Othello's final speech

• Othello: 'Within his final speech, Othello has returned to sanity too late, but that he returns at all provides us with some sense of reconciliation.'
• Othello's fate


  • A noble person may fall to the depths of savagery, but an essential humanity remains within the troubled soul
• The tradition of the mediaeval Morality Play was still familiar in Shakespeare's day and certainly influenced him
• Othello's placement between Iago and Desdemona


  Resembles the situation of the central character in a morality play: symbolic of the human soul, he was placed between an angel and a devil who each demanded his loyalty
• Othello offers redemption at its close
• Othello


  • Emblematic of one aspect of human life, he incarnates the inexorable guilt and ultimate in humanity's fate, but his eventual awareness offers a redeeming catharsis