Aspects of Love in Othello Quotes

• "I would you had never seen him."


  Emilia, act 4 scene 3, disapproval in the name of protection
• "If such actions have passage free,/Bondslaves and pagans shall our statesmen be."

  Brabantio, act 1 scene 2, love and elizabethan law, and subsequently christianity/play's christian context- idea that interracial marriage is distinctly un-Christian
• "O curse of marriage/That we can call these delicate creatures ours/And not their appetites!"


  Othello, act 3 scene 3, extent of male control in marriage and fantasies about male control, elizabethan fear of female sexual freedom
• "But I do think it is their husbands' faults/If wives do fall"


  Emilia, act 4 scene 3, more feminist opinion of Elizabethan marriage- arguing for respect and equal responsibility, more sympathetic view of 'fallen' wives
• "I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband"


  Desdemona, act 1 scene 3, elizabethan patriarchy and transferral of ownership in marriage, and power structures- powers of a father equal to that of a husband?
• "Nobody; I myself. Farewell./Commend me to my kind lord. O farewell!"


  Desdemona, act 5 scene 2, parting words to Emilia; lies to protect Othello even after he's murdered her
• "When we shall meet at compt,/This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven/And fiends will s natch at it"

  Othello, act 5 scene 2, reunion metaphysical reunion at the Day of Judgement, a contemptuous reunion rather than a heartwarming one
• "If after every tempest come such calms,/May the winds blow till they have wakened death"


  Othello, act 2 scene 1, reunion again, love as healing. compare with Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 with love that 'looks on tempests and is never shaken
• "Demand me nothing; what you know, you know. /From this time forth I will never speak word."


  Iago, act 5 scene 2, absence of catharsis in the play; Iago never explains himself
• "Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed?"

  Desdemona, act 4 scene 1, Desdemona is innocent and naive to Othello's suspicions of her, and is never told the explicit truth until her murder
• "Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:/She has betrayed her father, and may thee."

  Brabantio, act 1 scene 3, suspicion and loyalty, male ownership of women
• "What he will do with it, heaven knows, not I"


  Emilia, act 3 scene 3, secrets in marriage; distrust and division in Iago and Emilia's marriage; Emilia's innocence
• "For when my outward action doth demonstrate/The native act and figure of my heart /But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve/For daws to peck at"


  Iago, act 1 scene 1, duplicitous natures, division between Iago's motivations and his outward self, links between the truth and vulnerability (contrast with Desdemona)
• "I know not if't be true/Yet I, for mere suspicion in that kind, /Will do as for surety."


  Irony: Iago incenses Othello into violent and morbid jealousy when being violently jealous himself
• "I hate the Moor /He's done my office."


  Iago, act 1 scene 3
• "Trifles light as air/Are to the jealous confirmations strong/As proofs of holy writ"


  Iago, act 3 scene 3, commenting on Othello's tragic flaw and his quickness to react
• "O beware, my lord, of jealousy:/It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The meat it feeds on."


  Iago, act 3 scene 3, jealousy/envy as a deadly sin, corruptive force over humans
• "Since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found a man that knew how to love himself."


  Iago, act 1 scene 3, Iago as an experienced foil to Roderigo; value of self-respect and antithesis of above self-destruction in love
• "It is silliness to live, when to live is torment: and then we have a prescription to die, when death is our physician."


  Rodrigo, act 1 scene 3, as foolish, irrational young lover; echoing conceit used in love poetry
• "You'll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse"


  Iago, act 1 scene 1, more racism this time with interracial marriage- an idea that mingling of races is as obscene as interspecies relations
• "The devil will make a grandsire of you"


  Iago, act 1 scene 1, elizabethan racist stereotype with the devil being a black man
• "An old black ram/Is tupping your white ewe"


  Iago, act 1 scene 1, black/white dichotomy shown throughout the play; ideas about 'worth' in society and in love; livestock analogy?
• "I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak"


  Emilia, act 5 scene 2, Urge for revenge and justice; female power and avengement
• "Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away/Richer than all his tribe"


  Othello, act 5 scene 2, loss through disposal, ironic echo of one of Othello's first monologues, talking of his exotic adventures seducing Desdemona- tales of far-off things are now what he uses to describe losing her
• "I had rather adopt a child than get it"


  Brabantio, act 1 scene 3, familial/parental love: betrayal, ideas about bloodlines and blood relations, elizabethan patriarchy and paternal ownership of daughters
• "Let husbands know/Their wives have sense like them"


  Emilia, act 4 scene 3, female perspective on sexual desire- elizabethan ideal of outward female chastity versus the reality that women also have the capacity to desire
• "Her name, that was as fresh/As visage, is now begrimed and black"


  Othello, act 3 scene 3, elizabethan fear of female sexuality, ideas about virginity and purity and then conversely corruption
• "We have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts"


  Iago, act 1 scene 3, Lust as an animal instinct separate from human intelligence, sex as a completely primitive thing
• "If I be left behind/A moth of peace, and he go to the war, /The rites for which I love him are bereft me"


  Desdemona, act 1 scene 3, Consummation of marriage, Elizabethan gender roles and female sexuality, marital sex
• "And this, and this, the greatest discords be/That our hearts shall make."


  Othello, act 2 scene 1, Serious irony and tempting fate, idealism, Desdemona and Othello are in harmony
• "She loved me for the dangers I had passed/ I loved her that she did pity them"


  Othello, act 1 scene 3, love as healing, or as mutual sympathy in times of despair