Interpretative Deviations in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Othello, and The Tempest

Abstract

If Shakespeare’s Renaissance contemporaries were keen on efficiency and “progress” (in the sense of “onward movement in space”), they also particularly enjoyed labyrinthine ways which distracted them from their primary purposes. I therefore propose to explore the deviations in three very different plays: Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (1602), Othello (1603-1604) and The Tempest (1611). Keeping in mind that “to discourse” first meant “to run, move, or travel over a space”, today’s readers and spectators can still examine the twists and turns of seductive Shakespearean discourses pervaded by irregularities, amplification, irony and perversion. But not only is the dramatic world of the Elizabethan and Jacobean era based on stylistic erring, it is also deeply rooted in the art of perspective: we are continually made to change our points of view when we probe Shakespeare’s universes, teeming with deviant characters. Indeed, a labyrinthine scene necessarily echoes a problematic text. Oblique strategies are thus used by the playwright to generate extra-ordinary emotions: weaving a dramatic web to ensnare the spectators, Shakespeare creates a subversive art which fascinates precisely because of its refusal to follow well-traced, ordinary paths. Either in real life or on stage, only unexpected meanders can provoke men’s amazement…