Critical Analysis & Theatre Productions AO5

Question 1

What is significant about the National Theatre 2022 production of Othello within A3S3?

Answer 1

In A3S3, Desdemona is trying to persuade Othello to reinstate Cassio’s position. In this production, Othello is boxing and Desdemona steps in between the punching bag and Othello.
-This signals she is putting herself in masculine danger
-She is so devout to Othello she is willing to sacrifice herself to preserve their love
D: ‘I have no judgement in an honest face.’ (about Cassio)
O: ‘Not now, sweet Desdemon, some other time’

Question 2

What is significant about the 2022 National Theatre production in A4S1?

Answer 2

• When Othello hits D he whistles her to come back
• Reflects a performative masculinity and how D has fallen so he treats her like an animal
• public act- makes it more severe as this affects O’s reputation

Question 3

What is significant about Desdemona sleeping before Othello kills her?

Answer 3

At this moment, O sees Desdemona in her perfect state, which is silent. Therefore, it can be read that Othello is play about silencing women’s voices, particularly as he ‘smothers her’

Question 4

How does The National Theatre 2022 production demonstrate a continuation of misogyny in Jacobean society?

Answer 4

• Emilia has a black eye
• In the line ‘and when they strike us’ she touches her cheek, symbolising the hopelessness of women against the patriarchy and the cruel oppression of women based on mistrust and control
• There are posters of past Othello productions on the wall suggesting a continued reiteration and history of feminine abuse and ignorance of women

Question 5

What happens at the beginning and end of the National Theatre 2022 production?

Answer 5

• The play starts and ends with someone sweeping up blood
• This cyclical structure shows the cyclical nature of violence

Question 6

How does Shakespeare subvert the strereotype of the Moor?

Answer 6

• Audiences at the time would expect Othello as the Moor to be at the heart of the conflict.
• However, by having Iago as the malignant villain, Shakespeare subverts this stereotype as even though Othello is partially to blame, it is Iago that causes the conflict and the tragedy

Question 7

What is Thomas Rhymer’s (1693) opinion of Othello

Answer 7

NEGATIVE
* Plot was untrue to life due to unrealistic behaviour of soldiers
* No satisfactory moral for the audience
* A ‘warning to good housewives to look to their linen’
* ‘A noble Venetian lady is to be murdered by our poet- in sober sadness purely for being a fool’

Question 8

What is Dr Johnson’s (1765) opinion of Othello?

Answer 8

POSITIVE
* True to life
* Othello is ‘ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution and obdurate (stubborn) in his revenge
* Play’s moral is to ‘not make an unequal match’

Question 9

What is Coleridge’s (early 1800s) opinion of Othello?

Answer 9

• Iago is bad because he is bad - he has ‘motiveless malignity’

Question 10

What is Swinburne’s opinion of Othello?

Answer 10

• Othello is the ‘noblest man of man’s making’

Question 11

What is A.C Bradley’s (1904) opinion of Othello?

Answer 11

OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE
* Othello is blameless- he is a man of intense feeling but self controlled
* The newness of Othello’s marriage makes his jealousy credible
* Othello never falls completely and we feel ‘admiration and love’ for the hero because we exult in the power of ‘love and man’s unconquerable mind’
* Love is the central idea in Othello

Question 12

What is T.S Eliot’s (1927) opinion of Othello?

Answer 12

• In Othello’s last speech, he is guilty of trying to cheer himself up to evade reality –> ‘a terrible exposure of human weakness’

Question 13

What is F.R Leavis’s (1952) opinion of Othello?

Answer 13

• Iago’s role is ‘subordinate and merely ancillary (supporting)’
• Othello has a propensity to jealousy and possesses a weak character, which is sorely tested by marriage’

Question 14

What is Marilyn French’s (1982) opinion of Othello?

Answer 14

FEMINIST
* Even though Desdemona chooses her own husband, she ‘accepts her culture’s diction that she must be obedient to males’
* D is ‘self-denying in the extreme’ when she dies
* Othello, Emilia, Cassio and Roderigo subscribe to feminine values which Iago destroys, whose ‘ordinary wisdom’ of the male world comes to dominate

Question 15

What is Lisa Jardine’s (1983) opinion of Othello?

Answer 15

FEMINIST
* Stage world of Jacobean drama is wholly masculine
* Desdemona is too knowing, too independent
* ‘The shadow of sexual frailty hovers over;
* She is punished for her waywardness
* ‘Exemplary passivity in adversity’

Question 16

What is Leonard Tennenhouse’s (1986) view of Othello?

Answer 16

FEMINIST
* Women are victims of excessive punishment even if they are innocent;
* Women are cast as monsters because of their sexuality
* D’s smothering is an example of silencing female political voice

Question 17

What is Ania Loomba’s (1987)’s opinion of Othello?

Answer 17

POST-COLONIAL
* Othello is about the complex relationship between a black man, a white woman and the state
* Women and black people exist as ‘the other’
* Othello has a split consciousness-> ‘he becomes simultaneously the keeper of the state and its opponent’

Question 18

Elise Walter
‘Emilia and Desdemona struggle to…

Answer 18

Emilia and Desdemona struggle to navigate and survive in a violent, male-dominated world

Question 19

Elise Walter
‘Emilia and Desdemona are fundamentally…

Answer 19

Emilia and Desdemona are fundamentally ‘unlike:’ maidservant and gentlewoman, older and younger, sexually experienced and naive’

Question 20

Elise Walter
Desdemona and Emilia are ‘protectors from _____, defenders of _____, and the only speakers of ____

Answer 20

‘Protectors from slander, defenders of honour, and the only speakers of truth’

Question 21

What is significant about Ola Ince’s production of Othello?

Answer 21

• Set within Scotland Yard- takes contemporary issues of racism and misogyny into Othello
• Othello’s conscious is portrayed by a second actor who expresses himself mostly through movement

Question 22

Veronika Walker on Cassio and Othello
‘Both men serve as loyal soldiers of the…
Cassio seems to represent…
Othello represets…

Answer 22

“Both men serve as loyal soldiers of the Venetian crown, but Cassio seems to represent… the suave, debonair, and eye-catching gallantry that attracts lady folk to military men, while Othello represents the wisdom, experience, and backbone”

Question 23

Ruth Vanita on male solidarity
“Violence on a male produces…

Answer 23

“Violence on a male produces an immediate counterreaction”

Question 24

Kiernan Ryan on jealousy
‘sexual jelaousy is shown to be…

Answer 24

“sexual jealousy is shown to be the rule in Venice rather than the exceptional emotional disorder in Othello”

Question 25

Catherine Bates
‘Love sponsors the forces of…

Answer 25

“Love sponsors the forces of life, creating human families and social groups in the teeth of man’s instinct for destruction”

Question 26

Kiernan Ryan on the handkerchief
it ‘draws an implicit parallel between…

Answer 26

“draws an implicit parallel between Bianca and the respectable wives Desdemona and Emilia, revealing the true nature of the married woman’s role by erasing the distinction between them”