Othello: Flip Cards / Set Pieces - 1
Fatal Flaw: Jealousy
In Shakespeare’s tragedies one very important
Idea that he presents to the audience is the notion of a character’s personal
Weakness leading to ruin – usually death and destruction - over the years
this has been called the FATAL FLAW. In Othello the flaw is jealousy.
Typically a character’s fatal flaw spreads to others – they spread like a
poison or a disease.
‘ The thought whereof / Does, like a poisonous
mineral, gnaw my inwards’ (II, i) – (Iago)
‘O curse of marriage, that we can call these
delicate creatures ours and not their appetites’ (
III,iii)
(Othello)
‘I put the Moor at least into a jealousy so strong that
judgement cannot cure’ (II,i)
(Iago)
"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the greeneyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds
on." (III,iii)
(Iago)
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Psychomachia
This is a word that means ‘the struggle of the
Soul’. The struggle between two forces, a ‘good
angel’ and a ‘bad’ angel for a man’s soul.
In Othello the contest pits Iago on one side and
Desdemona on the other, the two contending
For the possession of Othello’s mind.
This also points to the fact that in many ways
Iago’s similar to a medieval ‘Vice’ character.
‘By the world, I think my wife be honest and
think she is not; I think that thou art just and
think thou art not’ (III,iii) - Othello
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Race, class, gender
These are categories that
one would think occupied
a more ‘modern’ audience. The 2005 movie
‘Crash’ is certainly based on the conflicts that
arise from these divisions.
A women asserts herself, a Moor marries her and
assumes a leadership role in a foreign country; a
soldier ambitious for preferment sees his place given to
another (a courtly educated snob).
Anxiety, tension and hatred are caused by divisions
and comparisons that are produced by categories like
race, class and gender.
‘A fellow that never set a squadron in the
field…mere prattle without practice…He in good
time, must his Lieutenant be, And – I – God bless
the mark! His Moorship’s Ancient.”
(I,i) – Iago
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Internal / External - battles
Iago’s infiltration of
Othello’s mind Structurally, conflict
progresses from external
wars to domestic disputes to an intensely
private battleground in Othello’s mind,
psychologically invaded by the villainous Iago.
“And little of this great world can I speak
More than pertains to feats of broil and
battle’ (I,iii) Othello
‘Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell
content! Farewell the plumed troops, and the
big wars That makes ambition virtue! (III,iii) Othello
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Iago the vice character
A Central Irony
‘Divinity of Hell’ speech
- Othello ‘the warrior’ can’t
survive in a courtly context in
‘the battle of wits’.
Iago invokes ‘hell’ and the Devil
or devils (demons) throughout the play. In the soliloquy in (II,iii)
Iago claims to employ ‘divinity of hell’ that is the theology (or
Thinking) of hell.
Many critics have noted that Iago embodies similar qualities to
the Devil in the Medieval Mystery plays and the character of
Vice in Morality plays. Vice was thought to be a messenger of
the Devil sent to tempt Everyman (a character rep’ the common
man) to do evil.
‘How am I then a villain To counsel Cassio to this
parallel course, Directly to his good? Divinity of
Hell! (II,iii) - Iago
‘When devils will the blackest sins put on, They do
suggest at first heavenly shows, As I do now’ (II,iii) - Iago
“News, friends ours wars are done, the Turks are
drowned” (I,ii)
There is no job here for Othello the soldier. His forte is
waging external wars against an acknowledged enemy,
in this case the barbarous Turk. But the end of these
external wars means, as it does all too often in
Shakespeare, the beginning of internal war.
“And little of this great world can I speak
More than pertains to feats of broil and
battle” (I,iii) - Othello
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Iago’s Motives
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
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For losing his place to Michael Cassio
He thinks that Othello has been sleeping
with his wife
Jealousy that Othello has been elevated to General and he is a lowly
‘Ensign’.
So the motives he brings forth are sexual jealousy, political
envy, and reputation. Yet none of these seem convincing. Iago
is not a man who – like Othello or Cassio – cares about external
reputation.
In fact his motivations seem deliberately crafted. Samuel Taylor
Coleridge called this his motiveless
malignancy.
(All quotes from Iago below)
‘I hate the Moor. And it is thought twixt my sheets,
he’s done my office.’ (I,iii)
‘But partly led to diet my revenge, For that I do
suspect the lusty Moor Hath leaped into my
seat…nothing shall content my soul Till I am
evened with him, wife for wife.’ (II,i)
‘I’ll have our Cassio on the hip, Abuse him to the
Moor in the right garb (for I fear Cassio with my
night-cape too)’ (II,i)
Iago excels in short term
Tactics but not long term
Strategy
He completely misses the possibility that his wife
Emilia could be his undoing because he doesn’t
understand: loyalty, friendship, respect, compassion
and love.
Emilia’s love for Desdemona is his undoing.
“Nay, lay thee down and roar, For thou hast
killed the sweetest innocent That e’er did lift
up eye” (V,ii)
“I care not for thy sword. I’ll make thee
known though I lost twenty lives” (Emilia
V,ii)
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Dramatic Irony - knowing more
than the actors on stage
The fact that we know Iago’s plans
From the outset when Othello and Cassio are completely
unaware sets up ‘dramatic tension’ that is sustained right up until
the the final act.
Iago is constantly referred to as ‘honest Iago’ which is obviously
the antithesis of what he is – compare what he says about
reputation, firstly to Cassio – then to Othello
Imagery of Darkness
Much of the play is set at night
(as you notice in the opening
scene) and the physical darkness suitably
parallels the moral darkness that dominates the
story.
Darkness is seen as a symbol for chaos and light the
opposite reason and order.
Iago speaks to Brabantio under the cloak of night, from
‘Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft
a moral, as well as a literal, darkness.
got without merit, and lost without deserving’ (II,iii)
Iago to Cassio
Brabantio calls, ‘Light, I say, light’ when awoken by
Iago and Roderigo – a call for order. As the play
“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
unfolds, this contrast of light and darkness will mirror
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
the contrast between Venice and Cyprus.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something,
nothing; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to
thousands; But he that filches from me my good
name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.” (III,iii) Iago to Othello
Two more times light is called for in the middle of the
night once when Cassio fights Montano and again
when Cassio is wounded.
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Black & white –
Othello’s skin colour is referred to
throughout: ‘black, sooty, dark,
coal black’ Though present in
Elizabethan society the presence of a black man conjured up
two responses:
(1) images of exotic strangeness of something ‘unknown and
dangerous something fundamentally ‘other’
(2) Iago plays upon the entrenched cultural prejudice = the
association of the colour black with moral darkness ‘evil,
unnatural, monstrous, devilish.
Here then is the key dramatic point, one typically
Shakespearean, at the same time establishing and critiquing a
stereotype: Othello looks black, but it is Iago who becomes the
pole of moral negativity (conventionally, ‘blackness’) in the play.
‘An old black ram is tupping your white ewe’
(I,i)Iago to Brabantio
"O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!"
Emilia to Othello (V,i)
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Settings: Venice / Cyprus
Othello provides us with a geographical shift
In the middle of the play, the movement
From a civilized place to a wild one, from a locale of order and law to a
place of passion and confusion.
This provided the perfect setting for Iago to go about his business –
far from the prying eyes of the Venetian authorities.
Opening act = Venice – a city in Northern Italy consisting of a number
of islands in a lagoon (streets are made up of canals
Venice = a republic governed by the people rather than a monarch. In
reality a rich aristocratic class held power and elected a Duke (often
for life).
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Destructive power of words
Iagos Methods
Iago’s is a voice out of the dark, living proof
that words have enormous power.
Iago’s words poison everyone who hears them, from Brabantio to
Othello.
“Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous
confirmations
strong
As proofs of holy
writ” (III,iii)
Iago doesn’t seem to physically
do anything other than use his
words, but instead moves other
people to do things. He uses language to insinuate
to imply, to pull out of people’s imaginations the dark
things that are already there.
“Ha, I like not that…(Othello: ‘Was that not Cassio
parted from my wife.’)
“Cassio my lord? No, sure, I cannot think it, That
he would steal away so guilty like Seeing you
coming.” (III,iii)
“The
Moor already changes with my poison.
Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood
Burn like the mines of sulphur” (III,iii)
(Iago
“I told him what I thought, and told no more Than
what he found himself was apt and true” (V,ii) Iago
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Pageants that Keep us in
‘False Gaze’
Just as the Senator remarks early in the play when
referring to the Turks playing tricks as to where they’ll
invade.
“…’tis a pageant, To keep us in false gaze” (I,iii)
This relates to all the plays-within-a play that Iago
stages for the people he’s trying to trick.
He has Cassio ‘court’ Desdemona in front of
Othello’eyes.
He has the drunk Cassio fight Montano. He has Cassio
talk about Bianca, deceiving Othello that it’s Des’. He
has Roderigo kill Cassio (unsuccessfully). He places
the all important prop, the handkerchief, in Cassio’s
hands. It’s like there are two dramatists here
Shakespeare and Iago.
‘
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Cuckold
Cuckold is a historic derogatory term for a
man who has an unfaithful wife. The word,
which has been in recorded use since the
13th century, derives from the cuckoo which gives up nurturing its own
by laying eggs in other birds' nests.
It’s notable that Othello is troubled more than anything else by being
labeled a ‘cuckold’.
What troubles him most, tellingly, is that other people will know about
his cuckolding
“I will chop her into messes!
Cuckold me?” (IV,i)
“I had been happy if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known.” (III,iii)
It is Othello’s shame, not Desdemona’s that he speaks
of here.