Othello – His Charm Let's examine William Shakespeare's play Othello in order to determine exactly which characteristics of the play are the most important ones that give it such universal appeal. Othello would seem to have a beauty that is difficult to match. 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. But Othello is also notable for another kind of beauty. Except for the mundane scene with the clown, everything is immediately relevant to the central issue; no scene requires critical justification. The work is of rare intellectual beauty, satisfying the imagination's desire for order and harmony between the parts and the whole. Finally, the work has an intense moral beauty. It makes an immediate appeal to the moral imagination, in its presentation in the figure of Desdemona of a love that does not change "when it finds alteration", but "sustains it to the brink of misfortune". (139)The audience's ability to identify with the characters in Othello – this is of primary importance. MH Abrams in The Norton Anthology of English Literature attributes the playwright's universality to his characters as well as the relevance of his themes:A preliminary document in the First Folio is by the great Shakespeare......middle of the folio.... . .inceton University Press, 1965.Gardner, Helen. "Othello: a tragedy of beauty and fortune." Readings on tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Reprinted from “The Noble Moor.” Lectures of the British Academy, n. 9, 1955. Heilman, Robert B. “The Role We Give Shakespeare.” Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Levin, Harry. General introduction. The bank of the Shakespeare River. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974.Shakespeare, William. Othello. In Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No lines nos.Wilkie, Brian and James Hurt. “Shakespeare”. Literature of the Western world. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.