OTHELLO

Question 1

A.C Bradley

Answer 1

“Othello’s nature is all of one piece.”

“ His trust where he trusts is absolute.”

“Hestitation is almost impossible to him.”

“He is extremely self-reliant and decides and acts instantaneously”

“[…] If such a passion as jealousy seizes him, it will swell into a well-nigh incontrollable flood”.

Question 2

A.C Baddley

Answer 2

“As tragic hero, merely a victim, he is blameless, honourable and romantic”

“thus his fall is entirely the fault of Iago, who colonises his mind.”

Question 3

F.R Leavis

Answer 3

“He really is, beyond any question, the nobly massive man of action, the captain of men he sees himself as being… In short a habit of self-approving self-dramatisation is an essential element in Othello’s make-up”

Question 4

F.R Leavis

Answer 4

• “[Iago] represents something that is in Othello”
• “Iago’s prompt success is not so much Iago’s diabolic intellect as Othello’s readiness to respond”

Question 5

Sean McEvoy

Answer 5

• “Othello’s tragedy is that he lives according to a set of stories through which he interprets the world- an ideology- but it is a world that has been superseded.”
• “He cannot see that this is so, and the contradictions within his ideology destroy him.”
• “He is living the life of a chivalric warrior in a world run by money and self-interest.”

Question 6

John Bayley

Answer 6

• “Othello retains to the end his agonised incomprehension”