“She loved me for the dangers I had passed/ I loved her that she did pity them” | Othello, act 1 scene 3, love as healing, or as mutual sympathy in times of despair |
“And this, and this, the greatest discords be/That our hearts shall make.” | Othello, act 2 scene 1, Serious irony and tempting fate, idealism, Desdemona and Othello are in harmony |
“If I be left behind/A moth of peace, and he go to the war, /The rites for which I love him are bereft me” | Desdemona, act 1 scene 3, Consummation of marriage, Elizabethan gender roles and female sexuality, marital sex |
“We have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts” | Iago, act 1 scene 3, Lust as an animal instinct separate from human intelligence, sex as a completely primitive thing |
“Her name, that was as fresh/As visage, is now begrimed and black” | Othello, act 3 scene 3, elizabethan fear of female sexuality, ideas about virginity and purity and then conversely corruption |
“Let husbands know/Their wives have sense like them” | Emilia, act 4 scene 3, female perspective on sexual desire- elizabethan ideal of outward female chastity versus the reality that women also have the capacity to desire |
“I had rather adopt a child than get it” | Brabantio, act 1 scene 3, familial/parental love: betrayal, ideas about bloodlines and blood relations, elizabethan patriarchy and paternal ownership of daughters |
“Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away/Richer than all his tribe” | Othello, act 5 scene 2, loss through disposal, ironic echo of one of Othello’s first monologues, talking of his exotic adventures seducing Desdemona- tales of far-off things are now what he uses to describe losing her |
“I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak” | Emilia, act 5 scene 2, Urge for revenge and justice; female power and avengement |
“An old black ram/Is tupping your white ewe” | Iago, act 1 scene 1, black/white dichotomy shown throughout the play; ideas about ‘worth’ in society and in love; livestock analogy? |
“The devil will make a grandsire of you” | Iago, act 1 scene 1, elizabethan racist stereotype with the devil being a black man |
“You’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse” | Iago, act 1 scene 1, more racism this time with interracial marriage- an idea that mingling of races is as obscene as interspecies relations |
“It is silliness to live, when to live is torment: and then we have a prescription to die, when death is our physician.” | Rodrigo, act 1 scene 3, as foolish, irrational young lover; echoing conceit used in love poetry |
“Since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found a man that knew how to love himself.” | Iago, act 1 scene 3, Iago as an experienced foil to Roderigo; value of self-respect and antithesis of above self-destruction in love |
“O beware, my lord, of jealousy:/It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on.” | Iago, act 3 scene 3, jealousy/envy as a deadly sin, corruptive force over humans |
“Trifles light as air/Are to the jealous confirmations strong/As proofs of holy writ” | Iago, act 3 scene 3, commenting on Othello’s tragic flaw and his quickness to react |
“I hate the Moor /He’s done my office.” | Iago, act 1 scene 3 |
“I know not if’t be true/Yet I, for mere suspicion in that kind, /Will do as for surety.” | Irony: Iago incenses Othello into violent and morbid jealousy when being violently jealous himself |
“For when my outward action doth demonstrate/The native act and figure of my heart /But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve/For daws to peck at” | Iago, act 1 scene 1, duplicitous natures, division between Iago’s motivations and his outward self, links between the truth and vulnerability (contrast with Desdemona) |
“What he will do with it, heaven knows, not I” | Emilia, act 3 scene 3, secrets in marriage; distrust and division in Iago and Emilia’s marriage; Emilia’s innocence |
“Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:/She has betrayed her father, and may thee.” | Brabantio, act 1 scene 3, suspicion and loyalty, male ownership of women |
“Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?” | Desdemona, act 4 scene 1, Desdemona is innocent and naive to Othello’s suspicions of her, and is never told the explicit truth until her murder |
“Demand me nothing; what you know, you know. /From this time forth I will never speak word.” | Iago, act 5 scene 2, absence of catharsis in the play; Iago never explains himself |
“If after every tempest come such calms,/May the winds blow till they have wakened death” | Othello, act 2 scene 1, reunion again, love as healing. compare with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 with love that ‘looks on tempests and is never shaken’ |
“When we shall meet at compt,/This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven/And fiends will s natch at it” | Othello, act 5 scene 2, reunion metaphysical reunion at the Day of Judgement, a contemptuous reunion rather than a heartwarming one |
“Nobody; I myself. Farewell./Commend me to my kind lord. O farewell!” | Desdemona, act 5 scene 2, parting words to Emilia; lies to protect Othello even after he’s murdered her |
“I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband” | Desdemona, act 1 scene 3, elizabethan patriarchy and transferral of ownership in marriage, and power structures- powers of a father equal to that of a husband? |
“But I do think it is their husbands’ faults/If wives do fall” | Emilia, act 4 scene 3, more feminist opinion of Elizabethan marriage- arguing for respect and equal responsibility, more sympathetic view of ‘fallen’ wives |
“O curse of marriage/That we can call these delicate creatures ours/And not their appetites!” | Othello, act 3 scene 3, extent of male control in marriage and fantasies about male control, elizabethan fear of female sexual freedom |
“If such actions have passage free,/Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be.” | Brabantio, act 1 scene 2, love and elizabethan law, and subsequently christianity/play’s christian context- idea that interracial marriage is distinctly un-Christian |
“I would you had never seen him.” | Emilia, act 4 scene 3, disapproval in the name of protection |
Aspects of Love in Othello Quotes
July 18, 2019