Key moments in the presentation of Othello’s is character, ethnicity, nature and and feelings with specific regard to his relationship with Desdemona.
These references are intended to provide some evidence for informed discussion and further textual research on how and why Shakespeare presents the character.
| 1.1.87 | an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe |
| 1.1.110 | your daughter covered with a Barbary horse |
| 1.1.114 | your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs |
| 1.1.125 | the gross clasps of a lascivious moor |
| 1.2.25 | But that I love the gentle Desdemona / I would not my unhoused free condition / Put into circumscription and confine / For the sea’s worth. |
| 1.2.70 | thy sooty bosom |
| 1.2.73 | thou hast practised on her with foul charms |
| 1.3.61 | She is abused … corrupted / by spells and medicines |
| 1.3.99 | she … to fall in love with what she feared to look on? |
| 1.3.125 | I do confess the vices of my blood / So justly to your grave ears I’ll present / How I did thrive in this fair lady’s love / And she in mine. |
| 1.3.168 | She loved me for the dangers that I had passed / And I did love her that she did pity them. |
| 1.3.253 | I saw Othello’s visage in his mind. |
| 1.3.262 | I beg it not / To please the palate of my appetite, / Nor to comply with heat, the young affects / In me defunct, and proper satisfaction / But to be free and bounteous to her mind. |
| 1.3.295 | My life upon her faith |
| 1.3.299 | Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour / Of love |
| 1.3.347 | These moors are changeable in their wills |
| 1.3.348 | The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as coloquintida |
| 1.3.398 | The Moor is of a free and open nature |
| 1.3.400 | And will…be led by the nose / As asses are |
| 2.1.187 | If it were now to die / ’Twere now to be most happy |
| 2.1.8 | Come, my dear love, / The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue: / That profit’s yet to come ’tween me and you. |
| 2.3.248 | ‘sweeting, / Come away to bed |
| 2.3.253 | ’tis the soldiers’ life / To have their balmy slumbers waked with strife |
| 2.3.340 | His soul is so enfettered to her love |
| 3.3.76 | I will deny thee nothing |
| 3.3.90 | Excellent wretch! perdition catch my soul / But I do love thee! and when I love thee not / Chaos is come again. |
| 3.3.182 | to be once in doubt / is once to be resolved |
| 3.3.229 | I do not think but Desdemona’s honest. |
| 3.3.245 | Why did I marry? |
| 3.3.265 | If I do prove her haggard, / Though her jesses were my dear heart strings, /I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind / To prey at fortune. |
| 3.3.272 | O curse of marriage / That we can call these delicate creatures ours / And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad… / Than keep a corner in the thing I love / For others’ uses. |
| 3.3.282 | If she be false, O, then heaven mocks itself, / I’ll not believe ’t. |
| 3.3.333 | Not poppy nor mandragora / Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world / Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep / Which thou woest yesterday. |
| 3.3.348 | I had been happy if the general camp, / Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body / So I had nothing known. |
| 3.3.363 | give me the ocular proof |
| 3.3.448 | All my fond love thus do I blow to heaven: / ’Tis gone! / Arise, black vengeance |
| 3.3.456 | Like to the Pontic sea…Even so my bloody thoughts… / Shall…ne’er ebb to humble love |
| 3.3.481 | the fair devil |
| 3.4.57 | That handkerchief… / ’Twould make her amiable and subdue my father / Entirely to her love |
| 3.4.149 | men are not gods |
| 4.1.192 | But yet the pity of it Iago, – O, Iago, the pity of it, Iago! |
| 4.1.201 | I’ll not epostulate with her, lest her body and beauty unprovide my mind again. |
| 4.1.239 | Devil! [striking her] |
| 4.2.68 | O thou weed / Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet / That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne’er been born! |
| 4.2.91 | I took you for that cunning whore of Venice |
| 4.3.5 | Get you to bed / On th’instant |
| 5.2.3 | Yet I’ll not shed her blood / Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow |
| 5.2.16 | O balmy breath |
| 5.2.18 | I will kill thee / And love thee after. [He smells, then kisses her] |
| 5.2.275 | Whip me ye devils, / From the possession of this heavenly sight! / Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur / Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire! / O Desdemon! dead, Desdemon. Dead! O, O! |
| 5.2.292 | For nought I did in hate, but all in honour. |
| 5.2.341 | Then must you speak / Of one that loved not wisely but too well; / … Of one whose hand, / Like the base Indian,threw a pearl away / Richer than all his tribe |
| 5.2.356 | I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this, / KIlling myself, to die upon a kiss [Kisses Desdemona, and dies] |
MR HENNEMAN'S ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 