presentation on Shakespeare's major works.

1. Mirroring Shakespeare’s Major Works

3. Points to Ponder.
1] Othello
2] Handkerchief
3] Hamlet
4] Operations With Shakespeare’s Works in
Contemporary Time

5. Othello
● Othello, the Moor of Venice, tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare,
written in 1603–04 and published in 1622.
● The play is set in motion when Othello, a heroic black general in the
service of Venice, appoints Cassio and not Iago as his chief lieutenant.
● Jealous of Othello’s success and envious of Cassio, Iago plots Othello’s
downfall by falsely implicating Othello’s wife, Desdemona, and Cassio in
a love affair.
● Iago persuades Othello that Desdemona has given the handkerchief to
Cassio as a love token.
● Overcome with jealousy, Othello kills Desdemona. When
he learns from Emilia, too late, that his wife is blameless,
he asks to be remembered as one who -
“loved not wisely but too well” and kills himself.(Shakespeare #)

6. ● Dislocate traces of racism within the characters of Iago,
Othello, and Desdemona and explanation about the play’s
tragic ending by reference to issue of race, culture, and
social standing.
● Vision of Europe’s ‘Others’ displayed in many works of
Shakespeare and ‘Othello’ is one of them.
● Othello -
“I have done the state some service and they know’t:
No more of that. I pray you, in letters
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous but, being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme” (Shakespeare #)

7. ● In this last speech, Othello appears to us not simply as a naïve human being easily
contaminated by irrational jealousy but as a tragic hero endowed with dignity,
betrayed by a Venetian society he has admired and served.
● Metaphorically spoken, we as spectators or readers are called upon to pass a fair
judgement on Othello.
● We should depict him as a human being caught between contradictions, torn apart
between kindness and cruelty, trapped in the woes of cultural hybridity.
● This malaise is reinforced by his adherence to Christianity and its notion of
paradise: he wishes Desdemona to confess before he kills her.
● Hence his being “perplexed in the extreme,” which reveals his inability to negotiate
the contradictions inherent in the two cultural poles of his in-betweenness. (Maufort #)

8. Handkerchief
● Motif of the handkerchief, closely linked to the
notion of witchcraft, associated by Venetians with
Othello’s ‘Otherness.’
● While offering a false proof of Desdemona’s
unfaithfulness, the handkerchief is perceived by
Othello as a crucial sign of his cultural identity and
‘Otherness:’ (Maufort #)
● Othello:
That handkerchief
Did an Egyptian to my mother give:
She was a charmer and could almost read
The thoughts of people […]/ […].
To lose’t or give’t away were such perdition
As nothing else could match […]/ […].
There’s magic in the web of it:
A sibyl, that had numbered in the world
The sun to course two hundred compasses,
In her prophetic fury sewed the work;
The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,
And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful
Conserved of maidens’ hearts. (Shakespeare #)

9. ● Othello thus clearly associates the handkerchief
with his mother, the origin of his cultural identity.
● In this speech, one can detect a sign of the
cultural defiance of an ‘Other’.
● Ironically, it is precisely this handkerchief, the
symbol of his identity, which causes the death of
Othello.
● is mirrored in Shakespeare’s portrayals of his
female heroines, who are at the mercy of their
husbands. (Maufort #)

10. To be
Or
Not to be ?
(Shakespeare #)

11. ● what is its nature. Othello has been styled the tragedy of jealousy,
Macbeth that of fear; Hamlet is in process of becoming the tragedy of
time wasted. (Claude C. H. Williamson)
● Inner contradiction in Hamlet's personality-that he sensitively shrinks
from carrying out the revenge indicated by the Ghost, and yet will do all
sorts of bloody deeds on his own account.
● He is strongly inclined to stab his uncle in the back while he is engaged in prayer;
he sends his college friends quite mercilessly to their death; and is all for a
struggle with Laertes on the very grave of Ophelia. (Claude C. H. Williamson)

12. ● He suggests the man who is too intellectual to be practical; he thinks too much and
does too little.
● What prevents him from executing the mission with which he has been entrusted?
Material obstacles? No. Psychological scruples? Some of us would answer yes. But
no Mr. Robertson has argues in article, If we cannot understand Hamlet, it is not
because we are stupid, but because the dramatist has blundered.
● Article includes Perspective of Charles Lamb, in the well-
known Essay on the Acting of Shakespeare's Tragedies,
speaks of "the silent meditations with which Hamlet's bosom
is bursting, reduced to words for the sake of the reader, who
else must remain ignorant of what is passing there. These
profound sorrows, these light- and-noise-abhorring
ruminations, which the tongue scarce dares utter to deaf
walls and chambers, how can they be represented by a
gesticulating actor, who comes and mouths them out before
an audience….And this is the way to represent the shy,
negligent, retiring Hamlet.. I am not arguing," (Claude C. H. Williamson)

13. ● " Charles Lamb adds, " that Hamlet should not be acted, but how much Hamlet is made another thing
by being acted. . . . Those who tell me of the actor Garrick, and his wonders, in this part, speak of his
eye and of the magic of his eye, and of his commanding voice it is not what the character is, but
how he looks; not what he says, but how he speaks it.".(Claude C. H. Williamson)
.
● More people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it
interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art.
● It is the "Mona Lisa" of literature.
● In order to make his piece interesting to an Elizabethan audience,
Shakespeare has rewritten the character of his hero, by means of soliloquies
and occassional utterances, so that there emerges from his hands a Hamlet
who is moody, pessimistic, selfanalytical, incapable of energetic action and
knowing that he is incapable a prey to suicidal thoughts, and continually
postponing his revenge.
● critics have pronounced Hamlet an artistic failure, lacking in real dramatic unity,
but they have been few, and -they have not been the best.(Claude C. H. Williamson)

14. Operations With Shakespeare’s Works in Contemporary
Time
● ‘White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate
Theatre’- Article includes the Modernity with the works of Shakespeare.(Nakase, Justine)
● White actors portrayed non-white characters through the use of costume and
makeup. Press photographs show mac Liammóir playing Bharat Singh with a
turban and darkened skin, and with exaggerated eyebrows and eyeliner to give an
‘Asian’ look in his performance for Princely Fortune.
● .
● Generally, these racial impersonations were cosmetic rather than mimetic – the
intention was not to ‘pass’ as Asian, but rather to augment one’s appearance in
order to better fit the scenery and setting.
● .
● Here it is not the use of make-up to impersonate blackness that troubles the
performance, but rather its inexpert application that robs the actor (and the
character) of dignity on stage. (Nakase, Justine)

15. Works Cited
Claude C. H. Williamson. “Hamlet.” International Journal of Ethics, vol. 33, no. 1, 1922, pp. 85–100. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2377179. Accessed 19 Oct. 2022.
Maufort, Marc. “Performing Europe’s ‘Others:’: Towards a Postcolonial Reinterpretation of the Shakespearean Canon.”
Europa Zwischen Fiktion Und Realpolitik/L’Europe – Fictions et Réalités Politiques, edited by Roland Marti and Henri Vogt,
Transcript Verlag, 2010, pp. 35–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1fxjdn.5. Accessed 19 Oct. 2022.
Nakase, Justine. “From White Othello to Black Hamlet: A History of Race and Representation at the Gate Theatre.” A Stage
of Emancipation: Change and Progress at the Dublin Gate Theatre, edited by Marguérite Corporaal and Ruud van den
Beuken, Liverpool University Press, 2021, pp. 189–206. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1kwxfgd.16. Accessed 19 Oct.
2022.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet: Original Text. Independently Published, 2020,
https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/Hamlet/x7RuzQEACAAJ?hl=en. Accessed 19 October 2022.
Shakespeare, William. Othello. Maple Press, 2014, https://www.maplepress.co.in/products/othello. Accessed 19 October
2022.

16. Thank you