CRITICS

Question 1

Phillip Sidney on ‘Othello’ as a tradegy

Answer 1

In Sidney’s view, tradegy provokes ‘the affects of admiration and commseration’ and so demonstrates ‘the uncertainty of this world’

Question 2

Helen Gardener on Othello’s characterisation

Answer 2

“He has the heroic capacity for passion. But what most sets him apart is his solitariness”

Question 3

F.R. Leavis on Othello’s characterisation

Answer 3

“Othello in his own magnanimous way, is egotistic”

Question 4

F.R.Leavis on Othello’s Characterisation

Answer 4

“This self-centredness doesn’t mean self-knowledge”

Question 5

A.C. Bradley on Othello’s Characteristaion

Answer 5

“Othello is the greatest poet of them all”

Question 6

A.C. Bradley on Othello’s Characterisation

Answer 6

“his sufferings are so heart-rending, that he stirs, I believe, in most readers a passion of mingled love and pity which they feel for no other hero in Shakespeare”

Question 7

Nigel Wheale on the play as a tradegy

Answer 7

“observing a tragic event chills us with shock and moves us with compassionate pity, making us realise the frailty and vulnerability of human life.”

Question 8

Nigel Wheale on the play as a tradegy

Answer 8

“They provide the focus for the most powerful (male) motivation of Renaissance tradegy - revenge”

Question 9

Bernard O’Keefe on Othello’s Characterisation

Answer 9

“Othello is at first supremely confident”

Question 10

Andrew McCulloch on Othello’s Characterisation

Answer 10

“Othello does love Desdemona and he is fully responsible for her death”

Question 11

Andrew McCulloch on Othello’s Characterisation

Answer 11

“Othello is at war with himself and cannot win”

Question 12

Bonnie Greer on Othello’s Characterisation

Answer 12

“Othello, the black man considered by some to be the enemy within, discovers that he is his own enemy”

Question 13

Kiernan Ryan on Race

Answer 13

“Othello and Desdemona find unleashed upon them, in shape of Iago, the venomous rage of a society whose foundations are rocked by the mere fat of their marriage”

Question 14

Kiernan Ryan on Race and Gender

Answer 14

“Othello’s dread of cuckoldry and the misogyny that feeds it are perfectly in tune with the patriarchal culture of a city where his colour makes him feel like an alien, but where he’s entierly at home as a man”

Question 15

Johnathan Dollimore on Race and Gender

Answer 15

“A misogynistic conception of women is fused with a racist one of Othello and a xenophobic pne about who she should ‘naturally’ desire. And somewhere inside himself, Othello perhaps agrees. And if he does it may be because he has come to identify unconditionally with the society he serves”

Question 16

Richard Lees on Race

Answer 16

“Elizabethans may have found travellers’ accounts of African peoples intrigungly exotic, yet the pervading stereotype to emerge from the plays they watched equated blackness with canibalism, cruelty, animal sexuality and the devil”

Question 17

Richard Lees on Race and Gender

Answer 17

“Othello’s jealousy - a patriarchal possessiveness that Shakespeare is careful to represent as racially non-specific”

Question 18

Marion Cox on Race

Answer 18

“His non-whiteness is the main issue, but his lack of faniliarity with Venetian customs and the way of peace are aggravating factors in his downfall; a world of courtesans and coutiers is incomprehensible to man who has been at war since the age of seven”

Question 19

Bernard O’Keefe on Race

Answer 19

“It is this sense of his ‘otherness’, of belonging yet also being marginalised, that Iago is able to exploit”

Question 20

Bernard O’Keefe on Race

Answer 20

“Iago cleverly plays on the insecurities and contradictions that Othello’s own stories have embodied”

Question 21

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on Race

Answer 21

“Othello, high-octane and contested, speaks acutely to our times, this age of high-migration anxiety”

Question 22

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on Race

Answer 22

“Othello’s tradegy is that cultural surrender is not enough for most Venetians. They cannot ever truly embrace him.”

Question 23

Ania Loomba on Race and Gender

Answer 23

“Othello is both a fantasy of interracial love and social tolerance and a nightmare of racial hatred and male violence”

Question 24

Ania Loomba on Race and Gender

Answer 24

“Othello is predisposed to believing his (Iago’s) pronouncements about the inhernet duplicity of women”

Question 25

Ania Loomba on **Race and Gender**

Answer 25

"Othello is **a victim of racial beliefs precisely because he becomes an agent of misogynist ones.**"

Question 26

Emma Smith on **Race**

Answer 26

"A 'colour blind' or **racially neutral response is impossible**"

Question 27

Germaine Greer on **Iago**

Answer 27

"They [the audience] do not go home hoping that they will never meet an Iago but rather **understanding something of the nature of evil** and **how soon bright things come to confusion.**"

Question 28

Germaine Greer on **Iago**

Answer 28

"We no longer feel as Shakespeare's contempories did, the ubiquity of Satan, but Iago is still servicable to us, as an objective correlative of **the mindless inventiveness of racist aggression.**"

Question 29

Germaine Greer on **Iago**

Answer 29

"Iago is **still alive and kicking and filling migrants' letterboxes with excrement**"

Question 30

Kiernan Ryan on **Iago**

Answer 30

"The really disturbing thing about Iago is not that he's an unfathomable psychopath, but that **he's pathologically normal and theatrically irresistable.**"

Question 31

Kiernan Ryan on **Iago**

Answer 31

"when he retorts unfazed in his final speech 'Demand me nothing: what you know, you', refusing point blank to explain his malevolence, we can be sure **every word of that barbed line is addressed, disoncertingly, to us too**"

Question 32

Bernard O'Keeffe on **Iago**

Answer 32

"We are simultaneously aware of both Iago's fabrication and **the plausability of his narratives.**"

Question 33

Bernard O'Keefe on **Iago**

Answer 33

"he is driving him [Othello] into **an emotion from which he himself suffers and which he understands intimately**"

Question 34

Simon Bubb on **Iago**

Answer 34

"by sharing his villainy with us, **he draws us into the darkness and somehow makes us part of it**"

Question 35

Simon Bubb on **Iago**

Answer 35

"It seems the playwright wantes to spend time examining the nature of villiainy"

Question 36

Giles Block on **Iago**

Answer 36

"Iago's plan takes place as we watch him; and as he watches us watching him, **we become complicit in his devilry.** By listening to him, it's as if we encourage him to tell us more."

Question 37

Sarah Robertson on **the presentation of women**

Answer 37

"He seems to mock [male character's misogyny], as **everything the men say about the women is completely untrue"**

Question 38

Sarah Robertson on **the presentation of women**

Answer 38

"the actual representations of the womens themselves are not degrading or insulting, **as theu are shown as strong women who have all the virtues that the men lack.**"