Some brilliant posts on Othello

http://www.bachelorandmaster.com/globaldrama/othello-as-a-domestic-play.html#.WSU_ok9SP5q

Critical quotes per theme/character

Marian Cox

·         Nearly every scene in the play refers to or depends upon a character seeing and knowing something or someone

·         Iago destabilizes Othello’s trust and faith by exposing them as irrational substitutes for knowledge

·         Power and authority because of his knowledge

·         We feel unsure about the validity of their love

W H Auden

·         Iago is motivated by the desire to know and show what Othello is really like.

Jealousy

Dostoevsky

·         Iago was not jealous, he was trustful

Honor

Marian Cox

·         Honest is used 52 times

·         Death was preferable to dishonor

·         A man’s honor was inseparable from his wife’s behavior

·         Desdemona is accused of the double dishonesty of lying and of lying with other men

Cassio

A C Bradley

·         There is something very lovable about Cassio

·         We trust him absolutely to never pervert the truth for the sake of some doctrine or purpose of his own.

Emilia

A C Bradley

·         She nowhere shows any sign of having a bad heart

·         Her stupidity in this matter is gross, but it is stupidity and nothing worse.

Matt Simpson

·         Emilia underscores Desdemona’s lack of knowledge in the world

·         She dies in the service of truth

·         We have to acknowledge the fact that wives are required to be obedient to understand Emilia’s handing over of the handkerchief

Desdemona

Jarvis

·         A whores death for all her Innocence

Marian Cox

·         Damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.

·         Characters divide into virgins and saints or whores and devils

Adams

·         She falls in love…for no better reason than that he has told her a braggart story

Bianca

Matt Simpson

·         Bianca is, like Othello and Cassio, an outsider

·         An Italian name that translates as ‘white’

·         She underscores the theme of jealousy

Women.

Jardine

·         All three are wrongfully accused of sexual misdemeanor in the course of the play

·         Most readily available form of assault on a woman’s reputation

Marian Cox

·         Women’s parts in the plays did not equal mens in number, size or status because they were written for boy actors with unbroken voices

·         Women could only rise through their association with men and their rank

·         Men wished to marry virgins

·         This made reputation an essential commodity for social society.

·         Dialogues…Reveal a deep seated fear of women deceiving them.

·         Fallen woman… necessitating suicide or entrance into a nunnery.

Matt Simpson

·         Iago is exposed as a shallow fool

Iago

Hazlitt

·         We only see the hollowness of his heart.

Marian Cox

·         Iago is Satanic in his energy

·         ‘Lucky’ is perhaps a more appropriate fixed epitaph than ‘honest’

·         He makes his superiors his puppets

·         He is the black sheep and resists this state of affairs by turning everyone else black rather than allowing them to feel superior in their whiteness

·         1097 lines to Othello’s 887

Bradley

·         General spite against the goodness in men

·         Mere Puppets in his hands

Blake

·         He publishes doubt and calls it knowledge

Cowhig

·         Iago is eaten up with sexual jealousy

Crawford

·         If Othello can be capable of such gross violation of all military rules and practices, Iago sees that he can no longer trust Othello

Matt Simpson

·         We have to recognize that to fantasists, fantasies are real

Warren

·         Iago revels in his ability to revel and destroy

·         He enjoys his ability to hoodwink others into believing he is honest

·         Stage manager…controlling his victims effortlessly

Othello

Warnken?

·         Othello is no fool

Rymer

·         Maidens of quality should not run away with black moors,

Matt Simpson

·         Othello allows Iago to replace Desdemona in his esteem and affection, and as his confidant and soulmate.

·         In a sense, what Othello is doing is executing the Iago under his own skin

Briggs

·         Blackness was associated with the devil, evil doing and death

Bradley

·         He is by far the most romantic figure among Shakespeare’s heroes

·         He does not belong to our world

·         He seems to enter it we know not whence- almost as if from wonderland

Leavis

·         Othello is completely flawed

T S Elliott

·         Cheering himself up

Hazlitt

·         He knew that love of power, which is another name for the love of mischief, is natural to  men.

Marian Cox

·         Whose diction he is copying

·         It is questionable how noble it is to marry secretly without permission

Race

Ruth Cowhig

·         An Alien in a white society

·         The black villain in a white society

Belsey

·         Product of a society already fascinated by travelers’ tales of distant cultures

Loomba

·         Women and blacks exist as the ‘other’

Poetry paragraph structure

How is the idea presented in poem A?

Where is it presented like that?

What are the connotations of those words/techniques?

Where else in the poem is one of these ideas reinforced?

What does the other poet do that compares or contrasts with this?

Where does the similarity or difference you've just drawn end?

Streetcar paragraph structure

What’s your point…?

Where’s your proof?

Explain the dramatic impact of the most telling detail.

Can you link this to other quotes in the play?

Why was that idea important at the time?

What was it important to Williams?

Which critics/ perspectives/ performances agreed/disagreed with you?

Clinch your point.

Eg

What’s your point…?

Blanche hates pragmatism:

Where’s your proof?

1) Her costume is ‘incongruous’ to the setting; 2) “I don’t want realism. I want magic!”; 3) her regular florid monologues: the opposite of practical dialogue

Explain the dramatic impact of the most telling detail.

“I don’t want realism. I want magic!”; the turgid full stop reveals the boredom she associates with reality, and the exclamation mark emphasises her love of fantasy, forcing the actor playing Blanche to show her bias towards these two opposing ideals.

Can you link this to other quotes in the play?

This is reinforced by her hysterical behaviour when confronted with Stella’s extremely pragmatic response to being beaten by her husband: Blanche’s hysterical behaviour is juxtaposed with Stella’s calm; she uses imaginative metaphors to describe the ‘ape’ Stanley, even though she claims to be giving Stella the ‘facts’.

Why was that idea important at the time?

Blanche’s hatred of pragmatism was an outright rejection of the ‘New American Male’ – inarticulate and illiterate – who, like Paul Newman and Montgomery Clift, was becoming a hero in 1940s American culture.

What was it important to Williams?

Williams himself wrote that he was ‘in a fight to the death’ against the ‘butcher, baker and candlestick-maker’ – practical trades that were the enemy of creative people.

Which critics/ perspectives/ performances agreed/disagreed with you?

Karl Malden captured the unattractive nature of pragmatic males perfectly with his ‘dancing bear’ performance, although it’s interesting to note that Marcello Mastroianni’s Mitch was far better looking, making Blanche and Williams’ pragmatic opponent a more attractive prospect.

Clinch your point.

Whether it was physically appealing or not, there is no doubt that for author and his heroine, the pragmatism that they hated so much was bound to defeat them.