Tags
Aristotle, As You Like It, Desdemona, Hamlet, Juliet, King Lear, Macbeth, Ophelia, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare
Having looked at the heroines of two of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, I thought of considering another couple from the great tragedies. I refer here to what is commonly seen as his most remarkable works, the five tragedies that between them span the different ages of man.
The first of these is Romeo and Juliet, which deals with youth. The last, King Lear, is about old age and. if Lear is not quite in the seventh stage that Shakespeare describes in As You Like It, still we are clearly looking at a man nearing the end of his tether. In between we have Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello, and I will look today at the heroines of the first and last of these.
Ophelia and Desdemona are also innocent victims, which I think serves to make clear that Bloom missed the point when he thought Juliet’s lack of responsibility for what happened to her made the play ‘a tragedy of circumstance’, and in effect therefore a contradiction of the Aristotelian view of tragedy. Aristotle was talking about the tragic hero, and the problem with tragic heroes is that their flaws lead to suffering for others as well as themselves. The most obvious victims of the destruction such heroes cause are their loved ones, and in particular lovers and wives, as we see with Juliet and Ophelia and Desdemona (and I suppose daughters as in Lear are an extension of this for the old and already bereaved).
I would however posit a difference between the two ladies in the tragedies of youth and age, and those I will look at today. Though the latter two are innocent, there is a sense in which they fuel the suspicions of their loved ones, which contributes to the psychological neuroses that are the springs of tragedy in either case.