SHAKESPEARE; Othello & King Lear - A comparison
If Shakespeare was alive today it is certain that there
would be a lot written about him. We would read reviews of
his new plays in newspapers, articles about his poetry in
the literary papers, and gossip about his love life and his
taste in clothes splashed across the glossy magazines. His
views about everything under the sun, from the government to
kitchen furniture, would probably appear regularly in the
colour supplements. His face would be familiar on television
talk shows, his voice well-known from radio broadcasts.
There would be so much recorded evidence about his life and
his opinions that it would not be hard to write about him.
Shakespeare, however, lived some four hundred years ago
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when there was no tele-
vision or radio, nor even any newspapers as we know them
today. Although he was respected as an important person in
his own lifetime, nobody ever thought of writing about him
until well after his death. And Shakespeare did apparently
not believe in keeping a diary either. So it is largely by
luck that the little evidence we have, such as the entry of
his birth in the parish register, has survived at all.
And yet, by looking carefully at contemporary pictures, by
reading contemporary accounts, it is possible to get a good
idea of how the boy whose birth is recorded in the Stratford
register of 1654 grew up into the man who wrote such famous
plays still known all over the world, as we type.
Imagery used in Othello and King Lear.
In Othello and King Lear Shakespeare uses a lot of
imagery. The main image in Othello is that of animals in
action, preying upon one another, mischievous, lascivious,