1,1 1,2
Victim of racist slurs
- “an old black ram is tupping your white ewe” “a barbary horse” - crude animalistic imagery by Iago, typical of Iago - sex
- “the thick lips” “the gross clasps of the lascivious Moor” - racial stereotype - Roderigo - accuses him of being overly sexual
- “the sooty bosom of such a thing as thou” - dehumanises him - “thou hast enchanted her” “in chains of magic” “practised on her with foul charms” - Brabantio - charm imagery - racial stereotype - witchcraft - black magic
nobility etc
He is self-confident, assured, brave, honourable, and commands respect
- “my parts, my title, and my perfect soul / shall manifest me rightly” - tricolon of complimentary attributes - ‘soul’ Christian language - 1,2 to Iago
- “my services which I have done the signory / shall out-tongue his complaints” - definitive tone when I tells O that B spoke against him
- “valiant Moor” - epithet - repeated many time
- “Is this the Noble Moor / […] whose solid virtue / the shot of accident nor dart of chance / could neither grave nor pierce?” - metaphor - 4,1 - this is his reputation - Lodovico
He’s proud, giving him the greatness prerequisite for the role of the tragic hero
- “I fetch my life and being / from men of royal aeige”
- “tis the plague of great ones […] the plague is fated to us” - disease imagery - 3,3 soliloquy - great men will fall, heroes will end tragically
Misguided
He is credulous, an awful judge of character
- “honest Iago” - epithet - “I know thou’rt full of love and honesty” - ironic - Iago will never “wear my heart on my sleeve / for daws to peck at”
- “the Moor is of a free and open nature, / that thinks men honest that but seem to be so, / and will tenderly be led by the nose/ as asses are” - Iago 1,3 soliloquy -may be antagonist but is best judge of character - animalistic imagery
- “men should be what they seem” - dramatic irony - the audience sees Iago’s duplicity
- “he echoes me / as if there were some monster in his thought / too hideous to be shown” - imagery - reminder of “green-eyed monster” - O is blind to I’s jealousy
Self-doubt
Iago’s insinuations lead him into a spiral of self doubt and insecurity in 3,3
- previously “it is not to make me jealous / to say my wife is fair, free of speech, loves company”
- but now “Haply for I am black, / and have not the soft parts of conversation / that chamberers have, or for I am declin’d, / into the vale of years” - caesura before is the pivot in his mindset - line ending after “declin’d” - line drops down - mental decline
- “her name that was as fresh / as Dian’s visage, is now begrim’d and black / as mine own face” - simile - comparing the evil she think she is guilty of to his race - Iago’s sown seed of racial inferiority
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A man undivided
- “a fine woman, a fair woman, a sweet women” - list of virtues shortly followed by “let her rot and perish and be damned tonight” - contrast
- “‘tis destiny unshunnable, like death” - simile -cuckoldry “If she be false, O then heaven mocks itself” - innocence
a sufferer and Victim of Iago’s maniupulation
- “thou hast set me on the rack” - torture
- “Farewell […] pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!” - hyperbole - his downfall is so quick
Becomes violent and savage, becoming like Iago
- “I’ll tear her all to pieces!” - exclamation
- “Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell!” - incantation - stirring up evil
- “keep it as a cistern for foul toads / to knot and gender in” - sexual disgusting imagery - sees D’s womb as something entirely physical - like Iago
- “he slaps her”
Fulfils role of a tragic hero
- “speak of me as I am […] one that loved not wisely but too well” - ironic - not how the audience knows her
- “killing myself, to die upon a kiss”
- “like the base Indian, threw a pearl away / richer than all his tribe” - simile - realises he messed up - racist?
