Quotes from Shakespeare & Sax SHAKESPEARE Gender Roles Iago: “an old black ram is tupping your white ewe” Iago: “Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags! Thieves, thieves!” Iago: “Now will I question Cassio of Bianca, A huswife that by selling her desires buys herself bread and clothes…Here he comes.” Appearance vs Reality (Trick Othello Othello: “I will chop her into messes! Cuckold me?” cuckhold (shame for him as wife cheated, destroyed masculinity) Race Iago: “you think we are ruffians; you'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you'll have your nephews neigh to you, you'll have coursers for cousins and jennets for Germans…. Moor are now making the beast with two backs.” Racial slur towards Othello, animal imagery, inhuman. Humping like camels. Brabantino: “To fall in love with what she feared to look on! It is a judgment maimed and most imperfect That will confess perfection so could err against all rules of nature” unnatural love, enchanted/foul charms, Othello: “She's like a liar gone to burning hell! 'Twas I that killed her.” Emilia: “O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!” Othello kills Desdemona, enacts racist stereotype violent, savage, to be feared. Duke of Venice: “If virtue no delighted beauty lack, Your son-in-law is far more fair than black” Othello is able to get over some people (‘cause of higher rank) but does not forget others think. Othello: “All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven. 'Tis gone. Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell!” links black race with evil and hell. SAX Gender roles Othello: “other men’s leavings” refers to Dessie Dessie: “I was like a blank sheet waiting for you to write your name on me” purity, love, untainted Race Jago: “you stupid patronising ape” bestial imagery Jago: “you clever black bastard” dramatic imagery
