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Flashcards in Othello Deck (39)
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1
Q

A.C. Bradley on nobility

A

‘the character is so noble’

2
Q

Samuel Johnson on Othello’s character

A

‘boundless in his confidence’
‘ardent in his affection’
‘inflexible in his resolution’
‘obdurate in his revenge’

3
Q

A.C. Bradley on trust

A

Othello’s ‘trust, where he trusts, is absolute’

4
Q

G. Wilson Knight on Othello’s language

A

‘Othello music’ – Othello’s language ‘holds an imaginative realism’ and a ‘certain exotic beauty’

5
Q

Paul A. Cantor

A

‘Othello seems to have stepped right out of the pages of some great martial epic, yet what he has stepped into is the world of Italian bedroom comedy’

6
Q

Coleridge on jealousy

A

‘the very opposite to a jealous man…a gallant Moor, of royal blood’

7
Q

Cox on secret marriage

A

‘questionable how noble it is to marry secretly without permission’

8
Q

John Bayley

A

‘wholly martial personality’

9
Q

F.R. Leavis on Othello’s central role

A

‘the chief personage in such a sense that the tragedy may fairly be said to be Othello’s character in action’

10
Q

F.R. Leavis on Othello’s distrustful nature (3)

A

‘Othello’s readiness to respond’
‘the essential traitor is within the gates’
‘Othello’s trust, then, can never have been in Desdemona’

11
Q

Jane Adamson on Othello’s emotions

A

‘When Othello does open himself to the full brunt of what he really feels, he utterly disintegrates’

12
Q

A.C. Bradley on the cause of Othello’s downfall

A

‘the wreck of his faith and love’

13
Q

Phillips on Othello’s nature

A

‘a man of action not a thinker’

14
Q

A.C. Bradley on Othello and emotion

A

‘emotion excites his imagination, but it confuses and dulls his intellect’

15
Q

G. Wilson Knight on Othello’s images

A

Othello remains ‘aloof’ just like his images are

16
Q

Hugh Quarsie on race

A

Played Othello in an RSC production

‘Shakespeare reverts to the convention as voiced by Iago: “These Moors are changeable in their wills”’

17
Q

F.R. Leavis on Othello and Desdemona’s relationship (3)

A

‘the tragedy is inherent in the Othello-Desdemona relationship’

Othello’s love is ‘composed very largely of ignorance of self as well as ignorance of her’

His love for Desdemona is more ‘a matter of self-centred and self-regarding satisfactions’

18
Q

Thomas Rhymer on the potential for ‘Othello’ to be a comedy

A

A man deceived into thinking he has been cuckolded would normally provide the basis for a comedy – link to ‘Much Ado About Nothing’

19
Q

A.C. Bradley on Othello’s murder of Desdemona

A

‘not in hate but in honour; in honour, and also in love.’

20
Q

Tony Tanner on Othello’s sexual drive

A

‘seems to dread the sexual act’

21
Q

Verdi on Othello’s culpability

A

Iago is ‘the Demon who sets everything in motion, but Othello is the one who acts’

22
Q

Kenneth Muir on how to play Othello and Iago

A

‘If Iago is played as an obvious villain, Othello and the other characters are reduced to credulous fools’

23
Q

Simpson on Othello, Iago and Desdemona

A

‘Othello allows Iago to replace Desdemona’

24
Q

Braham Murray on Othello’s race and its (lack of) importance

A

Othello’s race is intrinsic to his character but ‘it is not what Shakespeare is writing about. The crux of the play is the love between opposites’

25
Q

Coleridge on the unlikely nature of the love between Othello and Desdemona

A

Argues that Desdemona would never have fallen in love with Othello because he was black

26
Q

Valerie Traub on racism

A

‘internalised racial self-hatred’

27
Q

E.A.J. Honigmann

A

Argues that given the context of the time, Othello was not necessarily black

28
Q

Virginia M. Vaughn on Othello’s outsider status

A

‘The Moor…remains an alien in Venice’

29
Q

G. Wilson Knight on Othello’s centrality

A

‘Othello is dominated by its protagonist’

30
Q

Guy Hollands on Othello’s character development

A

‘His is the dynamic story, he is the most changed by the events of the play’

31
Q

Paterson Joseph on depicting Othello’s decline

A

‘challenge’ of depicting Othello’s shift from a ‘man who is calm in the face of danger’ to a ‘beast’

32
Q

Graham Bradshaw on Othello’s dynamic character

A

Othello’s character is not fixed – his perceptions of the other characters shift between extremes within the same scene

33
Q

T.S. Eliot on Othello’s final speech (4)

A

‘terrible exposure of human weakness’
‘cheering himself up’
‘ceased to think about Desdemona’
‘endeavouring to escape reality’

34
Q

Anthony Brennan on Othello’s final speech and death

A

‘In his final speech and his suicide he is able, as he was before the Senate of Venice, to express his nobility and to manifest himself rightly’

35
Q

A.C. Bradley on Othello’s character after his murder of Desdemona

A

Emerges as ‘a greater or nobler Othello still’ – he kills her out of love and regains or even surpasses his former nobility at the end

36
Q

Laurence Olivier

A

1964 performance as Othello saw him blacking up

37
Q

Patrick Stewart

A

Played a white Othello in 1997 but the entirety of the rest of the cast was black (race reversed production)

38
Q

Michael Neill on Othello’s language

A

Othello’s jealousy gives his language an ‘intensely erotic charge’

39
Q

John McRae on Othello’s final speech

A

‘a triumphant, brilliant and beautiful aria’