Othello Act 1, Scene 3

At the start of the scene, what do the letters seem to indicate? These letters are reporting that there are Turkish ships on the way to Cyprus.
Why doesn’t the First Senator believe the news that the Turkish fleet is now heading for Rhodes? Describe his reasoning. He believes that the Turks aren’t going to Rhodes and that’s just to divert their attention. He says that Cyprus is more important to the Turks and it’s easier to capture then Rhodes.
At the start of the scene, we are told that the Turks are preparing an attack on Cyprus. Then we told that the Turks plan to attack Rhodes only to find out a bit further on that the Turks are indeed heading to Cyprus. Why does Shakespeare do this? Shakespeare does this to show the irony of the theme of the play. They suspect that the Turks are coming for Cyprus, so they try to divert the attention away and say they’re going to Rhodes, when in fact they never planned to go anywhere else but Cyprus.
What does Othello say in lines 76-94? How is his speech effective? Othello talks as if he’s playing along with the accusations of him cursing Desdamona. I think he knows he can’t simply defend himself on his actions because it is something that is shunned so it seems that he’s going to put them in pity by telling his love story to them.
How does Brabantio describe his daughter? He makes his daughter seem so innocent and young, as if there is no way she would ever love a man like Othello.
How is Othello’s reply (lines 114-119) to the First Senator question effective? He knows they’ll probably think he’s lying so he calls for Desdamona to defend him as they’ll believe the victim in this situation.
According to Othello, how did he and Desdamona fall in love? He first was good friends with her father and would tell him his life stories, and Desdamona was always intrigued and told him she loved a man with stories like that.
Explain what Desdamona means by the phrase “divided duty”? By “divided duty” she means her divided love for her father and her husband.
How does Brabantio react to Desdamona’s speech? He gives up, but is extremely disappointed in his daughter. He gives Othello his blessing and basically gives his daughter away to him as he doesn’t seem to want her anymore.
Desdamona asks for permission to go to Cyprus. How does Othello answer any possible problems? He says that bringing Desdamona wouldn’t distract him as it’d be disgraceful for him to ignore his duties to lounge around with his wife.
Othello describes Iago as “a man of honesty and trust.” How is this an example of verbal irony? He puts trust in Iago with his wife, yet Iago is secretly not interested in helping Othello, but himself instead.
What does Roderigo want to do? How does Iago convince him otherwise? What does Iago convince him to do? Roderigo wants to drown himself because Desdamona is married to Othello, but Iago talks him out of it by giving him advice on how he should save up money and when Desdamona finally realizes that she made the wrong decision with Othello, she’ll want to go for a young rich man.
July 26, 2019