Key Events 2

• Othello’s Arrival

  Othello’s entrance interrupts the exchange between Iago and Desdemona and her attention immediately swings upon her husband.
• Othello's entrance

  • Othello enters and Desdemona’s attentions are immediately swung to be focused on her husband.
  • Their deep affection for each other is intensified here as both speak poetically of their love.
• Language

  • Othello calls Desdemona his ‘fair warrior’ and ‘his soul’s joy’.
  • He comments: ‘If after every tempest come such calms / May the winds blow till they have wakened death’.
  • Desdemona hopes on the heavens that their ‘loves and comforts should increase’.
• Irony

  • A perceptive audience member here could note the irony in their comments here; for the couple, the storm is only just beginning.
• Iago and Roderigo’s Continued Scheming

  As we have seen in previous scenes, the scene ends with Iago revealing to the audience what further machinations he plans to put in place to destroy Othello and Desdemona’s marriage.
• Sexual appetite

  • Iago is able to skilfully manipulate Roderigo into continuing the scheme despite Desdemona’s deep love for Othello by emphasising her supposed sexual appetite.
  • He insists ‘her eye must be fed’, and that she will become bored when ‘the blood is made dull with the act of sport’.
• Cassio

  • His attention in the scheme moves to Cassio, whom he believes makes a fitting ‘second choice’ for Desdemona, a ‘devilish knave’ who is ‘handsome, young, and hath all those requisites in him that folly and green minds look after’.
• Gullible Roderigo

  • His pernicious influence on the gullible Roderigo is clear as he is able to completely misrepresent the holding of hands between Cassio and Desdemona as not mere ‘courtesy’ but rather an act pointing to ‘a history of lust and foul thoughts’.
• Provoking Cassio

  • As he insists Roderigo ‘be ruled’ by him – accentuating his need for control over all – he plans that Roderigo will ‘provoke’ Cassio into a quarrel.
• Final soliloquy

  • His final soliloquy gives us some insight into his growing anger and his need for ‘revenge’ upon both Cassio and Othello.
  • At the beginning, he claims that he does ‘well believe’t’ that Cassio loves Desdemona.
  • The audience is left to question whether Iago truly does and is delusional, or whether his attempts to deceive and misrepresent facts now even extends to the audience.
• Revelations

  • As we have seen in previous scenes, the scene ends with Iago revealing to the audience what further machinations he plans to put in place to destroy Othello and Desdemona’s marriage.