Critical quotations Flashcards

1
Q

Sanders

A

Othello’s psychological complexity and the tight focus on his relationships with Desdemona and Iago exert a ‘relentless emotional grip’ on the audience

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2
Q

G. R. Elliot

A

For many, this play is ‘the world’s supreme secular poem of “human love divine”‘. Othello is one of the greatest lovers in dramatic literature. The play exerts a hold on our emotions because of the intensity of the central couple’s emotions.

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3
Q

E. A. J. Honigmann - ‘Othello’ as a tragedy

A

claims Othello is ‘the most unbearably exciting’ of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

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4
Q

Caryl Phillips - Desdemona

A

Othello’s love of Desdemona ‘is the love of a possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war’

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5
Q

Caryl Phillips - Othello

A

has commented that Othello is “a man of action, not a thinker”.
Also suggets that his position is tenuous: “In his very first speech he subsconsciously acknowledges the social pressure he is under” as a black man in a white world when he makes references to his service to the state.

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6
Q

E. A. J. Honigmann - Iago

A

Believes Iago is a seductive character, who is able to get the audience to collude with him for a few reasons:

  • Because his victims ‘lack humour, Iago appeals to us as more amusing’ than the other characters.
  • Shakespeare’s ‘dramatic perspective compels us to see with his eyes, and to share his “jokes”.’
  • ‘His humour also makes him seem cleverer than his victims’
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7
Q

Rymer - Desdemona (1697!)

A

Dismissed Desdemona as a ‘silly Woman’. He was offended by Desdemona’s conversation with Iago in Act2sc1, commenting that Desdemona was behaving like any ‘Countrey Kitchin-maid with her Sweet-heart’.

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8
Q

Othello’s psychological complexity and the tight focus on his relationships with Desdemona and Iago exert a ‘relentless emotional grip’ on the audience

A

Sanders

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9
Q

For many, this play is ‘the world’s supreme secular poem of “human love divine”‘. Othello is one of the greatest lovers in dramatic literature. The play exerts a hold on our emotions because of the intensity of the central couple’s emotions.

A

G. R. Elliot

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10
Q

claims Othello is ‘the most unbearably exciting’ of Shakespeare’s tragedies.

A

E. A. J. Honigmann - ‘Othello’ as a tragedy

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11
Q

Othello’s love of Desdemona ‘is the love of a possession. She is a prize, a spoil of war’

A

Caryl Phillips - Desdemona

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12
Q

has commented that Othello is “a man of action, not a thinker”.
Also suggets that his position is tenuous: “In his very first speech he subsconsciously acknowledges the social pressure he is under” as a black man in a white world when he makes references to his service to the state.

A

Caryl Phillips - Othello

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13
Q

Believes Iago is a seductive character, who is able to get the audience to collude with him for a few reasons:

  • Because his victims ‘lack humour, Iago appeals to us as more amusing’ than the other characters.
  • Shakespeare’s ‘dramatic perspective compels us to see with his eyes, and to share his “jokes”.’
  • ‘His humour also makes him seem cleverer than his victims’
  • ‘Dramatic perspective can even make us the villain’s accomplices: he confides in us’ - does he? how do we know that he is being honest?
A

E. A. J. Honigmann - Iago

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14
Q

Dismissed Desdemona as a ‘silly Woman’.
He was offended by Desdemona’s conversation with Iago in Act2sc1, commenting that Desdemona was behaving like any ‘Countrey Kitchin-maid with her Sweet-heart’.

A

Rymer - Desdemona (1697!)

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15
Q

Michael Long

A

Othello experiences a ‘collapse of the personality’

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16
Q

Michael Mangan - Othello

A

Othello is ‘simultaneously the civilised man and the babarian’

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17
Q

Michael Mangang - idealisation

A
  • Othello’s ‘idealisations’ render him ‘vulnerable’
  • this is because such highly constructed beliefs about women are ‘fragile and subject to collapse’
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18
Q

Neely - Desdemona

A

Desdemona represents a ‘middle-ground’ between ‘abstinence and lust’

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19
Q

Kott

A

‘Iago is a diabolical stage manager’

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20
Q

Bradley - Iago

A

‘Iago’s actions are those of a man who has been unjustly wronged’

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21
Q

A.C. Bradley - Iago

A

‘the almost superhuman art of Iago’

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22
Q

C. Phillips (probs Caryl)

A

‘Othello feels constantly threatened and profoundly insecure’

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23
Q

Caryl Phillips - fatal mistake

A

‘the ‘fatal mistake’ that Othello makes is to question his own judgement’

24
Q

Gardner - Desdemona

A

Desdemona is ‘love’s martyr’: by dying she wins Othello’s love again.

25
Q

Sean Benson

A

‘Othello’ is a domestic tragedy, of less worth than political tragedies that deal with the fate of nations

26
Q

Francis Dolan - Othello

A

Othello is a ‘domestic tyrant who murders his wife on spurious grounds’.

27
Q

Coleridge - Iago

A

Iago is a ‘motiveless malignity’

28
Q

A. C. Bradley - Othello

A

Othello is a romantic figure who we should look at with ‘admiration and love’

29
Q

Rymer - Othello

A

Othello belongs in ‘a Bloody Farce’ because he is the archetype of a foolish cuckold

30
Q

Newman on Othello’s heroism

A

Othello is ‘represented as heroic and tragic at a historical moment when the only role’ Black men ‘played onstage was that of a villain of low status’

31
Q

T.S. Eliot on Othello’s character

A

in Othello’s last speech he is ‘cheering himself up. He is endeavouring to escape reality…’

‘Othello succeeds in turning himself into a pathetic figure, by adopting an aesthetic rather than a moral attitude’

directly challenges A.C Bradley’s view that we should look at Othello with ‘admiration and love’

32
Q

Leavis on Othello’s love

A

considered Othello’s love to be ‘a matter of self-centred and self-regarding satisfactions – pride, sensual possessiveness, appetite, love of loving.’

33
Q

T.S. Elliot on Othello’s final speech

A

believed he had ‘never read a more convincing exposure of human weakness – of universal human weakness - than the last great speech of Othello.’

34
Q

Woolf

A

‘Othello, in his magnanimous ways, is egotistic.’

35
Q

Traub

A

Othello is vulnerable because he internalises Iago’s negative view of Black men, which undermines his sense of self.

36
Q

Newman on the handkerchief

A

‘possession of a lady’s handkerchief was considered proof of adultery’

37
Q

Phillips’ view of Othello’s line: “she had eyes and chose me”

A

reveals Othello’s ‘gross insecurity’

38
Q

G.K. Hunter on Iago’s racial prejudice

A

Iago’s racial prejudice means that he wants to make Othello’s deeds ‘fit in with the prejudice that his face… excited’. (Iago wants to ‘prove’ Othello’s evilness as a man of colour)

39
Q

G.K. Hunter on ‘Othello’

A

‘a tragedy of the loss of faith’

40
Q

Gardner on the murder

A

the murder has ‘the stamp of the heroic’ upon it.

The act is heroic because Othello acts from inner necessity… The act is also heroic in its absoluteness, and finality… It must be done.’

41
Q

Cavell on Othello’s opening speech Act5Sc2

A

This speech is ‘part of a ritual of denial’ (of responsibility?)

42
Q

Vaughan on the concerns of Othello

A

‘although Othello’s racial identity is clearly a factor in Shakespeare’s text, when the play was first performed the audience would not have seen it as squarely focussed on race as we do’

43
Q

Greenblatt on narratives

A

characters in the play are continuously manipulating narratives about themselves and others in order to gain control over how information is disseminated.

44
Q

Ryan on Othello and Desdemona’s behaviour

A

Desdemona and Othello ‘act… as if they were already free citizens of a truly civilised future, instead of prisoners’

45
Q

Smith on the handkerchief

A

‘a portable version or extension of Othello’

46
Q

Jardine on the willow song

A

Without Emilia’s speech, the willow scene ‘becomes a stylised, emblematic representation of female passivity’

47
Q

Loomba on the play

A

‘a fantasy of interracial love… and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence’

48
Q

Rymer on Iago

A

merely believes Iago to be a jealous ‘booby’ rather than a ruthless “demi-devil” (Act5sc2)

49
Q

Hazlitt on Othello

A

Othello has ‘blood of the most inflammable kind’

50
Q

E.A.J. Honnigmann on Desdemona

A

it is possible to see Desdemona as ‘the strongest, the most heroic person in the play’. Her last words are ‘an act of forgiveness’. additionally, Desdemona portrays ‘woman as man likes to reinvent her’

51
Q

E.A.J. Honnigmann on the end of the play

A

‘Love and Goodness defeat Evil’ at the end of the play

52
Q

E.A.J. Honnigmann on love

A

‘one wonders… whether the men are capable of unselfish love’.

53
Q

Dr Johnson on Iago

A

Iago, from the first scene until the last, is ‘hated and despised’

54
Q

Bradshaw on Emilia

A

Emilia is not a proto-feminist but a ‘cryptofeminist’ due to her need to conceal her progressive ideals

55
Q

Stanley Cowell on the play

A

‘the tragedy arises from a horror of female sexuality’

56
Q

Wain on Iago

A

‘love had been left out of his composition’

57
Q

Schlegel

A

‘the return of a barbarous man to his uncivilised roots’