Othello

1. Othello Ending

2. Inevitability • In what way is the tragic ending of the play inevitable?

3. Setting • What is the symbolic significance of the setting? • Desdemona is lying asleep at the start of the scene. Why is this significant?

4. Soliloquy • Analyse Othello’s soliloquy from the beginning of Act 5 Scene 2. • Use the notes in the book • Comment on the repetition of “it” and “Yet”. • Look at the imagery that Othello uses to describe Desdemona • Why does he say he’ll “not shed her blood”? • What justification does he give himself for killing her? • Evaluate – what emotions does this speech elicit in the audience?

5. Soliloquy It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,-- Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!— It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood; Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, And smooth as monumental alabaster. Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men. Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me: but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd the rose, I cannot give it vital growth again. It must needs wither: I'll smell it on the tree.

6. [Kisses her.]   Ah balmy breath, that dost almost persuade  Justice to break her sword! One more, one more. [Kisses her.]  Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,  And love thee after. One more, and this the last: [Kisses her.]  So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,  But they are cruel tears: this sorrow's heavenly;   It strikes where it doth love. She wakes

7. He gives her the opportunity to atone for her sins: “I would not kill thy soul” • However she has no sins to confess “why I should fear I know not”

8. Othello tells her “Think on thy sins”. • She replies “They are loves I bear to you” – her only sin seems to be that she loves him too much (like a god) • Finally he confronts her with a direct accusation: that she gave Cassio her handkerchief • However by now he is not listening to reason

9. Emilia • When she arrives this makes Othello face the truth of what he has done: My wife! my wife! what wife? I have no wife.  O insupportable! O heavy hour! • He blames ‘the moon’. • When he is faced with Iago he first attacks: “Are there no stones in heaven…? • Then he just feels weak: “I am not valiant”

10. Othello’s last speech • Soft you; a word or two before you go.I have done the state some service, and they know't.No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speakOf one that loved not wisely but too well;Of one not easily jealous, but being wroughtPerplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,Like the base Indian, threw a pearl awayRicher than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,Albeit unused to the melting mood,Drop tears as fast as the Arabian treesTheir medicinal gum. Set you down this;And say besides, that in Aleppo once,Where a malignant and a turban'd TurkBeat a Venetian and traduced the state,I took by the throat the circumcised dog,And smote him, thus.