Shakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
Author(s): Joel B. Altman
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 462
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Prologue / "As If for Surety": The Problematics of Shakespearean Probability......Page 12
Part I. Toward a Rhetorical Genealogy of Othello......Page 42
One / "My Parts, My Title, and My Perfect Soul": Ingenuity, Apodeixis, and the Origins of Rhetorical Anthropology......Page 44
Two / "Against My Estimation": Ciceronian Decorum, Stoic Constancy, and the Production of Ethos......Page 66
Part II. The Logic of Renaissance Rhetoric......Page 98
Three / "Apt and True": Speech, World, and Thought in Shakespeare's Humanist Dialectic......Page 100
Four / "Yonder's Foul Murders Done": Place, Predicament, and Grammatical Space on Cyprus......Page 130
Part III. Willful Words, Christian Anxieties, and Shakespearean Dramaturgy......Page 162
Five / "'Tis in Ourselves That We Are Thus, or Thus": Will, Habit, and the Discourse of Res......Page 164
Six / "Preposterous Conclusions": Eros, Enargeia, and Composition in Othello......Page 194
Seven / "Prophetic Fury": The Language of Theatrical Potentiality and the Economy of Shakespearean Reception......Page 218
Part IV. Tropings of the Self in Shakespeare's Scripts......Page 244
Eight / "I Am Not What I Am": Shakespeare's Scripted Subject......Page 246
Nine / "Nobody. I Myself": Discovering What Passes Show......Page 272
Part V. Performing the Improbable Other on Shakespeare's Stage......Page 296
Ten / "Were I the Moor, I Would Not Be Iago": Ligatures of Self and Stranger......Page 298
Eleven / "It Is Not Words That Shakes Me Thus": Burbage, as if Othello......Page 328
Epilogue / "Make Not Impossible/That Which But Seems Unlike": The Twilight of Probability and the Dawn of Shakespearean Romance......Page 350
Notes......Page 386
Bibliography......Page 440
Index......Page 454
