Othello - William Shakespeare

Othello - William Shakespeare
(c.1604)

Othello is a Shakespearean tragedy. This label is identifiable by many characteristics, but arguably the most significant is that of a fatally flawed protagonist. The eponymous character's fatal flaw is the "green eyed monster": jealousy. However, Othello is "not easily jealous", but is manipulated by his Machiavellian ancient, Iago, into believing his wife has been unfaithful to him.

The love between Othello and Desdemona is built on weak foundations as demonstrated by the line "She loved me for the dangers I had passed And I loved her that she did pity them." The qualities in Othello that attract Desdemona are his bravery, that is, physical rather than mental or moral qualities. Her love seems to be a kind of romantic fascination, and Othello describes that she wished "heaven had made her such a man." This implication that Desdemona lives the life she covets through Othello is a weak foundation for love; especially a love that will inevitably face obstacles. A marriage would never run smoothly for a mixed-race couple in an Elizabethan play, yet it is not race that is the fatal enemy of their romance, but the jealousy, as foreshadowed by Desdemona's father when he says "Look at her, Moor, if thou has eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may thee." This, combined with the insecurities about his place in society that Othello exhibits throughout the play, are ultimately what make Othello's rapid decline believable.

Themes and Relevant Quotes

Race	Gender	Jealousy	Deception
"And I, God bless the mark, his Moorship's ancient!" - Iago "the thicklips" - Roderigo "an old black ram is tupping your white ewe!" - Iago "you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse; you'll have your nephews neigh at you," - Iago "Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou?" - Brabantio "Against all rules of nature" - Brabantio (on Desdemona's attraction to Othello) "These Moors are changeable in their wills" - Iago "O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!" - Emilia	"She is abused, stolen from me and corrupted" - Brabantio "she wished that heaven had made her such a man." - Othello "Come Desdemona, I have but an hour of love, of worldly matter and direction to spend with thee." - Othello Othello: "O my fair warrior" Desdemona: "My dear Othello!" "Be as your fancies teach you: whate'er you be, I am obedient" - Desdemona "O curse of marriage that we can call these delicate creatures ours and not their appetites!" - Othello "But I do think it is their husbands' faults if wives do fall." - Emilia	"And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets he's done my office." - Iago "a jealousy so strong that judgement cannot cure" - Iago "O beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on." - Iago "Yield up, O love, thy crown and hearted throne to tyrannous hate!" - Othello "They are not ever jealous for the cause, but jealous for they're jealous." - Emilia "And his unbookish jealousy must construe poor Cassio's smiles, gestures and light behaviour quite in the wrong." - Iago "He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly" - Iago (on Cassio) "Then you must speak of one who loved not wisely, but too well; of one not easily jealous being wrought, perplexed in the extreme" - Othello	"I am not what I am" - Iago "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: she has deceived her father, and may thee." - Brabantio "some time to abuse Othello's ear." - Iago "Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me for making him egregiously an ass," - Iago "Iago is most honest." - Othello "I'll pour this pestilence into his ear" - Iago "The Moor already changes with my poison." - Iago "Thus credulous fools are caught, and many worthy and chaste dames even thus, all guiltless, meet reproach." - Iago "You told a lie, an odious, damned lie!" - Emilia

Critical Responses

• "Othello speaks of [Desdemona] as of a person whose function is to compliment his life and make him feel wonderful about himself." - Othello: Portrait of Marriage (David Bevington)
• "Desdemona's resistance to blaming Othello is another version of unconditional love." - Big Love: Cynthia Lewis
• "The racial antithesis between Desdemona and Othello visually introduces and consistently symbolizes the numerous polarities in their dramatic world" - Love and Age in Othello: Janet C. Stavropoulos
• "The process by which the Moor and Desdemona chose each other, the matrix of cultural expectation in which they audaciously departed from the norm, and the consequences all resonate, then, within the unambiguous reality of Othello and his lady as they are, aside from their races: He is an older man, she is a much younger woman." - Love and Age in Othello: Janet C. Stavropoulos
• "As gaining victory becomes customary, so does its obverse intensify: the terror of defeat, which, whether in love or in war, is a dreadfully public phenomenon. Precisely because the act was so unexpected, so essentially foreign to his customary accomplishments, Othello proudly regards the winning of Desdemona as the greatest event in his career," - Love and Age in Othello: Janet C. Stavropoulos
• "Like Brabantio, Othello comes to see himself as a man victimized by love's unpredictability, whom a young woman has publicly overmatched, betrayed, and abandoned." - Love and Age in Othello: Janet C. Stavropoulos
• "To murder Desdemona becomes yet another expression of the familiar military objective." - Love and Age in Othello: Janet C. Stavropoulos