Othello AO5

Question 1

Iago

Answer 1

• Honnigmann: Iago enjoys a “godlike sense of power”
• Bradley: Iago has “supreme intellect” and that makes him dangerous.
• Levis: Iago’s success isn’t due to his diabolical intellect, but due to Othello’s “weakness and hubris”
• McKellen: “Iago is so fascinating primarily [because he’s] so successful.”

Question 2

Othello and Desdemona’s relationship

Answer 2

• Leavis: Othello’s love for Desdemona is ‘much more a matter of self-centred and self-regarding satisfactions’
• Berry: ‘[Othello’s] passionate nature leads to murderous violence, but it also contains deep love and tenderness.’
• Berkeley: ‘Her love for Othello is not depicted as [primarily] a physical attraction.’
• Harewood: “Othello’s love for Desdemona is a powerful, all-consuming emotion. It’s unlikely he’s ever felt anything like it before.”
• Stewart*: “Desdemona helps to remove the chaos from his life”
• Stubbs: “Desdemona’s devotion to Othello is characterised by an enormous naivety.”

Question 3

Jealousy

Answer 3

• Wilson: Jealousy and revenge is like a disease, and it is so “structurally rampant in the play that its causes and consequences” affects “all agents”’
• Olson: “Jealousy was the fear of losing possession [and] the fear of cuckoldry.”

Question 4

Race

Answer 4

• Traub: “Othello is vulnerable because he internalises Iago’s negative viewpoint of black men.”
• Loomba: the conflict of the play is “between the racism of a white patriarchy and the threat posed to it by both a black man and a white woman.”
• Berry: “[Desdemona] does not say that she found Othello’s blackness beautiful but that she saw his visage in his mind”
• Berry: “She is secure among Venetians, insecure and uneasy in her marriage to a man she [doesn’t] fully understand.”

Question 5

Gender

Answer 5

• Marilyn French: Women are divided into 2 camps by men, “whores or virgins”; each exist mutually exclusively.
• Lisa Jardine: Desdemona is a “stereotype of female passivity”

* Bevington: Othello is a “stereotype of the anxious male beset by fears of womanly duplicity”

• Burgess: “when Othello first accepts [that] Desdemona has been unfaithful to him. In his mind, he has not only been cuckolded, he has also been emasculated.”
• Paster: “Desdemona’s fate in the bedroom scene is universal. We (women) know our own vulnerability and we could all be Desdemona”
• Greer: “Desdemona shouldn’t have given in to her fascination for Othello. Not because she can’t deal with it, but due to her knowledge that he couldn’t .”
• Loomis: “[Shakespeare’s plays] may indeed have been influenced by what his daughters were up to, or what he was afraid they were up to.”

Question 6

Otherness

Answer 6

• Loomba: The play is a nightmare of “racial hatred and male violence”
• Loomba: Women and black people exist as “the other”

Question 7

Identity

Answer 7

• O’Toole: “There is no Othello without Iago.”
• Elliot: “Iago simply exploits a weakness that already existed in Othello’s character.”
• Berry: “Iago’s notorious artistry…extends well to characterisation, the Othello he in many ways creates comes to see himself as his own stereotype.”
• Lester: “The actor is forced to dig into themselves and find the deep insecurity that comes from someone who is so afraid of being hurt”

Question 8

Hate

Answer 8

• Wayne: “Iago is the presence of misogynist discourse in the Renaissance.”
• Kermode: “Iago is motivated by more than a mere desire for revenge.”
• McKellen: “Iago’s final refusal to speak is an extraordinary act of evil.”
• Adshead: “Iago’s contempt for other people is profound.”

Question 9

Military

Answer 9

• Burgess: “Othello’s military background is
  a major factor in the disaster which overwhelms him.”
• Berry: “[Othello’s] courage serves him well in war but is ill-adapted to the complexities of peace.”

Question 10

Honesty

Answer 10

• Burgess: “Othello has been conditioned to expect absolute loyalty and honesty from his subordinates.”

Question 11

Human experience

Answer 11

• Hytner: “the play works best when the audience is pulled into a sense of solidarity with the title character…if we understand all his vulnerabilities then we have a successful play”
• Stewart: “Othello is in agony. To obliterate the reason for that agony is to relieve the pain that he is suffering from.”
• Greenblatt: “Othello’s downfall is a portrait of what it is to be human.”

Question 12

Performance

Answer 12

• Greenblatt: “the handkerchief scene is the most powerful example of dramatic irony in all of Shakespeare, where the audience feels a compulsion to intervene, and stop what’s going on on stage.”