Key Ideas

Love, Historical Context and Historicism (Act 1, Scene 3)

Brabantio suggests that Othello and Desdemona’s 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.

Othello’s modesty

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 an archetypal chivalric yet meaningful and loving courtship.

Othello's tale

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 explanation

Desdemona became infactuated 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’.

The Duke's opinion

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’.

Desdemona

Desdemona seems to rejects the racism shown to Othello by others as she ‘saw Othello’s visage in his mind’ and instead fell in love with his ‘valiant parts’ and status as a warrior.
The Duke is swayed by her argument, and allows them to leave for Cyprus together.

Iago's cynicism

Here Iago shows that he is cynical about love. Iago responds to Roderigo saying that he ‘never found a man that knew how to love himself’ and compares women to ‘guinea-hens’—men’s best interests should instead be themselves.
His depraved morality is revealed as he sees human nature as characterised by ‘blood and baseness’, ‘raging motions’ and ‘carnal stings’ rather than love.

Tragedy (Act 1, Scene 3)

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

Brabantio's warning

Brabantio issues a final warning to Othello as Desdemona ‘has deceived her father and may thee’, suggesting his unruly daughter will make for a promiscuous wife—and also establishing the foundations for Othello’s tortured jealousy later on in the play.

Iago’s soliloquy

Iago’s soliloquy is central in setting up the later tragedy.
He reveals more of his plot to the audience; he will ‘abuse Othello’s ear’ and manipulate his ‘free and open nature’ by ‘hell and night’.

Plot development

The audience now becomes almost complicit in Iago’s malevolent scheme and must helplessly witness him now ‘bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light’.
Terms such as ‘hell’ and ‘monstrous birth’ highlight how terrifying events will become.

Tragedy (Act 1, Scene 3)

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

Private and public

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.

Adjectives

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.

Motivations

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.

‘Sport and profit’

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 could be that Iago’s principle motive and logic for wishing to destroy Othello is simply to be evil for his own base ‘sport and profit’.

1Context

1.1Introduction

1.1.1Specifications

1.2Background

1.2.1Shakespeare

1.2.2Love

1.2.3Tragedy

1.2.4Historical Context

1.3Othello

1.3.1Setting

1.3.2Social Issues

2Act One: Summaries & Themes

2.1Act and Scene Summaries

2.1.1Structure

2.1.2The Exam

2.2Scene One

2.2.1Key Events

2.2.2Key Themes

2.2.3Key Ideas

2.3Scene Two

2.3.1Key Events

2.3.2Key Themes

2.3.3Key Ideas

2.4Scene Three

2.4.1Key Events

2.4.2Key Events 2

2.4.3Key Themes

2.4.4Key Ideas

3Act Two: Summaries & Themes

3.1Scene One & Two

3.1.1Scene One: Events

3.1.2Key Events 2

3.1.3Key Ideas: Love & Tragedy

3.1.4Scene Two: Events

3.2Scene Three

3.2.1Key Events

3.2.2Key Ideas

4Act Three: Summaries & Themes

4.1Key Events

4.1.1Scene One & Two

4.1.2Scene Three

4.1.3Scene Three: Key Ideas

4.1.4Scene Four

5Act Four

5.1Scene One

5.1.1Key Events

5.1.2Key Ideas

5.2Scene Two

5.2.1Key Events

5.2.2Key Ideas

5.3Scene Three

5.3.1Key Events

5.3.2Key Ideas

6Act Five

6.1Scene One

6.1.1Key Events

6.1.2Key Ideas

6.2Scene Two

6.2.1Key Events

6.2.2Key Ideas

7Character Profiles

7.1Major Characters

7.1.1Othello

7.1.2Iago

7.1.3Desdemona

7.1.4Emilia

7.1.5Cassio

7.2Minor Characters

7.2.1Roderigo & Brabantio

7.2.2Other Characters

8Key Themes

8.1Love & Tragedy

8.1.1Love

8.1.2Love 2

8.1.3Tragedy

8.1.4Tragedy 2

8.2Other Key Themes

8.2.1Public versus Private

8.2.2Appearance & Reality

9Writing Techniques

9.1Writing Techniques

9.1.1Structure

9.1.2Genre

9.1.3Form & Language

9.1.4Language & Imagery

10Critical Debates

10.1Criticism & Performance

10.1.1Shakespeare's Legacy

10.1.2Traditional

10.1.3Modern & Contemporary

10.2Approaches

10.2.1Feminist Approach

10.2.2Psychoanalytic Approach

10.2.3Marxist Approach

11Approaching AQA English Literature

11.1Specification A

11.1.1Specification A

11.1.2Love Through the Ages

11.2Specification B

11.2.1Specification B

11.2.2Aspects of Tragedy

12Issues of Assessment

12.1The Exams

12.1.1AOs

12.1.2Mark Scheme

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