Episode 164: Shakespeare's "Othello", Acts 1 & 2

This week on The Literary Life Podcast with Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks, we have our second episode covering Shakespeare's play Othello. Today's episode is a discussion of Acts 1 and 2. Our hosts talk about the problem of Iago's antagonism toward Othello, the way in which Shakespeare asks "what if?" to develop new treatments of old stories, the question of Othello's ethnicity, Shakespeare's method of building up layers of disorder in the story, the theme of people out of harmony with the community, plus so much more!

Register now for our 5th Annual Literary Life Online Conference coming up April 12-15, 2023, Shakespeare: The Bard for All and for All Time. Get all the details and sign up today at houseofhumaneletters.com.

Commonplace Quotes:

It has only been for a short time, a recent and disturbed time of transition, that each writer has been expected to write a new theory of all things or draw a new wild map of the world. The old writers were content to write of the old world, but to write of it with an imaginative freshness which made it in each case look like a new world. The poets taught in a continuous tradition and were not in the least ashamed of being traditional. Each taught in an individual way with a perpetual slight novelty, as Aristotle said, but they were not a series of separate lunatics looking at separate worlds. One poet did not provide a pair of spectacles by which it appeared that the grass was blue, or another poet lecture on optics to teach people to say that the grass was orange. They both had the far harder and more heroic task of teaching people to feel that the grass is green. And because they continue their heroic task, the world, after every epoch of doubt and despair, always grows green again.

G. K. Chesterton

Our age was cultivated thus at length; But what we gained in skill we lost in strength. Our builders were with want of genius curst; The second temple was not like the first.

John Dryden

The atmosphere of the homeschool is on the mother's face.

Lynn Bruce My Pretty Rose Tree

by William Blake

A flower was offered to me, Such a flower as May never bore; But I said "I've a pretty rose tree," And I passed the sweet flower o'er.

Then I went to my pretty rose tree, To tend her by day and by night; But my rose turned away with jealousy, And her thorns were my only delight.

Books Mentioned:

Othello by William Shakespeare

The Soul of Wit by G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist

Paradise Lost by John Milton

The Meaning of Shakespeare by Harold Goddard

The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. Tillyard

Support The Literary Life:

Become a patron of The Literary Life podcast as part of the "Friends and Fellows Community" on Patreon, and get some amazing bonus content! Thanks for your support!

Connect with Us:

You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

Find Cindy at morningtimeformoms.com, on Instagram @cindyordoamoris and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/cindyrollins.net/. Check out Cindy's own Patreon page also!

Follow The Literary Life on Instagram, and jump into our private Facebook group, The Literary Life Discussion Group, and let's get the book talk going! http://bit.ly/literarylifeFB