Othello Act 5 s ii

• Engels
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• GCSE

Lesson objectives 

Setting 

Desdemona's bedchamber: enter Othello, with a light, and Desdemona in bed

The play’s action has progressed gradually from public scenes to private scenes​

Now we have reached Desdemona and Othello’s bedchamber, the most private place of all.​

This mirrors the private and domestic nature of the tragedy​

We are here now

The construction of a five act tragedy 

ACT ONE: setting the scene, laying out the problem

ACT TWO: plot develops, but the tragedy is not yet fixed

ACT THREE: something happens that seals the tragedy; no going back now

ACT FOUR: things unravel, and do so faster and faster

ACT FIVE: a catastrophe happens (usually deaths) and the problem at the start is resolved. Normality resumes.

Othello's famous monologue 

Why does Othello hesitate? 

what does he focus on in his soliloquy? He is a trained soldier – why is his military knowledge of no use here?​

​Consider what Shakespeare is doing in creating this speech and how the sensuous imagery used contributes to Othello’s character and the play’s larger themes​

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.​

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars.

It is the cause. Yet I’ll not shed her blood,​

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

And smooth as monumental alabaster. ––

Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men.​

Put out the light, and then put out the light.:

If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,​

I can again thy former light restore,​

Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,​

Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,​

I know not where is that Promethean heat​

That can thy light relume. When I have plucked the rose,​

I cannot give it vital growth again;​

It needs must wither, I’ll smell thee on the tree. ​

He kisses her

O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade​

Justice to break her sword! One more, one more!​

Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,​

And love thee after. One more, and this the last.

So sweet was ne’er so fatal. I must weep, ​

But they are cruel tears. This sorrow’s heavenly ––

It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

Act 5 s ii lines 1 - 22

Othello’s presumption: ​

beauty = unfaithful ​

• Is this a presumption we still have? The better looking a person is, the more likely they are to cheat?​ Why? 

• In Hamlet, the protagonist notes that “the Devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape” – Othello is working on the same presumption here​
  

Strangulation 

It is a far more cruel and shocking death to use brute force than to use a weapon​

Creates even greater sympathy for Desdemona, dying in such a violent way​

It is far more intimate and overwhelming, especially in the marital bed with their wedding sheets laid on it. Instead of consummation, there is strangulation​

Iago: “I told him what I thought, and told no more than what he found himself was apt and true”​ 5.2.175 -176

Othello saw, heard and believed what he wanted to believe​

This is confirmation bias: when we search for, interpret, favour, and recall information in a way that confirms our beliefs or values​.

Confirmation bias also often works in conjunction with stereotyping, ​

i.e. everyone who is anti-abortion is deeply religious​

Iago used a form of this to play on Othello’s sensitivities about his marriage and drive him to the edge of madness​

Iago: “These Moors are changeable in their wills” 1.3.342

Has Othello proved Iago right? ​

​

Has Othello become the savage that everybody feared, and that the Jacobean audience fully expected?​

​

The Jacobean audience would have viewed Othello’s behaviour as entirely predictable because of his race, yet clearly he was, and still is,  a figure to be pitied and admired, whatever his race​. 

Do you pity and admire him? 

Is Othello’s race even important?

Complete a table like this with both answers. 

Try to find several reasons why. 

YES

NO

Is Othello’s race even important?

Is Othello’s race even important?

Othello’s anagnorisis

the point in the plot especially of a tragedy at which the protagonist recognises his or her or some other character's true identity or discovers the true nature of his or her own situation

"When we shall meet at compt,

This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,

And fiends will snatch at it" 5.2.172-175

We feel pity for him because he now knows that he has made a terrible mistake and that he cannot go back; “but once put out thy light…I know not where is that Promethean heat that can thy light relume”

The fear of divine punishment weighed heavily at the time – eternal damnation was to be avoided at all costs as it meant eternal separation from God’s love and mercy, with no chance of redemption

Find a quote that shows this realisation in this final scene. 

Othello’s final speech