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1. Welcome...equipment out...ready to learn...Welcome...equipment out...ready to learn... Extended Essay Othello Lesson 12 LQ: Can I explore Shakespeare’s presentation of female characters?

2. Form: play, drama, genre, tragedy, hubris, hamartia, Contexts: historical, social, cultural, race, religion, gender, Venice, Cyprus, attitude, audiences Structure, language, juxtaposition, split lines, pentameter, relationships, love, fraternity Starter: • Choose one of the female characters • In role, prepare a statement about the following: • Who you are • Your relationship with one other character in the play • What your function is in the play (e.g Emilia might stress her importance to the plot when she gives Iago the handkerchief. Bianca might stress her contribution to a theme: the exploitation of women by men) Extended Essay Text 1: Othello LQ: Can I explore Shakespeare’s presentation of female characters?

3. LQ: Can I explore Shakespeare’s presentation of female characters? B4 Outstanding Progress: you will confidently explore and evaluate through detailed and sophisticated critical analysis how writers use these aspects to create meaning. B3 Excellent Progress:you will explore structure, form, language, themes and contexts, commenting on specific aspects with reference to how characters could be interpreted. Extended Essay Text 1: Othello B2 Good Progress: you will show awareness of structure, form, language, themes and contexts, and comment on specific aspects with reference to how characters could be interpreted

4. LQ: Can I explore Shakespeare’s use of language and the presentation of the relationship between Othello and Iago? The Big Picture Extended Essay Text 1: Othello

5. Form: play, drama, genre, tragedy, hubris, hamartia, Contexts: historical, social, cultural, race, religion, gender, Venice, Cyprus, attitude, audiences Structure, language, juxtaposition, split lines, pentameter, relationships, love, fraternity STARTER feedback • As volunteers share their statements, make notes on the following: • What you learned about the characters and their functions • Any comments or interpretations with which you disagree • Similarities and differences with how characters have been interpreted Extended Essay Text 1: Othello Ext: Whether or not you think the gender of the presenter made a difference to their interpretation LQ: Can I explore Shakespeare’s presentation of female characters?

6. Form: play, drama, genre, tragedy, hubris, hamartia, Contexts: historical, social, cultural, race, religion, gender, Venice, Cyprus, attitude, audiences Structure, language, juxtaposition, split lines, pentameter, relationships, love, fraternity • Characters of intellect • Characters of passion and imagination • Triumphant women • Pathetic women • Good wives • Outspoken females • Suffering females • Villainesses • Passive women • Independent wives • Rural simpletons • Witty ladies • Young, desirable unmarried women • Shrewish, discontented older women Group task : categorising the women • Listed opposite are some broad categorisations critics have used to describe the female characters in Renaissance drama. • You will be assigned a character: • Choose the 3 descriptions which you think describe your character most closely. You must provide evidence. • Identify one categorisation with which you disagree, but which a critic from a different era might have thought appropriate. Extended Essay Text 1: Othello Ask for the extension task on the next slide!

7. Form: play, drama, genre, tragedy, hubris, hamartia, Contexts: historical, social, cultural, race, religion, gender, Venice, Cyprus, attitude, audiences Structure, language, juxtaposition, split lines, pentameter, relationships, love, fraternity Does this extract support or refute your own ideas? In Othello three women, of three distinct social ranks, figure prominently in the plot. Desdemona is the daughter of one of Venice’s most senior and influential citizens. Bianca is a Venetian courtesan – a woman of substance who supports herself and her household by her liaisons with men of rank (notably Cassio, Othello’s second in command). Emilia is the wife of Othello’s third in command, Iago, and personal maid to Desdemona. As women playing active roles within the community the three are occupationally distinct. All three are wrongfully accused of sexual misdemeanour in the course of the play; all three, though unequal in their rank-power, are equally vulnerable to a sexual charge brought against them: although the incidents which provoke the slander may be presumed to be of separate and distinct types (as befits the differing social situations in which the three women find themselves), they yield the identical slur, the identical charge of sexual promiscuity – the most readily available form of assault on a woman’s reputation. Each takes the accusation (once made) extremely seriously; but the ways these accusations are dealt with by the women themselves have very different consequences, and this is crucial…Lisa Jardine, ‘Why Should He Call Her Whore?’ in Reading Shakespeare Historically (1996) Extended Essay Text 1: Othello LQ: Can I explore Shakespeare’s presentation of female characters?

8. Plenary: • Why do you think Shakespeare includes three women from different positions in society: • To have three women accused makes this a much more powerful theme? • It allows the audience to compare the way the women react (Emilia and Bianca are foils for Desdemona)? • It shows the audience that Desdemona’s death is not inevitable? • It is comment on society at the time? • It suggests that women do not need to be victims? Extended Essay Text 1: Othello