key quotations Flashcards
Act 5Sc2, Othello: “But why should honour…
“… outlive honesty?”
Act 1sc3, Iago: ‘I hate the Moor:/
‘…And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets/ He has done my office’
Act1Sc3, Iago: ‘Put money…
‘… in thy purse’
Act5Sc2, Othello: ‘smooth as…’
“Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow”
‘… monumental alabaster’
Besides the beauty of alabaster—yet another precious substance—its coldness and stillness are the keynotes, and the same with snow. Earlier he had been troubled to feel her hand, “Hot, hot, and moist,” and sense there “a young and sweating devil . . . That commonly rebels” (3.4.45–49). What he wants, it seems, is a beautiful form with no wayward life at all.
Act5Sc2, Othello: ‘I will kill thee/…’
‘… And love thee after.’
(Desdemona as ‘love’s martyr’ - Gardener)
Act2Scene1, Cassio: ‘The …. Desdemona’, ‘our captain’s captain’
‘divine’
overly obsequious language
Act2sc1, Iago: ‘you are pictures out of doors,…
‘…bells in your parlours…’
long list emphasises Iago’s unwavering view of women as elusive, deceitful and duplicitous.
Act2sc1, Desdemona: ‘These are old fond paradoxes to…’
‘make fools laugh i’th’ ale-house’
Act2Sc3, Cassio and Iago:
‘she is sport for Jove’ vs
‘fresh and delicate creature’
Othello repetition (losing control of words and language) Act3sc3 and Act4sc1
Act3sc3: ‘Oh, blood, blood, blood!’
‘So, so, so, so…’
Act4sc1: ‘But yet the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iago!’
Othello switching to prose like Iago in Act4sc1after this poetic line:
‘As doth the raven o’er the infectious house’
Act2sc3, Cassio: ‘Reputation, reputation, reputation!…’
‘I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.’
(lapses from blank verse into prose)
Act3sc4, Emilia: ‘They are all but stomachs, and we but food;…’
‘…when they are full, they belch us.’
proto-feminist
Act4sc1, Lodovico: ‘My lord, this would…’
‘… not be believed in Venice.’
Act4sc1, Iago: ‘Or to be naked…’
‘… with her friend in bed’
prurience and painting elaborate sexual scenarios
What happens to Othello during Act4sc1?
He falls into a trance
How does Cassio refer to himself in relation to Bianca?
as her ‘customer’
Act1sc1, Iago about Cassio: “A great arithmetician… a Florentine”
Cassio also distinguished as non-Venetian but, unlike Othello, is respected as a cultural insider. He is also, notably, the only character that survives besides Iago and the other minor characters and becomes the governor at the end.
Act3sc4, Othello and Desdemona: ‘talk me of Cassio’ vs ‘The handkerchief!’
their speech is contrapuntal, no longer ‘well tuned’ as at the start of the play
“I am not what I am”, Iago
diacope emphasises Iago’s duplicity/ that duplicity will become an important idea in the play
blunt monosyllables and simplistic language in contrast to complexity of imagery and grammatical structures in the preceeding speech
“ensnare as great a fly as Cassio”
grotesque animal imagery to demean. Iago as a ‘diabolical stage manager’ (Kott)
“So will I turn her virtue into pitch,/And out of her goodness…”
“…make the net/That shall enmesh them all.”
- imagery suggests Iago is setting a trap for his prey
- suggests Iago has an innate contempt for innocence and goodness
“… beware, my lord, of jealousy;/ It is the green-eyed monster…”
“…that doth mock the meat it feeds on.”
(also appears in ‘The Merchant of Venice’, another play set in Venice. Perhaps this suggests that in open societies like Venice where women ‘let heaven see the pranks they dare not show their husbands’, men are more prone to jealousy?)
“In Venice, they do let God see the pranks…”
“…they dare not show their husbands.”
