Othello

• Shakespeare did not invent this story, it was originally a short story written by Cinthio
• Venetian women had a reputation of being promiscuous
• Shakespeare was aware of the audiences, and influential people’s, growing excitement of the world
• Othello and the Moorish Ambassador were both highly respected
• Moor


  Reference to indigenous people of North Africa
• Venice made Desdemona more credible and suspicious
• Venice was the envy of Londoners who deemed it too powerful
• Shakespeare moved the story around the world to gain popularity and interest
• Jealousy quotes:


  "O, beware my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on"

  
  

  "But jealous souls will not be answered so. They are not ever jealous for the cause, but jealous for they're jealous. It is a monster."
• "The Moor is of free and open nature"
• "They are all but stomachs, and we all but food. They eat us hungerly and when they are full/ They belch us."
• "She has deceived her father, and may thee"
• "He holds me well/ The better shall my purpose work on him"
• "my wayward husband hath a hundred times wooed me to steal it"
• "If she be false, O then heaven mocks itself"
• "Iago is most honest"
• "to be free and bounteous to her mind"
• "I am not what i am"
• "She loved me for the dangers i had passed/ And i loved her that she did pity them"
• "I know Iago/ Thy honesty and love doth mince this matter"
• "then you must speak/ Of one that loved not wisely but too well"
• "Even so my bloody thoughts with violent pace/ Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love"
• "I follow him to serve my turn upon him"
• "Nobody. I myself"
• "O thou foul thief, where hast thou stowed my daughter"
• "old black ram is tupping your white ewe"
• "how she got out? O treason of the blood!"
• "gentle Desdemona"
• "honest Iago"
• "valiant Moor"
• "Whether a maid so tender, fair and happy"
• "let her speak"
• "but words are words: I never yet did hear/ That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear"
• "let me go with him"
• "It cannot be that Desdemona should long to continue her love to the Moor - put money in thy purse - nor he his to her"
• "our great captain's captain"
• "howbeit that I endure him not,/ Is of a constant, loving, noble nature"
• "till I am evened with him, wife for wife"
• "At least into a jealousy so strong/ That judgement cannot cure"
• "Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation"