THEME: Love Flashcards
(4 cards)
1
Q
“She gave me for my pains a world of sighs”
A
- OTHELLO 1:3:158
- “World of sighs” - metaphor.
2
Q
“Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul/ But I do love thee; and when I love thee not,/ Chaos is come again”
A
- OTHELLO 3:3:92-93
- “Excellent wretch” - oxymoronic. “Wretch” has connotations of unhappiness, deception and is used typically as an insult. However, “excellent” morphs this into a compliment. This perhaps may be an allusion to how on the surface, Othello still acts kind and somewhat ordinary to Desdemona, but there is a secret inner turmoil.
- “Perdition catch my soul” - a direct foreshadow. Even more significant as he is talking to Desdemona. He tells Desdemona to her face in a way that he is doubting their love.
- “Catch” - sometimes used in the context of disease. Iago is the disease. Also, “catch” is nearly always used in the context of catching an object or animal. Dehumanises.
- “Chaos is come again” - continuous present, which creates a sense of immediacy and “is” makes it inevitable.
- Biblical terms - it will be the end of the world; Elizabethans believed that at the end of the world all things would return to the state of chaos that existed before creation. This is in the temptation scene. Is Othello’s downfall (so from the peripeteia) like the Bible foretells. We start with Adam and Eve, and we end with chaos come again.
3
Q
“My life upon her faith!”
A
- OTHELLO 1:3:291
- “Faith” - an intangible abstract noun. He trusts something he can’t even see. Emphasises the trust.
4
Q
“The fountain from which my current runs/ Or else dries up”
A
- OTHELLO 4:2:58-59
- “Fountain” - a source of endless water. Water symbolises love and abundance. Something beautiful and ornamental and built. This suggests the intricacy of their love and how it has been built and now flows.
- “my current” - he compares himself to water. Water is symbolic of change, so this reflects the events.
- “Dries up” - that love is no longer there.
