The night time setting disguises Iago, showing how his words alone manipulate others and connote disruption. Brabantio is unaware of the truth to his words. Brabantio: “What profane wretch art though? / “Thou art a villain”.Iago: “You’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you’ll have your neighbours neigh to you, you’ll have courses for cousins and jennets for Germans.” Iago’s manipulative word play connotes bestial, incestuous images.Brabantio: “This is Venice!” Shows a narrative equilibrium that will be distorted when the characters leave for Cyprus, with Venice being the centre of wealth, knowledge and power.Misogynistic undertones also connote Desdemona as a mere extension of the patriarchal body – she doesn’t belong to herself, only the men around her. The phrase ‘white ewe’ makes a pun on the word ‘you’, that Iago uses to victimise Brabantio as a victim of social and natural disorder. Iago is thus manipulating the evidently misogynistic Brabantio through the Senator’s own language – Iago may not be racist himself, merely capitalising on language in order to achieve his aims. Iago: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe.” This phrase alludes to witchcraft through its association to a witch’s familiar, indicative of lust and sexual deviance, as well as the horns foreshadowing the later cuckoldry and Satan imagery.Marxist interpretation in a city of wealth and status?

Iago: “Look to your house, your daughter, and your bags!” Iago aligns Desdemona with commodities and objects, an item belonging to Brabantio that isn’t even prioritised above his house.

Incense her kingmen… Plague him with flies.” Despite insistence that Othello is the one “bewitching”, Iago displays connotations of witch-like changing using imperative verbs.

Iago: “Rouse him… poison his delight, proclaim him in the streets.

Roderigo : “thick-lips” proclaims Othello’s racial otherness.

This directly juxtaposes Iago against God, enforcing him as a Satan-like figure and preying on the severe Christianity of Shakespeare’s audience. Iago is parodying God with his statement, alluding to Exodus’s declaration, “I am that I am” in the Bible.

Iago: “The native act and figure of my heart.” Meta-theatrical, playing on themes of truth and appearance, and Iago reflecting the playwright (Shakespeare himself) due to his manipulation of characters and the world.

Iago: “Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago.” Discussion flitting between 1 st and 3 rd person, with Iago removing himself from his own identity and ironically uniting the two characters.

Trick imagery enforces him as a Machiavellian villain.

Iago: “Whip me such honest knaves!” Oxymoron prefiguring “Honest Iago” and connoting him as knave/ villain.

Iago: “I follow him to serve my turn upon him.” Connotations of this being a game to Iago, who gambles his actions and motives, implying truth in Coleridge’s interpretation of motiveless malignity.

Injustice and corrupt hierarchies in Venice, a city ripe with wealth and status.

Iago: “’tis the curse of service: Preferment goes by letter and affection.” Iago’s class envy.

The spaces they inhabit are inevitably tainted by male hegemonic patriarchy and Christian tradition. This also perhaps gives truth to Iago’s claim that Cassio committed adultery, whilst asserting women’s place as hellish and demonic. This Italian proverb connotes misogyny and Iago’s sexual envy of Cassio.

Iago: “a fellow almost damned in a fair way”.

Giraldi Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ (the source of ‘Othello’) identifies Iago as a foreigner when, as the end, he has him “return to his country.” Shakespeare’s choices of names for 2 Venetians with bigoted resentments towards strangers is surely a deliberate irony. Jacobean audiences would’ve been aware of the Venetian practice of employing mercenary officers, and might have identified Iago as a Spaniard, particularly as is name recalls Spain’s patron saint, known as Sant’Iago Matamoros (St James, Hammer of the Moors). This demonstrates Iago’s awareness of outsiders and foreigners, ironic due to the Spanish heritage of his own name. It also foreshadows the very end of the play – Iago never in fact ‘tells’ Roderigo or any other character about his true incentives.

Roderigo: “Tush, never tell me!” The play begins with a mild expletive, already advertising themes of innocence vs sin.

Othello act 1 scene 3 summary