Othello Context

Question 1

Shakespeare

Answer 1

• Written during “Great Tragic Period”

- Many plays for royal court

Question 2

Elizabethan view on women

Answer 2

• rarely educated, if then in housewifery
• seen as possessing dark magical powers (hence witch burnings)
• therefore lead men astray or are easily lead astray

Question 3

Elizabethan view on race

Answer 3

• on one hand good relationship with the Ottoman Empire for trade
• on the other strong anti-catholic sentiments, suspicion that “moors” and muslims were heretics and practices of black magic
• Leo Africanus’s Geographical History of Africa depicted a “scientific” breakdown of different types of black people

Question 4

Leo Africanus’s Geographical History of Africa

Answer 4

“So credulous that they believe matters impossible which are told to them”

“No nation in the world is so subject to jealousy”

Question 5

Cyprus

Answer 5

• “Island of love” irony
• isolated, away from the structured society of Venice
• Arrival of soldiers ready for war when there is no longer a war
• “on the edge of Christian territory”
• “a bastion of male power”

Question 6

Venice

Answer 6

• a republic, controlled by wealthy merchant classes
• highly multicultural
• booming prostitution industry
• ordered setting where Iago’s manipulation attempts are easily thwarted