Othello Critic Quotes

Loomba on Othello as a play fantasy of interracial love and social tolerance
Loomba on Desdemona marrying Othello she flouts the established social hierarchies of ‘clime, complexion and degree’
Loomba on why Othello is so succeptable to Iago Othello is a victim of racial beliefs precisely because he becomes an agent of misogynistic ones
Phillips on why Othello fell down from Nobility ‘The pressures placed upon him rendered his life a tragedy’
Philips on Othello struggling to understand society Life for him is like a game he does not know the rules
Othello’s last words according to Leavis ‘tragically pathetic’ + ‘no tragic self-discovery’
Dramatic Turn of events Coup de theatre
Leavis on Othello’s death Ohello dies belonging to the world of action in which his true part lay
The cathartic effect of falling from nobility according to Bradley ‘The suffering and calamity is contrasted with previous happiness and glory’
Loomba on the portrayal of blacks in Elizabethan media ‘black-skinned people were usually typed as godless, bestial and hideous’
Loomba on Desdemona’s social status ‘young, white and well-born’
Honigmann on Iago’s downfall ‘Emilia’s love for Desdemona is Iago’s undoing’
Coryat on Venetian courtesans ‘the number of these venetian courtesans, it was very great… many are so loose as to open their quiver to every arrow’
Loomba on the suspicious portrayal of women ‘Othello is predisposed to believing pronouncements about the inherent duplicity of women’
Loomba on Venice’s attitude towards free women Female opennes was considered dangerous and immoral
The Effect of Soliloquys according to Honigmann ‘we are close to sympathising with a villain’ due to ‘dramatic perspective’
The amoral nature of Iago according to Honigmann ‘he has neither felt nor understood the spiritual impulses that bind ordinary human beings together’
The intellegence of Iago according to Goddard Shakespeare has bestowed the highest of intellectual gifts on Iago
The intellegence of Iago according to Honigmann ‘Iago excels in short-term tactics, not long-term strategy’
Why we admire Iago according to Auden ‘The chief humourist of the play’ + ‘a practical joker of a particularly appaling kind’
Why we respect Iago according to Honigmann ‘we respect the amibition, the aspiring spirit, the intellectual activity that causes him to overleap those moral fences’
Bradley on how the Machiavellian Villian is viewed ‘burning hatred and burning tears’
Leavis on Othello’s self-critical speech ‘histrionic intent’ and ‘self-dramatization’
Leavis on Othello starting to break down ‘his dictating power begins to quiver’
Kastan on the mindset of the Tragic hero after a fall ‘struggles to create a coherent worldview from the ruins of the old’
The power of Iago’s humour according to Honigmann ‘arouses a little fellow feeling in the audience’ + ‘his victims lack humour, Iago appeals to us as more amusing’
August 30, 2019