Critics

Question 1

On Race and Otherness

Answer 1

Thomas Rymer (1693): “Othello is a cautionary tale that warns against the dangers of allowing outsiders to integrate into society.”
F.R. Leavis (1952): “Othello is too stupid to be regarded as a tragic hero; his downfall is his own doing.”
Ania Loomba (1998): “Othello is both the hero and the other, the conqueror and the conquered.”

Question 2

On Emilia

Answer 2

Carol Thomas Neely (1985): “Emilia’s role in the play reveals the tensions between wifely duty and feminist resistance.”
E.A.J. Honigmann (1997): “Emilia dies in the service of truth.”
Valerie Wayne (2000): “Emilia underscores the misogyny of the play, exposing the brutal realities of women’s oppression.”

Question 3

On Desdemona

Answer 3

A.C. Bradley (1904): “Desdemona is the sweetest and most pathetic of Shakespeare’s women.”
Marilyn French (1982): “Desdemona accepts her culture’s dictum that she must be obedient to males.”
Lisa Jardine (1996): “Desdemona is too-knowing, too-independent” and is punished for her assertiveness.
E.A.J. Honigmann (1997): “Desdemona is helplessly passive. She can do nothing against Othello’s accusations.”

Question 4

On Iago’s Villainy

Answer 4

William Hazlitt (1817): “Iago is an accomplished dissembler, a master manipulator of the weaknesses of others.”
Harold Bloom (1998): “Iago is Shakespeare’s greatest villain because he operates without clear motivation, making him terrifyingly real.”

Question 5

On Jealousy and Emotion

Answer 5

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1818): “Othello does not kill Desdemona in jealousy, but in a conviction forced upon him by the almost superhuman art of Iago.”
A.C. Bradley (1904): “Othello’s downfall is a result of his own nobility, which renders him incapable of suspecting deceit in others.”