ‘The Tempest’ and ‘Othello’
Both plays are about the ultimate struggle for power. Power can be shown in many ways such as race, gender, ‘others’, social class, and most importantly through use of language. Power can be shown in both plays through the use of ‘otherness’. This can be associated with power as characters such as Othello or Caliban are ‘others’ because they are from ‘elsewhere’. One such character who could be described as an ‘other’ is Othello. Bill Bryson suggested that ‘before he reworked it ‘Othello’ was insipid melodrama’ and perhaps it was the addition of ‘others’ by Shakespeare that added to the drama. Characters such as Othello and Caliban were considered dangerous and unnatural because they were foreign. In the Elizabethan times, these were the characters that the audience would have wanted to have a bleak ending. Especially people of a higher class, such as James I, would have enjoyed and found amusing how the people of a lower class or the ‘others’, people in context and relation with them, who in their lives may symbolise a threat, die in the play.
Caliban can be compared to Othello in the way that they are both the “noble savages” in each of the plays. Othello’s extreme thoughts provoked by Iago and consequential imaginings cause him to doubt Desdemona. The contemporary audience would have found this fascinating, as they would have seen how a person of a different ethnicity, such as Othello, felt towards a different social hierachy. With both characters there are comparisons, Caliban is savaged and deformed; Othello is black, which in the 16th Century was seen as essentially deformed and different to the ‘normal’ white person, in addition they are easily fooled by deception, as expected by the contemporary audience. Trinculo, Stephano and Iago have their evil intentions and conspiracies to gain power by deceiving others to believe in them fully. Caliban, a half human and half beast, is easily fooled by
Both plays are about the ultimate struggle for power. Power can be shown in many ways such as race, gender, ‘others’, social class, and most importantly through use of language. Power can be shown in both plays through the use of ‘otherness’. This can be associated with power as characters such as Othello or Caliban are ‘others’ because they are from ‘elsewhere’. One such character who could be described as an ‘other’ is Othello. Bill Bryson suggested that ‘before he reworked it ‘Othello’ was insipid melodrama’ and perhaps it was the addition of ‘others’ by Shakespeare that added to the drama. Characters such as Othello and Caliban were considered dangerous and unnatural because they were foreign. In the Elizabethan times, these were the characters that the audience would have wanted to have a bleak ending. Especially people of a higher class, such as James I, would have enjoyed and found amusing how the people of a lower class or the ‘others’, people in context and relation with them, who in their lives may symbolise a threat, die in the play.
Caliban can be compared to Othello in the way that they are both the “noble savages” in each of the plays. Othello’s extreme thoughts provoked by Iago and consequential imaginings cause him to doubt Desdemona. The contemporary audience would have found this fascinating, as they would have seen how a person of a different ethnicity, such as Othello, felt towards a different social hierachy. With both characters there are comparisons, Caliban is savaged and deformed; Othello is black, which in the 16th Century was seen as essentially deformed and different to the ‘normal’ white person, in addition they are easily fooled by deception, as expected by the contemporary audience. Trinculo, Stephano and Iago have their evil intentions and conspiracies to gain power by deceiving others to believe in them fully. Caliban, a half human and half beast, is easily fooled by
Bibliography: http://files.libertyfund.org/pll/quotes/100.html Shakespeare, William, Othello, New Longman Edition, 2003 Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, Cambridge University Press, 2005.