Othello's plot follows the downfall of the valiant black general, Othello, who serves Venice. At the beginning of the play, Othello happily marries Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian senator. Othello is later tricked and led to ruin by the play's ruthless villain, Iago, who seeks revenge on Othello for passing him up for a promotion. Iago causes Othello to lose trust in his faithful lieutenant, Cassio, and his loving wife, Desdemona. This ultimately leads to the play's tragic outcome: Othello smothers Desdemona with a pillow and takes his own life.
 |
Act One
In the first scene of the play, Iago and Roderigo, the play's two villains, discuss the secret marriage of the general Othello and Desdemona, who is the daughter of Venetian senator, Barbantio. Roderigo is distraught because he had been a suitor of Desdemona and had asked Barbantio for her hand in marriage. Iago bitterly hates Othello because the general had passed him up when choosing a lieutenant, promoting Cassio instead.
Iago hatches a nefarious plan and convinces Roderigo to wake and provoke Barbantio by telling him that his daughter has eloped with Othello. Barbantio becomes enraged and sets off to arrest Othello. Iago, however, whom Othello trusts deeply and calls 'honest Iago,' arrives sooner to warn Othello of Barbantio's coming.
When Barbantio arrives at Othello's residence, he finds the Duke of Venice's guards, who were called by the Duke to summon Othello because news has arrived that the Turks were launching an attack on Cyprus. Othello, Barbantio, and Iago set off for the Duke's residence, where the senators have gathered to discuss the imminent war.
Barbantio accuses Othello of having seduced his daughter by witchcraft to the senators. Othello defends himself and requests that Desdemona be brought before the senators to affirm her love for him. Desdemona is brought before the senators and confirms what Othello had stated. Othello is then sent to Cyprus by the Duke. He is accompanied to Cyprus by Cassio, Iago, and Iago's wife, Emilia.
Act Two
After arriving in Cyprus, Othello learns that the Turkish fleet has been destroyed in a great storm, and orders a celebration. Iago, consumed by hatred, continues to plot against Othello and Cassio. He convinces Cassio to get drunk, and then tells Roderigo to insult Cassio and draw him into a fistfight in order to disgrace him. Cassio becomes enraged and belligerent, and as a result fights with Montano, Othello's predecessor in Cyprus, who tries to calm him. Othello demotes Cassio to make an example of him. Iago approaches Cassio and convinces him to confront Desdemona to beg her to entreat Othello to reinstate Cassio's rank.
Act Three
Iago then begins to persuade Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona, implying that Desdemona's fervent request for Cassio's reinstatement is a sign of her infidelity. When Desdemona accidentally drops her handkerchief, Iago's wife, Emilia, picks it up, noting that her husband had asked her to steal it from Desdemona multiple times. She presents the handkerchief to Iago, though not knowing what Iago plans to do with it. When Othello once again returns to seek Iago's counsel, he is already convinced that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him. Iago drives him to despair by claiming that he had seen Cassio wipe his beard with Desdemona's handkerchief.
Act Four
In the first scene of Act Four, Iago's lies drive Othello to an epileptic episode. To further deceive Othello, Iago leaves Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's bedroom, and then tells Othello to eavesdrop on a conversation he will have with Cassio. Iago draws Cassio into a conversation about Bianca, a local courtesan with whom Cassio has a love affair, but says Bianca's name quietly, so that Othello cannot hear and believes they are talking about Desdemona. When Bianca finds Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's quarters and confronts Cassio about it in anger, Iago convinces Othello that Cassio had received the handkerchief from Desdemona.
Flying into rage and despair, Othello orders Iago to kill Cassio. Iago in turn tasks Roderigo with the murder. Othello begins to mistreat Desdemona, going so far as to strike her in front of Venetian nobles and disgracing himself in doing so.
Act Five
Roderigo and Iago ambush Cassio in the dark as Cassio is returning from Bianca's lodgings. Roderigo and Cassio are both injured in the scuffle. To keep Roderigo from revealing their plot, Iago stabs and kills Cassio. Iago, whose identity hadn't been discovered in the fight, calls for help. When help arrives, he blames the murder plot on Bianca.
Othello confronts Desdemona in her bedchamber, and refuses to believe her pleas of innocence. Othello admits to having ordered the murder of Cassio and then smothers Desdemona to death with a pillow. Emilia discovers Othello in the bedchamber with the body of Desdemona and calls for help. Montano and Iago arrive, and when Othello cites the handkerchief as proof of Desdemona's infidelity, Emilia realizes her husband's plot and reveals it to Othello and Montano. Iago stabs Emilia fatally in retaliation. After being apprehended, Iago refuses to explain himself and expresses no remorse for his wrongdoings. Othello, after realizing that Desdemona and Cassio were innocent, stabs himself and dies.
 |
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
The themes of Othello include jealousy, deception, and passion.
Iago, the remorseless villain, is really the main character of the play. His machinations and evil intentions drive the plot, turning a happy marriage and bloodless military victory into a murderous tragedy. He destroys reputations and pits friend against friend. His nefarious behavior, alongside his complete lack of remorse and sympathy, cast him as a purely evil character, willing to exact revenge at all costs.
Othello, who at the beginning of the play is a well-respected general, conducting himself with heroic composure, is brought down by jealousy to near madness when he believes Iago's lies. At the end of Act Four he suffers an epileptic fit, emphasizing his progression from military hero to tragic hero. Shakespeare also uses the character of Othello to explore a hero who is in a position of otherness. Othello's black skin marks him as different in Venice, and he is often referred to as "the moor." In Act I, Iago exploits this by emphasizing Othello's skin color to convince Barbantio that Othello stole his daughter.
Othello as Tragedy
Tragedy is a genre of drama in which the protagonist, often a great or heroic person, meets a disastrous or horrific end. Othello is part of the tradition of revenge tragedy, a type of tragic play which was written in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras (c. 1580-1620), in which the protagonist seeks revenge for an imagined or actual wrong done to them. William Shakespeare wrote ten tragedy plays, including Othello as well as other famous plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Hamlet. In Shakespeare's tragedies, it is common for many of the main characters to die. In Othello, the characters Othello, Desdemona, Emilia, and Roderigo all die, while Cassio is maimed. Furthermore, Othello contains the tragic trope of a great man destined for a downfall: Othello turns from an admired general to a ruined man by the end of the play.
Shakespeare also wrote comedies, plays with comic tropes, often including marriage, disguise, and misconception. The comedies almost always end happily. In plays such as Twelfth Night and As You Like It, lovers face a number of obstacles, but marry happily in the end.
Othello at first seems to mirror these conventions. Othello and Desdemona, despite the obstacles they face to their marriage, such as the secret nature of their wedding, their different skin colors, and Iago and Roderigo's plot to set Desdemona's father, Barbantio, against them, successfully affirm their love before the Senators in Act One and are given permission to live together unhindered. However, this faux 'happy ending' in the first act of the play gives way to utter tragedy later in the play. In this sense, Othello can be said to evolve from a comedy to a tragedy.
Another parallel could be drawn between the setting of Othello and the setting conventions which Shakespeare used in his comedic plays. While many of Shakespeare's contemporaries set their comedies in England, Shakespeare often set his comedies in foreign lands, such as Italy, or in magical settings, such as the magical wood outside Athens in A Midsummer Nights Dream. Othello is also set outside of England, in Venice and Cyprus. Most of the plot develops in Cyprus, an island, which could be viewed as a further removed setting: Cyprus is removed from the Venetian society to which Othello and Desdemona belong. This mirrors the removed settings of Shakespeare's comedies. In fact, his final comic play The Tempest was also set on an island. However, unlike the island in the The Tempest, which Shakespeare uses for a play ending in a happy marriage, Cyprus in Othello is cast as the setting for a bloody tragedy.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
Here are some famous quotes from the play, along with their explanations:
- 'And so much duty that my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.' (Act One, Scene 3, Lines 213-218)
This famous quote is Desdemona's response to her father when she is being questioned about the nature of her love for Othello before the senators in Act One. She professes her love to Othello and explains that she is bound by love to Othello just as her mother was bound to her father. She quells her father's anger with this quote, although he leaves the scene still feeling deceived by her.
- 'O beware, my lord, of Jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves!' (Act Three, Scene 3, Lines 195-200)
This quote and description of jealousy is spoken by Iago in Act Three. He is provoking Othello's jealousy by convincing him of Desdemona's supposed infidelity. Iago draws attention to the pain Othello is experiencing as he both loves and doubts Desdemona, and contrasts him with a husband who doesn't love his wife and so does not care whether she is faithful or not.
- 'When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well.
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme. Of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe. Of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum.' (Act Five, Scene 2, Lines 357-367)
This is the Othello's final speech before he kills himself at the end of the play. He characterizes himself as having loved Desdemona "too well" but unwisely. He emphasizes that his jealousy was not a natural trait of his, but was "wrought" by Iago's deceptive plots. Othello admits to his horrible folly and knows that he has thrown away a "pearl" in killing Desdemona. At this moment, at the end of his development as a character, Othello at last sees his situation clearly, and faces both his own horrible misdeed and Iago's treachery.
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
William Shakespeare's play Othello (1603-1604) is a tragic play which chronicles the downfall of Othello, a black general who serves Venice. The main character is the villain Iago, whose remorseless and nefarious plots destroy Othello and his wife, Desdemona. As Iago puts his dishonest plans into action, he turns Othello against his faithful lieutenant, Cassio, and his loving wife, Desdemona. By the end of the play, Othello seeks murderous revenge. He orders the assassination of his lieutenant and kills Desdemona himself. When Iago is at last uncovered, Othello ends his own life and dies beside the body of his wife.
Othello falls into the revenge tragedy genre. Although the play is one of Shakespeare's tragedies, it contains elements of his comedies, such as love and marriage, deception, and a setting which is removed from society.
The main themes of Othello include deception, jealousy, and passion. Shakespeare also explores Othello's position of otherness, as a black skinned person in Venice. Othello's tragic flaw is that he trusts Iago, and allows the villain to turn him against those who are loyal to him and love him.3
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
Video Transcript
Summary of Othello
What do you get when you mix a viciously ambitious military man with a jealous newlywed and a spurned lover? A famous Shakespearean tragedy about what happens when people let their emotions get the best of them. The play opens in Venice, Italy, with Iago, the play's villain, and Roderigo, a man who is paying Iago to help him in his romantic pursuit of Desdemona, arguing about Desdemona's recent marriage to Othello. Iago assures Roderigo that Desdemona will soon become bored with Othello and then Roderigo will have his chance with her.
Iago is upset with Othello, the military commander, because he recently promoted a guy named Cassio instead of Iago to the position of lieutenant even though Iago has more military experience. Iago and Roderigo tell Desdemona's father that the only reason she married Othello is because he put some kind of magic spell on her. Desdemona's father complains to the local governing body, the Senate, and Othello offers his rebuttal, stating that he won Desdemona's love by telling her the exciting stories of his military adventures. Desdemona appears before the Senate to confirm Othello's story and tells her father that her allegiance is now to her husband.
Meanwhile, the Turks are on their way to invade Cyprus, an island just off Turkey's coast, so all the major characters sail to the island to prepare to defend it. When they get there, however, they learn that the Turks' ships were all lost in a storm. With the problem of the Turks out of the way, Iago can now concentrate on a complex plan to get Cassio demoted and get revenge on Othello for promoting Cassio in the first place. When Iago notices Cassio innocently holding Desdemona's hand while he assures her that Othello's ship has made it safely through the storm, he decides to use this purely platonic gesture to frame Desdemona for adultery.
To celebrate the fact that the Turks will not be invading after all, Othello declares a night of feasting and partying. During the party, Iago gets Cassio drunk and sends Roderigo to start a fight with him. During the fray, Cassio inadvertently stabs the governor of Cyprus. Othello punishes Cassio by demoting him. Cassio complains about his demotion to Iago who tells him that if he tells Desdemona his story, she will be sympathetic and talk Othello into reinstating him as lieutenant. Iago offers to help by telling Othello he needs to check on some of the town's fortifications.
When Othello returns, Desdemona asks him to forgive Cassio and let him have his lieutenant position back. This, plus Iago's suggestions that Cassio and Desdemona are being intimate, causes Othello to become jealous and angry. He accuses Desdemona of adultery and smothers her with a pillow. Later, Emilia, who is Iago's wife and Desdemona's friend, convinces Othello that Desdemona was never unfaithful. Iago is angered by this and kills Emilia. Othello is guilt-stricken and kills himself. The authorities, realizing that Iago was behind this plot to ruin Othello, sentence him to be executed.
Analysis of Othello
Othello is unusual among Shakespeare's tragedies because much of it is set up like a typical Shakespearean comedy. A tragedy is a play that focuses on unfortunate events and that ends unhappily, while a Shakespearian comedy almost always deals with love and marriage, has a plot that hinges on deception and disguises, and has a setting that is outside of civilization where supernatural events can take place and the characters are not held to the normal rules of society. Othello contains all of the elements of a comedy, but instead of ending in marriage, the play ends in multiple deaths including that of the tragic hero, Othello.
Othello is a military hero, well-respected by the Senate, and well-loved by his new wife. At the beginning of the play, he seems calm, controlled, and eloquent. But by the end of Act IV, Othello has given himself over to raging jealousy, so much so that he suffers an epileptic fit and cannot speak. Shakespeare uses this to show Othello's progression from military hero to tragic hero.
Although Othello is the tragic figure, Iago is really the main character in the play. He has been passed up for a promotion and this apparently explains his revenge plot against Othello, but as the play progresses, it becomes apparent that Iago may simply just be a bad guy. He manipulates just about everyone else in the play and causes the deaths of several innocent characters. He even stabs and kills his own wife. Iago's plan hurts many more people than just Othello.
Most of the action of the play takes place on the island of Cyprus. In contrast to Venice, where the Senate rules and Othello is calm and well-spoken, Cyprus appears to be a place where deception, strong emotions, and lack of control abounds. Othello contains probably one of the most disturbing murder scenes in literature, that of Othello smothering his bride, possibly on their wedding night (the timing of their actual marriage is unclear during the play). Again, Shakespeare uses this act to show how far unchecked emotions, in this case, jealousy, can go.
Quotes in Othello
Here are some famous quotes from the play, along with their explanations:
'And so much duty that my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father,
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.' (Act I, Scene 3, Lines 213-218)
Desdemona says this to her father when he's complaining that she has been tricked into marrying Othello with a magic spell. She tells her father that she now owes her loyalty to her husband (Othello the Moor) just like her mother was loyal to her husband (Desdemona's father). Basically, she's doing the same thing her mother did when she got married, so why should her father be angry?
'O beware, my lord, of Jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger;
But O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves!' (Act III, Scene 3, Lines 195-200)
Iago utters this famous description of jealousy when he is egging Othello on about Desdemona's supposed infidelity. You may recognize now where we get the idea of jealousy being a 'green-eyed monster.' A 'cuckold' was a term used to describe a man whose wife was cheating on him. Here, Iago says a husband who doesn't love his wife doesn't really care what she does even when he is certain of her unfaithfulness, but it's maddening when a man just suspects that his wife might be cheating, but still loves her.
'When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well.
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme. Of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe. Of one whose subdued eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum.' (Act V, Scene 2, Lines 357-367)
Othello is dictating his last request to Lodovico, Desdemona's cousin, just before he kills himself. He asks that he be remembered as objectively as possible given the circ*mstances. He describes himself as a man who did not make good choices in love, but who was faithful in his love. This line obviously refers to his relationship with Desdemona, but it also speaks of the alliance he and Iago made during the play. He claims here that he was not easily made jealous (which is suspect, given how easily Iago was able to convince him of Desdemona's unfaithfulness), but when he became jealous he was consumed by the emotion and threw away a precious part of his life (Desdemona) and then cried bitterly about it.
Lesson Summary
In Othello, a tragedy by William Shakespeare, Iago, angered over being passed up for a promotion, seeks to get revenge on Othello. Iago manipulates the words and actions of almost everyone else in the play in order to convince Othello that his new wife, Desdemona, has committed adultery with Cassio, the man who received the promotion Iago wanted.
Most of the play takes place on Cyprus, an island just off the coast of Turkey. Although in the beginning, Othello is calm and well-spoken, by the end he has become so consumed with jealous rage, he kills Desdemona and then kills himself. This transformation emphasizes the theme that unchecked emotions can cause disastrous results.
Othello is unusual among Shakespeare's tragedies because much of it is set up like a typical Shakespearean comedy. A tragedy is a play that focuses on unfortunate events and that ends unhappily, while a Shakespearian comedy almost always deals with love and marriage, has a plot that hinges on deception and disguises, and has a setting that is outside of civilization where supernatural events can take place and the characters are not held to the normal rules of society.
Learning Outcomes
Ensure that you're able to reach these goals after watching the video lesson:
- Recount the plot of Othello
- Analyze the character 'Othello'
- Recite and clarify some quotes from the play
To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.com Member.
Create your account
