I Used to Know That_ Stuff You Forgot From School - Caroline Taggart [9]
Othello, the Moor of Venice: Othello is a successful general, but the problem is that he is black and has secretly married a white girl, Desdemona. The other problem is that Iago hates him, partly because Othello has promoted a young lieutenant, Cassio, over Iago’s head. Iago persuades Othello that Cassio is having an affair with Desdemona. Mad with jealousy (“the green-eyed monster”), Othello smothers Desdemona in her bed. Iago also tries to have Cassio murdered, but the plot fails, and letters proving Iago’s guilt and Cassio’s innocence are discovered. Othello realizes that he has murdered Desdemona for no reason and kills himself. Othello was the man who loved “not wisely but too well,” and it was Iago who said, “Who steals my purse steals trash.” (But he was lying, of course.)
This section ends with words from one famous sonnet—number 18—whose first four lines have provided titles for at least two novels:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Romeo and Juliet: The original star-crossed lovers. Romeo is a Montague, Juliet a Capulet, and the two families hate each other. Romeo and Juliet secretly marry. However, Juliet has already been commissioned to marry her cousin, Paris. To get out of this, Juliet comes up with one of those clever schemes that you just know will go wrong: She takes a potion that puts her into a coma for a couple of days so that everyone thinks she is dead. The message telling Romeo about this goes astray (of course), and he arrives at her tomb believing that she is dead. He poisons himself just before she wakes up, so Juliet, discovering him dead, stabs herself with his dagger.
The balcony scene is full of famous lines. For example, when Romeo lurks in the garden, Juliet appears on the balcony above and, talking to herself, says:
O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?…
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.
And at the end of the scene, she says:
Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good-night till it be morrow.
The Taming of the Shrew: Katharina is too bad-tempered to secure a husband, but her father will not allow her younger (and better behaved) sister, Bianca, to accept any of her many suitors until Katharina is married. Petruchio comes along and accepts the challenge, more or less beating Kate into submission. Twenty-first-century feminists do not care for this play, although Cole Porter’s musical version, Kiss Me Kate, is wonderful.
Twelfth Night: Twins Viola and Sebastian become separated in a storm, and each believes the other dead. Viola disguises herself as a boy, Cesario, and enters the service of Duke Orsino, with whom she falls in love. Orsino, however, is in love with Olivia and uses Cesario as a messenger to woo her. Olivia—you guessed it—falls in love with Cesario, and it takes the reappearance of Sebastian to make everyone live happily ever after. The subplot concerns Olivia’s pompous steward, Malvolio, who is conned by Olivia’s uncle and his friends into believing that Olivia is in love with him and that she wishes to see him wearing yellow stockings and cross garters. The well-known saying “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them” appears in the letter that Malvolio believes Olivia has written to him.
Other Notable British Authors
North American Authors
There is a countless number of American writers who have earned their rightful place in literary history. While it is tricky to capture all of them in one relatively brief chapter, here are some that many students have come to know very well.
☞ PEARL BUCK (1892-1973)
Winner of both the Nobel