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Notes || Exam Prep || Character Profiles || Themes || Additional Reading & Videos

This text is included in  Paper 1 . You can find notes and guides for it below.

• Literary Form

Additional Reading & Videos:

• Essay: Homosocial Desire and its Conversion to Homosexual Desire
• Essay: The Symbolic Significance of Desdemona’s Handkerchief
• Essay: Men, Women and War: An Examination of Gender Conflicts within Othello
• Thesis: Courtship, Love, and Marriage in Othello: Shakespeare’s Mockery of Courtly Love
• Essay: Too Gentle: Jealousy and Class in Othello
• Video: Racism in Othello
• Video: The Question of Race in Othello
• Film: Othello (modern-day adaptation, dir. Geoffrey Sax 2001)
• Film: Othello (filmed theatrical production, 1965)

Character Profiles

• Proximity and Distance
• Truth and Deception

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Othello: Essay Questions

A list of potential essay questions to form revision and speed planning practice:

Jealousy is at the core of all the tragic events that occur in Othello.’ In the light of this statement, explore the dramatic function of jealousy in Shakespeare’s play. In your answer, you must consider relevant contextual factors.

‘Despite his suffering, Othello learns nothing.’ In the light of this statement, explore Shakespeare’s presentation of Othello in the play. In your answer, you must consider relevant contextual factors.

‘Othello depicts a world riddled with corruption and prejudice’. In the light of this statement, explore Shakespeare’s presentation of the values of the world in which the play is set. In your answer, you must consider relevant contextual factors.

‘Irony is a powerful device that Shakespeare uses to heighten the tragedy of Othello.’ In the light of this statement, discuss Shakespeare’s use of irony in the play. In your answer, you must consider relevant contextual factors

‘Othello’s foolishness, as much as Iago’s cleverness, is responsible for the tragedy that unfolds.’ In the light of this statement, explore where responsibility for the tragedy might lie. In your answer, you must consider relevant contextual factors.

‘The settings in Othello are not just times and places in which action happens: they are deeply symbolic and add greatly to the meaning of the play as a whole.’ In the light of this statement, explore Shakespeare’s use of settings in the play. In your answer, you must consider relevant contextual factors.

Looking for more resources on Othello?

A compendium of useful links, exemplar material, resources and home learning

Othello Knowledge Organiser

An Othello Knowledge Organiser, based on William Shakespeare’s seminal play, including key vocabulary and crucial literary allusions and comparisons. My knowledge organisers distill important information from the text in clear and manageable pieces of information for both students to revise from, and teachers planning new curriculum content.

The Knowledge Organiser is structured into three key areas: Critical Theory, Intertextuality and Context as well as Biblical Allusions. Whilst also incorporating key quotations for each character in short sharp, high utility phrases which can be used in a range of essays.

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Love Through the Ages

The aim of this topic area is to encourage students to explore aspects of a central literary theme as seen over time, using unseen material and set texts.

Love through the Ages

• Students should be prepared for Love through the Ages by reading widely in the topic area, reading texts from a range of authors and times.
• The range of texts (of which Othello is one) allows students to study representations of love by a variety of authors across time.

• One prose text, of which one must be written pre-1900.
• One Shakespeare play ( Othello ).
• You will also respond to two unseen poems in the exam.

Aspects of love to explore

Although not an exhaustive list of Aspects of Love through the Ages, areas that can usefully be explored include:

Romantic love of many kinds

• Othello and Desdemona.
• Iago and Emilia (but failed and damaged).
• Cassio and Bianca.

Love and sex

• Iago and Emilia—and her dissatisfaction.
• Cassio and Bianca—the notion of paying for sex/love.
• Love and Sex in the context of the 1600s in general and the historical period and place the play is set.
• Desdemona’s interest in sex.

Love and loss

• Othello’s suspicion and jealousy, feeling like he has lost Desdemona to Cassio.
• Emilia realising that she has lost Iago.
• Othello killing Desdemona.
• Desdemona (alive enough) to realise Othello’s death.
• The failure of Cassio and Bianca’s relationship.
• Cassio’s injury and Bianca’s reaction.

Love Through the Ages 2

Social conventions and taboos

• The love affair between a white woman and a black man.
• Marrying without the permission of one’s father (Brabantio).
• The age gap between Othello and Desdemona.
• The notion of witchcraft.

History and time

• Conventions during the Renaissance.
• The ability of those at the top of society to do what they want.
• The challenge of the ‘new man’ in the form of Iago.
• The way that relationships are conducted between men and women.
• The legitimacy of courtiers / prostitution.
• The conventions of marriage.

Individual lives

• Othello and Desdemona when younger, but also their maturity at the end of the play - reverting perhaps to childishness once more.
• The impact of thinking one is being deceived.
• The fear that one partner thinks the other partner believes they are having an affair.
• Love and sex, paid for by money.
• The loveless marriage of Emilia and Iago.
• The manipulation of others by an individual.

Jealousy and guilt

• Othello’s misplaced jealousy of Cassio.
• Iago’s jealousy of Othello (he believes Othello once slept with Emilia).
• Iago’s jealousy of Cassio.
• Brabantio’s guilt about his daughter.
• Desdemona’s own guilt over going against her father.
• Othello’s guilt over killing Desdemona.
• Emilia’s guilt at not telling the truth soon enough.

Love Through the Ages 3

Truth and deception

• Iago’s deception of Othello.
• Iago’s deception of Emilia.
• Othello’s realisation of truth about Desdemona.
• The symbol of the handkerchief.

Proximity and distance

• Desdemona and Othello’s initially close marriage and eventual distance.
• Iago’s enforced distance from Emilia.
• Bianca’s distance from Cassio.
• The distance from Cyprus (away) to Venice (home).

• Desdemona and Othello’s marriage and how it declines into chaos.
• Iago and Emilia’s failed marriage.
• Cassio and Roderigo’s incapacity to marry.

Approval and disapproval

• Social approval of Othello and Desdemona’s marriage by the Senators.
• Brabantio’s disapproval of Othello.
• Iago’s disapproval of Othello and Desdemona’s relationship.
• Iago’s anger over Emilia’s past relationship with Othello.
• The general disapproval of mixed race love and marriage in the society at the time.

1.1 Introduction

1.1.1 Specifications

1.2 Background

1.2.1 Shakespeare

1.2.3 Tragedy

1.2.4 Historical Context

1.3 Othello

1.3.1 Setting

1.3.2 Social Issues

2 Act One: Summaries & Themes

2.1 Act and Scene Summaries

2.1.1 Structure

2.1.2 The Exam

2.2 Scene One

2.2.1 Key Events

2.2.2 Key Themes

2.2.3 Key Ideas

2.3 Scene Two

2.3.1 Key Events

2.3.2 Key Themes

2.3.3 Key Ideas

2.4 Scene Three

2.4.1 Key Events

2.4.2 Key Events 2

2.4.3 Key Themes

2.4.4 Key Ideas

3 Act Two: Summaries & Themes

3.1 Scene One & Two

3.1.1 Scene One: Events

3.1.2 Key Events 2

3.1.3 Key Ideas: Love & Tragedy

3.1.4 Scene Two: Events

3.2 Scene Three

3.2.1 Key Events

3.2.2 Key Ideas

4 Act Three: Summaries & Themes

4.1 Key Events

4.1.1 Scene One & Two

4.1.2 Scene Three

4.1.3 Scene Three: Key Ideas

4.1.4 Scene Four

5.1 Scene One

5.1.1 Key Events

5.1.2 Key Ideas

5.2 Scene Two

5.2.1 Key Events

5.2.2 Key Ideas

5.3 Scene Three

5.3.1 Key Events

5.3.2 Key Ideas

6.1 Scene One

6.1.1 Key Events

6.1.2 Key Ideas

6.2 Scene Two

6.2.1 Key Events

6.2.2 Key Ideas

7 Character Profiles

7.1 Major Characters

7.1.1 Othello

7.1.3 Desdemona

7.1.4 Emilia

7.1.5 Cassio

7.2 Minor Characters

7.2.1 Roderigo & Brabantio

7.2.2 Other Characters

8 Key Themes

8.1 Love & Tragedy

8.1.2 Love 2

8.1.3 Tragedy

8.1.4 Tragedy 2

8.2 Other Key Themes

8.2.1 Public versus Private

8.2.2 Appearance & Reality

9 Writing Techniques

9.1 Writing Techniques

9.1.1 Structure

9.1.2 Genre

9.1.3 Form & Language

9.1.4 Language & Imagery

10 Critical Debates

10.1 Criticism & Performance

10.1.1 Shakespeare's Legacy

10.1.2 Traditional

10.1.3 Modern & Contemporary

10.2 Approaches

10.2.1 Feminist Approach

10.2.2 Psychoanalytic Approach

10.2.3 Marxist Approach

11 Approaching AQA English Literature

11.1 Specification A

11.1.1 Specification A

11.1.2 Love Through the Ages

11.2 Specification B

11.2.1 Specification B

11.2.2 Aspects of Tragedy

12 Issues of Assessment

12.1 The Exams

12.1.2 Mark Scheme

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Specification A

Specification B