Aspects of tragedy

Question 1

Century the play was written

Answer 1

17th century

Question 2

What does the play challenge

Answer 2

Cultural norms of what it means to be noble and moral

Question 3

Genetic conventions of tragedy in the play

Answer 3

• A hero who is ‘great of heart’ but has an overweening pride and makes a fatal error of judgment
• A hero who is exploited by an unfathomable villain
• A hero who brings about suffering and death to others and inevitably suffers a tragic fall and dies

Question 4

Aristotle’s ‘recognition’

Answer 4

significantly, othello’s knowledge comes too late, a key aspect of tragedy.

Question 5

The play as a domestic tragedy

Answer 5

Othello and Desdemona have a passionate love which could be seen as a threat to the rules established by patriarchal order; their intense, emotionally charged and equal marriage challenges ideas about class, race and the conformity of women. The play ultimately suggests that if the social order is to continue, this marriage and what it represents must be destroyed.

Question 6

Where the main action of the play is set

Answer 6

Cyprus

Question 7

Where the beginning of the play is set

Answer 7

Venice

Question 8

Venice in 17th century

Answer 8

Controlled by wealthy merchant classes who bought power.

Question 9

Why Shakespeare uses the setting of Cyprus

Answer 9

It allows him to place his characters in a world without the boundaries that would be imposed upon them by an established city state.

Question 10

Cyprus and religion

Answer 10

Cyprus is a fortified outpost of civilisation, on the edge of Christian territory, a barrier between Christian values and the infidels, the enemies of the true faith

Question 11

How Cyprus leads to Desdemona’s vulnerability

Answer 11

Cyprus is less controlled, a bastion of male power where Desdemona, alone and isolated from her Venetian support system, is vulnerable to the machinations of arch manipulator Iago.

Question 12

The effect of the war ending in Cyprus

Answer 12

As a result of no more war, the soldiers in their claustrophobic confines have time to turn on each other without the controlling order of Venice.

Question 13

The effect that the relocation from Venice to Cyprus has on Iago’s plot

Answer 13

Venice is ordered, in which Iago’s attempts are easily thwarted, the relocation allows him to work more successfully, ensnaring all the weaving in his plot.

Question 14

Othello’s ranking in the army and society

Answer 14

Holds high military rank in the Venetian army as general.
He is not a European king of nobleman so in some ways is a figure much closer to that of the ‘ordinary man’ than most of Shakespeare’s other tragic heroes.
No status in society due to his colour and race
He is a black man, a Moor and was sold to slavery

Question 15

How Othello has required status for classic tragic hero

Answer 15

He is foreign royalty and has a culture which is exotic, mysterious and extraordinary. He is an outsider to European culture.

Question 16

What does the handkerchief represent about Othello

Answer 16

It’s strawberry spotted with magic in its web.

Question 17

In what way is Othello a worthy hero

Answer 17

Iago attempts to blacken his name at the start of the play and rails bitterly against what he feels is Othello’s judgement and mistreatment of him, yet when the audience meet Othello for the first time he is measured, dignified and commanding.

Question 18

Othello’s language

Answer 18

Shakespeare gives him musical language, elevating his status.

Question 19

Ways in which Othello is noble and admirable

Answer 19

• An excellent general
• Respects his wife and gives her voice to speak for herself
• Confident to speak of his love in public

Question 20

Othello’s fatal flaw

Answer 20

Jealousy, which Iago exploits to the full

Question 21

The effect of Othello’s flaw on the audience

Answer 21

His flaw connects him with audiences who also might have felt the stab of the green eyed monster.
Othello’s fate is perhaps more likely to inspire pity and fear because of that connection.

Question 22

The driving tragic impulse of the play

Answer 22

Othello’s fall from nobility and grace, from articulate general to brainwashed puppet of Iago.

Question 23

How does Othello’s tragic stature rise

Answer 23

When he realises what he has thrown away and that he is elevated by the quality of his speech.

Question 24

What does Othello imagine before taking his own life

Answer 24

He imagines meeting Desdemona at the last judgement hurling his soul from heaven. He consolidates the vision by committing suicide.

Question 25

How did Leavis see his final speech

Answer 25

He saw it as self dramatising, with its focus not on his victims, but on himself and how he will be remembered.

Question 26

What does Coleridge say about Iago’s soliloqueys?

Answer 26

He says that they reveal ‘the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity’

Question 27

Iago’s motives

Answer 27

• Cassio has been promoted to the post he believed was his
• He suspects Othello to have cuckolded him
• He is jealous of Cassio who has a daily beauty in his life that makes Iago ugly

Question 28

What kind of villain is Iago

Answer 28

An opportunistic villain whose ideas gather momentum as he tastes success.

Question 29

Viewing Iago from a theological position

Answer 29

• Most of his activities take place in darkness: he is associated with hell and night.
• Possible to see him as a devil incarnate, with his ancestors in the medieval Mystery Plays

Question 30

Iago as a stage Machiavel

Answer 30

Possible to read him as a stage machiavel who tortures and torments those who are good, using their goodness to ‘enmesh them’.

Question 31

Iago as a vehicle of the state

Answer 31

• Voicing its patriarchal contempt of outsiders and women.
• His self interests are the self interests of those who govern
• He understand Venetian attitudes and he becomes the state’s agent in removing those who transgress its unwritten laws
• What he achieves in the destruction of Othello and Desdemona could be seen as what the state desires.