Weather Disturbances in 3 Shakespeare Dramas

In Othello, we first come upon a significant weather disturbance at the end of Act I, which takes fuller form in the opening lines of Act II, Scene 1. Iago, the evil plotter against the sanity and marriage of Othello, declares at the end of Act I that for his plot to take shape and achieve success it will require the participation of evil forces working with the weather: "Hell and night/ Must bring this monstrous birth to the world's light" (Othello, Act I, Scene III, 404-405). The significance of this call by Iago on the forces of nature and of evil bespeak the dark form of his plot. Morally, he recognizes the evil in himself and in his plan, and he delights in that evil, eagerly calling on those dark forces. Dramatically, the weather disturbance which will soon be manifest signal that, indeed, fortune is on the side of the plotting Iago in his efforts to destroy Othello.

The storm at sea which begins the first scene in Act II is the manifestation of Iago's call for evil forces to aid him. Specifically, the storm at sea has separated Cassio and his friend, Othello, which is a symbolic separation for the spiritual division which will come between them, manufactured by Iago. As the Third Ge

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daughters against him (King Lear, Act II, Scene IV, 271-283). As in Othello, in King Lear we see Shakespeare using weather disturbances as a symbolic set of forces which dramatically accompany the moral disintegration of the major character. Lear calls on the ongoing storm to punish him, the world, and his daughters, but we are meant to see such ravings as the self-delusion of the old King as he himself internally storms forward to moral destruction: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!/ You cataracts and hurricanes, spout/ Till you have drenched our steeples, drown'd the cocks! . . . Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!/ Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters./ I tax not you, elements, with unkindness . . . " (King Lear, Act III, Scene 11, 1-3; 14-16). We are witnessing the psychological and moral disintegration of Lear as he converses with the storm, which he sees in part as the cause of his problems and at the same time, somehow, the possible cure. Macbeth is rich with meteorological import, beginning with the first stage direction: "Thunder and lightning. Enter three witches." As with Othello and Lear, Macbeth's moral shortcomings and fatal flaw are mirrored by the disturbances in the
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Approximate Word count = 2140
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)