Act 4 / 5 Othello Final week teaching the play 13th March timed mock – theme of jealousy ( learn quotes from each act/ learn critical quotes on jealousy / learn contextual details)

4.3 Feeding back on Emilia spider diagram 1. loyalty / trust – Emilia used as a foil to Othello 2. Dramatic irony - Emilia’s ignorance that Iago is the ‘eternal villain’ ( evidence of his mastery?) 3. Emilia questions Desdemona’s unconditional love – transgresses her role as maid 4. Emilia’s world view – echoes Iago’s Machiavellian, individualist ideology ( ruthless/ pragmatic/ ends justifies the means) 5. Emilia articulates wives’ complaints – ‘peevish jealousies’ – adjective ‘peevish’ belittles their anxiety / result of irritable nature . Shakespeare presents the irrational jalousies of men in Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter’s Tale(A04) all plays about unfounded sexual jealousy

Emilia feedback continued 6. Men are weak and ‘affection breed it’ – suggestions that women can be partially responsible for permitting husbands’ unjust and uncaring behavious? 7. Use of conclusive full rhyming couplets shows the conviction each woman has in her opposing belief: Desdemona to mend/remedy male flaw ; Emilia – women should be able to also be irrational, unfaithful. 8. Willow song is used as a motif for a univerale experience of female abuse – structural device linking Barbary, Desdemona and Emilia – women’s powerlessness is underlined.

Timed write – What is the function of Emilia in Act 4 Timed write – What is the function of Emilia in Act 4? SQIQI (A02/3) 12 minutes Shakespeare uses Emilia as a foil to Desdemona … Emilia’s function in Act 4 is to provide a female view on marriage The willow scene could be argued to further realise Shakespeare’s feminist agenda – to give a voice to female experience in marriage Shakespeare juxtaposes the suspicion of Othello with the passionate loyalty of Emilia for her mistress – in Act 4 Emilia helps present sororal love… Shakespeare uses the structural arc of the play to coincide Desdemona’s diminishing strength with Emilia’s growing defiance…. Emilia has been described as ‘the truly tragic female’ in the play as a result of her sharp awareness of her own powerless position and the unjust nature of marriage…

Act 5 Scene 1 - homework 4.3 shows Emilia as capable of sororal love. But this characterisation is problematized in the next scene Read 5.1.74-end – how does she treat Bianca? Note down key quotes. Why does she target Bianca? How does Bianca retort? Why does Shakespeare present three women from three difference social groups ? What do they have in common? Find a critical quote for Bianca.

Act 5 – the denouement in this domestic tragedy / tragedy of passion The tragic hero’s harmartia – jealousy - results in the tragic murder of Desdemona and his own self-destruction Dramatic irony and tension peaks in Act 5 as the audience are prepared for Iago’s plan to succeed – we have been maliciously prepared for this tragic ending Desdemona denies, but ultimately surrenders and sacrifices herself to the accusations of her husband ‘Commend me to me kind lord’ Setting - bed chamber so it is an intimate, claustrophobic scene, sense of entrapment – the play is a domestic tragedy ( marriage problem not state) Symbolism that he kills her on the bed - site of all male anxieties - a woman’s sexuality ‘ the tragic loading of this bed’

Act 5 continued - overview Emilia refuses to ‘charm’ her tongue and exposes her husband’s villainy ‘ Tis proper I obey him, but not now.’ ‘So speaking as I think, I die, I die.’ We learn Brabantio died from a broken heart ‘ thy match was mortal to him’ Othello does not take full responsibility ‘ill-starred wench!’ self-justified his actions as ‘the cause’ calling it an ‘honourable murder’ Before he kills himself ( after wounding but not killing the ‘viper’ Iago) he speaks his own obituary ( ‘self-aggrandising’ – Leavis) ‘speak of one that loved not wisely, but too well / of one not easily jealous but perplexed in the extreme; threw a pearl away’) Lodovico – voice of reason and Venice – restores order (convention of tragedy) but with focus on the villain not the victims ‘The object [ the bed] poisons sight; Let it be hid.’

Act 5.2 activities Close-reading : Othello’s soliloquy – lines 1-22 how is he conflicted? What is his justification for the murder? Can we at all sympathise with him at this point? Perform : Desdemona’s death lines 68-91 (act in pairs/threes). Add to notes Perform: Emilia’s reaction to the murder of Desdemona 18-166 (act in pairs/threes). Add to notes Class read: The truth about Iago is revealed lines 175-250 (whole class) – focus on Othello/Iago/ Emilia Discussion / evaluation / notes: Is the ending satisfying for a contemporary and a modern audience – is justice served? Are lessons learned? Lines 255- end.