Othello Character Quotes Flashcards
Quotes to show Othello’s ability to rise above provocation.
“Whither will you that I go/ to answer this your charge”
Quotes to show Othello as being honest
“I must be found”
Quote to show Othello as being confident
Othello begins the play with great confidence that his ‘service’ will ‘out-tongue’ (Act 1, Scene 2) any complaints against him.
Quotes to show Othello believes he is ignorant to society
he is still aware that his decisive and strict military upbringing renders him ignorant to society’s ways and the company of women.
He himself states ‘little of this great world can I speak’ (Act 1, Scene 2).
How does Othello describe his language?
rude’ in his speech and ‘little blessed with the soft phrase of peace’.
Quotes to show Othello as being calm, honourable and controlled
“Hold your hands…”
“Most potent, grave and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approved good masters”
Quotes to show Othello as being noble
“our noble and valiant general”
-Act Two Scene Three is dominated by this idea
Quotes to show Othello having self control
“Let’s teach ourselves that honourable stop,
Not to outsport discretion” - Act Two Scene 3
What does the Duke call Othello?
“more fair than black”
Quotes to show how Brabantio does not approve of Desdemona and Othello’s marriage
‘An extravagant and wheeling stranger of here and everywhere’
Othello and Desdemona’s marriage is said to be “against all rules of nature” in Act one Scene 3. We can see that this interracial marriage was not deemed at natural when Brabantio openly says he believes Othello used “witchcraft” on his daughter in order to seduce her.
Quotes to show Othello’s fatal flaws and weakness
Jealously/Passion:
“my passion having my best judgements collied
Assays to lead the way”
His love for Desdemona:
“When I love thee not,/ Chaos is come again”
Vulnerable/Manipulated Easily:
“What dost thou say…Why dost thou ask…Why of thy thought… What dost thou think?”
Quotes to show the decline in Othello’s language
As Othello declines his language begins to mirror the baseness of his tormentor, from poetic verse and complex imagery to repetitive, limited prose:
His language changed from ‘she gave me for my pains a world of kisses’ (Act 1, Scene 3), to the monosyllabic repetition of ‘O, blood, blood, blood’ (Act 3, Scene 3).
Only on his deathbed, when he realises Desdemona’s innocence and his own ignorance is Othello’s poetry restored, and he is again differentiated from
What does Othello ask the characters at the end of the play to do?
“speak of me as I am” - contrasts nicely to “I am not what I am” Iago
Quotes to show the decline of Othello:
When he kills Desdemona he is merciless: “By and by. - She’s dead…Ha! No more moving?”
“Devil!…O devil devil!…Out of my sight!” - to desdemona
Breaks into “savage madness”
Ludovico cannot believe the change in Othello he asks, “is this the noble moor…? Is this the nature whom passion could not shake”
Emilia: “Heaven, keep the monster from Othello’s mind”
Mental agitation:
“Lie with her? Lie on her?…Zounds, that’s fulsome. Handkerchief - confession-hankerchief!…O devil!” - (othello falls into a trance) visual representation of Othello being under Iago’s power)
Inner conflict Quotes
“I think my wife be honest, and I think she is not;
I think that thou art just, and I think thou art not”
