Introduction

Abstract

Othello — authentic tragic hero, or merely a tragic fool? This question dominates criticism and indicates why actors see the role as the most difficult in the Shakespearean canon to interpret and to perform. Macaulay, writing for the Edinburgh Review in 1827, points out how two different audiences, whether readers or spectators, might respond to Othello. The first admires ‘his intrepid and ardent spirit’: ‘The unsuspecting confidence with which he listens to his adviser, the agony with which he shrinks from the thought of shame, the tempest of passion with which he commits his crimes, and the haughty fearlessness with which he avows them, gives an extraordinary interest to his character.’ The second, however, is ‘inspired with nothing but detestation and contempt’ for him: ‘The folly with which he trusts to the friendly professions of a man whose promotion he had obstructed, — the credulity with which he takes unsupported assertions and trivial circumstances for unanswerable proofs, — the violence with which he silences the exculpation till the exculpation can only aggravate his misery, would have excited the abhorrence and disgust of the spectators.’

But now I find I had suborned the witness And he’s indicted falsely.

[iii iv 149–50]