Key Ideas

• Love, Historical Context and Historicism (Act 1, Scene 2)

  Brabantio has no awareness that Desdemona is deeply in love with Othello. He accuses Othello of deceiving and forcing Desdemona’s hand in marriage using ‘drugs or minerals that weakens motion’.
• Voodoo

  • His references to ‘arts inhibited and out of warrant’ imply Brabantio believes Othello has used voodoo or black magic to seduce Desdemona.
  • He seems to make assumptions about Othello based on common prejudices of his time rather than any knowledge he has of Othello.
• Brabantio

  • At the end of the scene, Brabantio suggests that allowance of the marriage may even lead to wider societal corruptive consequences—he warns that ‘if such actions may have passage free / Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be’.
  • We later discover that the events may bear out Brabantio’s warnings about this love and marriage between Othello and Desdemona.
• Othello

  • Othello is the first character in the play to speak of love, as he confidently asserts that he loves the ‘gentle Desdemona’ and speaks proudly of his ‘title’ as her husband, contrasting with other character’s view that women are for possession, not for love.
  • He compares his love for her to the treasures of the ‘sea’s worth’.
• True love

  • It is becomes clear to many of the other characters that Othello’s love for Desdemona is true and honest, and that he did not win her with either witchcraft or charms.
  • Those watching are as much under his poetic and narrative spell as Desdemona was.
• Tragedy (Act 1, Scene 2)

  The encroaching tragedy is set up through dramatic irony, Iago's duplicity, Othello's hamartia and the clashing of public and private spheres.
• Dramatic irony

  • Shakespeare creates dramatic irony here through Iago’s untruthful portrayal of his conversation with Roderigo.
  • He claims he was angered through Roderigo’s use of ‘scurvy and provoking terms’ against Othello’s ‘honour’, providing a sense of irony, as it was Iago who himself did exactly that.
• Duplicity

  • Iago swears ‘By Janus’, an allusion to the Roman god who was represented by a double-faced head, symbolising duality.
  • This implies Iago’s duplicitous, devious nature.
  • Duplicity is generally a precursor of tragedy.
• Respect for Othello

  • Everything we have just covered creates the sense that Othello is a man to be admired and respected.
  • We may also feel some pity for him as he seems to be treated like an outsider by the other characters, despite his admirable qualities, and is seemingly devalued because of his race, implied by comments made by other characters.
• Pride

  • However, his pride and self-confidence in his ‘parts’, ‘title’ and ‘perfect soul’ perhaps also suggests early on a deep flaw (hamartia) in Othello’s character—an arrogance in which he believes men can be judged solely for their actions and reputation.
• Private v public

  • Whilst conflict and tension in Othello’s private sphere builds as Brabantio threatens and accuses him, Michael Cassio also introduces the more public threat of military conflict in Cyprus due to the Turkish invasion as ‘business of some heat’ for which Othello is required ‘haste-post-haste’, already creating a sense of some chaos as Othello is forced to confront both urgent situations simultaneously.
• Husband and general

  • This ascertains that Othello’s private and public roles as husband and military general will be inextricably connected and divisive throughout the rest of the play.
  • The early conflict both in the private sphere with Brabantio and in the public sphere with the Turks suggests that further conflict and chaos are not far away.