themes Flashcards
Reputation and Identity - P1
Cassio and Othello suggest reputation is crucial to them
- ‘My parts, my title, my perfect soul shall manifest me rightly’ - when accused by Brabantio
- ‘I have done the state some service, and they know it’ - in death
- ‘Reputation, reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself’ - Cassio
- ‘Speak of me as I am’ - in death
Reputation and Identity - P2
Reputations are fragile
- ‘The best of you shall sink in my rebuke’ - after Cassio is drunk
- ‘If I love thee not, chaos is come again’ to ‘I’ll chop her into messes’ 400 lines later - fragility
- ‘Valiant Othello’, ‘Noble Moor’ to ‘This would not be believed in Venice’, ‘Othello that once so good’
- ‘This is a subtle whore’
Reputation and Identity - P3
Reputation is dangerous as Iago manages to manipulate
- ‘Honest Iago’ 50 times
- ‘O brave Iago, honest and just, that has a noble sense of friend’s wrongs’
- ‘Thou art wise. T’is certain’
- ‘I know thy honesty and love dost mince the matter’
- Convinces Othello that Cassio called out Desdemona’s name in his sleep
Deception - P1
Iago is master of deception
- ‘Put money in thy purse’
- ‘Poor trash of Venice’
- ‘The gallants desire it’
- ‘Ha, I like not that’
- ‘Think, my Lord’
- ‘You advise me well’
Deception - P2
Iago justifies his hatred for Othello is self-decieving
- ‘Twixt my sheets he has done my office’, ‘I know not if’t be true’
- ‘Out of her own goodness, make the net that shall enmesh them all’
- ‘How am I then a villain?’
Deception - P3
Othello’s justification for killing Desdemona is self-deception
- ‘Yet she must die else she’ll betray more men’
- ‘A murder that I thought a sacrifice’
- ‘Justice to break her sword’
- ‘It is the cause, it is the cause’
Love, sex and marriage - P1
Othello and Desdemona originally in love
- ‘My life upon her faith’
- ‘Let her speak’
- ‘When I love thee not chaos has come again’
- ‘I cannot speak enough of this content, it is too much joy’
- ‘Let me go with him’
- ‘O my fair warrior’, ‘O my soul’s joy’
Love, sex and marriage - P2
Fragile nature of marriage as corrupted by jealousy
- ‘If I love thee not, chaos is come again’ to ‘I’ll chop her into messes’ 400 lines later
- ‘My Lord I see you’re moved’, ‘This hath a little dashed your spirits’
- ‘O curse of marriage’, ‘Why did I marry’
- ‘Haply for I am black’, ‘Declined into the vale of years’
Love, sex and marriage - P3
Uses Othello’s love for Desdemona to emphasise the betrayal
- ‘Away at once with love or jealousy’
- ‘When she seemed to shake or fear your looks, she loved them most’
- ‘For she had eyes and chose me […] I’ll see before I doubt
Fakes love for others to convince and manipulate
- ‘I do love Cassio well and would do much to rid him of this evil’
- ‘My Lord you know I love you’
- ‘I think you think I love you’
- ‘If thou dost I shall never love thee after’
- ‘What says’t thou noble heart?’
Jealousy - P1
Iago’s source of motivation for revenge
- ‘Will be as tenderly led by the nose as asses are’
- ‘Twixt my sheets he has done my office’
- ‘Three great ones of the city in personal suit’
- ‘I know my price, I am worth no worse a place’
- ‘This monstrous birth to the world’s light’ - his plan
Jealousy - P2
Devastating effects on Othello
- ‘When I love thee not, chaos has come again’ to ‘I will chop her into messes’ 400 lines apart
- ‘He is much changed’
- ‘Is this the noble Moor?’
- ‘Is this the nature whom passion could not shake?’
- ‘I am sorry that I am deceived in him’
Jealousy - P3
Bianca and Roderigo’s petty jealousy has consequences
- ‘By heaven that should be my handkerchief’
- ‘This is some minx’s token’
- ‘Villain thou diest’
- ‘Your dear lies dead […] strumpet, I come’
Presentation of women - P1
Women have little power
- ‘Jewel’
- ‘Sir, you’re robbed’
- ‘She is abused, stol’n from me’
- ‘What drugs, what charms, what conjuration and what mighty magic’
- ‘I nothing but to please his fantasies’
- ‘Alas, she has no speech’
Presentation of women - P2
Women treated violently and harsh by men
- ‘Devil! [strikes her]’
- ‘She’s obedient’
- ‘I think, i’faith, she loves me’
- ‘tis the strumpet’s plague’
- ‘I marry her? What! A customer?’
- ‘A good wench’
- ‘You have a thing for me? it is a common thing’
Presentation of women - P3
Strong moments (Desdemona and Emilia)
- ‘Let me go with him’
- ‘I do here perceive a divided duty’
- ‘Nor I, I would not there reside’
- ‘Do thy worst’
- ‘T’is proper I obey him, but not now’
- ‘I will speak as liberally as the north’
