Key Events

Q: Othello’s Love Story

The Duke and senators greet Othello as __‘valiant Othello’__, but this is interrupted quickly by Brabantio’s __‘grief’__ that __‘engluts and swallows other sorrows’.__

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The Venetian Senate

This scene reinforces the link between private and public conflict in this tragedy.

Events

Act One Scene Three opens with the Duke and Venetian senators discussing the news of the Turkish threat before Othello’s marriage to Desdemona is formally debated in court.
Othello and Desdemona both explain their courtship, which is accepted by the Duke; they both leave for Cyprus before Roderigo and Iago further cement their scheme to destroy Othello’s marriage and Cassio’s reputation.

Military conflict

As the scene opens amongst a tactical discussion between the Duke and senators, it emphasises the public and military conflict between Turkey and Cyprus as well as Venice’s defensive role in this.

Importance of Cyprus

In the sixteenth century, Venice valued Cyprus as a colonial outpost as a source of sugar and cotton, hence its wish to protect it for commercial reasons.

Private and public conflict

The news that the Turks bear ‘purposes towards Cyprus’ creates a sense of immediacy and urgency running parallel to Othello’s private strife.
The reference a Senator makes to the Turks’ attempted trickery to convince Venice they had set sail for Rhodes instead of Cyprus as a ‘pageant / To keep us in false gaze’ links to the fraudulence of Iago against Othello, reasserting the link between private and public conflict in this tragedy.

Othello’s Love Story

The Duke and senators greet Othello as ‘valiant Othello’, but this is interrupted quickly by Brabantio’s ‘grief’ that ‘engluts and swallows other sorrows’.

Othello's tale

Othello’s impassioned, dignified and eloquent plea to his ‘most potent, grave, and reverend signiors’ to allow himself to explain suggests modesty as he concedes he is ‘rude’ in his ‘speech’ and ‘little bless’d with the soft phrase of peace’.
However, he promises that he will try to tell an ‘unvarnish’d tale’ of the ‘whole course of love’, framing his and Desdemona’s relationship as a archetypal chivalric yet meaningful and loving courtship.

Brabantio's retort

Brabantio dismisses Othello’s claims as ‘against all rules of nature’ and ‘cunning hell’.
He emphasises yet again that the love must be due to ‘some dram conjur’d’ as Desdemona is but an innocent and vulnerable ‘maiden never bold’.
He suggests that their marriage is mismatched due to Desdemona’s youth, that she is from an entirely different culture, and her supposed fear of men that look like Othello ('what she feared to look on').

Othello's defence

Othello asks to ‘send for the lady to the Sagittary’ so that she may speak for herself.
Before this, he tells his own tale, which presents their love as sprung from tales of exotic adventures – ‘the battles, sieges, fortunes’ and of the ‘Anthropophagi’ – which Othello has valiantly experienced.

Othello's love

Desdemona became infatuated with him on her own accord as she listened with ‘greedy ear’ and would ‘devour up’ his stories.
He summarises their love: ‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them’, cleverly subverting Brabantio’s accusations by suggesting ‘this is the only witchcraft I have used’.

Impressing the Duke

Othello appears here as an eloquent, heroic soldier rather than malevolent abuser that Brabantio would have us to believe, and the Duke seems greatly impressed by this tale.
He thinks it would ‘win’ his ‘daughter too’.