Othello – Does it rank high or low? William Shakespeare's tragic play Othello has received high ratings from some critics and low ratings from others. We delve deeper into this issue in this essay. In Shakespeare and Tragedy John Bayley explains why modern audiences feel so exasperated when seeing this play: But Othello is not freed from this sense of his own situation: he is trapped by it. like in a trap. And instead of being freed from the hero's consciousness of things and sharing it with him, we are forced to stay outside of Othello's illusion. The work captures us in its own artifice of incomprehension. And for most viewers these days, the sensation seems to be more exasperating than thrilling or painful. (200-201) The feeling of exasperation on the part of the public is not universal. Lily B. Campbell in Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes explains the factor that made Othello significant among the tragedies of his time: The Moor takes it upon himself to kill his wife in the name of justice; blood is stained. And in the second scene, the murder scene, he cries out again as he looks at the sleeping Desdemona and kisses her: Oh, balmy breath, you almost persuade Justice to break her sword! It is this insistence on passion that drives men to seek to take the place of God and, through private revenge, to carry out the laws of God that make Othello significant in the tragedy of his time. Othello sees his acts as an expression of justice, worked out in the most perfect balance between action and punishment. (172)If the judicial aspect of private revenge gave the work popularity then, what gives it fame today? Othello seems to have a beauty that is difficult to match, thus ranking the opera high. Helen Gardner in “Othello: A Tragedy of Beauty and Fortune” touches on this beauty that allows this play to stand out from the Bard's other tragedies: Among Shakespeare's tragedies Othello is supreme in one quality: beauty. Much of his poetry, in the imagery, in the perfection of the phrase, and in the stability of the rhythm, slender but firm, enchants the sensual imagination. This type of beauty Othello shares with Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra; it is a corollary of the theme he shares with them.