Othello: Interpretations (OCR A Level English Literature): Revision Note
Exam code: H472
Interpretations
AO5 assesses your ability to understand different ways of reading and interpreting texts. Those readings take several forms. They might come from your own class, from published criticism, or from watching different productions of the play. To meet the AO5 criterion you should read widely around the text alongside your own study of it. Useful routes include:
Exploring critics
Interpretations over time
Dramatisations
All quotations here follow the Alexander text, which is the edition OCR prints in the exam paper.
Examiner Tips and Tricks
Examiners are clear that AO5 carries half the marks on the question (b) essay, so the critics you use aren’t just nice to have; they’re half of what’s being marked. It’s also worth knowing what (b) doesn’t assess: AO2 and AO3 earn nothing there, so close language work or a paragraph of context can eat your time for no reward.
A great idea is to build each paragraph around a critical view you’re testing, instead of saving the critics for one paragraph near the end. Examiners warn repeatedly against “bolted-on” criticism. Weaving a critic into your own argument as you go keeps the essay focused on the idea raised by the question.
Exploring critics
Different critics offer different insights into Othello, and citing them lends authority to your analysis. Critics who disagree with each other are the most useful, because a disagreement gives you something to argue with. The three below are a good starting point for that reason. Bradley and Leavis reach opposite conclusions about the same character, and Leavis wrote partly to attack Bradley.
A.C. Bradley (1851–1935)
Bradley was a British literary scholar. His 1904 lectures, published as a book, Shakespearean Tragedy, shaped how the whole 20th century read Shakespeare’s tragedies
He reads the plays through character psychology, treating the tragic heroes as real people whose inner lives can be reconstructed:
He calls Othello “the most painfully exciting and the most terrible” of the tragedies, “not even excepting King Lear”
His central claim is that Othello is not a jealous man by nature:
He dismisses “the ridiculous notion that Othello was jealous by temperament”
He argues instead that Othello’s “whole nature was indisposed to jealousy, and yet was such that he was unusually open to deception”
He describes Othello’s trust as total: “His trust, where he trusts, is absolute”
He takes Othello’s account of himself in Act 5, Scene 2 to be “perfectly just”
Bradley is more sceptical about Iago than students often expect:
He calls Coleridge’s idea about Iago — that he possesses a “motiveless malignity” — a “misleading phrase”
He rejects the idea that Iago acts from “a disinterested love of evil”
He still thinks the characterisation unmatched, writing that “evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the character of Iago”
F.R. Leavis (1895–1978)
Leavis was an influential Cambridge critic. He published ‘Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero’ in 1937, which was included in his 1952 book, The Common Pursuit
He wrote the essay against Bradley, and gave it the pointed subtitle ‘or The Sentimentalist’s Othello’:
His argument is that Bradley takes Othello’s account of himself at face value
He compresses this into one line: “Bradley’s Othello is, rather, Othello’s”
The noble Othello Bradley describes is the character’s own self-image, not Shakespeare’s presentation of him
Leavis argues that “a habit of self-approving self-dramatization is an essential element in Othello’s make-up, and remains so at the very end”
This moves the cause of the tragedy from Iago to Othello himself:
He reads the nobility of the later acts as “no longer something real, but the disguise of an obtuse and brutal egotism”
What we should see in Iago’s success, he argues, “is not so much Iago’s diabolic intellect as Othello’s readiness to respond”
He sums this up as “the essential traitor is within the gates”
Iago therefore matters far less to Leavis than to Bradley or Coleridge. He calls him “subordinate and merely ancillary”, and “not much more than a necessary piece of dramatic mechanism”
Leavis also denies Othello any final insight:
At the play’s denouement, he argues, “he has discovered his mistake, but there is no tragic self-discovery”
Ania Loomba (b. 1955)
Loomba is an Indian literary scholar, now Catherine Bryson Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. She works on race, colonialism and gender in Renaissance drama
She wrote Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama (1989) while teaching in Delhi:
It argues that criticism has treated race and gender as separate questions, when in Othello the two cannot be separated
She rejects the idea that the play has one central conflict between men and women, or between white and black:
She argues it lies “rather between the racism of a white patriarchy and the threat posed to it by both a black man and a white woman”
She adds that the two are “not simply aligned against white patriarchy”, because their own relationship carries the same racial and sexual tensions
Her most famous claim about the protagonist is that “Othello is not merely a black man who is jealous, but a man whose jealousy and blackness are inseparable”
Loomba reads Othello’s position in Venice as conditional:
She describes him as “valuable as a Christian warrior, or the exotic colonial subject in the service of the state”
That helps explain why the Senate overrules Brabantio in Act 1, Scene 3. Venice needs its general more than it needs to satisfy a senator
On Desdemona, she argues that the move from confidence to submission comes from “the contradictions imposed upon her by a racist, patriarchal and bourgeois society”, and not from “truly feminine love”
Examiner Tips and Tricks
Bradley and Leavis are useful together because they can’t both be right. A great way to use them is to take one moment they both discuss — Othello’s final speech is the obvious choice — and ask which reading the text supports better.
For example, you could argue that “Speak of me as I am” is a genuine attempt at honesty, as Bradley thinks. Or you could argue it’s the self-dramatisation Leavis describes. Set the two readings against each other. Then say which you find more convincing, and why. That often lifts a question (b) answer, because it shows you evaluating interpretations instead of reporting them.
Interpretations over time
Othello has been read very differently in different periods. Its reception history is tied closely to changing attitudes to race. Below are some of the ways interpretations have shifted.
Jacobean context: early 17th century
The first recorded performance is 1 November 1604, when the King’s Men played “The Moor of Venice” before James I at Whitehall
Venice carried a particular set of associations for that audience:
It was a wealthy republic that depended on foreign mercenaries to defend itself, which helps explain why the Senate backs Othello over Brabantio
Cyprus, where the last four acts take place, had fallen to the Ottoman Empire in 1571, so the setting itself felt exposed
Attitudes to Othello’s race in the period were neither uniform nor settled:
Elizabeth I issued an open letter in 1596, and a further warrant in 1601, seeking to remove Black people from England
England was pursuing an alliance with Morocco at the same time, and the Moroccan ambassador Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud spent six months at Elizabeth’s court in 1600
Iago’s racial language in Act 1 belongs to the character, not to the play. He chooses it to inflame Brabantio, reducing the marriage to “an old black ram” and “your white ewe”
Neoclassical objections: Thomas Rymer, 1693
Rymer’s A Short View of Tragedy contains the most famous attack on the play ever written. He dismisses its tragic action as “a Bloody Farce, without salt or savour”
He objects to the plot depending on a small piece of cloth:
“So much ado, so much stress, so much passion and repetition about an Handkerchief!”, he complains
He then asks: “Why was not this call’d the Tragedy of the Handkerchief?”
He offers a mock moral for husbands, that “before their Jealousie be Tragical, the proofs may be Mathematical”
Rymer’s other objections are openly racial. He treats Desdemona’s marriage as obviously absurd, which shows that hostility to the play’s central relationship is not a modern invention
Use Rymer as the position later critics argue against. Nobody now defends his reading
Romantic readings: Coleridge and the question of colour
Samuel Taylor Coleridge supplied the best-known phrase in Othello criticism. In a note for his 1818–19 lectures he described Iago’s last speech in Act 1 as “the motive-hunting of motiveless Malignity”
The phrase is more careful than its popular use suggests:
Coleridge describes Iago hunting for motives that do not actually explain his malignity. He does not claim Iago has no motives at all
Bradley thought the phrase misleading, but read it the same way. He notes that Coleridge means Iago’s malignity “does not spring from the causes to which Iago himself refers it”
Coleridge also argued that Shakespeare could not have intended Othello to be Black. He claimed it would be “something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl falling in love with” such a man:
Bradley rejected this in 1904. He points out that Coleridge has simply repeated Brabantio’s and Iago’s view of the marriage, and asks “Could any argument be more self-destructive?”
Twentieth-century readings: the quarrel over Othello
Bradley’s character-centred reading dominated criticism for the first third of the 20th century, and Leavis wrote his 1937 essay to challenge it
The two disagree about where Othello’s jealousy comes from:
Bradley says Iago put it there and that Othello is not a jealous man by nature
Leavis says it was already in Othello; Iago only brings it to the surface
The text supports both readings, which is why the pairing remains a useful route into AO5
Race-centred criticism: 1980s onwards
From the 1980s critics increasingly argued that earlier criticism had avoided the play’s treatment of race, either by ignoring Othello’s colour or by disputing it:
Loomba’s 1989 study belongs to this shift, alongside work such as Karen Newman’s 1987 essay on femininity and race
The novelist Ben Okri saw the play in London in 1987 and described changing his mind about it:
“I used to agree with C.L.R. James that Othello is not a play about race… If it did not begin as a play also about race, then its history has made it one”
Okri’s point is useful for AO5. It separates what the play may have meant in 1604 from what its performance history has made it mean
Examiner Tips and Tricks
Reception history works best when it’s doing something in your argument, not sitting at the start of it as background. A useful habit is to bring in a historical reading only where it changes how a moment can be understood.
To do this, you could take Rymer’s complaint about the handkerchief and turn it into a question your essay answers. If the plot really does turn on a trifle, is that a fault in the play, or is it Shakespeare’s point about how little evidence jealousy needs? Answering that keeps the history tied to the question, and stops it sitting beside your argument doing nothing.
Dramatisations
Dramatisations of Othello carry different readings of the text. Directors and actors make choices about performance, setting, costume and characterisation, and all of those shape how an audience understands the play. In this play, casting is itself an interpretation, and the performance history is part of what critics now argue about:
Ira Aldridge (1807–1867) was an African American actor working in Britain. He played Othello at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in 1833, after Edmund Kean collapsed on stage. He performed it twice before the run was cancelled, and several London reviews objected to his race directly
Paul Robeson played Othello opposite Peggy Ashcroft at the Savoy Theatre in 1930, and again on Broadway in 1943, with Uta Hagen as Desdemona. That production ran for 296 performances, the longest run any Shakespeare play had then had on Broadway
White actor Laurence Olivier played the role in dark make-up in John Dexter’s 1964 National Theatre production, filmed in 1965. It was admired at the time and nominated for four Oscars. It is now generally discussed as an example of a practice (known as “blackface”) that has since been abandoned
Below are two productions that read the play very differently. You should watch a range of stage and screen performances to inform your own interpretation.
Othello: Trevor Nunn, RSC (1989)
Nunn’s production opened at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon in August 1989, transferred to the Young Vic, and was filmed for television in 1990. Willard White played Othello, Ian McKellen played Iago, with Imogen Stubbs as Desdemona and Zoë Wanamaker as Emilia
The staging was small and naturalistic, and that shaped the reading it produced:
The Other Place seated little more than a hundred people, so the audience watched Iago at conversational distance
Nunn updated the period to the mid-19th century, placing the action in a recognisable officer class instead of a remote Venice
McKellen played Iago as contained and unshowy, which supports a Leavis-like reading. If Iago is a plausible colleague and not a diabolical intelligence, then something in Othello has to explain the collapse
Othello: Clint Dyer, National Theatre (2022)
Dyer’s production ran in the Lyttelton Theatre from November 2022 to January 2023. Giles Terera played Othello, Rosy McEwen played Desdemona, Paul Hilton played Iago and Tanya Franks played Emilia
Dyer was the first Black director of Othello at the National Theatre, and the production addressed the play’s performance history directly:
Audiences entered to a display of material from past productions, including the blackface casting that forms part of that history
Its most distinctive choice was a chorus, credited in the cast list as “System” and made up of most of the company:
The racism of Venice appeared on stage as a visible group, and stopped being the private prejudice of individual characters
That produces a staging close to Loomba’s reading, where the conflict lies between a white patriarchal order and those who threaten it
Reviewers praised the production widely:
The Guardian called it a staging that makes “this tragedy feel utterly new”
Interpretations are shaped by the time and place that produced them, whether they come from critics, historical audiences or directors. With Othello, something as basic as who is cast in the title role has carried interpretative weight for two centuries. That makes performance history unusually productive material for this play.
Examiner Tips and Tricks
A production counts as an interpretation for AO5, so a staging choice can be evidence in the same way a critic’s sentence can. Examiners don’t reward a long description of the production itself. That starts to read like a review.
A great way to handle this is to name one decision and say what reading it produces. You could write that staging the racism of Venice as an onstage chorus makes it structural, not personal. Then show how that supports your answer to the question. One sentence of production detail, tied to your argument, is often worth more than a paragraph of plot.
Sources:
Bradley, A.C. (1904) Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. London: Macmillan.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16966/16966-h/16966-h.htm
Coleridge, S.T. (1987) Lectures 1808–1819 On Literature, ed. R.A. Foakes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, vol. 2, p. 315.
Dyer, C. (dir.) (2022) Othello [Stage production]. London: National Theatre, Lyttelton Theatre.
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/othello/
Folger Shakespeare Library (2021) ‘Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, a pioneering Othello’.
https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/ira-aldridge/
Leavis, F.R. (1952) ‘Diabolic Intellect and the Noble Hero: or The Sentimentalist’s Othello’, in The Common Pursuit. London: Chatto & Windus, pp. 136–159. First published in Scrutiny, 1937.
Loomba, A. (1989) Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Newman, K. (1987) ‘“And wash the Ethiop white”: femininity and the monstrous in Othello’, in J.E. Howard and M.F. O’Connor (eds.) Shakespeare Reproduced. London: Methuen, pp. 143–162.
Nunn, T. (dir.) (1989) Othello [Stage production]. Stratford-upon-Avon: Royal Shakespeare Company, The Other Place.
https://mckellen.com/stage/othello/index.htm
Okri, B. (1987) ‘Meditations on Othello’, West Africa, pp. 562–563. Quoted in Loomba (1989), p. 61.
Rymer, T. (1693) A Short View of Tragedy. London: Richard Baldwin.
Shakespeare, W. (1951) ‘Othello’, in P. Alexander (ed.) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text. London: Collins.
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