Comparison of “Hamlet”, “King Lear” and “Othello” by Shakespeare Research Paper

Introduction

William Shakespeare lived in extremely uneasy time, marked with the transition from medieval to Renaissance values in governance, political and social life; therefore, the reality was quickly changing. In the 16^th century, medieval feudalism was quickly declining, moreover the feudalism was dying an honorable death; the aristocracy began using increasingly more cruel and tough measures to support its authority and with the help of that to back up the hierarchical order which aristocrats thought had served them very well. The sixteenth century showed the consequent unrest and a great feeling of suspicion that in most cases resulted in different kind of surveillance and betrayal in people relations – in the social and political spheres. Several attempts to kill both Elizabeth I and James VI brought about cruel and really brutal retaliations. According to Shakespeare, only a man is able to improve the world, so the central focus of his plays is human emotions and psychological life, doubts, mistakes and suffering. His tragedies King Lear, Hamlet and Othello are consistently based upon the central theme of fatal mistake, resulting from blind anger. However, the specific drives for these mistakes are different: whereas in Hamlet, the striving for revenge is the most apparent motivator, in King Lear and Othello, anger gives rise to frustration, sorrow and psychological abandonment, which, however, bring the same outcome.

Main body

Before discussing Shakespearean notion of anger as expressed in the three literary works, it is important to note that his protagonists are unordinary people, who achieved considerable social success either by birth (Hamlet) or by wise deeds (King Lear, Othello) (Gurr, p.119; Bloom, p. 87). Therefore, these characters tend to emphasize their personal dignity and overprotect it so that this aristocratic quality turns into vanity and self-importance. Hamlet is a Prince of Denmark, so his background forces him to protect both his own and his family’s pride. For instance, after his father’s sudden death, he learns his mother is creating family with Claudius, his uncle and apparently reproaches the women for the lack of respect for the memory about the deceased king (Hamlet, 1.2). Othello, in turn, is basically a military man, who established himself through heroic deeds (Othello, 1.1), whereas King Lear is so egotistic that decides to divide his kingdom among his daughters after evaluating each woman’s love for him. Thus, given the characters’ exaggerated self-esteem, they acutely react to the situations, which ostensibly challenge their self-respect. For instance, Othello fails into a truly hysterical state when he finds out the handkerchief, his gift to Desdemona, is missing, believing that the loss of the present is an indicator of his spouse’s infidelity. When Desdemona begins to appeal to his common sense, he shows nothing but rudeness: “A man that all his time/ Hath founded his good fortunes on your love, / Shared dangers with you/ – The handkerchief!/ – In sooth, you are to blame./ – Away!” (Othello, 3.4). Moreover, when he detects the accessory it Cassio’s hand, Othello loses control and strikes his wife publicly (Othello, 3.4). Iago’s reports and the loss of the handkerchief appear to Othello reliable proofs of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness, and under the effect of anger the protagonist is both unable and unwilling to do further investigation. Similarly, King Lear seems equally impetuous after his older daughters deliver beautiful speeches about their love for him, whereas the youngest, Cordelia, fails to say anything. Objectively Cordelia understands that the three girls are merely competing in rhetoric, and the true love can be expressed exceptionally through specific deeds, but when she tries to explain this obvious fact to the king, her father falls in even greater rage and damns her: “Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower; / For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,/The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;/ By all the operation of the orbs/ from whom we do exist, and cease to be;/ Here I disclaim all my parental care,/ Propinquity and property of blood,/ And as a stranger to my heart and me/ Hold the, from this, for ever” (King Lear, 1.1). In Hamlet, anger is also caused by the perceived abuse of his own and his family’s dignity: as the ghost reports, Hamlet’s father was slaughtered by his own brother, the closest blood kin. Hamlet is apparently infuriated with the fact that the murdered of his father is now freely living in his castle, ruling his motherland and, most importantly, shares royal status with his mother, who willingly agreed to marry him: “O most pernicious woman! /O villain, villain, smiling damned villain!/ My tables, – meet it is I set it down, /That one may smile, and smile and be a villain” (Hamlet, 1.5). Further, all the characters appear to be consumed by their anger, so that it becomes a destructive force which substantially changes the person’s mind and causes fixation on the object (Bradley, p.414; Gurr, p.197). This is Shakespeare’s “anatomy” of anger.

In spite of the obvious similarity of the “background feeling” the three characters experience, the actual motivators of their further actions differ substantially in the three literary works. Whereas Hamlet’s anger is associated rather with hatred and striving for revenge at any price, the protagonists of Othello and King Lear are driven by disappointment and sorrow, or the disappearance of their idealistic perception of the closest person. After hearing the ghost’s monologue, Hamlet kills Claudius first and foremost in his imagination: “So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word/ It is ‘Adieu, adieu!’ remember me.’ I have sworn’t” (Hamlet, 1.5). From this passage, one can derive a conclusion that the Prince of Denmark is likely to receive satisfaction from his vengeance, as opposed to King Lear and Othello, whose anger is greatly associated with frustration and sorrow (Heilman, p. 39; Rosenberg, p.46). In particular, King Lear is astonished and greatly disappointed, realizing that Cordelia does not love him, as he always believed his daughters have similar feelings for him and even divided his territory into three parts in advance so that Regan, Goneril and Cordlia receive a domain. The same obviously happens to Othello, as the moor compels himself to despise Desdemona, still loving her: “I am abused; and my relief/ Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage,/That we can all these delicate creatures ours, /And not their appetites!” (Othello, 3.3). As one can assume, both Lear’s Othello’s erroneous actions are driven by the loss of trust.

Naturally, given the alteration of consciousness, the characters make serious mistakes, which bring about tragic outcomes. In particular, Hamlet, in the blindness of rage, stabs Polonius, whereas the servant decided to supervise Hamlet in order to prevent him from impulsive acts and check whether his alleged madness is associated with the prince’s romantic feelings for Ophelia. Hamlet, in turn, loses his trust for people around him and thus treats everyone, who believes in a strange way, as a betrayer. Following Polonius’s death, his daughter Ophelia commits suicide, so Hamlet’s blindness and egoism take one more life. Further, Polonius’s son Laertes comes to Denmark in order to combat with Hamlet and given Claudius’s plot of poisoning beverages and blades, the whole royal family including Hamlet, as well as Laertes, pass away one after another. Obviously, Hamlet would be able to avoid this sequence of deaths and preserve his own life, if he controlled himself better and approached the issue in a more thoughtful and comprehensive way. The only evidence he relies on is the ghost’s testimony, which might have been a hallucination, but his arrogance makes him believe himself as the highest resort. Similarly, Othello and King Lear actually die of their own conceit and lack of trust for their nearest and dearest. Othello gives credit to perfidious Iago, showing himself as a superficial person and a slave of emotions (Adamson, p.58; Rosenberg, p.52). As he decides Desdemona has betrayed him, Othello kills her without mercy and regret; as the moor reveals that he has murdered the wrong person, Othello commits suicide. Similarly, King Lear creates his tragedy by himself: by dividing the reign between two-faced Regan and Goneril, he causes a war, in which his youngest daughter, found to have the greatest integrity, is killed. Most saddening, the tragedy is entering Lear’s life gradually, so that he is able to identify it and repent as a result, regretting about his moral blindness. After being rescued by Cordelia, he admits his acts were foolish : “You must bear with me:/ Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish” (King Lear, 4.7). Likewise, Othello and Hamlet also seem remorseful at the end, as the former learns his deceased spouse was innocent, whereas Hamlet finally obtains clear vision and realizes he is to be charged with the deaths of his closest relatives and friends (Hamlet, 5.2)

Conclusion

As one can conclude, the essential point of the three literary works is that Shakespeare presents anger as the emotion that makes people regret making and putting into practice certain decisions in the past. Whereas the gamma of emotions underlying and supplementing this anger is unique is each protagonist, the cause and effect relationship between anger and fatal mistakes is drawn in Hamlet, King Lear and Othello quite lucidly. Therefore, Shakespeare’s key message in the three plays is that arrogance and self-reliance are not constructive personality traits and result in the brutalization not merely at the individual, but also at the social level.

Works cited

Adamson, J. “Othello” as Tragedy: Some Problems of Judgment and Feeling”. In Booth, S. (ed.) King Lear”, “Othello”: Indefinition and Tragedy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980,. 55-79.

Bradley, A. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. Toronto: Macmillan, 1916.

Gurr, A. The Shakespearean Stage, 1574–1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Heilman, R. Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956.

Rosenberg, M. The Masks of Othello. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961.

Bloom, H. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Essex: Longman, 2001.

Shakespeare, W. Othello. 2008. Web.

Shakespeare, W. King Lear. 2008. Web.

Shakespeare, W. Hamlet. 2008. Web.