Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

Controlled Assessment Unit 3: Love and Hate in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Othello’

Within both tragedies, Romeo and Juliet and Othello, Shakespeare intertwines feelings of love and
hate that have disastrous effects, leading to the deaths of the lovers
...
In Othello Iago causes the
problems for Desdemona and Othello, due to his hatred and jealousy, and manipulates Othello into
hating Desdemona, which goes on to him murdering her, and then committing suicide himself

At the start of both plays we are immediately introduced to the themes of love and hate, which
Shakespeare interlinks
...
We discover the scale of the violence between the families, with the
violent imagery of, ‘civil blood make civil hands unclean’, which sets up the play and forebodes that
lives will be lost
...
This is also an oxymoron because if someone is ‘civil’ they would not usually
draw ‘blood’
...
However we know that their violent
conflict is in protection of their reputations, and love for their own families
...
However, the hatred of Iago is due to his personal vendetta caused by jealously when he is
passed over for promotion by Othello in replacement of Cassio, calling him a ‘spinster’ with ‘bookish
theoric’
...

Here Shakespeare presents Iago as a Machiavellian villain who has little regard for the consequences
of his actions and the people he hurts along the way
...
The servant’s
commitment to the Capulet family is revealed when Gregory explains that ‘the quarrel is between our
masters and us their men’
...

Juxtaposed with the violence of the brawl, we also play witness to Romeo’s passion for love in his
listless and languid state
...
The
oxymoron of ‘love’ and ‘hate’, included in the same breath, reveals that Romeo understands the link
between the two, and how this can have complications
...
Here, Romeo is shown as a courtly lover, consumed by
unrequited love, which Shakespeare slightly mocks in Romeo’s heartbroken state
...

As seen in the fued between the two families and the hatred of Iago, along with Romeo’s passion for
love
...

What is surprising about Romeo and Juliet’s love is how fast it develops, supporting the idea of love at
first sight
...
Romeo and Juliet’s instant love wold have appeal to the audience’s emotional side as they
would have realised the depth of their love for each other
...
Shakespeare intensifies the story from its
original source, Arthur Brooke’s ‘the Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Iuliet’, by denying the lovers the
two month affair Brookes writes about and instead only giving them one passionate night
...
(Romeo) Then move not, while
my prayer’s effect I take’
...
Also the religious imagery
highlights the purity and depth of their love
Comparatively, Othello and Desdemona’s love develops more gradually, as Othello used to tell
Desdemona stories about his life, which gained Desdemona’s sympathy
...
Although similar to Romeo and Juliet, we do realise the depth of their love when
Desdemona refuses to confess that Othello killed her because she still loves him
...

When we first meet Romeo he seems to be infatuated with Rosaline, who, despite his efforts, does
not love him back
...
The sibilance of ‘saint-seducing’ reveals how
corruptible saints are compared to Rosaline and the hyperbole shows her stubbornness in retaining
her virginity
...

Infatuation and passion also appears through the character of Roderigo in Othello, whose love for
Desdemona sends him to decide to ‘incontinently drown myself’, but he is quickly manipulated by
Iago to help him enact his plan
...

Throughout the play we can see how the speed at which the relationship of the lovers develops
affects their outcome
...
Whereas Romeo and Juliet’s love
was so deep that they would rather die than be apart

Both plays are set in a male dominated society, where women are inferior and expected to obey men
...

In Othello we are immediately presented with Desdemona’s independence when she diplomatically
argues with her father that she now obeys Othello
...
Brabantio first reacts with resentment towards Othello for stealing his daughter, and
claims that Othello used ‘witchcraft’ to persuade Desdemona to marry him
...
Before this Brabantio recognises Othello as a
good person, but believes he is not good enough for his daughter, highlighting the fundamentality of
racism
...

This is similar to Juliet’s defiance against the arranged marriage with Paris, set up by her father
...
Lord Capulet responds with the exclamatory and derogatory phrase, 'young
baggage, disobedient wretch', to emphasise his disgust
...

Whereas Juliet is so submissive, being only thirteen, that the only way to escape the arranged
marriage is with her death
...
Despite our initial judgement of Desdemona’s independence, she is very obedient
when it comes to Othello, especially as the play goes on and her relationship with her husband
diminishes
...

However Emilia, a much stronger character, and has her limits in regard to how much she obeys her
husband
...
The
monosyllabic phrase helps to emphasise her defiance, and complete loyalty to Desdemona
...
Romeo puts himself
below Juliet both literally and figuratively in submission during the balcony scene, saying ‘O, speak
again, bright angel’
...

The female protagonists in both plays are defiant against their fathers, which would have surprised
the audience
...


Many of the characters in both texts are extremely influenced by a desire to retain and defend their
honour that determines whether hate overcomes love
...
In a conversation with Iago about Desdemona’s dishonesty Othello
reveals ‘I here engage my words’
...
Before this we are constantly reminded about his
complete love for Desdemona and despite his actions we understand Othello’s continuous love for
her, as illustrated in the kiss
...
The audience would
have been familiar with this because it relates to a cuckholded husband
...
Furthermore Othello’s
honourable status also gives him power and influence, which allows him to feel so comfortable
injuring Desdemona
...
However this could be seen as not an act
of hate, but of love, because it is actually Romeos devotion to Juliet and his best friend that generates
his desire for revenge
...
We also see Romeos reluctance towards conflicts when he calls Tybalt ‘good
Capulet, which I name tender as dearly as my own’
...
Furthermore after killing Tybalt we witness
Romeo’s realization that he has endangered his marriage to Juliet, when he cries ‘fortunes fool’
...
However, unfortunately love can be overcome in replacement of other
emotions, such as jealousy and the protection of pride and honour
...

However hate is not the ultimate factor that overcomes love and results in their death, from the start
of the play we discover that the fate of the lovers has already been decided, so therefore fate has a
stronger influence in regards to their outcome
...
Romeo’s
perception of Juliet’s surprising ‘beauty’ is dramatic irony, as the audience is in knowledge of Juliet’s
plan
...
In the

end, their deaths do bring about reconciliation between feuding families, so hatred is actually
destroyed as a result of the lover’s death
In comparison with Othello we also see the defiance of love towards hate in Desdemona last words
that ‘nobody’ killed her, and refrains from telling Emilia of Othello’s actions
...
Therefore we can say that hate, even through an act of
murder, cannot overcome her love
...
Although Othello tries to convince himself that he hates Desdemona, it is clear in
his grief that his actions were due to loving her too much that caused jealously to overcome him
because he did not want her to be with anyone else
...
He describes it as a "glooming peace this morning
with it brings", with the oxymoron being used to reveal that the play has reached reconciliation, and
that the youthful purity of Romeo and Juliet's love leads to positive changes in their world, even
though they are no longer alive
...

However, in contrast to R+J, the cause of the hatred in O, the character Iago, does not feel remorse,
unlike the families of the lovers
...
In
regards to Iago, Shakespeare decides to deviate from the primary source of ‘The Story of Desdemona
and the Moorish Captain’, by increasing Iago’s malice by changing his personal vendetta from
passionate love for Desdemona to being entirely based on jealously and his chosen punishment for
being Othello extreme emotional torment that results in his suicide
...


In conclusion, both plays reveal, to an extent, how hate can overcome love, such as the hatred
between the families in Romeo and Juliet caused their suicide because their love could survive
surrounded by the hostility of the situation
...
However, with deeper analysis we can clearly
see that love holds a continuous presence and, in Romeo and Juliet, does not only refrain from being
overcome by hate, as seen by their suicides as they cannot bear to live apart, it actually acts as a
catalyst for the reconciliation between the feuding families, dissolving the hatred
...




---