Critical quotations

Question 1

Sanders

Answer 1

Othello’s psychological complexity and the tight focus on his relationships with Desdemona and Iago exert a ‘relentless emotional grip’ on the audience

Question 2

G. R. Elliot

Answer 2

For many, this play is ‘the world’s supreme secular poem of “human love divine”‘. Othello is one of the greatest lovers in dramatic literature. The play exerts a hold on our emotions because of the intensity of the central couple’s emotions.

Question 3

E. A. J. Honigmann - ‘Othello’ as a tragedy

Answer 3

claims Othello is ‘the most unbearably exciting’ of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Question 4

Caryl Phillips - Desdemona

Answer 4

Othello’s love of Desdemona ‘is the love of a possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war’

Question 5

Caryl Phillips - Othello

Answer 5

has commented that Othello is “a man of action, not a thinker”.
Also suggets that his position is tenuous: “In his very first speech he subsconsciously acknowledges the social pressure he is under” as a black man in a white world when he makes references to his service to the state.

Question 6

E. A. J. Honigmann - Iago

Answer 6

Believes Iago is a seductive character, who is able to get the audience to collude with him for a few reasons:

• Because his victims ‘lack humour, Iago appeals to us as more amusing’ than the other characters.
• Shakespeare’s ‘dramatic perspective compels us to see with his eyes, and to share his “jokes”.’
• ‘His humour also makes him seem cleverer than his victims’

Question 7

Rymer - Desdemona (1697!)

Answer 7

Dismissed Desdemona as a ‘silly Woman’. He was offended by Desdemona’s conversation with Iago in Act2sc1, commenting that Desdemona was behaving like any ‘Countrey Kitchin-maid with her Sweet-heart’.

Question 8

Othello’s psychological complexity and the tight focus on his relationships with Desdemona and Iago exert a ‘relentless emotional grip’ on the audience

Answer 8

Sanders

Question 9

For many, this play is ‘the world’s supreme secular poem of “human love divine”‘. Othello is one of the greatest lovers in dramatic literature. The play exerts a hold on our emotions because of the intensity of the central couple’s emotions.

Answer 9

G. R. Elliot

Question 10

claims Othello is ‘the most unbearably exciting’ of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Answer 10

E. A. J. Honigmann - ‘Othello’ as a tragedy

Question 11

Othello’s love of Desdemona ‘is the love of a possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war’

Answer 11

Caryl Phillips - Desdemona

Question 12

has commented that Othello is “a man of action, not a thinker”.
Also suggets that his position is tenuous: “In his very first speech he subsconsciously acknowledges the social pressure he is under” as a black man in a white world when he makes references to his service to the state.

Answer 12

Caryl Phillips - Othello

Question 13

Believes Iago is a seductive character, who is able to get the audience to collude with him for a few reasons:

• Because his victims ‘lack humour, Iago appeals to us as more amusing’ than the other characters.
• Shakespeare’s ‘dramatic perspective compels us to see with his eyes, and to share his “jokes”.’
• ‘His humour also makes him seem cleverer than his victims’
• ‘Dramatic perspective can even make us the villain’s accomplices: he confides in us’ - does he? how do we know that he is being honest?

Answer 13

E. A. J. Honigmann - Iago

Question 14

Dismissed Desdemona as a ‘silly Woman’.
He was offended by Desdemona’s conversation with Iago in Act2sc1, commenting that Desdemona was behaving like any ‘Countrey Kitchin-maid with her Sweet-heart’.

Answer 14

Rymer - Desdemona (1697!)

Question 15

Michael Long

Answer 15

Othello experiences a ‘collapse of the personality’

Question 16

Michael Mangan - Othello

Answer 16

Othello is ‘simultaneously the civilised man and the babarian’

Question 17

Michael Mangang - idealisation

Answer 17

• Othello’s ‘idealisations’ render him ‘vulnerable’
• this is because such highly constructed beliefs about women are ‘fragile and subject to collapse’

Question 18

Neely - Desdemona

Answer 18

Desdemona represents a ‘middle-ground’ between ‘abstinence and lust’

Question 19

Kott

Answer 19

‘Iago is a diabolical stage manager’

Question 20

Bradley - Iago

Answer 20

‘Iago’s actions are those of a man who has been unjustly wronged’

Question 21

A.C. Bradley - Iago

Answer 21

‘the almost superhuman art of Iago’

Question 22

C. Phillips (probs Caryl)

Answer 22

‘Othello feels constantly threatened and profoundly insecure’

Question 23

Caryl Phillips - fatal mistake

Answer 23

‘the ‘fatal mistake’ that Othello makes is to question his own judgement’

Question 24

Gardner - Desdemona

Answer 24

Desdemona is ‘love’s martyr’: by dying she wins Othello’s love again.

Question 25

Sean Benson

Answer 25

'Othello' is a domestic tragedy, of less worth than political tragedies that deal with the fate of nations

Question 26

Francis Dolan - Othello

Answer 26

Othello is a 'domestic tyrant who murders his wife on spurious grounds'.

Question 27

Coleridge - Iago

Answer 27

Iago is a 'motiveless malignity'

Question 28

A. C. Bradley - Othello

Answer 28

Othello is a romantic figure who we should look at with 'admiration and love'

Question 29

Rymer - Othello

Answer 29

Othello belongs in 'a Bloody Farce' because he is the archetype of a foolish cuckold

Question 30

Newman on Othello's heroism

Answer 30

Othello is 'represented as heroic and tragic at a historical moment when the only role' Black men 'played onstage was that of a villain of low status'

Question 31

T.S. Eliot on Othello's character

Answer 31

in Othello’s last speech he is ‘cheering himself up. He is endeavouring to escape reality...' 'Othello succeeds in turning himself into a **pathetic figure**, by adopting an aesthetic rather than a moral attitude' directly challenges A.C Bradley's view that we should look at Othello with 'admiration and love'

Question 32

Leavis on Othello's love

Answer 32

considered Othello’s love to be ‘a matter of self-centred and self-regarding satisfactions – pride, sensual possessiveness, appetite, love of loving.’

Question 33

T.S. Elliot on Othello's final speech

Answer 33

believed he had ‘never read a more convincing exposure of human weakness – of universal human weakness - than the last great speech of Othello.’

Question 34

Woolf

Answer 34

‘Othello, in his magnanimous ways, is egotistic.'

Question 35

Traub

Answer 35

Othello is vulnerable because he internalises Iago's negative view of Black men, which undermines his sense of self.

Question 36

Newman on the handkerchief

Answer 36

'possession of a lady's handkerchief was considered proof of adultery'

Question 37

Phillips' view of Othello's line: "she had eyes and chose me"

Answer 37

reveals Othello's 'gross insecurity'

Question 38

G.K. Hunter on Iago's racial prejudice

Answer 38

Iago's racial prejudice means that he wants to make Othello's deeds 'fit in with the prejudice that his face... excited'. (Iago wants to 'prove' Othello's evilness as a man of colour)

Question 39

G.K. Hunter on 'Othello'

Answer 39

'a tragedy of the loss of faith'

Question 40

Gardner on the murder

Answer 40

the murder has 'the stamp of the heroic' upon it. '**The act is heroic because Othello acts from inner necessity**... The act is also heroic in its absoluteness, and finality... It must be done.'

Question 41

Cavell on Othello's opening speech Act5Sc2

Answer 41

This speech is **'part of a ritual of denial'** (of responsibility?)

Question 42

Vaughan on the concerns of *Othello*

Answer 42

'although Othello's racial identity is clearly a factor in Shakespeare's text, **when the play was first performed the audience would not have seen it as squarely focussed on race** as we do'

Question 43

Greenblatt on narratives

Answer 43

characters in the play are continuously manipulating narratives about themselves and others in order to gain control over how information is disseminated.

Question 44

Ryan on Othello and Desdemona's behaviour

Answer 44

Desdemona and Othello 'act... as if they were already free citizens of a truly civilised future, instead of prisoners'

Question 45

Smith on the handkerchief

Answer 45

'a portable version or extension of Othello'

Question 46

Jardine on the willow song

Answer 46

Without Emilia's speech, the willow scene 'becomes a stylised, emblematic representation of female passivity'

Question 47

Loomba on the play

Answer 47

'a fantasy of interracial love... and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence'

Question 48

Rymer on Iago

Answer 48

merely believes Iago to be a jealous 'booby' rather than a ruthless "demi-devil" (Act5sc2)

Question 49

Hazlitt on Othello

Answer 49

Othello has **'blood of the most inflammable kind'**

Question 50

E.A.J. Honnigmann on Desdemona

Answer 50

it is possible to see Desdemona as **'the strongest, the most heroic person in the play'**. Her last words are 'an act of forgiveness'. additionally, **Desdemona portrays 'woman as man likes to reinvent her'**

Question 51

E.A.J. Honnigmann on the end of the play

Answer 51

'Love and Goodness defeat Evil' at the end of the play

Question 52

E.A.J. Honnigmann on love

Answer 52

'one wonders... **whether the men are capable of unselfish love**'.

Question 53

Dr Johnson on Iago

Answer 53

Iago, from the first scene until the last, is **'hated and despised'**

Question 54

Bradshaw on Emilia

Answer 54

Emilia is not a proto-feminist but a **'cryptofeminist'** due to her need to conceal her progressive ideals

Question 55

Stanley Cowell on the play

Answer 55

'the tragedy arises from a horror of female sexuality'

Question 56

Wain on Iago

Answer 56

'love had been left out of his composition'

Question 57

Schlegel

Answer 57

'the return of a barbarous man to his uncivilised roots'