Key Ideas: Love & Tragedy

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Love, Historical Context and Historicism (Act 2, Scene 1)

This scene shows us Emilia and Iago's strained relationship, and Othello and Desdemona’s deep affection for each other.

Cyprus

The arrival at Cyprus is important in showing a couple of aspects of love.
When the dialogue moves to Desdemona - Cassio praises her as ‘divine’ and ‘our great captain’s captain’, the ‘riches of the ship’ as she arrives in Cyprus safely.

Cassio

Desdemona’s immediate concern however, is if Cassio has heard from her ‘lord’, so she meets Cassio’s exaggerated, positive reception by requiring facts about her husband’s safety.

Quarrel with Iago

Desdemona engages in somewhat of a quarrel with Iago, which could be either interpreted as mischievous, amusing teasing between the two or alternatively a rather tense, bitter and unpleasant argument rising from Iago’s critical comments about women.

Desdemona

She decries him as a ‘slanderer’ as he implies all women’s involvement with prostitution as they ‘rise to play and go to bed to work’.
The subtext of the quarrel is about love and relationships and the power that men have over women.

Love, Historical Context and Historicism (Act 2, Scene 1)

This scene also shows us Emilia and Iago's strained relationship, and Othello and Desdemona’s deep affection for each other.

Emilia

Throughout Desdemona and Iago's conversation Emilia is noticeably mostly silent, implying here her subservience and meekness when with Iago (or possibly her annoyance at him), whilst Desdemona contests his pointed witticisms rather equally and determinedly, typifying her strength and power as a woman in the face of misogyny at the beginning of the play.

Emilia later

This is very different to the Emilia we see later on in the play, but here too, we also see a confident Desdemona as well, who may be seen as being very different to the way she is at the end of the play.
Is it love that is emboldening her?

Othello and Desdemona

Othello and Desdemona’s deep affection for each other is intensified here as both speak poetically of their love.
Othello calls Desdemona is ‘fair warrior’ and ‘his soul’s joy’.
He comments: ‘If after every tempest come such calms / May the winds blow till they have wakened death’, and Desdemona hopes on the heavens that their ‘loves and comforts should increase’.

Irony

A perceptive audience member here could note the irony in their comments here; for the couple, the storm is only just beginning.
More intense stormy weather lies ahead.

Tragedy (Act 2, Scene 1)

Iago's final soliloquy gives us some insight into his growing anger and his need for ‘revenge’ upon both Cassio and Othello. Revenge is always a tragic concept.

The storm

The storm is so ferocious that the men can see ‘nothing at all’; it ‘seems to pelt the clouds’ with ‘high and monstrous mane’.
The storm may prefigure and act as a symbol of the storms to follow in the tragedy.

Manipulation

Iago is able to skilfully manipulate Roderigo into continuing the scheme despite Desdemona’s deep love for Othello by emphasising her supposed sexual appetite.
He insists ‘her eye must be fed’, and that she will become bored when ‘the blood is made dull with the act of sport’.

Cassio

Iago’s attention in the scheme moves to Cassio, whom he believes makes a fitting ‘second choice’ for Desdemona, a ‘devilish knave’ who is ‘handsome, young, and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds look after’.
The villainous plot to cause Othello’s tragic fall begins to shape in Iago’s mind.

Iago's influence

His pernicious influence on the gullible Roderigo is clear as he is able to completely misrepresent the platonic holding of hands between Cassio and Desdemona as not mere ‘courtesy’ but rather an act pointing to ‘a history of lust and foul thoughts’.

Revenge

As he insists Roderigo ‘be ruled’ by him— accentuating his need for control over all—he plans that Roderigo will ‘provoke’ Cassio into a quarrel.
His final soliloquy gives us some insight into his growing anger and his need for ‘revenge’ upon both Cassio and Othello.
Revenge is always a tragic concept.

Complicity

At the beginning, he claims that he does ‘well believe’t’ that Cassio loves Desdemona.
The audience is left to question whether Iago truly does and is delusional, or whether his attempts to deceive and misrepresent facts now even extends to the audience.
The audience therefore finds themselves complicit in the tragedy and sometimes even feels sympathy for Iago.