Othello

Question 1

A.C. Bradley on nobility

Answer 1

‘the character is so noble’

Question 2

Samuel Johnson on Othello’s character

Answer 2

‘boundless in his confidence’
‘ardent in his affection’
‘inflexible in his resolution’
‘obdurate in his revenge’

Question 3

A.C. Bradley on trust

Answer 3

Othello’s ‘trust, where he trusts, is absolute’

Question 4

G. Wilson Knight on Othello’s language

Answer 4

‘Othello music’ – Othello’s language ‘holds an imaginative realism’ and a ‘certain exotic beauty’

Question 5

Paul A. Cantor

Answer 5

‘Othello seems to have stepped right out of the pages of some great martial epic, yet what he has stepped into is the world of Italian bedroom comedy’

Question 6

Coleridge on jealousy

Answer 6

‘the very opposite to a jealous man…a gallant Moor, of royal blood’

Question 7

Cox on secret marriage

Answer 7

‘questionable how noble it is to marry secretly without permission’

Question 8

John Bayley

Answer 8

‘wholly martial personality’

Question 9

F.R. Leavis on Othello’s central role

Answer 9

‘the chief personage in such a sense that the tragedy may fairly be said to be Othello’s character in action’

Question 10

F.R. Leavis on Othello’s distrustful nature (3)

Answer 10

‘Othello’s readiness to respond’
‘the essential traitor is within the gates’
‘Othello’s trust, then, can never have been in Desdemona’

Question 11

Jane Adamson on Othello’s emotions

Answer 11

‘When Othello does open himself to the full brunt of what he really feels, he utterly disintegrates’

Question 12

A.C. Bradley on the cause of Othello’s downfall

Answer 12

‘the wreck of his faith and love’

Question 13

Phillips on Othello’s nature

Answer 13

‘a man of action not a thinker’

Question 14

A.C. Bradley on Othello and emotion

Answer 14

‘emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect’

Question 15

G. Wilson Knight on Othello’s images

Answer 15

Othello remains ‘aloof’ just like his images are

Question 16

Hugh Quarsie on race

Answer 16

Played Othello in an RSC production

‘Shakespeare reverts to the convention as voiced by Iago: “These Moors are changeable in their wills”’

Question 17

F.R. Leavis on Othello and Desdemona’s relationship (3)

Answer 17

‘the tragedy is inherent in the Othello-Desdemona relationship’

Othello’s love is ‘composed very largely of ignorance of self as well as ignorance of her’

His love for Desdemona is more ‘a matter of self-centred and self-regarding satisfactions’

Question 18

Thomas Rhymer on the potential for ‘Othello’ to be a comedy

Answer 18

A man deceived into thinking he has been cuckolded would normally provide the basis for a comedy – link to ‘Much Ado About Nothing’

Question 19

A.C. Bradley on Othello’s murder of Desdemona

Answer 19

‘not in hate but in honour; in honour, and also in love.’

Question 20

Tony Tanner on Othello’s sexual drive

Answer 20

‘seems to dread the sexual act’

Question 21

Verdi on Othello’s culpability

Answer 21

Iago is ‘the Demon who sets everything in motion, but Othello is the one who acts’

Question 22

Kenneth Muir on how to play Othello and Iago

Answer 22

‘If Iago is played as an obvious villain, Othello and the other characters are reduced to credulous fools’

Question 23

Simpson on Othello, Iago and Desdemona

Answer 23

‘Othello allows Iago to replace Desdemona’

Question 24

Braham Murray on Othello’s race and its (lack of) importance

Answer 24

Othello’s race is intrinsic to his character but ‘it is not what Shakespeare is writing about. The crux of the play is the love between opposites’

Question 25

Coleridge on the unlikely nature of the love between Othello and Desdemona

Answer 25

Argues that Desdemona would never have fallen in love with Othello because he was black

Question 26

Valerie Traub on racism

Answer 26

‘internalised racial self-hatred’

Question 27

E.A.J. Honigmann

Answer 27

Argues that given the context of the time, Othello was not necessarily black

Question 28

Virginia M. Vaughn on Othello’s outsider status

Answer 28

‘The Moor…remains an alien in Venice’

Question 29

G. Wilson Knight on Othello’s centrality

Answer 29

‘Othello is dominated by its protagonist’

Question 30

Guy Hollands on Othello’s character development

Answer 30

‘His is the dynamic story, he is the most changed by the events of the play’

Question 31

Paterson Joseph on depicting Othello’s decline

Answer 31

‘challenge’ of depicting Othello’s shift from a ‘man who is calm in the face of danger’ to a ‘beast’

Question 32

Graham Bradshaw on Othello’s dynamic character

Answer 32

Othello’s character is not fixed – his perceptions of the other characters shift between extremes within the same scene

Question 33

T.S. Eliot on Othello’s final speech (4)

Answer 33

‘terrible exposure of human weakness’
‘cheering himself up’
‘ceased to think about Desdemona’
‘endeavouring to escape reality’

Question 34

Anthony Brennan on Othello’s final speech and death

Answer 34

‘In his final speech and his suicide he is able, as he was before the Senate of Venice, to express his nobility and to manifest himself rightly’

Question 35

A.C. Bradley on Othello’s character after his murder of Desdemona

Answer 35

Emerges as ‘a greater or nobler Othello still’ – he kills her out of love and regains or even surpasses his former nobility at the end

Question 36

Laurence Olivier

Answer 36

1964 performance as Othello saw him blacking up

Question 37

Patrick Stewart

Answer 37

Played a white Othello in 1997 but the entirety of the rest of the cast was black (race reversed production)

Question 38

Michael Neill on Othello’s language

Answer 38

Othello’s jealousy gives his language an ‘intensely erotic charge’

Question 39

John McRae on Othello’s final speech

Answer 39

‘a triumphant, brilliant and beautiful aria’