Othello Critical Readings

Question 1

Loomba on why Othello is so easily manipulated

Answer 1

‘Iago’s machinations are effective because Othello is predisposed to believing his pronouncements about the inherent duplicity of women, and the necessary fragility of an ‘unnatural’ relationship between a young, white, well-born woman and an older black soldier.’

Question 2

Honigmann on Iago’s role in the play

Answer 2

‘He is the play’s chief humourist.’

Question 3

Dhillon on virtuous characters

Answer 3

‘Virtuous characters, by their very nature, are too credulous, trusting and unsuspecting, whereas the villains are so extremely wary.’

Question 4

Dhillon on villains

Answer 4

‘Villains are generally subtle and
ingenious, excellent role players and actors..’

‘The villains pursue their ambitious projects with a cynical indifference to what anyone else thinks. They are fixated on themselves as the centre of the universe (Charney xii). Shakespeare’s villains are arbitrary and irrational in the pursuit of their wills, as if they need to consult with no one else among their many counsellors.’

‘Reject all arguments to the contrary.’

Question 5

Loomba on black stereotypes

Answer 5

‘Godless, bestial and hideous, fit only to be saved.’

‘Propensity to violence.’

Question 6

Honigmann on the relationship between Iago and the audience

Answer 6

‘There is much to be said on both sides. In the theatre our reactions are unlikely to remain the same ‘from the first scene to the last’; they fluctuate, and may come close to sympathizing with a villain. Dramatic perspective can even make us the villain’s accomplices: he confides in us, so we watch his plot unfolding from his point of view.’

Question 7

Honigmann on Iago’s undoing

Answer 7

‘He has neither felt nor understood
the spiritual impulses that bind ordinary human beings together, loyalty, friendship, respect, compassion – in a word, love. Emilia’s love (of Desdemona) is Iago’s undoing.’

Question 8

Leavis on Othello’s death

Answer 8

‘The final blow is as real as the blow it re-enacts, and the histrionic intent symbolically affirms the reality: Othello dies belonging to the world of action in which his true part lay.’

Question 9

Leavis’ pathetic quote

Answer 9

‘The noble Othello is now seen as tragically pathetic, and he sees himself as pathetic too.’

Question 10

Leavis’ learning quote

Answer 10

‘The tragedy doesn’t involve the idea of the hero’s learning through suffering.’

Question 11

Loomba on a tolerant society or a warning

Answer 11

‘Did the play make the case for a tolerant society, or did it issue a warning not only to disobedient daughters but also to ‘open societies’ who let in outsiders, especially black ones?’

Question 12

Kastan on the reasons behind tragedy

Answer 12

‘Human error or capricious fate? Is the catastrophe a just, if appalling, retribution, or an arbitrary destiny reflecting the indifference, or, worse, the malignity of the heavens?’

Question 13

Kastan on Shakespearian tragedy

Answer 13

‘Tragedy, for Shakespeare, is the genre of uncompensated suffering.’

Question 14

Kastan on the truth of tragedies

Answer 14

‘The emotional truth of the struggle rather than the metaphysical truth of the worldview that is at the centre of these plays.’

Question 15

Berry on Emilia’s motives

Answer 15

Suggests that she shares Iago’s resentment of class and that this motivates her reticence with Iago.

Question 16

Berger on Emilia’s motives

Answer 16

‘One of the motives imaginable for Emilia is a socially coded pleasure in watching ones better’s misbehave and suffer.’

Question 17

Honigmann on Emilia’s attitudes

Answer 17

‘Fear of Iago, though not expressed explicitly, explains Emilia’s attitude as Shakespeare’s tragedy unfolds.’

Question 18

Abraham on Emilia

Answer 18

‘Prey to the dominant ideology of wifely virtue.’

Question 19

Nuttall and the Nietzschean oxymoron

Answer 19

‘Tragic joy.’

Question 20

Mack quote about Cassandra that can be applied to Desdemona

Answer 20

‘She is doomed to know…she is doomed
never to be believed.’

Question 21

Mack on the truth

Answer 21

‘Can convey it only through poetry.’ (willow song).

Question 22

Mack quote about Hamlet’s madness that can be applied to Othello

Answer 22

‘The guise of the madman.’

Question 23

Mack’s adage

Answer 23

‘Quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat prius’ (Those whom Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first drives mad)

Question 24

Mack on the dramatic relevance of madness.

Answer 24

‘It was arresting in itself, and it allowed the combination in a single figure of tragic hero and buffoon, to whom could be accorded the licence of the allowed fool in speech and action.’

Question 25

Jardine on Desdemona

Answer 25

Becomes the face of ‘female passivity.’

Question 26

Thomas on Emilia and Desdemona

Answer 26

‘Emilia is a foil to Desdemona and corrects her occasional naivety.’

Question 27

Djungdjung on Iago’s motives

Answer 27

‘Detachment from his emotions raises another question… whether Iago is truthful in revealing his motives.’

‘Ambiguity of his motives do not logically correspond to his actions.’

Question 28

Coleridge on Iago

Answer 28

‘Motiveless malignity.’

Question 29

Dugger on Iago’s motives

Answer 29

‘Othello has broken his homosocial bonds and must now pay for his crime.’

Question 30

Bradley on death in tragedy

Answer 30

‘No play at the end of which the hero remains alive is, in the full Shakespearean sense, a tragedy.’

Question 31

Bradley on suffering in tragedy

Answer 31

‘The suffering and calamity are, moreover, exceptional. They befall a conspicuous person. They are themselves of some striking kind. They are also, as a rule, unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness or glory.’

‘Generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe.’

Question 32

Bradley on positions of seniority in tragedy

Answer 32

‘The consciousness of his high position never leaves him. At the end, when he is determined to live no longer, he is as anxious as Hamlet not to be misjudged by the great world, and his last speech begins.’

Question 33

Haque on Othello’s death

Answer 33

Othello has not committed suicide; indeed, he is murdered by the instigator or a social
agent named Iago!

Question 34

Hyman on cuckolding

Answer 34

An indirect form of homosexual intimacy because it is ‘two men symbolically uniting sexually by sharing the body of the same woman.’