SOURCE: Doebler, Bettie Anne. “Othello's Angels: The Ars Morendi.” ELH 34, no. 2 (June 1967): 156-72.

In the following essay, Doebler examines Othello's last moments within the tradition of the art of dying well, with particular reference to popular iconography and devotional books. The critic asserts that by framing the Moor's precipitous death within this tradition, Shakespeare intensified the audience's sympathy for the despairing hero.

The second scene of the last act of Othello invokes the ars moriendi tradition, a popular tradition of comfort for the dying which stands in ironic contrast to Othello's own violent and despairing death. The most familiar prop in the iconography of Renaissance death is the bed, and the bed is the dominant presentational image in this scene, a bed that should probably be both well downstage and as massive as possible while still capable of being rolled forward. In many of the woodcuts that accompany...