Hamlet, Othello, and tragedy
Jan. 22nd, 2009 04:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm reading an essay on renaissance tragedy and it's being rather frustrating. It keeps saying how we can't really understand Hamlet in his play or Iago in Othello. Since I have recently watched both and felt I understood them quite well enough this is a bit annoying, as if I've missed the point by feeling I've grasped it.
I've had a think, and what I think the problem is is that the essay dismisses every possible motive as insufficient and simplistic without taking the step to say that all of them put together are in play at once.
Humans are not single pointed arrows, they're more like my icon, pushed and pulled in every direction at once, and with something in the middle that can be a surprising new bit of creation or a gaping great hole depending how you look at it.
Characters have to be right contradictory to be particularly realistic.
... my head is coming up all Addams Family to demonstrate this. Love/Hate, Hate/Love.
And, okay, yes, but as a demonstration of realistic... *sigh*
So, anyways, Iago lists a whole bunch of reasons for doing what he does, and that doesn't make him mysterious or impossible to understand, that's just people. And Hamlet bounces around exploring different reasons for doing or not doing, and again, seems like recogniseable people because of it. Any character you can sum up as doing absolutely everything because x makes them to is being a bit small, to my mind.
I've had a think, and what I think the problem is is that the essay dismisses every possible motive as insufficient and simplistic without taking the step to say that all of them put together are in play at once.
Humans are not single pointed arrows, they're more like my icon, pushed and pulled in every direction at once, and with something in the middle that can be a surprising new bit of creation or a gaping great hole depending how you look at it.
Characters have to be right contradictory to be particularly realistic.
... my head is coming up all Addams Family to demonstrate this. Love/Hate, Hate/Love.
And, okay, yes, but as a demonstration of realistic... *sigh*
So, anyways, Iago lists a whole bunch of reasons for doing what he does, and that doesn't make him mysterious or impossible to understand, that's just people. And Hamlet bounces around exploring different reasons for doing or not doing, and again, seems like recogniseable people because of it. Any character you can sum up as doing absolutely everything because x makes them to is being a bit small, to my mind.