Othello Research Paper

Shakespeare’s plays almost always surround the actions, affection, and or plot revolving around women. In the last three plays we’ve read, that being The Winter’s Tale, Othello, and Hamlet, the women of each play are prominent members of the story in a society where women are usually second to men. However, in many of Shakespeare’s plays he draws on ancient Greek myths in a number of ways not just in names. Also the creation of women by the gods, to punish man after Prometheus stole fire. In The Winters Tale, King Leontes is driven made thinking his wife, the Queen is having an affair with his friend. Within Othello, Iago uses Othello’s wife, Desdemona as the foundation in his scheme against Othello. Lastly two women in Hamlet prove harmful

Others like in Hamlet, characters share the same names with mythological figures such as Laertes who in the play is Ophelia’s brother in the play. While in ancient myth the father of King Odysseus, and a main character of Homers Iliad & Odyssey. Also, all myths and ancient religions have stories of how man and women were created. For the Greek myths, woman was created to punish man after Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to

In The Winter’s Tale, first half has the cast calling on an oracle of Apollo for help. The opening of which is about Queen Hermione being accused by her husband the king to be having an affair with the Kings best friend, Polixnes. Since Hermione was pregnant during Polixnes’s extensive stay in Leontes kingdom. The King believes the two are having an affair and his jealousy sends him into madness leading to the eventual death of the Queen and future events of the story. This is very similar to Othello, in which Iago deceives the protagonist Othello into believing his own wife; Desdemona has been unfaithful with one of Othello’s captains, Cassio. Like King Leontes, Othello believes Iago, who lied about Desdemona to harm Othello. The love the two men feel for their wives, turns into vicious anger and disgust. Which later leads both of them to kill their wives over wrongful accusations. In Hamlet, however, the title character Hamlet’s strife caused by a woman is not from a lover, but his mother, Queen Gertrude. After the death of Hamlet’s father, his mother married his uncle, Claudius, soon after. In the beginning of the play Hamlet shows his disgust towards his mother with how quickly she married Claudius, later on Hamlets rage comes to a tipping point when he confronts his mother and kills the spying