'Othello' ~ quotes & analysis

AO1 and AO2 (my key ideas)

How does Othello subvert Aristotle’s arguably-oversimplified ‘hubris’?

• pride in social and military achievements —> hubris

• this is pride makes him susceptible to insecurity because it is inextricable from his race (connection between perception of his noble achievements + his race conveyed by title)

• hence when his pride is questioned, he loses his sense of self —> opposite of hubris

• these events are not chronological but simultaneous

How does Othello’s plot obsfucate the boundary of classical and domestic tragedy?

• upper-class characters

• audience’s Act 1 expectations are that the war between the Turks and the Christians will supply the cathartic suffering required by tragedy

• curtailment of this sub-plot shifts the focus to the internal conflicts within Cyprus

• situation of tragic climax = bedroom

title: “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice”

• determiner “the” doubly-represents Othello’s alienation when placed before racial “moor”

• recalls Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta”

“Zounds, sir, you’re robbed”

• “robbed” prefigures later use of womanhood as an epithet, a feature of man before a feature of woman

  • eg. Iago: “it is thought that ‘twixt my sheets/ He’s done my office” (slept with Emilia) yet doesn’t seem to love her (ultimately killing her) so why is this a motive

  • the thought that “the lusty Moor/ hath leaped into my seat” is what drives him mad ~ Othello has used a possession that belongs to him

  • metaphorical “office” and “seat” deprive Emilia of humanity

• “zounds” = God’s wounds ie. Jesus dying on a cross; blasphemous expletive

What is inherently problematic with the use of blackface?

implicit in the logic that all one has to do to embody or perform a black person is use blackface is the notion that a black person’s identity can be reduced to their skin colour, re-emphasising ideas lingering from the slave trade

Othello: “O Monstrous! Monstrous!”

• repetition of “monstrous” instead of expletive/blasphemy as we know Othello is capable of provides an inauthentic woodenness

• reacts how white man might be expected to react to a Black man doing the same ~ animalistic imagery

• emasculates Cassio to maintain his masculinity

“I greet thy love,
Not with vain thanks, but with acceptance bounteous”

• contradictory; overt dishonesty juxtaposes Iago’s more subtle inauthenticity ~ is Othello too noble to truly be deceitful?

• so hyperbolic as to be almost paradoxical

• based on image of white masculinity/ brotherhood

• “vain thanks” = Freudian slip; worries he will only ever be known on superficial terms & not accepted as part of true white brotherhood

Why is Othello’s questioning Desdemona on the handkerchief significant?

• ploy to taunt Desdemona, prolonging their already-doomed relationship

• possibly reflects reluctance to lose her/ subconscious insecurity

• aggressiveness of ploy suggests perhaps a projection of white violence; reassertion of Othello’s masculinity

How is ‘tragicomedy’ significant?

• undermines dramatic tradition of tragedy & even art of play-writing

• entails audience introspection (of own insignificance) ~ allows thematic exploration of morality

• de-centering Othello from his own play perhaps enables a broader societal critique

Emilia:
“They are all but stomachs, and we all but food:

They eat us hungerly, and when they are full,

They belch us.”

• food imagery parallels Othello 3.3: (“O curse of marriage,/ That we can call these delicate creatures our/ And not their appetites!”)

• eating as a form of gaining sustenance by taking virility/power from the other ~ both associate this draining/feeding with the opposite gender (restrictive gender norms for both?)

• perversely sexual

• both associate draining of sustenance/ feeding/ sexual appetite with the opposite gender

• general oppression of sexual desire is projected onto opposite gender?

“She was a fine woman! A beautiful woman! A sweet woman!”

“Nay, you must forget that.”

• imperative modal verb “must” continues Iago’s tradition of phrasing his manipulation as a tangible necessity (Iago = playwright)

• ensures Othello’s descent into madness can’t be traced to Iago

• appeals to Othello’s inner desire to do what he “must” and his equal (and related) ignorance of what he “must” do

“It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul”

• somebody who believes they have reason to do something does not feel the need to verbally justify it (disjunction between Othello’s true and projected self)

• becomes agent of his own destruction

• we hear Iago’s doctrine voiced through Othello

“I can again thy former light restore,

Should I repent me: but once put out thy light” (cannot relight)

• polysemantic meaning of “light”; one temporary, restorative candle, one D’s life

• finality of death

• foreshadowing: “Should I repent thee” is applied to the object the candle but accidentally applicable to the latter light (D’s life) ~ quasi-zeugma

• textualises role of accident/ unpredictability of humanity

“Shall she come in? were’it good?-

I think she stirs again:- no. What’s best to do?”

• disjointed, fragmented syntax

• paratactic

• juxtaposes naturally self-assured act of murder

“I think this tale would win my daughter too”

• the Duke does not resort to racism

• implicitly argues from reconciliation and acceptance

“I will rather sue to be despis’d than to deceive so good a commander with so slight, so drunken, and so indiscreet and officer.”

Act 2 Scene 3

• yearns to win Othello’s favour

• unlike Iago, Cassio doesn’t project his failings onto others

“I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humors from him”

• Desdemona sees Othello’s blackness as a sign of virtue

• her faith in his purity becomes an extension of her own purity (patriarchy) ~ women’s goodness implicitly defined by how much they are willing to accept men’s misogynistic abuse

• Desdemona’s only active (rather than responsive) act of virtue = trying to help Cassio & this leads to her death

How is the uncanny significant?

• irony of “honest Iago” & Othello’s perception of Othello is uncanny in that Iago, the familiar object of Othello’s comforts and trust, becomes unfamiliar

• special form of uncanny ~ Iago remains to Othello familiar

• Othello doesn’t possess the audience’s omniscient insight or “whip” to realise Iago’s uncanniness (“put in every honest hand a whip/ To lash the rascals naked through the world”)

• Iago’s uncanny force lies in this inaccessibility & creates a doubled unsettlement

• the audience’s uncanniness lies in the discomfort of not being able to warn Othello of Iago’s truer nature

• introduction of play with Iago’s racialised judgement of Othello (17th-cent audience comes to same judgement of him as Iago) —> is this unsettled upon realising falsity of Iago’s judgement

• within Othello-Iago dynamic, the audience = Othello; their sense of knowing superiority, granted by Shakespeare, is unearned

• same superiority leads us to condemn Othello’s credulity, wonder why Desdemona didn’t tell him about the handkerchief, and why Emilia gave it Iago

• reality/ vulnerability of human nature ~ tragicomedy

Which black Shakespearean character embodied evil?

Aaron from ‘Titus Adronicus’

What is Othello notable for in Shakespeare’s source material, the novel ‘Hecathmithi’?

being Black, spiteful and resentful

“My name, that was as fresh
As Dian’s visage, is now begrim’d, and black
As mine own face”

• attempting to convey sense of impurity attached to his relationship with Desdemona, uses a metaphor of his own Blackness

• refers to Diana, goddess of moon

“I will chop her into pieces! Cuckold me?”

• violence ~ the almost savage onomatopoeic verb “chop” ~ in response to his own emasculation~ “cuckold”

• exactly aligns with the colonial image of white masculinity

The religious dichotomy presented by Church ideals of femininity and the Madonna/whore dichotomy is debilitatingly constrictive but also presented a problem of ____-______________; is a choice really our own if either choice dooms us to essentially a form of subjective captivity?

self-identification

The woman of the 3 who most resembles the Jacobean ideal is _________, and yet she still suffers the most

Desdemona

How is Desdemona christ-like?

• sacrifices not just her self but her goodness/virtue by claiming Othello’s sins as her own in death

• “Nobody; I myself.”

• chooses wh*re side of dichotomy for Othello’s sake

• lack of women’s agency ~ freely chooses this side (“I myself”) as she has nothing to lose anymore

• in death for the first time has autonomy

• women can only be free in death/ patriarchy necessitates violent reactions

How is patriarchy cyclical?

The women at the top of the female hierarchy suffer precisely because of the excessive restraint by virtue of which they solidified their place; patriarchy becomes a uroboric cycle with no end, finally microcosmically broken by violence.

Alternative interpretation:

• Othello and Desdemona’s passionate love and progressive marriage poses a threat to the established order; it challenges ideas about class, race and the conformity of women and is thus dissolved for the social order to continue (modern criticism)

• My view: this is far too deterministic ~ Othello and Desdemona are not passive puppets in the play ~ reductive to suggest their death had active purpose in characters’ minds

How could it be argued that the two different ways of describing women don’t actually literally apply to real women?

• they are male fantasies imposes on women ~ ideals that men want women to fulfil, and roles that women therefore purposefully play for men

• Desdemona often describes her devotion to Othello in front of others; she is to a certain extent playing the role of virtuous wife

• Iago’s stokes Othello’s jealousy by forcing him to realise there’s no way for a man to tell the different between a virtuous wife and a wife playing the role of virtue

• links to Emilia’s “ And put in every honest hand a whip/ To lash the rascals naked through the world” ~ this is message of the play

• ironic that Desdemona’s faithfulness to Jacobean expectations (attempting to resolve conflict with Othello, caring for others through Cassio) leads to her downfall (although she does stand up to Othello when he strikes her)

• misogyny = shallow tool for Iago, and as extension Shakespeare’s narrative device, for it’s always in the man’s power to shape patriarchy - ultimately something rooted in performance - to his needs

Which word is used in ‘Othello’ more times than in any other Shakespeare play?

“wh*re”

Critical discourse has often failed to observe that being a _____-________ and being an explicit victim of __________ are in no way mutually exclusive; such discourse is reductive and lacks contextual nuance

proto-feminist

patriarchy

“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them”

• Othello’s love for Desdemona is arguably born out of insecurity

• seemingly Petrarchan dynamic is replaced by pragmatic mutual understanding and respect

How the is the connection between race and misogyny unsatisfactorily-examined by critics?

• Shakespeare constructs an inductive leap from racial insecurity to misogyny, as if such a leap is self-explanatory and expected

• deliberate connection formed between race and gender which proves Shakespeare’s canny understanding of what we now call intersectionality ~ here the implicit connection is between blackness and social emasculation

• causes Othello to project his insecurity onto his wife

How has criticism counter-productively over-focused on Othello’s (audience) perceived racial inferiority?

• the association between his race and his insecurity (and subsequent villainy) is admittedly implicit

• however, what critics fail to note is the nuanced complexity between social position and narrative role within all the characters of the play

• in fact, Othello’s villainy is notable precisely because it cannot be directly traced back to his race ~ no clear-cut, exact causal relationship between them

• Shakespeare arguably characterised a black murderer precisely to foreground the fact that characters do not murder because of their race, in the only acceptable manner to a late-16th century audience

“Myself the while to draw the Moor apart”

• polysemantic reading of “apart”

• creates image of Othello being figuratively hung, drawn and quartered

“the green-eyed monster which doth
mock the meat it feeds on”

• “monster” “mock” “feeds” —> Iago image of jealousy colonising mind (thus building on Othello’s imperialistic insecurity?)

• link to race/ imperialism ~ jealousy as the uncanny ‘othering’ of that which should be familiar

• jealousy = cannibalistic (barbaric stereotype); feeds off others; food imagery

• highlights Othello’s susceptibility to consumption ~ loss/obsfucation of self

“But jealous for they are jealous: ‘tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself”

• Emilia emphasises jealousy as a force unto itself, beyond human control entirely

• epistrophe (repetition at end of successive clauses) gives emphasis

“Rude am I in my speech”

• is self-degradation perversely necessary for a Black man to maintain power?

• play about threatened masculinity; Othello is placed within a system where he is forced to devalue himself in order to prevent white men from feeling threatened

“with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse”

• Othello to Venetian court

• synaesthesia prefigures later cannibalistic imagery, establishing eating imagery as motif for greed/ jealousy

When told that Othello must leave for Cyprus; Brabantio says he will not have it [her at her father’s]:

Othello: “Nor I.”

Desdemona: “Nor I. I would not there reside,
To put my father in impatient thoughts
By being in his eye.”

• Desdemona uses parallel syntax from Othello

• repetition of husband’s believe adapted by repetition of “I”, (falsely?) established as active first person ~ sums up Desdemona’s role in whole play?

• Desdemona not repeating Othello’s thoughts but genuinely having his thoughts ~ if there is a disjunction between Desdemona’s speech and herself, we cannot know it ~ by presenting herself inaccurately, she condemns herself

“Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see.
She has deceived her father, and may thee.”

foreshadows Othello’s hamartia

“Go to, farewell. Put money enough in your purse.”

“I’ll sell all my land.”

• Iago exploits Roderigo’s excessive love for Desdemona

• humour/stupidity moves into metaphor for what he would give up (Freudian slip)

“Most fortunately. He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame,
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,
And in th’ essential vesture of creation
Does tire the ingener.”

Act 2 Scene 1

• irony: Desdemona is written ~ she can never fulfil fantasy role projected upon her by males

• exceeds her own self ~ inauthenticity on metafictional level

“The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue:
That profit’s yet to come ‘tween me and you.”

• fruit, sex and shame ~ Edenic

• “purchase” makes marriage political ~ intersection of personal and public life as talks of sex in public

• feels he is owed by Desdemona

“I’ll warrant her, full of game.”

“Indeed, she is a most fresh and delicate creature.”

“What an eye she has” Methinks it sounds a parley to provocation.”

“An inviting eye, and yet methinks right modest.”

Act 3 Scene 2

• oxmoronic idealisation

• can never escape patriarchy ~ sexually available vs pure ~ either imposes male values

• Shakespearean audiences would have respected Cassio’s restraint

• patriarchy linked to fate ~ fate not singular entity

“She is stirring, sir; if she will stir hither, I shall seem to notify unto her.”

• clown’s bawdy humour

• feels more acceptable than when Iago did same thing ~ not part of character/plan

• maybe because to clown, Desdemona unattainable, whereas Iago’s sexual pursuit seemingly presents a real threat to Othello ~ clown offers contrast ~ Othello’s insecurity

• women as agents of men’s insecurities

Act 3 Scene 2

• almost like this scene is not part of constructed play!

• audience feels they are intruding

• builds reality, but also highlights that while we are in the centre of our own tragedy, life goes on

• establishes as at least partially domestic tragedy, rather than classical tragedy - highlights hypocrisy of focusing on meta-narratives/ heroic tales with no mention of the interior lives of characters

“She’s gone; I am abus’d; and my relief
Must be to loathe her.”

• Othello’s dramatic monologue

• definitive “must”

• abdicates responsibility

• lives up to white image

“My wayward husband hath a hundred times
Woo’d me to steal it.”

• Emilia finding napkin

• closeness of litotes (“wayward”) and implicit hyperbole “hundred” illustrates her linguistic quickness; ability to mould language to her needs

• critically reflects and simultaneously dramatises her role

• however could reflect her denial/inability to verbalise her husband’s flaws in comparison to his other features

• patriarchy has strangled her language

“Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore”

• why would you want this

• complete juxtaposition

• threat is not actually her infidelity, but Othello’s ignorance ~ not knowing worse than fear being affirmed ~ insecurity stems from instability of position

• women agents of men’s insecurities

“I should be wise; for honesty’s a fool,
And loses that it works for.”

regressive irony: Iago for the first time honest!!

“I’ll tear her all to pieces.”

• violent dismembering ~ sexual conquest

• being hung, drawn and quartered

“Not that I love you not.”

“But that you do not love me.”

• stichomythia with interruption

• double negation from Cassio

“I am not what I am”

• Jane Adamson: Iago fails to recognise his own sense of failure/rejection, transforming his feelings into other ones that might allow retributive action, instead of suffering from “fear, loss and self-disgust and negation”

• foregrounds CHOICE particularly in relation to self-identification ~ the contrast between Iago’s manipulation/ moulding of self vs the woman’s same inauthenticity - but this is enforced

• Iago borrows unearned justification for his actions by defining them as inauthenticity - how can one by inauthentic by choice, if choice is inherently authentic?