Othello: Themes (OCR A Level English Literature): Revision Note

Themes

Responses that discuss the key themes of the play in a nuanced way are more likely to reach the highest levels of the mark scheme.

Below are some of the most important ideas that might be explored in William Shakespeare’s Othello. This list is not exhaustive and you are encouraged to identify other ideas within the text.

• Jealousy

• Love and relationships

• Race and appearance

• Reputation and honour

• Deception and honesty

All quotations here follow the Alexander text, which is the edition OCR prints in the exam paper.

Jealousy

An audience might see jealousy as the driving motivation behind the events of Othello. It’s important to remember that jealousy has two meanings, both of which are relevant to the play. Jealousy can mean being resentful of somebody’s achievements, possessions, or advantages, as Iago is of Cassio and Othello. Jealousy also takes the form of overprotectiveness, of fiercely guarding one’s possessions, just as Othello guards Desdemona and the Venetians jealously defend the island of Cyprus from their Turkish foes.

Shakespeare explores sexual jealousy and professional jealousy through several different relationships in Othello: Iago is jealous of Othello’s military success and Cassio’s promotion; Roderigo is jealous of Othello’s relationship with Desdemona; Othello becomes jealous when he believes that Desdemona is having an affair with Cassio; even Bianca becomes jealous when she believes that Cassio has a new lover. Through these relationships, Shakespeare shows how jealousy’s malign influence can ultimately consume love, friendship, nobility and honour.

Knowledge and evidence

• Iago’s jealousy is initially based on a professional slight, but he is later revealed to have motives related to sex as well:

  • In Act 1, Scene 1 he complains that Cassio has been promoted instead of him even though he is “worth no worse a place”

  • He later implies that his hatred of Othello is rooted in rumours that Iago’s wife, Emilia, has been unfaithful to him with Othello

  • He claims that it is “thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets / ’Has done my office”, although the audience never find out if this is true or not

  • The truth does not matter to Iago, whose hatred leads him to take “mere suspicion” as “surety”

• Othello’s change in character over the course of the tragedy reveals how jealousy can corrupt even those who are resistant to it:

  • In the first Act Othello dismisses Brabantio’s warning that Desdemona may deceive her husband, replying “My life upon her faith”

  • Iago slowly manipulates Othello’s trusting nature by “practising upon his peace and quiet” to convince him of Desdemona’s infidelity

  • Perhaps because of his own suspicions of Othello and Emilia, Iago understands the terrible power of this psychological torture

  • By Act 3 Othello is prepared to “tear” Desdemona “all to pieces” without even any concrete proof of her betrayal

• Roderigo is a spurned suitor of Desdemona who is jealous that she chose to marry Othello:

  • Manipulated by Iago, he believes that Iago can help him to win Desdemona’s affections

  • Roderigo’s jealousy blinds him to Iago’s true intentions and he does whatever the ensign tells him

  • He becomes Iago’s pawn in bringing about Cassio’s downfall

  • He gives money and precious jewels to Iago, only realising too late that he has “wasted” his fortune

• Sexual jealousy in particular is explicitly connected to madness, and shown to make men murderous and violent:

  • Emilia describes marital jealousy in violent terms when she tells Desdemona how husbands are prone to “break out in peevish jealousies”

  • Iago aims to whip Othello into “a jealousy so strong / That judgment cannot cure”

  • In Act 4 Othello “foams at mouth” and breaks out into “savage madness”

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Shakespeare warns his audience of the perils of jealousy, which is presented as ultimately self-defeating and never satisfying:

  • When Othello realises too late that his jealousy was based on lies, he turns his sword on himself

  • Similarly, Roderigo is led by jealousy to place trust in the man who abuses and eventually murders him

  • Iago is handed over for torture, a fitting punishment for the psychological and emotional torture he has inflicted

• Throughout the tragedy Shakespeare links jealous behaviour to images of consumption to give the impression that jealousy is all-consuming and irrational:

  • Iago famously describes jealousy as “the green-ey’d monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on” and devours those who succumb to it

  • Iago returns to this idea when he describes Othello as “eaten up” by jealousy in Act 3

  • Roderigo has “wasted myself out of my means” in the pursuit of jealous vengeance

  • Even Othello threatens to chop Desdemona “into messes” (that is, the dishes of food eaten by military personnel)

Love and relationships

If revenge is the central motivation in Othello, love is usually the catalyst. Shakespeare depicts several different kinds of love in the play, including romantic, sexual, and platonic. These relationships take place against the background of an intensely patriarchal society that reflected Shakespeare’s own. In Othello’s world, as in Shakespeare’s, codes of conduct for men and women were very different: men exercised all of the power in their personal relationships, whereas women were treated figuratively (and legally) as objects. The connection between gender and power leads to double standards by which, for example, Cassio is allowed to engage the services of courtesans but Bianca is laughed at for hoping that he will marry her. This is also why Desdemona’s alleged infidelity is punished so severely: the idea of a woman possessing any sexual agency is a threat to the patriarchy.

Knowledge and evidence

• At the beginning of the play the audience are presented with a depiction of powerful womanhood as Desdemona chooses her own husband:

  • Brabantio considers this a crime against him and his property, as though by marrying his daughter, Othello has stolen from Brabantio

  • Othello later echoes Brabantio’s patriarchal language when he accuses Desdemona of enjoying “stol’n hours of lust” with Cassio

  • By deceiving her father and asserting independence, Desdemona makes the power struggle between men and women a central focus of the play

• The relationship between Othello and Desdemona is one of true love, and it is initially harmonious:

  • Othello reveals to Brabantio that Desdemona “lov’d me for the dangers I had pass’d; / And I lov’d her that she did pity them”

  • Their love is reciprocal, and based on mutual and respectful understanding

  • They seem to love one another because of, not despite, the differences between them

• This makes them different to other couples in the play:

  • Emilia is cynical and understands that wives are merely “food” for husbands

  • Cassio treats Bianca as a “bauble”, and dismisses the idea of marrying her because she is “a customer”

  • One of the motives Iago gives for wanting to come between Othello and Desdemona is that he cannot bear to see two lovers so “well tun’d”

• Iago’s overwhelming hatred is the counterpoint to the love between Othello and Desdemona:

  • Iago displays a fierce misogyny throughout the play, and loathes the idea of women having power over men

  • He shows contempt for Othello for being “enfetter’d” to Desdemona’s love (Act 2, Scene 3)

  • All of the women in the play — Desdemona, Emilia, and Bianca — are used by Iago as tools to facilitate his revenge

  • He then binds Othello’s mind in exactly the way he claims Desdemona has bound it

  • He does this while pledging himself to Othello: “I am your own for ever”

  • His pledge may be a lie, but some interpret this as Iago desiring Othello for himself and being jealous of Desdemona

• The romance between the central lovers is also undermined by Emilia’s cynicism:

  • Emilia argues that men “are all but stomachs, and we all but food”

  • Her words also foreshadow how both of the wives in the play are ultimately victims of abusive relationships

• The relationship between love and male violence reaches its zenith when Othello murders Desdemona:

  • Othello frames the murder as an act of love and “honour”

  • He kisses Desdemona before killing her on their marital bed

  • He claims that his greatest mistake was in loving “not wisely, but too well”

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Shakespeare presents women in a sympathetic light in Othello:

  • He depicts Desdemona as faithful and loving in a world that defines women as either chaste or prostitutes

• All of the female characters are unjustly silenced by the end of the play:

  • Bianca accepts Cassio’s authority and her relative powerlessness

  • Bianca is also framed (briefly) by Iago for the attempted murder of Cassio

  • Desdemona is murdered by Othello on the basis of unproven suspicion

  • Iago kills Emilia for speaking out against him

  • These women are only ever seen in relation to the male characters, who have absolute power over their lives and deaths

• Shakespeare’s message, though, is less a critique of the patriarchy and more about the perils of jealousy and placing blind trust in the wrong people:

  • With her final breath, Desdemona defends her love for Othello

  • Even after killing his wife and himself, Othello is still lauded as “great of heart”

Race and appearance

Although Othello is known as “the Moor of Venice”, it is not possible to define Othello’s race exactly, and perhaps purposefully so. In early modern England, people from any part of Africa could be termed “moors”, which means that the term encompassed an enormous range of different languages, cultures, and skin colours. Othello’s specific racial origins are far less important than the simple idea that his skin colour marks him as different to the rest of Venetian society. Shakespeare foregrounds Othello’s race in ways that make him a compelling protagonist. Othello’s position as an outsider is presented both positively and negatively at various points, and gives audiences the sense of a character torn between two worlds, or at conflict with himself.

Knowledge and evidence

• In the first scene of the play, Shakespeare presents deeply negative views of Othello’s race:

  • Roderigo and Iago horrify Brabantio with their reference to Desdemona taking “an old black ram” and a “Barbary horse” as her lover

  • Brabantio also accuses Othello of having used witchcraft to entrance Desdemona

  • The views of Iago, Roderigo, and Brabantio are undermined in the first instance by the fact that the audience are encouraged by Shakespeare to question the judgement of these speakers

• In Act 1, Scene 3, however, Shakespeare contrasts the negative views of race with Desdemona and Othello’s positive perspective on mixed-race marriages:

  • Desdemona tells her father that she “saw Othello’s visage in his mind”

  • She urges her father to see that racial differences do not matter in love

  • Her words also suggest that Desdemona herself looked past Othello’s race because his stories excited her so much

  • Her views of Othello’s race would have been considered radical by Shakespeare’s less racially tolerant Jacobean audience

• Othello tells Brabantio and the Venetian nobles that his race was a factor in Desdemona’s active and positive choice:

  • He says that “she had eyes, and chose me”

• The fact that Othello has risen to the important position of general suggests that Venice is prepared to overlook issues of race if outsiders can demonstrate their value to society:

  • The Duke of Venice tells Brabantio that Othello is “far more fair than black”

  • These words are, though, ambiguous: is the Duke suggesting that skin colour does matter and Othello is the exception? Or is he simply making the point that Othello belongs among the Venetian nobility?

• Desdemona is ultimately proven to be wrong about Othello when he reveals his capacity for jealousy and violence:

  • It is important to note, though, that Shakespeare never suggests that Othello’s jealousy is because of his race

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Although negative racial descriptions of Othello are alarming and prominent throughout the play, it is important to note that they are all shown to be inaccurate:

  • In the first few Acts of the play, Othello is anything but the cruel, animalistic black man described by Iago

  • Only after Othello has been tricked by Iago does he begin to show some of the negative aspects of the stereotype

  • His fixation on the handkerchief verges on superstition

  • He is passionate, and cries several times before becoming violent

  • In the final scene, Othello’s captors do not blame his race for his situation, only his “rash and most unfortunate” actions

• Deceit is more dangerous than skin colour, especially when villainy hides in plain sight:

  • One of the first things the audience learn about Iago is: “I am not what I am”

  • This gives the impression of someone who is used to lying, deception, and hiding his true intentions from others

  • Despite the association in Shakespeare’s time between blackness and the devil, only Iago is referred to as a devil at the end of the play

Reputation and honour

Reputation is what every character in the play is trying to protect, and it is the lever Iago uses on all of them. In a military society, a soldier’s good name is his livelihood, and in a patriarchal one a wife’s good name belongs to her husband. Shakespeare shows reputation to be both immensely valuable and completely fragile: it can be destroyed by rumour alone, without any evidence at all.

Knowledge and evidence

• Cassio’s dismissal shows how completely a reputation can collapse:

  • He laments that he has “lost my reputation” and calls it “the immortal part of myself”, saying that “what remains is bestial” (Act 2, Scene 3)

  • The repetition of “Reputation, reputation, reputation” shows a man who can think of nothing else

• Iago argues the opposite to Cassio, then the opposite again to Othello, which tells you the arguments are tactical rather than sincere:

  • To Cassio in Act 2, Scene 3 he dismisses reputation as “an idle and most false imposition”

  • To Othello in Act 3, Scene 3 he calls “Good name in man and woman” “the immediate jewel of their souls”, having just said that “who steals my purse steals trash”

• Othello’s reputation is what makes him acceptable in Venice, and losing it is what he cannot survive:

  • He is confident in Act 1 that “My services which I have done the signiory” will answer Brabantio

  • His final speech asks the Venetians to record his “service” and to remember him as “An honourable murderer”

• As a woman, Desdemona’s reputation is the one she has least control over:

  • She is condemned on rumour alone, and never learns what she is accused of

  • Emilia is the only character who defends her name aloud, calling her “heavenly true” in Act 5, Scene 2

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Shakespeare presents reputation as something held by other people rather than owned by the self, so that no character can protect it alone

• He gives the play’s two most eloquent speeches about honour to the two men who have least of it: Iago, who does not believe a word of what he says, and Othello, who is describing a murder

• The result is a play in which appearing honourable and being honourable come apart completely, which is what makes Iago’s nickname, “honest Iago”, so ironic

Deception and honesty

Iago tells the audience in the first scene that he is lying to everyone, and no one on stage works this out until the final scene. So the audience watches the whole play knowing what Othello does not. Shakespeare marks this deception with one word, ironically used: “honest” and its forms appear more than fifty times in the play, most often about Iago.

Knowledge and evidence

• Iago tells the audience exactly what kind of man he is in the very first scene of the play:

  • “I am not what I am” (Act 1, Scene 1) is a plain statement of the whole plot

  • He says he will not “wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at”, which makes concealment a deliberate policy

• The play’s characters repeatedly mistake plain speech for honesty:

  • Othello calls him “honest Iago” in Act 1, Scene 3, before Iago has done anything to earn it

• Iago avoids saying outright that Desdemona is unfaithful:

  • He hints, then refuses to explain, so Othello puts the accusation into words instead

  • That leaves Iago looking honest and reluctant

• Othello, by contrast, cannot tell appearing to be from actually being, and says so:

  • He is astonished that Desdemona “so young, could give out such a seeming” (Act 3, Scene 3)

  • He demands “ocular proof”, but what convinces him is a handkerchief he never sees in the hands he thinks he sees it in

• The deception is undone by the character with least power to undo it:

  • Emilia realises the truth in Act 5, Scene 2 and says it aloud, and Iago kills her for it

  • Iago then refuses any explanation at all: “From this time forth I never will speak word”

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• By telling the audience the truth in Act 1 and withholding it from everyone on stage, Shakespeare makes watching the play an uncomfortable experience: we know, and we can only watch

• He also makes the audience complicit in Iago’s pleasure, because Iago shares his plans with us and nobody else

• Refusing Iago a final explanation denies the audience the one thing a tragedy usually supplies, which is a reason. That refusal is arguably his last act of deception

Sources:

Shakespeare, W. (1951) ‘Othello’, in P. Alexander (ed.) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text. London: Collins.

Shakespeare, W. (1986) ‘Othello’, in S. Wells and G. Taylor (eds.) The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press.