Othello notes
Discussion questions
• What is most important in Othello?
• Why does Othello kill Desdemona?
• Why does Iago hate Othello?
• Is Desdemona completely innocent?
• Why is Emilia important?
• Is Othello a tragic hero?
• Does Othello’s final speech recover his dignity?
• What is Othello’s tragic flaw?
AO1
• Quality of argument
• Organisation of ideas
• Use of appropriate concepts and terminology
• Technical accuracy
AO2
• Structural issues relating to the changing nature of the marriage– events at the
beginning, middle and ending of the play, Othello’s trajectory
• Contrast between Othello’s early speech to the Senate and his final apologia
• Imagery
• Irony & dramatic irony
• Iago’s subtlety in his duplicity
• structural issues relating to the changing nature of both marriages – Desdemona’s
loyalty right to the end, the role of this scene to heighten pathos for both women as
victims immediately before Desdemona’s murder and not long before Emilia’s
• use of imagery – heaven, hell, purgatory, etc.
• use of irony and dramatic irony – reflecting on what has happened and is to come in
the lives of both women and their husbands
• use of rhetorical features
• use of blank verse and complex syntax, particularly from Emilia – speaking like a
practised debater who suddenly has the chance to articulate her view of male-
female relationships
AO3
• Expectations of marriage from a 17th century perspective
• Othello’s violence towards Desdemona, shocking from a 21 st century perspective
• How attitudes to men and women and their respective marital roles might have
changed over time
• Emilia’s strikingly modern analysis of marriage in the Willow scene set against
Desdemona’s more traditional POV
• In exploring Emilia’s and Desdemona’s relationship and relative roles, students will
specifically be engaging with not only the contexts of gender, power, morality and
society but also the contexts of when texts were written and how they have been
received.
, AO4
• The extent to which the play has been defined as a ‘domestic tragedy’
• Typical representations of courtship and marriage in other texts (unusual in the
union of black/white, but not unusual, especially in Shakespearean terms, with
regards to how their marriage is opposed)
• The typical representations of fidelity and purity of the wife
• Typical representations of a black man – look at Titus Andronicus
• Typical representations of the cuckolded husband
• Typical representation of the tragic hero
• Principally, the representation of marriage both within Shakespeare’s drama and in
other texts more widely across time.
AO5
• Take a slant on the statement
• Explore different interpretations, explain why your own view is the correct one
• Explain why others might hold the interpretation they do, but why yours is still right
Do you agree? (AO5 prompters)
• Desdemona and Emilia function as representations of oppressed wives.
• Desdemona worships instead of loves Othello
• Giving away a handkerchief is too slight a ground for jealousy.
• No man could resist the circumstances of suspicion which were suggested to
Othello’s mind
• If Desdemona had been guilty, no one would have thought of calling Othello’s
behaviour that of a jealous man. He could not act otherwise than he did with the
lights he had.
• Othello is, in one sense of the word, by far the most romantic figure among
Shakespeare’s heroes. He does not belong to our world.
• Othello is a credulous fool
• Emilia is just as guilty as Iago
• Desdemona is dead because of her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected.
• Jealousy does not strike me as the point in his passion; I take it to be rather an agony
that the creature whom he had believed angelic, with whom he had garnered up his
heart and whom he could not help still loving, should be proved impure and
worthless. It was the struggle not to love her. It was a moral indignation and regret
that virtue should so fall.
• “A man cannot become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall.”
Genre – tragedy
What are Shakespearean tragedies? (Are they just tragedies by Shakespeare?)
What has Aristotle said about tragedy?
What does your knowledge of tragedy contribute to your reading of Othello?
• ‘ I am of the opinion that, unlike many Aristotelian tragic heroes, Othello is not in
possession of an intrinsic flaw, which causes his downfall. Instead, he is a victim of
the endemic racism of his era; racism that has driven him to feel insecure about the
permanence of his position and his well-deserved, but unusually good fortune.’
Discussion questions
• What is most important in Othello?
• Why does Othello kill Desdemona?
• Why does Iago hate Othello?
• Is Desdemona completely innocent?
• Why is Emilia important?
• Is Othello a tragic hero?
• Does Othello’s final speech recover his dignity?
• What is Othello’s tragic flaw?
AO1
• Quality of argument
• Organisation of ideas
• Use of appropriate concepts and terminology
• Technical accuracy
AO2
• Structural issues relating to the changing nature of the marriage– events at the
beginning, middle and ending of the play, Othello’s trajectory
• Contrast between Othello’s early speech to the Senate and his final apologia
• Imagery
• Irony & dramatic irony
• Iago’s subtlety in his duplicity
• structural issues relating to the changing nature of both marriages – Desdemona’s
loyalty right to the end, the role of this scene to heighten pathos for both women as
victims immediately before Desdemona’s murder and not long before Emilia’s
• use of imagery – heaven, hell, purgatory, etc.
• use of irony and dramatic irony – reflecting on what has happened and is to come in
the lives of both women and their husbands
• use of rhetorical features
• use of blank verse and complex syntax, particularly from Emilia – speaking like a
practised debater who suddenly has the chance to articulate her view of male-
female relationships
AO3
• Expectations of marriage from a 17th century perspective
• Othello’s violence towards Desdemona, shocking from a 21 st century perspective
• How attitudes to men and women and their respective marital roles might have
changed over time
• Emilia’s strikingly modern analysis of marriage in the Willow scene set against
Desdemona’s more traditional POV
• In exploring Emilia’s and Desdemona’s relationship and relative roles, students will
specifically be engaging with not only the contexts of gender, power, morality and
society but also the contexts of when texts were written and how they have been
received.
, AO4
• The extent to which the play has been defined as a ‘domestic tragedy’
• Typical representations of courtship and marriage in other texts (unusual in the
union of black/white, but not unusual, especially in Shakespearean terms, with
regards to how their marriage is opposed)
• The typical representations of fidelity and purity of the wife
• Typical representations of a black man – look at Titus Andronicus
• Typical representations of the cuckolded husband
• Typical representation of the tragic hero
• Principally, the representation of marriage both within Shakespeare’s drama and in
other texts more widely across time.
AO5
• Take a slant on the statement
• Explore different interpretations, explain why your own view is the correct one
• Explain why others might hold the interpretation they do, but why yours is still right
Do you agree? (AO5 prompters)
• Desdemona and Emilia function as representations of oppressed wives.
• Desdemona worships instead of loves Othello
• Giving away a handkerchief is too slight a ground for jealousy.
• No man could resist the circumstances of suspicion which were suggested to
Othello’s mind
• If Desdemona had been guilty, no one would have thought of calling Othello’s
behaviour that of a jealous man. He could not act otherwise than he did with the
lights he had.
• Othello is, in one sense of the word, by far the most romantic figure among
Shakespeare’s heroes. He does not belong to our world.
• Othello is a credulous fool
• Emilia is just as guilty as Iago
• Desdemona is dead because of her slowness to suspect that she can be suspected.
• Jealousy does not strike me as the point in his passion; I take it to be rather an agony
that the creature whom he had believed angelic, with whom he had garnered up his
heart and whom he could not help still loving, should be proved impure and
worthless. It was the struggle not to love her. It was a moral indignation and regret
that virtue should so fall.
• “A man cannot become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall.”
Genre – tragedy
What are Shakespearean tragedies? (Are they just tragedies by Shakespeare?)
What has Aristotle said about tragedy?
What does your knowledge of tragedy contribute to your reading of Othello?
• ‘ I am of the opinion that, unlike many Aristotelian tragic heroes, Othello is not in
possession of an intrinsic flaw, which causes his downfall. Instead, he is a victim of
the endemic racism of his era; racism that has driven him to feel insecure about the
permanence of his position and his well-deserved, but unusually good fortune.’
