Modern Age - Spring 2016 - 25

SHAKESPEARE, CERVANTES, AND THE ROMANCE OF THE REAL

of course as members of Shakespeare's audience we are implicitly
invited to wonder how our "audience" regards our performance
of the roles in our lives.
It is a moot point whether or to what extent Shakespeare or
his contemporaneous audience "believed in" fairies, but Shakespearean drama most assuredly suggests that there are realities
in our world that transcend simple realism-much the same as
Cervantes suggests that Don Quixote, foolishly seeking wonders
in chivalric romance, fails to see how he and his squire are really
romantic characters.
Like Don Quixote, A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy, but
the kind of ironic vision that Cervantes and Shakespeare exhibit
is not necessarily confined to comic writing. Romeo and Juliet, first
staged about the same time as A Midsummer Night's Dream, also
takes up the theme of "star-crossed lovers" and ends tragically,
but along the way it offers a similarly complex and ambivalent
image of love.

S

hakespeare treats this theme with consummate subtlety
in Othello (ca. 1604), a mature tragedy that represents the
playwright at the height of his powers. The dark-skinned Moor,
mercenary general of the military forces of Venice, wins the heart
of the fair Venetian lady Desdemona, to the horror of her father,
with the charm of his words:
She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I lov'd her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have us'd.
(1.3.167-69)

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Modern Age - Spring 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Spring 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover1
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Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Contents
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