Othello
Acts I and II Quotes
Read the following quotes from Acts I and II of Othello. For each, identify:
i. the speaker
ii. the listener
iii. the context
iv. the significance
(theme illustrated, character traits established, plot advancement, poetic
elements, etc.)
1. I do perceive here a divided duty:
To you I am bound for life and education;
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you. You are a lord of all my dury,
I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my
husband;
And so much duty as my mother shoed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge, that I may profess
Due to the Moor, my lord.
(I.iii.181-188)
2. And I of whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes, at Cyprus, and on there grounds
Christian and heathen, must leed and calmed
By debitor and creditor; this counter-caster,
He in good time must his lieutenant be,
And I – God bless the mark! – his Moorship’s
ancient.
(I.i.28-33)
3. Let him do his spite:
My services, which I have done the signory,
Shall out-tongue his complaints…I fetch my life
and being
From men of royal siege.
(I.ii.17-22)
4. For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ‘tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at – I am not what I am.
(I.i.61-65)
5. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
She swore, in faith, ‘twas strange, ‘twas passing
strange,
‘Twas pitiful, ‘twas wondorous pitiful;
She wished she had not heard it, yey she wishes
That heaven had made her such a man…Upon this
hint I spake:
She loved me for the danger I had passed,
And I loved her, that she did pity them.
This is the only witchcraft I have us’d.
(I.iii.158-169)
6.
And it is though abroud that ‘twixt my
sheets
He’s done my office. I know not if’t be true
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety.
(_____________)
7.
Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see.
She has deceived her father, and may thee.
(_____________)
8.
I’ll pour this pestilence into his earThat she repeals him for her body’s lust.
(_____________)