Shakespeare’s Imagery: The Diabolic Images in Othello

Summary

There is still no commonly accepted procedure in Shakespeare criticism. Yet method to a great extent determines results. Unfortunately no one to-day can have a specialist’s familiarity with every department of Shakespeare studies: indeed, it is arguable that the talents of the critic and those required by the modern textual scholar are seldom to be found in the same person. The critic is usually willing to defer to specialist authority on textual and bibliographical questions, but other departments of scholarship, notably the study of Elizabethan thought and Elizabethan theatrical conditions, are indispensable. Without these safeguards the approach to Shakespeare’s imagery is especially perilous.

Method

The study of poetic imagery is without doubt one of the most important innovations in Shakespeare criticism, but, unless a method is followed which brings imagery into due subordination to other aspects of dramatic expression, it can lead only to the construction of individual fantasies. There would seem to have been hitherto a good deal of confusion about the nature and function of Shakespeare's imagery and about the critical technique required to deal with it. It might be useful to examine some of the more important problems involved.