Q5: Desdemona's love for Othello is unconditional. Even when he hits her and calls her a whore, she still says she loves him. At the end, she says she killed herself rather than tell the truth and implicate Othello. Is Desdemona's overwhelming love admirable? Should we pity Desdemona rather than admiring her?

Q4: Compare and contrast Desdemona and Emilia's views on love, sex, marriage, and men. Do either Desdemona or Emilia change their viewpoints as a result of their conversations with each other?

Q3: Who is a more jealous person, Othello or Iago?

Q2: What is the constraining motive with Othello in killing Desdemona?

Q1: Do we excuse or condemn Desdemona's dying assertion that she killed herself?

Main Themes

various of themes & symbols: racism, love, jealousy, betrayal, revenge and repentance, witchcraft, handkerchief, the token of love, light and dark...

• Witchcraft is prominently raised as a major theme in Shakespeare’s Othello in the first act, when Brabantio suspects that his daughter Desdemona may have been influenced by witchcraft which make her fall in love with Othello and marry him. 

• As Iago’s jealousy keeps expanding, filling his whole mind with framing Othello, by a great coincidence, Iago gets possession of the precious handkerchief accidentally dropped by the innocent Desdemona and manages to pass it into Cassio's possession. Iago knows that the fact that Cassio has the handkerchief won't be any kind of real proof that Cassio is having an affair with Desdemona, but he is pretty sure that it will be proof enough for Othello. He claims, "Trifles light as air/Are to the jealous confirmations strong/As proofs of holy writ" (III.iii.322-324).Cassio gives it to Bianca, his mistress, and Iago, by various contrivances, manages to have Othello observe Cassio handling the handkerchief and joking about it and about Bianca.  

• The handkerchief is also a token of love to Othello.For Othello, this handkerchief passed by Othello’s mother is a token of love. He believes as long as Desdemona has the handkerchief with her, her love and pureness still exists. Therefore, when Othello finds out Desdemona’s lost of the handkerchief and mistakenly believes Cassio is joking about his lewd behavior with Desdemona, he believed this only "oracular" proof Othello ever gets that Desdemona and Cassio are carrying on an affair. All this exaggerated valuation of a handkerchief and all the coincidences connected with it are very hard to swallow. They seem like a very contrived way of motivating Othello to murder the wife he adores. Except the deceiving and intentionally misguiding of Iago, it is the too strong jealousy of Othello himself finally kills Desdemona.

Book Summary

Othello

One of the most famous tragedies of Shakespeare

• Along with Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, Othello is one of Shakespeare's four great tragedies and the most critics take to be the apex of Shakespeare's dramatic art. Othello is unique among Shakespeare's great tragedies. Unlike Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, which are set against a backdrop of affairs of state and which reverberate with suggestions of universal human concerns, Othello is set in a private world and focuses on the passions and personal lives of its major figures. Indeed, it has often been described as a "tragedy of character"; Othello's swift descent into jealousy and rage and Iago's dazzling display of villainy have long fascinated students and critics of the play. The relationship between these characters is another unusual feature of Othello. With two such prominent characters so closely associated, determining which is the central figure in the play and which bears the greater responsibility for the tragedy is difficult.

Shakespeare's photo + biography

William Shakespeare

Quick Facts

• occupation: poet, playwright
• birth date: April 23, 1564
• death date: April 23. 1616
• education: king's New School
• place of birth and death: Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom

Mysterious Origin

• Known throughout the world, the works of William Shakespeare have been performed in countless hamlets, villages, cities and metropolises for more than 400 years. And yet, the personal history of William Shakespeare is somewhat a mystery. There are two primary sources that provide historians with a basic outline of his life. One source is his work—the plays, poems and sonnets—and the other is official documentation such as church and court records. However, these only provide brief sketches of specific events in his life and provide little on the person who experienced those events.

Writing Style

• William Shakespeare's early plays were written in the conventional style of the day, with elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn't always align naturally with the story's plot or characters. However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words. With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of poetry or simple prose.

Early Works: Histories and Comedies

Later Works: Tragedies and Tragicomedies

Controversy and Literary Legacy

• About 150 years after his death, questions arose about the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays. Scholars and literary critics began to float names like Christopher Marlowe, Edward de Vere and Francis Bacon, men of more known backgrounds, literary accreditation, or inspiration—as the true authors of the plays. Much of this stemmed from the sketchy details of Shakespeare's life and the dearth of contemporary primary sources. Official records from the Holy Trinity Church and the Stratford government record the existence of a William Shakespeare, but none of these attest to him being an actor or playwright.

• Skeptics also questioned how anyone of such modest education could write with the intellectual perceptiveness and poetic power that is displayed in Shakespeare's works.

• The most serious and intense skepticism began in the 19th century when adoration for Shakespeare was at its highest. The detractors believed that the only hard evidence surrounding William Shakespeare from Stratford-upon-Avon described a man from modest beginnings who married young and became successful in real estate. Members of the Shakespeare Oxford Society (founded in 1957) put forth arguments that English aristocrat Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was the true author of the poems and plays of "William Shakespeare." The Oxfordians cite de Vere's extensive knowledge of aristocratic society, his education, and the structural similarities between his poetry and that found in the works attributed to Shakespeare. They contend that William Shakespeare had neither the education nor the literary training to write such eloquent prose and create such rich characters.