Acting As Applied Criticism In Shakespeare's Othello

In the “Three Greened-Eyed Monsters: Acting as Applied Criticism in Shakespeare's Othello”, Geoffrey Bent claims that actors can serve an important, if not, a better hermeneutic, or a method of interpretation than academic critics. Generally, when one wants to know how a play will turn out they resort to scholar interpretations from the web or renowned universities. Academic critics appear to be credible when claiming bizarre interpretations with just a piece of supporting text. Unfortunately, this form of interpretation seems to shrink the credit given to actors as interpreters, who are dedicated to bringing a piece of text to life. The audience, who has already been influenced by outside sources, often overlook actors when in actuality actor

interpretations are the most important. Similarly, Geoffrey Bent claims,“ a play can easily do without critics, but a play without actors is incomplete. The cohesiveness and consistency of an actor’s interpretation must sway the audience; it must edify as well as clarify” (358).
Firstly, there is no guarantee that actors serve the best interpretation, but provided with accuracy and comprehension, they hold the potential to be better than academic critics.

Actors are tasked with “illuminating a piece of work”(358) through appearance and how they perform their lines. For example, if a pianist adds an extra key that changes the song, the song can either sound better or worse. The pianist like the actor has control over what they will convey. Hence, it is their interpretation, appearance and how it is conveyed, that translates plain guidelines to a performance. However, it is heavily dependent on the actors ability to “edify and clarify” which is why actors only hold the potential to surpass academic scholars as interpreters. With this in mind, it is essential for actors to fully understand their characters in order to accurately display the character to the best of their ability. Particularly, Iago exists in the play Othello as one of the most complex characters at the turn of the 17 century. As Agnes Matuska writes in “An Ontological Transgression”, Iago is “present both in the drama and on the stage on several levels”(46). Iago interacts with the levels of reality by talking to both the audience and other characters in the play. Additionally, Iago creates higher levels of complexity as he interacts with each individual differently. Thus, if a role as complex and important as Iago’s is to be played well by an actor, then the actor must pertain to

some skill in interpretation and performance.
At the end of Geoffrey Bent’s analysis of three performances, all of which are alterations of Othello, he came to conclude that, “performance is the true medium of a play”(373). Unlike other literary arts, plays offer performance as a unique form of interpretation which make actors “the living tissue of a theatrical text”(373). Thus, there is no denying that actors are the show and shouldn’t be neglected as puppets. Actors and critics both argue points through some support, but critics can only ever leave it to be plain text while actors argue it through onstage performance to an audience. If performed well, actors now appear to be the ones who seem to be more scholastic as they have done everything the critics could but have also brought it to life by performing. It is usually said that there are no actors without a show, but it might now also be said that there is no show without actors.