Free College Essays - The Fall of Othello :: GCSE Coursework Shakespeare Othello

The Fall of Othello The Othello of the Fourth Act is Othello in his fall. His fall is never complete, but he is much changed. Towards the close of the Temptation-scene he be tell aparts at times most terrible, but his grandeur remains almost undiminished. Even in the following scene (III iv), where he goes to test Desdemona in the field of study of the handkerchief, and receives a fatal confirmation of her guilt, our sympathy with him is hardly touched by every feeling of humiliation. But in the Fourth Act Chaos has come. A slight interval of time may be admitted here. It is but slight for it was necessary for Iago to hurry on, and terribly dangerous to leave a incur for a meeting of Cassio with Othello and his in stag into Othellos nature taught him that his plan was to deliver blow on blow, and never to allow his victim to recover from the confusion of the first shock. bland there is a slight interval and when Othello reappears we see at a glance that he is a changed man. He is physically exhausted, and his mind is dazed. He sees everything foggy through a mist of blood and tears. He has actually forgotten the incident of the handkerchief, and has to be reminded of it. When Iago, perceiving that he can now risk almost any lie, tells him that Cassio has confessed his guilt, Othello, the hero who has seemed to us only second to Coriolanus in physical power, trembles all over he mutters disjointed words a blackness of a sudden intervenes between his eyes and the world he takes it for the shuddering testimony of nature to the horror he has just heard, Endnote6 and he falls senseless to the ground. When he recovers it is to keep up Cassio, as he imagines, laughing over his shame. It is an imposition so gross, and should have been one so perilous, that Iago would never have ventured it before. But he is safe now. The sight only adds to the confusion of intellect the madness of rage and a ravenous thirst for revenge, contending with motions of infinite longing and regret, conquers them. The delay till night-fall is torture to him. His self-control has all told deserted him, and he strikes his wife in the presence of the Venetian envoy. He is so lost to all sense of reality that he never asks himself what pull up stakes follow the deaths of Cassio and his wife.