Othello's Sacrifice: Essays on Shakespeare and Romantic Tradition

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald-Murray is an assistant professor of English at
the University of Western Ontario.

The focus of this small volume of essays is not Shakespeare, as the
title suggests, but rather the obscure 19th-century philosopher Rudolf
Steiner.

The first two essays discuss the failure of post-Romantic critics to
recognize and account for Shakespeare’s “absorption in a pattern of
alienation from romantic-transcendental and formal-aesthetic solutions
to tragedy.” O’Meara argues that while previous critics have been
successful in highlighting the bard’s creative imagination and his
means of dramatically presenting those imaginings to his audience, their
“incarnational enthusiasm” goes too far in claiming a wholeness of
theme and image, represented in the bared soul and mind of the tragic
hero. In neither essay, however, does he offer a creative or critical
response to the issues he has raised. It is not until the third and
final essay, which occupies more than half of the volume, that he
introduces the critical missing link—the system that he claims will
illuminate the mystified and provide enlightenment for a new generation
of Shakespearian scholars: Anthroposophy.

O’Meara’s analysis of previous critics provides new insight into
both the potential and the limitations of Romanticism as an interpretive
tool; in doing so, it opens new vistas of further critical enquiry.
However, his advocacy of Steiner’s theories, which he presents with
the fervor of a disciple, taints his entire argument by shifting it from
literary criticism to outright proselytizing. This impression is
heightened by his assertion that universities must open themselves to
Anthroposophy, with the understanding that true understanding, or
“initiation,” can be achieved only “by a certain way of living
into one’s thinking—amounting to a vocation—which a devoted study
of Anthroposophy provides.” Thus, it appears that it is not Steiner
who will lead us to a better understanding of Shakespeare, but rather a
desire to understand Shakespeare that will lead us to the higher
experience of Anthroposophy.