Study Questions on Othello

Questions for January 21 (Acts 1-2)
1. The title character does not appear in the play's opening scene. Why does Shakespeare hold off Othello's entrance until the second scene? What is the effect of his being introduced indirectly? What impression does the audience have of "the Moor" based on the exchanges between Roderigo and Iago and between those two and Brabantio?

2. What impression does Othello make on you in I.ii? Consider both his language and his behavior.

3. Compare the various characters' ideas about why Desdemona married Othello: What is Brabantio's theory? What does Iago think (or say that he thinks) of her motives? What reasons does she herself give? What does Othello think her reasons were?

4. Why are there so many different answers to question #3? What is the dramatic effect of there being so many answers?

5. What reasons does Iago give to explain his hatred of Othello and the actions that he takes? Why does he keep adding to and/or changing his list of motives?

6. Analyze Othello's character as military man. To what extent are his personality and his self-definition defined by his sense of himself as a soldier? Pay particularly close attention to I. iii, II.iii.


Questions for January 25 (Acts 3-5)

1.  Reconsider question #6 above in light of Act V, scene ii.

2. What is Iago's attitude toward human sexuality? To what extent does that attitude determine his character?

3. III.iii is famous for its conclusion, in which Iago and Othello commit themselves to each other in a parody of wedding vows. Is the scene leading up to those vows a kind of wooing or seduction? Compare the account that Othello gives (in I. iii) of how he won Desdemona's love.

4. Cassio's inability to "hold his liquor" is essential to Iago's plot and to the plot of the play; does it also have thematic significance? How does Cassio's weakness compare to Othello's?

5. Study with particular attention Othello's speech about the handkerchief at III.iv. 55-75. Analyze the imagery; delve deeply into the language he uses, noting sound patterns, puns, rhythm; consider both the literal meaning and the subtle connotations or implications of specific words. What effect does the speech have as a poem in its own right? What effect does it have in its dramatic context? (i.e. what effect does it have on Desdemona?) What does the handkerchief mean to Othello on a conscious level? On a subconscious level? What (if anything) does the speech imply about his sense of himself? Carefully note and interpret any echoes of images, themes, or ideas from earlier in the play.

6. IV.ii. 19-94 is often referred to as the "brothel scene." Why? What is the dramatic effect of this scene?


Questions for January 26 -- Continued discussion of Othello
For today, please read "The Source of Othello" -- Selection from Giraldi Cinthio, Hecatommithi (pp. 171-184 in the Signet edition).

1. In the soliloquy that begins Act 5, scene 2, Othello's attitude has clearly shifted.  He is no longer raging as he was before.  What do we learn from this speech?  How does Othello himself define the act he will commit in killing Desdemona?  How does this definition affect the reader's or audience-member's sense of his character?

2.  How, if at all, does the question of race enter into the play's final scene?

3.  Shakespeare's source, Cinthio's novella, has a decidedly racist "moral"; how does Shakespeare alter the emphasis and the effect of Cinthio's story as he adapts it for his play?

4.  Analyze the role Emilia plays in the drama. How does she compare to her husband? To Desdemona?

5.  The epistles of St. Paul emphasize the subordination of the wife to her husband. In Ephesians 5: 22-29, Paul sets up two interrelated analogies: wife is to husband as body is to head, for wife is to husband as the Church is to Christ, and Christ is the head of the Church. ("Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.") Be prepared to discuss the relationships in Othello in light of this passage: consider the marriage of Emilia and Iago and that of Othello and Desdemona. Consider also Othello's relationship to his Christian faith and his attitude toward "his own flesh."