ABSTRACT
A variety of critics in this century, while recognizing its poignancy, human veracity, and dramatic brilliance, have agreed in being unwilling to praise Othello without some reservations. Bradley found in it a certain limitation, a partial suppression of that element in Shakespeare's mind which unites him with the mystical poets and with the great musicians and philosophers. Granville-Barker said of Othello that he goes ignorantly to his doom. The mere sight of such beauty and nobility and happiness, all wickedly destroyed, must be a harrowing one. Wonder is the note of Othello's greatest poetry, felt in the concreteness of its imagery and the firmness of its rhythms. Wonder sharpens the vision of things, so that we see them, not blurred by sentiment, or distorted by reflection, but in their own beautiful particularity. The services which he has done he speaks of at his first appearance as in his dying speech.
