OTHELLO QUOTES

iago devil face - John Webster’s ‘The White Devil’ 1612

When devils will the blackest sins put on / They do suggest at first with heavenly shows (A2)

racist epithets

black; thick-lips

brabantio perversion of world order - Great Chain of Being

For nature so preposterously to err (A1)

witch stuff - Travels of John Mandeville 1430; Witch-doctors

arts inhibited (A1)

perfect lover in Neo-Platonic philosophy is the one who can balance ‘head and heart’

I am one who loved not wisely, but too well (A5)

emilia divine binaries

O, the more angel she / And you the blacker devil! (A5)

chop chop!

I will chop her into messes - cuckold me! (A4)

iago - othello is credulous - antithesis of garden metaphor

Will be tenderly led by th ’nose / As asses are (A1)

scary family - fear of miscegenation

you’ll have your nephews neigh to you; you’ll have coursers for cousins, and jennets for germans (A1)

even now?

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / is tupping your white ewe (A1)

eloquence & blackness

Haply, for I am black / and have not those soft parts of conversation (A3)

duke to brabantio reassuring - perlocutionary effect of Othello’s narrative is absolute

Your son in law is far more fair than black (A1)

patronising, very form of verse (couplet) attempts to gloss disharmony of transgressive marriage into neatly aligned pairs (sardonic)

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended / By seeing the worst which late on hopes depended (A1)

ear 7 deadly sins

with a greedy ear devour up my discourse (A1)

o’s exotic history

A1 S3 L149

emilia ‘moor’

Thou dull Moor… she loved thee, cruel Moor (A5)

sexual corruption venice & desdemona (I → O)

I know our country disposition well. In Venice they do let God see the pranks / they dare not show their husbands. Their best conscience / is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown. (A3)

emilia belch - protofeminist?

They are all but stomachs/ and we all but food;/ they eat us hungrily, and when they are full,/ they belch us

D self-effacing (final words)

Nobody- I myself. Farewell./ Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell (A5)

emilia attacking ethical hypocrisy condoning male infidelity

I do think it is their husbands’ faults / If wives do fall (A4)

where is my husband?

I do perceive here a divided duty… I am hither to you a daughter./ But here is my husband (A1)

othello on uncontrollable women

O, curse of marriage! / That we can call these creatures ours/ But not their appetites (A3)

iago + cassio exchange, consummation

He’s married. // To who? // Marry, to- (A1)

othello marriage unconsummated

The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue: / That profit’s yet to come ‘tween me and you. (A2)

cassio & montano in bed

A2 S3 L191

musician tale

O, thereby hangs a tail (A3)

othello enquiry after his wife’s maidenhood (hanky)

Is’t lost? Is’t gone? (A3)

domestic > cosmic tragedy

Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse / Of sun and moon (A5)

d proving virginity

If I do die before thee, prithee shroud me / In one of those same sheets (A4)

killing the whore to save the virgin (double vision)

Yet I’ll not shed her blood / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow (A5)

take life? take virginity? conflation

When I have plucked thy rose I cannot give it vital growth again (A5)

Bradshaw - ‘their marriage’s only consummation, and the ghastly tragicomic parody of erotic death’

Thy bed, lust-stained, shall be with lust’s blood spotted (A5)

lodovico - bed & mute Iago

Look on the tragic loading of this bed / This is thy work (A5)

get cuckolded othello

A horned man’s a monster and a beast (A4)

iago on ‘the bed’

Strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated (A4)

what is a good name (iago)

Good name in man and woman... is the immediate jewel of their souls... he that filches from me my good name... Makes me poor indeed (A3)

othello linking love & violence

It strikes where it doth love (A5); That death’s unnatural that kills for loving (A5)

demeaning alternative to ‘married’ (montano → cassio)

Is your general wived? (A2)

cassio too florid

Most fortunately: he hath achieved a maid / That paragons description (A2)

desdemona underestimated by brabantio

A maiden never bold

Marries outside ‘clime, complexion and degree’

cassio idealised religious lexis

Divine Desdemona… she is indeed perfection (A2)

desdemona as possession

Look to your house, your daughter and your bags! (A1); O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow’d my daughter? (A1)

paragon of uxorial obedience???

My heart’s subdued / Even to the very quality of my lord… to his honour and his valiant parts / Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate (A1)

cognitive dissonance - symbols of cultural refinement vs. Fallen Woman

Hang her! I do but say what she is: so delicate with her needle: an admirable musician, also A fine woman! A fair woman! A sweet woman! (A4)

dramatic foil - moral pragmatism illuminates D’s pious Christian moral idealism (adultery as minor misdemeanour > cardinal sin)

A small vice vs. By this heavenly light

chiasmic employment of religious allusions & opposing concepts of truth and falsehood - complicated perception. Heaven / hell binary - predetermination, fatalistic - seemingly preordained

Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell (A4)

iago marriage sexual > dedication

She must have change (A1)

echoes nominative determinism (ill-fated)

Ill-stared wench (A5)

desdemona’s face

Her name, that was as fresh / As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black / As mine own face (A3)

B internalised misogyny

This is some minx’s token… give it to your hobby horse (A4)

o adopting I’s misogynistic rhetoric

strumpet

desdemona naive

Something sure of state… hath puddled his clear spirit (A3)

cassio zoomorphic bianca

fitchew

rhetorical questions, E attempting to challenge D’s narrative of self-destructive female passivity

Have we not affections, / Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have? (A4)

cuckoldry as excruciating

I do suspect the lusty Moor / Hath leap’d into my seat; the thought whereof doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my innards (A2)

othello forced to confront emasculating cuckold identity (anaphoric)

Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars

othello self-deprecating

Rude am I in my speech, and little blessed with the soft phrase of peace (A1)

othello self-deprecating (black)

Haply, for I am black / and have not those soft parts of conversation (A3)

othello subverting witchcraft w. words

What drugs, what charms / What conjuration and what might magic… I won [Brabantio’s] daughter (A1)

bates chaos to harmony, harmony to chaos

And when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again (A3)

othello diplomatic, tricolon of deferential adjectives

Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors (A1)

double time amount as noted by bianca

seven days and nights, / Eight score eight hours

iago disrupt harmony, theory of celestial spheres

O, you are well tuned now! But I'll set down the pegs that make this music 

poison…

I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear (A2)

epithet about iago - absolute public facade as loyal servant, O as credulous / intellectually inferior

Honest Iago

othello final identity fracturing

That’s he that was Othello – here I am (A5)

vehement full iambic pentameter, stressing tragically ironic words (honesty & trust) metrically furthers Shakespeare’s textual illustration of Othello’s credulousness

A man he is of honesty and trust (A1)

subversive biblical parody of Exodus (I am what I am). Text is about God’s ineffability, I’s identity is mutable and fragmented. Links honesty / public vulnerability to weakness

When my outward action doth demonstrate / The native act and figure of my heart… I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at. I am not what I am (A1)

s anticipates Cartesian duality - mind can conquer base desires of body through reason. Machiavelli’s idea of supreme human agency.

Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners (A1)

iago final cryptic

Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: / From this time forth I will never speak a word (A5)

roman god of gateways (duplicity)

By Janus

reputation - artificial, extrinsic to a person (divorced from merit/moral virtue), elevates man beyond primitive, uncivilised impulses & establishes security within civilised social hierarchy

Reputation, reputation, reputation!... I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial

rep > truth

I had been happy, if the general camp… had tasted her sweet body, / So I had nothing known (A3)

essential sadism of linguistic manipulation (iago) - parallel sentence structure

Lie with her! Lie on her!

goats &… (manifestation of i’s control)

As prime as goats, as hot as monkeys

Goats and monkeys!

harsh plosives, lexical field of accountancy & emasculating language - effeminate, lacking military skill (i abt. c)

mere prattle without practise; counter-caster; arithmetician; spinster

the malcontent - recurring character in Elizabethan drama dissatisfied with society & its structures. Asides, soliloquies, satirical commentary to voice criticism (iago nepotism)

Preferment goes by letter and affection

which monster? dramatic irony. warns against it whilst orchestrating the very conditions of its birth.

It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock / The meat it feeds on (A3)

iago justifying Cassio murder, resentment of social privilege (white privileged high-ranking courtier) as a sustained motif

He hath a daily beauty in his life / That makes me ugly (A5)

othello’s lexis of oratory describing their courtship. their relationship is reliant upon the maintenance of O’s narrative performance & D’s interest in his narrative (unstable)

The story of my life; I spake; She would devour up my discourse

desdemona drawn to othello’s construction of identity

She loved me for the dangers I had passed / I loved her that she did pity them / This only is the witchcraft I have used (A1)

othello’s qualities. ‘Shall’ - deontic modal marking intentionality - in discourse between parts, title, perfect soul, O can reveal himself as a man of character & worth.

My parts, my title and my perfect soul / Shall manifest me rightly (A1)

characteristic features of I’s speech - commences with imperative, followed by a question he himself answers, ends with a bold assertion. Complete command of discourse. Redundancy and hyperbole to suggest O’s lack of legitimacy both as a speaker & a lover.

A2 S1 L242