Love and OthelloOthello is, in one sense of the word, by far the most romantic figure among Shakespeare's heroes; and it is partly due to the strange life of war and adventure he has lived since childhood. It does not belong to our world and seems to enter it from we know not where, almost from wonderland. There is something mysterious about his lineage from royal siegemen; in his wanderings in vast deserts and among wonderful peoples; in the tales of magic handkerchiefs and prophetic Sibyls; in the sudden, vague glimpses we get of countless battles and sieges in which he played the hero and lived a charmed life; also in casual references to her baptism, her sale as a slave, her stay in Aleppo. And he is not a merely romantic figure; its very nature is romantic. He does not, in fact, have Hamlet's meditative or speculative imagination; but in the strictest sense of the word he is more poetic than Hamlet. Indeed, if you recall Othello's most famous speeches - those which begin, "His father loved me", "O now for ever", "Never, Iago", "If it had pleased Heaven", "It is the cause", "Behold, I have a weapon," "Be careful, a word or two before you go"—and if these speeches are joined by an equal number of any other hero, there will be no doubt that Othello is the greatest poet. of all of them. There is the same poetry in his casual phrases - such as "These nine wasted moons", "Keep your swords shining, for the dew will rust them", "Ye chaste stars", "It is a sword of Spain, the ice-brook's temperament", "It is precisely the moon's mistake" - and in those brief expressions of intense feeling which have since been taken as an absolute expression, as if it should now of...... half of paper..... Harold. "Introduction" Modern critical interpretations, Othello Ed. Harold Bloom, Pub. Chelsea House New Haven CT 1987. (1-6) Slights CW. “Slaves and Subjects in Othello,” Shakespeare Quarterly v48 Winter 1997: 382. Jones, Eldred. "Othello: an interpretation" Critical essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. (page 39-55) Neely, Carol. "Women and men in Othello" Critical essays on Shakespeare's Othello. Ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy Pub. Macmillan New York, NY 1994. (pages 68-90)Norman Sanders, ed. Othello. Cambridge: New York, 1995: 12.Snyder, Susan. "Beyond comedy: Othello" Modern critical interpretations, Othello Ed. Harold Bloom, Pub. Chelsea House New Haven CT 1987. (page 23-37)J. Adelman. “Iago's Alter Ego: Running as Projection in Othello,” Shakespeare Quarterly v48 Summer 1997: 130.