Othello

Question 1

General

Answer 1

‘possible people caught in a net of circumstance which their characters make them unable to escape’
Smith

Question 2

Honest

Answer 2

‘the 52 uses of honest and honesty in Othello are a very queer business there is no other play in which Shakespeare worries a word like that’
Empson

Question 3

Othello

Answer 3

‘despite being a christian soldier, othello cannot shed either his blackness or his ‘Turkish’ attributes’ Loomba

Question 4

Gender & sexuality

Answer 4

‘pathological male animus towards sexuality’
Boose

Question 5

Desdemona

Answer 5

‘is killed not only by Othello and Iago but by all those who see her humiliated and beaten in public, and fail to intervene’
Vanita

Question 6

Iago

Answer 6

‘the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs’
Johnson

Question 7

Tragedy

Answer 7

‘the tragedy that speaks most directly and powerfully to current interests’
Pechter

Question 8

Desdemona

Answer 8

‘accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males’
French

Question 9

Othello

Answer 9

his tragedy begins when ‘he begins to forget he is black’
Phillips