Brabantio + Minor Characters

Brabantio viewing romantic love as corrupting

‘Is there not charms by which the property of youth and maidenhood may be abused?’- Act 1 Scene 1

Brabantio’s fatherly love for Desdemona being undermined by patriarchal values

‘O unhappy girl!’ ‘O she deceives me past thought’- Act 1 Scene 1

‘For your sake, jewel, I am glad at soul I have no other child, for thy escape would teach me tyranny to hang clogs on them- A1S3

Brabantio as viewing interracial marriage as unnatural

‘To fall in love with what she feared to look on?’- Act 1 Scene 3

Montano as a bringer of justice

‘O monstrous act!’

‘ For tis a damned slave!’

‘Tis a notorious villain’- Act 5 Scene 2

Montano as just another pawn

‘tis great pity that the noble Moor should hazard such a place as his own second’

‘With one of an ingraft infirmity’- Act 2 Scene 3

Lodovico as a bringer of justice

‘Where is that viper? Bring the villain forth’

‘Myself will straight aboard, and to the state, this heavy act with heavy heart relate’- Act 5 Scene 2

Lodovico, A4 S1

‘My Lord, this would not be believed in Venice’

Lodovico, A4S1

‘Make her amends; she weeps’

Gratiano as belittling to women

‘Poor Desdemon, I am glad thy father’s dead: Thy match was mortal to him, and pure grief’- Act 5 Scene 2

Gratiano as a mouthpiece for justice

‘Torments will ope your lips’

‘All that’s spoke is marr’d’- Act 5 Scene 2

Brabantio as a powerful social figure

‘But thou must needs be sure, my spirit and my place have in them power to make this bitter to thee’- A1, S1

Brabantio appears above at a window- A1S1

Interrupts important war meeting, putting his private conflict of his daughter’s unauthorised marriage on the agenda instead- A1S3

‘Is of so flood-gate and o’erbearing nature that it engluts and swallows other sorrows and yet is still itself’- A1S3

Brabantio as representative of fading traditional power

‘What have you lost your wits?… what are you?’- A1, S1

repeated use of questions

Brabantio as truth

‘Thou art a villain’- A1, S1, to Iago

His death at end of play represents death of all honesty and trust- pay as a warning for defiance of Great Chain of Being

Brabantio as enabling the merging of the public and private spheres

‘Get weapons, ho! And raise some special officers of the night:’- A1, S1

Brabantio as overcome by racism

‘thou hast practised on her with foul charms, abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals’- A1,S2

Brabantio as possessive over Desdemona

‘If she in chains of magic were not bound, whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy, so opposite to marriage that she shunned the wealthy curled darlings of our nation’- A1,S2

Minor characters as plot devices for foreshadowing

‘‘Tis a pageant/ To keep us in false gaze’- Senator, A1S3- Iago is like the Turks in deceiving Othello with the intent of violence

‘What from the cape can you discern at sea?’- Montano

‘Nothing at all’- Gentleman, A2S1

‘The wind-shaken surge, with high and monstrous mane, seems to cast water on the burning Bear/ And quench the guards of th’ever-fixed Pole’- Gentleman, A2S1

Minor characters providing irony

‘Our wars are done’- Gentleman, A2S1