Literary Theory: New Criticism

This semester I have had a lot of practice with this particular theory in my Shakespeare class. During this semester so far we have looked at and picked apart 4 major plays written by Shakespeare. We have looked at his word choice and tried to determine what points was he trying to get across to the audience at the time and how those same ideas changed at all. We just finished the play Othello and in this play there is a black man in a high position in the military. (Where it is assumed that most of the soldiers are white.) Othello marries a very prominent white woman. Othello then passes up one of his white soldiers for a promotion whom then decides to take revenge by ruining his marriage. In the end everyone is dead with the exception of the soldier who was passed up for the promotion. My professor raised the question of; did Shakespeare intended for this play to be about racism or was it just a second thought so to speak. In class we looked very closely to the language that was used such as moor, my black face, reference to magical powers, slavery, sooty bosom and many others. Without knowing a lot of background about Shakespeare or the time he was writing this play you would automatically assume that he intended this play to be about racism. Another question my professor brought up was is you were to cast this play would it be right to cast an all white cast without the use of makeup to make the person who played Othello look dark? Most of the class agreed that the play would not make sense because of the choice of words. My point to telling you all this is that it is important to look at the choice of words an author uses because if you don't then you very well are missing out on some important point. But I also think that you must combine some of these theories to really get the whole picture because with out the background information you could assume something that really was not intended. Such as when Shakespeare uses the term slave he is not using it in the same way as we know it to be today because back when the play was written slaves were soldiers captured in war and the African slave trade was just starting.