Othello Critics

Question 1

Matt Simpson on Emilia

Answer 1

Emilia underscores Desdemona’s lack of knowledge in the world

Question 2

A.C Bradley on Emilia

Answer 2

She nowhere shows any sign of having a bad heart

Question 3

A.C Bradley on Emilia’s stupidity

Answer 3

Her stupidity in this matter is gross, but it is stupidity and nothing else

Question 4

Matt Simpson on Emilia’s obedience

Answer 4

We have to acknowledge that wives were required to be obedient to understand Emilia’s handing over of the handkerchief

Question 5

Lisa Jardine on female sexuality

Answer 5

All three [women] are accused of sexual misdemeanour in the course of the play

Question 6

Marilyn French

Answer 6

Desdemona accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males and is self-denying in the extreme

Question 7

Marian Cox on Desdemona

Answer 7

Desdemona is accused of the double dishonesty of lying and lying with other men

Question 8

Marian Cox on dichotomies

Answer 8

Characters divide into virgins and saints or whores and devils

Question 9

G. Wilson Knight on Desdemona’s language

Answer 9

Domesticity and gentleness

Question 10

Marian Cox on reputation

Answer 10

Men wish to marry virgins. This made reputation an essential commodity for social society

Question 11

Jarvis on Desdemona’s death

Answer 11

A whore’s death for all her innocence

Question 12

Adams on Desdemona

Answer 12

She falls in love…for no better reason than that he has told her a braggart story

Question 13

Harold Goddard on Desdemona

Answer 13

Desdemona’s audacity in doing the right thing in the face of her father’s opposition is enough to answer those incredible readers who persist in thinking her weak

Question 14

A.C. Bradley on Othello

Answer 14

He is by far the most romantic figure among Shakespeare’s heroes. He does not belong to our world

Question 15

Lisa Jardine on Desdemona

Answer 15

Desdemona becomes a stereotype of female passivity

Question 16

A.C Bradley on Cassio

Answer 16

There is something very loveable about Cassio. We trust him absolutely to never pervert the truth for the sake of some doctrine of purpose of his own

Question 17

S. Johnson on Cassio

Answer 17

Brave, benevolent and honest, ruined only by his want of stubbornness to resist an insidious invitation

Question 18

William R. Mueller on Cassio

Answer 18

This first [flaw] is Cassio’s overcavalerish manner

Question 19

Tucker Brooke

Answer 19

Cassio’s qualities would be almost condemnable in a fair lady

Question 20

W.H. Auden

Answer 20

Iago is motivated by the desire to know and show what Othello is really like

Question 21

Dostoevsky on Iago

Answer 21

Iago was not jealous, he was trustful

Question 22

Matt Simpson on Iago and Othello

Answer 22

Othello allows Iago to replace Desdemona in his esteem and affection, and as his confidant and soulmate

Question 23

Matt Simpson on Othello

Answer 23

In a sense, what Othello is doing is executing the Iago under his own skin

Question 24

Marian Cox on Iago

Answer 24

He is a black sheep and resists this state of affairs by turning everyone else black rather than allowing them to feel superior in their whiteness

Question 25

William Blake on Iago

Answer 25

He publishes doubt and calls it knowledge

Question 26

Alexandra Melville on Iago

Answer 26

Iago’s reputation for straightforward honesty is the foundation of his deceptions

Question 27

Matt Simpson on Iago

Answer 27

Iago is exposed as a shallow fool

Question 28

G. Wilson Knight on Othello’s language

Answer 28

Othello’s speech ‘holds a rich music of its own…its thought does not mesh with the reader’s:rather it is always outside us, aloof’

Question 29

A.C. Bradley on Othello’s feelings

Answer 29

Othello has no feeling that we should not have ourselves in his situation

Question 30

S. Johnson on Iago

Answer 30

The character of Iago is so conducted that he is from the first scene to the last hated and despised

Question 31

Charles Lamb on Iago

Answer 31

We think not so much of the crimes they commit, as of the ambition, the aspiring spirit