Othello: Critcal Quotes- Characters

Question 1

Sanders:

Answer 1

“A racial and religious melting pot”

Question 2

Honigmann: (1) - First…

Answer 2

“first scene to the last hated and despitsed.”

Question 3

Honigmann: (2) confides

Answer 3

“Dramatic perspective can even make us the villain’s accomplices: he confides in us”

Question 4

Honigmann: (3) godlike

Answer 4

“He enjoys a godlike sense of power”

Question 5

Honigmann: (4) excels

Answer 5

“excels in short-term tactics, not in long-term strategy”

Question 6

Honigmann: (5) he has neither

Answer 6

“he has neither felt nor understood the spirital impulses that bind ordinary human beigns together”

Question 7

Honigmann: (6) Iago’s undoing

Answer 7

“Emilia’s love (of Desdemona) is Iago’s undoing”

Question 8

Leavis: (1) tragic

Answer 8

“there is no tragic self discovery”

Question 9

Leavis: (2) pathetic

Answer 9

“The noble Othello is now seen as tragically pathetic”

Question 10

Leavis: (3) stoic-captain

Answer 10

“the stoic-captain whose few words know their full sufficiency.”

Question 11

Leavis: (4) Inseperatly

Answer 11

“Inseperatly the man of action”

Question 12

Leavis: (5) readiness

Answer 12

“Not so much Iago’s diabolic intellect as Othello’s
readiness to respond”

Question 13

Loomba: (1) fantasy

Answer 13

“a fantasy of interracial love and social tolerance”,
“and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence”

Question 14

Loomba: (2) predisposed

Answer 14

“Othello is predisposed to believing… the inherent duplicity of women”

Question 15

Loomba: (3) fragility

Answer 15

“the fragility of an ‘unnatural’ relationship between a young, white, well-born women, and an older black soldier”

Question 16

Loomba: (4) dangerous

Answer 16

“Venice’s openness could also be viewed as dangerous by a society itself fairly suspicious of outsiders”

Question 17

Jardine: (1) accused

Answer 17

“All three are wrongfully accused of sexual misdemeanour”

Question 18

Jardine: (2) identical

Answer 18

” the identical charge of sexual promiscuity”

Question 19

Jardine: (3) whore

Answer 19

“It does not just matter that a woman is called ‘whore’, it matters when and where she is”

Question 20

Bradley: (1) retaliate

Answer 20

“She cannot retaliate even in speech.”

Question 21

Bradley: (2) a man of

Answer 21

“Othello is a man of mystery, exoticism and intense feeling”

Question 22

Bradley: (3) trust

Answer 22

“His trust… is absolute.”

Question 23

Bradley: (4) conciousness

Answer 23

“The conciousness of his high position never leaves him,,, he is as anxious as Hamlet not to be misjudged by the great world”

Question 24

Newman: (1) norms

Answer 24

“Both Othello and Desdemona deviate from the norms of the sex/race system in which they
participate from the margins.”

Question 25

O’Toole: (1) inner fears

Answer 25

“There is no Othello without Iago: it is Iago who draws out his inner fears and longings”

Question 26

O’Toole: (2) byword

Answer 26

“Venice is also a byword for exotic vices and unbridled passions”

Question 27

O’Toole: (3) external/internal

Answer 27

“Othello is the story of how external things- politics, culture, prejudices- become internal, become part of the most intimate details of a mans thoughts and feelings”

Question 28

O’Toole: (4) blackness

Answer 28

“blackness, or rather the white mans fear of blackness fuels much of the play’s imagery”

Question 29

O’Toole: (5) brilliance

Answer 29

“Iago’s brilliance lies not in what h puts into Othello’s mind, but what he draws out of it.”

Question 30

O’Toole: (6) hates

Answer 30

“What he hates when he hates her is himself, the image of his own blackness”

Question 31

Kastan: (1) genre

Answer 31

“Tragedy, for Shakespeare, is the genre of uncompensated suffering”

Question 32

Kastan: (2) worldview

Answer 32

“It is the emotional truth of the struggle rather than the metaphysical truth of the worldview that is at the center of these plays”