The entire plot involves a nasty disinformation campaign he runs against his boss. This is an Elizabethan antecedent to the vile “lusty Black men are coming for our white women” trope disseminated by the KKK and other racists in the Reconstruction period and beyond.Īnd, finally: Iago is a troll. That his wife has maybe, possibly, but probably not actually dallied with a Moor - that introduces a racial element to the dynamic. In other words, Iago’s going to assume this happened, even though he himself doesn’t actually believe it. There is fear of being made a cuckold - in MAGA parlance, a “cuck.” Early in the play, Iago tells us of his suspicion that his boss, the titular Othello, banged his wife, Emilia:Īnd it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets Exchange the M-word for the N-word, and you have the simple, benighted, ugly motive of the Trump rally-goer who hasn’t gotten over the fact that Barack Obama was president. “I hate the Moor,” Iago says, on more than one occasion. Animating all the action is white male grievance about something dumb - in Iago’s case, being passed over for a promotion - and the violent, petty, heartless lengths to which aggrieved white men will go to avenge these perceived slights. Othello, I now realize, applies perfectly to the current moment. The reason Iago goes silent at the end, I theorized, is that, despite the arsenal of 1,700 new words at his disposal, the Bard simply could not figure out what to make his villain say to sufficiently explain his heinous actions. I don’t believe this at all.” Not only that, I was convinced that Shakespeare himself agreed with me. I remember reading it in high school or early college and thinking, “This plot is nuts. The exception, it occurred to me this week, is Othello. The characters may be universal, behaving in the flawed, self-sabotaging way humans always have, but most of us don’t have to fret over how exactly to take out the uncle who is sleeping with our mother to avenge our father’s murder, or whack a king to fulfill the prophecy of some witches, or survive being shipwrecked on a mad sorcerer’s island, or tame a shrew. Do we really need two parts of Henry IV?Īnd the plots aren’t particularly applicable to modern times. We have Be Real to update and Wordle to puzzle over and Netflix to binge. Why five acts, Billy? Can’t you distill it to three? I’m sure the audiences of 1603 were content to take in four-hour theatrical productions, but in 2023, we’re busy. The plays, though? They’re usually, let’s face it, kind of dull. There are clunkers for sure but, at his best, Shakespeare is as good as English verse gets. I’ve written before about Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, but the dude just cranked out top-shelf material, like the rest of us mortals exhale carbon dioxide. As a poet, he is without parallel in the language. The prolific wordsmith coined some 1,700 words, including assassination, zany, bloody, dishearten, obscene, majestic, lonely, and my personal favorite, countless. Watch out for the App Store and Play Store badges on the game pages.Shakespeare helped invent modern English. Some of the games are also available for download to smartphones and tablets. Sometimes he’s hard to beat but sometimes he makes mistakes too, so there is some fun involved. He will try to outsmart you with various tactics, but he doesn’t think too far ahead. The built-in computer opponent in the board games plays at a medium skill level, so the games are suited for beginners and casual-level players (or elite players who like to win). These are quick games that use little memory and they don’t have a lot of unnecessary options. The browser games open up as regular web pages. Welcome to the best browser games for classic board game players. PUZZLE ( pŭz′əl): Something, such as a game, toy, or problem, that requires ingenuity and often persistence in solving.
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