A1 Flashcards
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“I am not what I am”
AO1 - Iago’s deception / Iago x Othello
AO2 - Dramatic irony
AO3 - Gli Hecatommithi by Cinthio (Addition of characters, exploring psychology)
- The Renaissance; great age of tragedy, Iago considered most sophisticated Machiavellian antagonist
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“Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags!”
AO1 - (Women as) Possession / Femininity / Masculinity
AO2 - Placement of ‘your daughter’ in the middle of the sentence
AO3 - Women in Jacobean society commodities of men
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“Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe.”
AO1 - Prejudice
AO2 - Repetition of ‘now’ evoking a sense of urgency and extremity
- Juxtaposition of ‘black’ and ‘white’ creating colour imagery; antithesis of white which connotes purity, extreme corruption of innocence
- Black sheep suggests rarity and ‘outcast’,
AO3 - Projects Elizabethan/Jacobean society’s xenophobia and prejudice against ‘outsiders’
- Animal imagery: Great Chain of Being; Othello reduced to bottom of social hierarchy
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“Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father and may thee”
AO1 - Deception / Appearance vs. reality
AO2 - Foreshadowing of Othello doubting Desdemona’s faith
- Rhyme: prophetic undertones
- Motif of eyes; deception and reality
AO3 - Venice and women: sexual liberty meant men/husbands were typically suspicious of their wives being involved in infidelity
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“Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.”
AO1 - Deception / Iago
AO2 - Motif of hell: associates Iago with devilish intentions
- Imagery of monster: foreshadowing of Othello’s downfall
AO3 - SDS, Gli Hecatommithi (soliloquies)
AO5 - Dramatic perspective can make us the villain’s accomplice (Honigmann)
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“She loved me for the dangers I had passed, / And I loved her that she did pity them.”
AO1 - Marriage / Love / Reputation
AO2 - Parallelism of “she loved me” and “I loved her”, emphasises reciprocity and mutuality of their marriage
- Chiasmus created through the ‘criss-cross’ pattern of “she” and “I” visually emphasises the strength of their bond
AO3 - Prejudice and wariness circulating interracial marriage
