Key Themes

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Private versus Public Matters

This scene begins to establish a growing sense of unease and suspense as we see conflict and tension between private and public matters and gender relations.

Dichotomies

This scene reveals the dichotomy between the public, military matters of the Venetian state and the private, personal relationships between the characters. Conflict defines both, however.
Whilst Cyprus becomes imminently threatened by the arrival of the Turkish fleet to its shores, Brabantio disowns his own daughter and Iago begins to move his plot forward, revealing his darkest machinations in his final soliloquy.

'Faces'

Desdemona is presented as promiscuous and carnal by other men, yet appears sincere in her love for Othello.
Iago is seen as ‘honest’ and ‘noble’ yet is clearly understood by the audience to be truly wicked.

Appearance versus reality

One of the play’s key themes – the discrepancy between appearance versus reality - is first fully explored in this scene.
This was a central tenet of many Shakespearean tragedies, including Othello, Macbeth, Richard III and Romeo and Juliet.

Use of personas

Elizabethan audiences were fascinated by the gaps between private and public personas, as many citizens would often portray a public persona quite dissimilar from their private life.
Shakespeare’s use of soliloquy and aside – particularly by Iago - helps to reveal private personas and allows the audience to reflect critically upon their own identity and use of personas.

Gender Relations

This scene begins to establish a growing sense of unease and suspense as we see conflict and tension between private and public matters and gender relations.

Brabantio

Brabantio’s metaphorical comparison of his grief as a ‘flood-gate’ highlights his paternal love for Desdemona.
Yet this turns patriarchal and possessive as he suggests Desdemona has been ‘stol’n’ from him, stripping away Desdemona’s agency and reducing her to mere property.

A man's responsibility

It is interesting how Brabantio refuses to accept Desdemona’s role in the partnership as a ‘maiden never bold’.
He speaks for her as he insists Othello is something ‘she fear’d to look on’, accentuating that women’s opinions and actions were seen as the responsibility of men.

Othello

Othello speaks sincerely of his and Desdemona’s love – yet still seems implicitly misogynistic as he too assures that he ‘won’ her from her father.

Influence

Medieval culture often influenced Shakespeare’s work.
The tale of Othello and Desdemona’s growing love alludes to typical medieval chivalric romance, which was a popular literary genre at the time emphasising love and courtly manners, usually portraying some kind of knight with heroic qualities on a quest who wins the favour of a lady by virtue of these qualities.

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony permeates the scene as we become increasingly aware of Iago’s anarchic villainy.

Language

Shakespeare’s constant use of the adjectives ‘honest’ and ‘noble’ in reference to Iago in this scene creates tension throughout as we see his outright lies and manipulations by other characters.

Iago

Othello sincerely trusts and believes in Iago’s ‘honesty’, yet Iago shows no remorse or hesitation in abusing this trust.
In his final soliloquy, he seems to suggest another motivation for his hatred of Othello – that he may have slept with Emilia.

Motivations

However, no other action or dialogue in the play seems to suggest this, and this cannot compensate our hatred for Iago’s deception and deceit.
Instead, it seems Iago’s principle motive and logic for wishing to destroy Othello is simply to be evil for his own base ‘sport and profit’.