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The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice

William Shakespeare's play "The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice," considered one of his four great tragedies. Othello is a black general who is manipulated by his jealous ensign Iago, ultimately driving the noble Moor insane.

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'Othello' Who is lago using in the play and why?

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Iago uses everyone in the play. It is the only way that he can relate to people. He uses Roderigo as a source of money. He uses Cassio to set up Desdemona. He uses Desdemona's kindness to give him an opportunity to use Othello, and he uses Othello in order to destroy both him and Desdemona. He then uses Roderigo to destroy Cassio. He uses his wife Emilia to get Desdemona's handkerchief.

Iago is a psychopath. He does not care about anyone except himself and he is extremely adept at manipulating others. He is so good at appearing to be whatever he wants to be that everyone is taken in and thinks he is an "honest fellow".

How tall was Othello in the play?

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Ophelia Lovibond is 157 cm.

What type of genre is Othello?

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Many scholars believe that the play Othello was based on the short story/play, A Moorish Captain.

What are the similarities between Othello and Desdemona?

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Although Ophelia and Nala have different personalities and portrayals, both characters are similar to each other because they are the lover of the protagonist, Hamlet and Simba. Another similiarity (or more like an allusion) is that in The Lion King, Nala is thrown into a pool during the "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" sequence by Simba, but she emerges quickly as she doesn't want to drown. However, in Hamlet, Ophelia throws herself in the water and drowns.

What is the difference between the Othello movie and play?

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I do not no even, searching for it because I have a paper due by today in this topic. please help me out if someone has any idea.

How does Othello kill himself?

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He died in his palace at Memleben after celebrating Easter with a great assembly. He died from a strong fever as one of then strongest leaders after Charlemenge.

How is Desdemona depicted in Othello?

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As the "ideal" wife: she submits to Othello as opposed to the other women who are quite strong characters. Therefore her supposed infidelity is even more painful for Othello to believe and for the audience to witness the catastrophic events which follow this.

How does the play Othello end?

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Othello strangles Desdemona and then Emilia comes in and Iago kills her and then Othello realizes that Desdemona was innocent so in the end he kills himself. Not a happily ever after ending, eh?

Why was Othello called Moor?

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Othello is a Moor, which is to say an African, but it is not clear whether or not he was actually born in Africa. He does say that he was a soldier since he was seven years old, and that he had travelled a good deal since then, being captured once and sold into slavery then redeemed. He does seem to have made a career out of fighting the Turk, which does not suggest that he was raised in Africa (most of which was culturally closer to the Islamic Turkish Empire). He may have been born in Europe of African parents.

The full title of Othello is Othello, the Moor of Venice, so Othello is from Venice to some extent.

Othello is a person and a symbol. He is a noble man from a line of royal men, and is the highest ranking person in the play. By birth as by personal merit. The fight is between the middling, trading classes and the nobility who was forbidden to trade, but instead married rich heiresses coming from trade. Desdemona's father is against her alliance with Othello because she quits the sphere of her middling class. He cannot marry her out and use her to bolster his social position in Venice. The Venetians are remarkably non-racist as they made the sole Black in their midst the highest military leader. Even Brabantio, Desdemona's father often invited him to dinner, where he met Desdemona and could woo her. He is giving a fair hearing over his elopement with Desdemona and not automatically lynched, as should expected if the Venetians were racists. The racist remarks are really anti-nobility remarks, in a sharp but satirical fashion, as not to give to much offence to the people who bankrolled Shakespeare, to begin with.

What is the first lie Iago tells Othello?

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In Act II Scene 3 Iago tells Montano that Cassio is a drunkard and drinks himself to sleep every night. "'Tis evermore the prologue to his sleep; He'll watch the horloge a double set if drink rock not his cradle." "Horloge" is French for "clock".

How was Desdemona faithful to Othello till the end?

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Never. She is not only never unfaithful to him in the sexual sense, but she does not blame him or start to hate him even when, due to the jealousy Iago has raised in him, he insults her and strikes her in public. Even then she remains true to him.

How does Othello view himself?

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Some plays have characters whose names mean things, like Everyman or Middleton's Revenger's tragedy (where the one who wants revenge is called Vindice and the stupid one is called Supervacuo). Shakespeare sometimes did this too: In Two Gentlemen of Verona Proteus is changeable and Valentine is the true lover. But Othello is not one of those plays. Iago is just the Italian version of Jim and that's all. It doesn't mean anything.

In Othello how many times is Iago referred to as honest?

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20

Othello says Iago is honest 12 times.

Cassio says Iago is honest 1 time.

Desdemona says Iago is honest 1 time.

Iago says that he himself is honest 6 times.

Act I scene iii

2 - Othello

Act II scene i

1 - Iago

Act II scene iii

3 - Othello

2 - Iago

Act III scene i

1 - Cassio

Act III scene iii

3 - Othello

2 - Iago

1 - Desdemona

Act IV scene i

1 - Iago

Act V scene i

1 - Othello

Act V scene ii

3 - Othello

What does the saying Vanished into thin air by Othello mean?

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The phrase comes from Prospero's famous speech in The Tempest, as follows: "These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air". It means to disappear without a trace.

Was Othello a Moor or a Turk?

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Othello is neither a Turk nor a Spaniard. The most specific description of Othello given throughout the play is that he is a Moor. A Moor typically describes someone who is black or Arab and has descended from North Africa. Europeans applied the term 'Moor' loosely to people who were black or Middle Eastern in appearance, and thus, not much can be determined about Othello's race or appearance from this description.

What are some of the racist insults to Othello in the play?

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No. It's difficult to see how a story of passion and politics, love and betrayal can have a racial connotation. Do you ask this question because the main character is black? It's necessary to understand that in Shakespeare's time racial divisions were not as we see them today. Another answer: I would hold that the play is oddly both racist and accepting of racial differences. It does contain some of what I would call racist remarks, such as when Iago tells Brabantio that "even now, very now, an old black ram [Othello] is topping your white ewe [Desdemona]." Such passages would seem to refute critics who say that the play treats Othello's race as ambiguous, i.e., perhaps only swarthy as a Moorish North African -- ethnically Arab or Berber -- might be expected to look. It seems to me more likely that Shakespeare and his audience were prone to confuse Africans' physical features and races and treat "Moor" as synonymous with black Africans, as reflected in the term "blackamoor." On the other hand, I think there may be some attestation for their use of "black" to mean simply anyone who wasn't blond. Even so, aside from a general tendency by other characters to treat Othello as "other," referring to him usually simply as "the Moor," he is accepted as an equal, even respected for his military rank. So much so that apart from Iago's ribald jesting, no one seems to think his being married to Desdemona in any way remarkable. So it seems to me that Elizabethans, for all their racial and class distinctions, hadn't yet come to abhor miscegenation. I suspect this is because segregation in its full force became ingrained in the Western mind only as a symptom and enablement of the swelling tide of enslavement of Africans after the time Othello was written around 1600.

Why is Othello called a domestic tragedy?

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The classification of Shakespeare's plays as "Histories" "Comedies" and "Tragedies" was done by the publishers of the compilation known as The First Folio. In this edition, the full title of the play is "The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice", and it is classed among the tragedies.

Some people will want to discuss whether this play falls within the conventions and definitions of tragedy drawn from Aristotle by later critics. It is important to know that this is a highly artificial and academic definition which Shakespeare himself does not use, and which hinges on whether there is a "tragic hero" as described by Aristotle (Basically, Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex).

Some will say Othello is not a tragedy. Othello is not a tragic hero, Iago manipulates him. Othello falls for it because essentially he has to, he is an outsider. Also, Iago has about 200 more lines than Othello. If Iago is considered the central character, then he can in no way be considered a tragic hero.

Others will say that 'Othello' is a tragedy as he follows the conventions of a 'tragic hero'. A tragic hero is someone who has a flaw, and that flaw leads to his downfall. Othello's flaw is that he is naive and believes "honest Iago" to be exactly that, honest. Becuase of his trusting nature he declines and he ends his life realising he has nothing to live for. Iago does maniplulate Othello. But just because Iago has more control over the characters before the final scene in Act 5, doesn't mean he is the main character.

Another point of view is that the definition of 'hero' in literature has changed, and there may be better ways of deciding whether something is a tragedy than seeing how close the main character comes to Oedipus. Keep in mind that Shakespeare was a man who was beyond his time. He wrote in a very modern way. He isn't called the father of literature for no reason. In short, do we not feel like our guts are kicked out when we see this man, torn between his brain and his heart, who destroys the one he loves and who truly loves him only to find out minutes later that it was all a con job? I think so, and if that's not tragedy I don't know what is.

To conclude, 'Othello' is in fact, a tragedy. It is known as "Shakespeare's greatest tragedy".

The villain in Othello is?

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Iago is, although he is more likely to get others to do bad things than to do them himself. He does murder Roderigo, after egging him on to kill Cassio. He also induces Othello to murder Desdemona.
The villain in Othello is Iago as he twists Othello's mind and gets him to kill Desdemona, steals from Roderigo and kills him, kills Emilia, wounds Cassio and ruins his job.

Who is Desdemona's father in Othello?

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Brabantio is Desdemona's father. He becomes very upset when Desdemona elopes with Othello and accuses Othello of committing witchcraft in order to woo his daughter. Othello denies any wrongdoing and Brabantio warns Othello that if Desdemona deceived her father, she can deceive Othello as well. Brabantio dies from a broken-heart resulting from Desdemona's marriage.

What is the overall meaning of the play Othello?

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The main conflict is the internal one within Othello, between his love of Desdemona and his fear that Iago is right about her being an adultress.

How does Iago get back in Othello's good graces?

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Iago tells Cassio that he must persuade Othello to reinstate him. He says "the general's wife is now our general" and so the best way to persuade Othello is to get Desdemona to plead on Cassio's behalf. Since Iago has also told Othello that Desdemona and Cassio are having an affair, the harder Desdemona pleads, the worse it is going to look for both her and Cassio.