Roderigo & Brabantio

• Roderigo

  Roderigo is a fool and a dupe.
• Roderigo

  • Roderigo is paying Iago money to give him information about Desdemona, who he wishes to marry.
  • Brabantio has already rejected him as a suitor but this does not stop his pursuit of her.
• Iago

  • Roderigo is often melancholic and full of self-pity, lamenting his own situation.
  • However, there is no room for his development and so he is killed.
  • Iago has played him for most of the play.
  • It is only when he faces mortality that he realises Iago’s true nature.
• Love and tragedy

  • Roderigo believes that love can be bought and paid for, but he comes to understand that it cannot be.
  • His function in the tragic plot is to be duped by Iago, and this contributes to his death.
• Brabantio

  A ‘reverend signor’ Brabantio is an elderly man whose daughter is Desdemona.
• Brabantio

  • Brabantio is a respected figure in Venetian society. He is distraught when he learns that Desdemona has married a Moor.
  • He views him as having stolen her (so she is his property) and that he has achieved this through witchcraft.
• Racism

  • Brabantio offers much of the racist abuse in the play.
  • He orders Othello to appear before the Duke of Venice to justify himself in a kind of trial.
  • He is very forthright and opinionated.
• Mirrored emotions

  • Brabantio's slide into despair is matched by Othello’s happiness at being married to Desdemona.
  • We learn of his death later in the play.
• Love

  • Brabantio is an important character in terms of restricting love and not permitting marriage.
• Tragedy

  • The play implies that is dissatisfaction with his daughter’s choice of husband throws him into such despair that he dies.
  • Interestingly, retrospectively the audience may see that his concerns over Desdemona and Othello’s pairing were right: he foresaw that tragedy and chaos might result from their union.