Mirzayeva ozoda course work theme: Female characters in Shakespeare's comedies (Portia ("The Merchant of Venice"), Rosalind

Chapter II. The essence of Shakespeare’s Tragedy

The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice is considered one of the most popular works of William Shakespeare. The tragedy of Othello was written in the second period of his creative career, which is characterized by pessimism. Consequently, Shakespeare writes about the great tragic problems of life. The essence of Shakespeare's tragedy lies in the collision of two principles: humanistic feelings (pure and noble humanity) and vulgarity, meanness, greed, and selfishness. According to the writer himself, the fate of everyone is the result of their character and circumstances.

On rare occasions, he used the Greek name for a god rather than the Roman one. For example, in Henry V he refers to the messenger god as Hermes (Greek name) rather than Mercury (Roman name). The names of some deities—such as the god of prophecy, Apollo—were the same in Greek and Roman mythology, as indicated later on this page. Be aware also that a few gods were Roman inventions. Janus is an example.
The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice is considered one of the most popular works of William Shakespeare. The tragedy of Othello was written in the second period of his creative career, which is characterized by pessimism. Consequently, Shakespeare writes about the great tragic problems of life. The essence of Shakespeare's tragedy lies in the collision of two principles: humanistic feelings (pure and noble humanity) and vulgarity, meanness, greed, and selfishness. According to the writer himself, the fate of everyone is the result of their character and circumstances.
The names of the main characters, Othello, Iago, and Desdemona, have long been household names. But it is also worth paying attention to the secondary heroes who became unwitting participants in the tragedy and directly influenced it. The young courtesan, Bianca, is presented in the play as the mistress of one of the main characters, Cassio. Since she was a girl of easy virtue, no one took her seriously. Having analyzed the work, it can be seen that Bianca is not just a negative person
but a sympathetic character that is important for a deeper understanding of human relationships and the plot itself.
The first trait of Bianca’s character that shows her good side is care and love for Cassio. An amazing feature of Bianca’s character was that she met only one person throughout the work. Moreover, she was jealous of Cassio, did things for him, and hoped he was serious about her: “I pray you bring me on the way a little, and say if I shall see you soon at night”. As in the play, Bianca is represented by a prostitute; therefore, in society, such girls are famous for frivolity, inconstancy, the ability to betray, and pathological lies. Thus, Shakespeare wanted to show how stereotypes affect a person’s reputation and that a person can be completely different from what most people imagine him to be.
Despite the fact that Bianca has a minor role in the tragedy and she appears literally in several scenes, she played an important role and unknowingly became the key cause of Desdemona’s death. Iago lies to Othello and shows the handkerchief that Desdemona allegedly dropped when she cheated on him with Cassio: “but such a handkerchief— I am sure it was your wife’s—did I today see Cassio wipe his beard with.”. When Cassio found the handkerchief, he admired the magnificent pattern and asked Bianca to embroider the same one for him. Bianca was furious because she thought it was a gift from another woman, but she still agreed because of her good-natured nature and love for Cassio. Thus, despite her jealousy, she subdued her character and did what her loved one asked.
Despite the fact that Bianca is represented in the play as a girl of easy virtue, Shakespeare gives her honesty and compassion. The author describes Bianca as a jealous girl who did not hold a grudge or evil against someone for a long time. She dreamed of marrying her beloved Cassio, who in turn did not take her seriously because she was famous for her reputation as a courtesan. Behind her back, she was discussed badly, although she was honest with everyone and acted with good intentions. She unwittingly became one of the reasons for Desdemona’s murder, but she was the only character who didn’t lie and just wanted to be treated better. The last words Bianca says: “I am no strumpet, but of life as honest as you that thus abuse
me”¹³. Therefore, the author wanted to show that the social status of a person does not show his character.
Additionally, at the end of the poem, the author highlights Bianca’s empathic and compassionate character. At the end of the poem, she appears right after Iago has wounded Cassio. After that, Yage pretends that he has nothing to do with it. Thus, he accuses Bianca of being involved in the attack on Cassio. He convinces everyone that her emotional reaction is not related to her feelings for Cassio at all. Iago was sure that everyone would believe him since Bianca had a reputation as a prostitute. In the last scene where Bianca appears, the author shows her empathetic character: “What is the matter, ho? Who is ’t that cried?”. However, they snap at her and start insulting her, which once again proves that Bianca was an unwitting victim of this situation. Therefore, she acted sincerely; she decided to embroider the same pattern on the scarf because she wanted to make Cassio pleasant.
In conclusion, in his work The Tragedy of Othello the Moor of Venice, Shakespeare presents the prostitute Bianca as the only honest person. Therefore, her downfall makes her a sympathetic character because it is engineered. Bianca was innocent of Desdemona’s death but unwittingly became involved in it. Although Bianca had a bad reputation in the city, she is represented by a good-natured person. Thus, one of the goals of the works is to make the reader think that the social role of a person does not always determine his character. Because the transformed hero is driven to act with the utmost brutality against one or more of those to whom he is bound by the closest ties, some are inclined nowadays to conclude that his alleged nobility is being exposed as superficial or in some sense inauthentic. Such a conclusion implies that the pity, wonder, and fear which the plays provoke in performance are symptoms of sentimental misapprehension on the part of the audience; it rules out the possibility of seeing the fall of the hero as genuinely tragic.
_{Behind Shakespeare’s delineation of the hero’s moral fall lies a conviction that ‘In}
¹³ Gayley M. Charles (2005). Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Century Publishing Group, p40-41.
men as in a rough-grown grove remain / Cave-keeping evils that obscurely sleep’ (Luc. 1249–50). One might regard this conviction as an essentialist evasion of such questions as historical contingency and the effects of cultural conditioning on character. Othello’s murder of Desdemona, for example, might be explained solely in terms of his own particular make-up and unusual situation: a proud, middle-aged African warrior, married to a beautiful young Venetian lady, socially and sexually insecure, and terrified by the humiliating thought of cuckoo dry. But there is quiet play in Othello on the relation between the words ‘general’ and ‘particular’, and it has the effect of hinting that ‘the General’ is not just a uniquely flawed stranger (‘an erring barbarian’) but a representative human being as well; such hints are reinforced by Iago’s reminder that ‘there’s many a beast in a populous city, / And many a civil monster’. When the mad Ophelia says, ‘We know what we are, but know not what we may be’, she is recalling not only the baker’s daughter who became an owl but also the refined prince of noble mind who killed her father and contemptuously lugged his guts into the neighbor room; and who himself had reminded her father that ‘it was a brute part’ of the ‘gentle Brutus’ that killed his friend in the Capitol. The notion of cave-keeping evils in every human being was one which Shakespeare clearly taking for granted. And the cave-keeping evil can emerge with shocking abruptness. The sheer speed with which Othello’s love and nobility are turned to hatred and baseness is sometimes taken as incontrovertible proof that both (if genuine at all) were exceptionally fragile. But with Shakespeare the speed of the hero’s transformation is a theatrical device emphasizing both the extremity of the change and the vulnerable nature of all love and all nobility, indeed of all human worth. France observes in amazement that Lear’s affection for his favorite daughter turns by way of ‘the dragon ...wrath’ to black hatred in a ‘trice of time’ and concerning Coriolanus, suddenly ‘grown from man to dragon’, Socinus asks: ‘Isn’t possible that so short a time can alter the condition of a man?’