ACT 4, SCENE 3

“O pardon me, ‘twill do me good to walk.”

• AO2: this is currently a private tragedy (othello keeps a normal front for state matters, grace and formality here with Lodovico)→ suggests Othello could be becoming machiavellian? or is this one time where he’s able to separate his public and private life?

“Get you to bed on th’instant; I will be returned forthwith. Dismiss your attendant there. Look’t be done.”

• AO2: dramatic tension → we know the plan

• AO2&3: Othello condems and orders Desdemona, but she still listens → virtuous qualities in a Renaissance woman

• AO2: “dismiss your attendant” → he wants her to be alone, builds pathos

“We must not now displease him.”

• AO2: collective pronoun → the women

• AO2: she’s incredible loyal and believes she’s in the wrong → has Othello manipulated her into thinking she’s wrong? → is this devotion or delusion?

• AO2: contrasts Emilia and contrasts the patriarchal views

“All’s one. Good faith, how foolish are our minds! if I do die before thee, prithee shroud me in one of those same sheets.”

• AO2: “all’s one” → Desdemona is giving into fate

• AO2: foreboding

“sing it like poor Barbary”

• AO2: associated with the Barbary coast as well as the Barbary horse and othello?

“[Sings] The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow”

• AO2: the willow song is a dramatic device → builds pathos → willow trees are a symbol of lovesickness which is used in other Shakespeare

• AO2: symbol of female unity

• AO2: sibilance → mirrors the woman’s weeping (weeping willow) → abandoned women, forsaken love

• AO2: “green willow” could be suggestive of jealousy

“But I do think it is their husbands’ faults if wives do fall”

• AO2: blames men not women → rare in society

• AO2: Emelia speaks in verse → change of status and draws the attention of the audience

• AO2: premise of speech → attacks the patriarchy

“Let husbands know Their wives have sense like them”

• AO2: engages the immediate theatrical audience

• AO2: lexical choice of “sense” → feelings, intellect, sensibility