Othello AO5 Critic Quotes general

‘It is hard to imagine…’

‘It is hard to imagine that any of Shakespeare’s plays has a more obvious contemporary relevance’

Andrew Hadfield

‘Cupid may be…’

‘Cupid may be blind, but Othello needs eyes in the back of his head’

Andrew McCulloch

‘She [Desdemona] goes…’

‘She [Desdemona] goes from being a person to being a prop’

Emma Smith

Iago’s power is ‘not so much…’

Iago as an opportunist, Othello as already corrupt/weak

‘Iago’s power is not so much diabolical intellect as Othello’s readiness to respond’

Iago as an opportunist, Othello as already corrupt/weak

F.R. Leavis

‘However fascinating…’

Iago as irrelevant

‘However fascinating Iago might be, it is Othello’s tragedy we are asked to contemplate’

Iago as irrelevant

Helen Gardner

‘Iago embodies a…’

Iago as entirely evil

‘Iago embodies a hatred that cannot be rationalised, an evil not based on reasons’

Iago as entirely evil

Jonathon Lear

‘He [Othello] loves not…’

‘He [Othello] loves not Desdemona but his image of her’

Leo Kirschbaum

‘It is much safer to…’

‘It is much safer to be feared than loved’

Niccolo Machiavelli

‘Price and value are…’

Marxist

‘Price and value are horribly conflated; a world of honour is horribly corrupted by a world of money’

Marxist

Pete Bunten

‘Relationships are seen…’

Marxist

‘Relationships are seen through the language of economics’

Marxist

Pete Bunten

‘Wived or…’

‘Wived or not, Iago hates women’

Robert Rogers

‘the doubts he…’

‘the doubts he [Iago] whispers into Othello’s ears are Othello’s own’

Simon O. Lesser

‘We see…’

Iago in Act 2 S1

‘We see Iago at his most playful’

Iago in Act 2 S1

E.A.J. Honigman

‘Iago is essentially…’

‘Iago is essentially parastic on Othello’

Helen Gardner

‘There is not ferocity…’

‘There is no ferocity in Othello’

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

‘It is the nature of the tragic…’

‘It is the nature of the tragic hero that he should be both great of heart and ignorant as dirt’

Andrew McCulloch

‘the motive-…’

‘the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity’

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

‘Desdemona’s chastity is…’

‘Desdemona’s chastity is significant to Othello only as a mirror of his own idealized self-image’

Barbara Schapiro

‘No woman bred…’

‘No woman bred out of a pigsty could talk so meanly’

Thomas Rymer