| “Preferment goes by letter and affection,/ And not by old gradation, where each second/ Stood heir to th’ first.” | Iago to Roderigo (only way to move up in life is to kiss up to someone) |
| “We cannot all be masters, nor all masters/ Cannot be truly followed.” | Iago to Roderigo (only some people can be leaders, but some leaders aren’t worthy to have followers) |
| “You shall mark/ Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave/ That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,/ Wears out his time, mush like his master’s ass,/ For naught but provender; and when he’s old, cashiered” | Iago to Roderigo (kiss-ass; a servant works his whole life to serve his master, but when he grow old he’s tossed away without a thought) |
| “Heaven is my judage, not I for love and duty,/ But seeming so, for my peculiar end;/ For when my outward action doth demonstrate/ The native act and figure of my heart/ In compliment extern, ’tis not long after/ But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve/ For daws to peck at; I am not what I am.” | Iago to Roderigo (allusion to Jesus in the Old Testament “I am who I am;” Iago is the devil) |
| “I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.” | Iago to Brabantio (Desdemona and Othello are doing the nasty in the ‘devil’s position’) |
| “Fathers, from hence trust not your daughters’ minds/ But what you see them act, Is there not charms/ By which the property of youth and maidhood/ May be abused?” | Brabantio to Roderigo (women are deceitful; Othello seduced Desdemona with magic) |
| “Let him do his spite. My services which I have done the signiory/ Shall out-tongue his complaints.” | Othello to Iago (since Othello is such an important war hero, his heroic deeds speak for him and his reputation) |
| “Damned as thou art, thou hast enchanted her!/ For I’ll refer me to all things of sense,/ If she in chains of magic were not bound,/ Whether a maid so tender, fair, and happy,/ So opposite to marriage that she shunned/ The wealthy curled darlings of our nation,/ Would ever have t’ incur a general mock,/ Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom/ Of such a thing as thou – to fear, not to delight.” | Brabantio to Othello (Othello has clearly enchanted Desdemona because a black thing such as him should never have married her under normal means) |
| “Rude am I in speech,/ And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace:/ For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith/ Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used/ Their dearest action in the tented field;” | Othello to Brabantio (basically, “I’m not a great speaker because I’ve been at war” but he’s doing a good job) |
| “She loved me for the danger I had passed,/ And I loved her that she did pity them./ This only is the witchcraft I have used.” | Othello to Duke/Court (Desdemona fell in love with Othello’s war stories not necessarily Othello himself AKA OTHELLO HAS NO CLUE WTF LOVE IS) |
| “Look at her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and my thee.” | Brabantio to Othello (Desdemona fooled her own father, so she may fool her husband too) |
| “Since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself.” | Iago to Roderigo (everybody has insecurities so Iago picks a weak point and gets in the person’s head where they’re most vulnerable) |
| “If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions.” | Iago to Roderigo (we are in control of our own lives but most things we can’t control) |
| “I have’t! It is engendered! Hell and night/ Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.” | Iago to audience (Iago’s plan is basically the equivalent of the devil’s child; allusion to Jesus being the light of the world and book of revelation) |
| “You are pictures out of doors. Bells in your parlors, wildcats in your kitchen, saints in you injuries, devils being offended, players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.” | Iago to Desdemona and Emilia (all women are whores and Iago is misogynistic af) |
| “Nay, it is true, or else I am the Turk: You rise to play, and go to bed to work.” | Iago to Emilia (all women wake up to flirt and go to bed to have sex) |
| “But my Muse labors, and thus she is delivered: if she be fair and wise, fairness and wit–the one’s for use, the other useth it.” | Iago to Desdemona (women use their looks to get what they want) |
| “She never yet was foolish that was fair, for even her folly helped her to an heir.” | Iago to Emilia (no matter what kind of woman she is, she’s still a *****) |
| “Come, my dear love. The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue; That profit’s yet to come ‘tween me and you. — Good night.” | Othello to Desdemona (Othello wants to consummate the marriage) |
| “Not to-night, good Iago. I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking. I could well wish courtesy would invent come other custom of entertainment.” | Cassio to Iago (Cassio’s a light weight and is already at his limit) |
| “I fear the trust Othello puts him in, On some odd time of his infirmity, will shake this island.” | Iago to Montano (Iago is falsely slamming Othello’s trust in Cassio to give Montano a bad image of the lieutenant) |
| “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.” | Cassio to Iago (reputation is the only thing that matters to Cassio and society) |
| “Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving, You have lost no reputation at all unless you repute yourself such a loser.” | Iago to Cassio (reputation is gained by lying but brought down without reason; reputation is only lost if you believe it is) |
| “When devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest as first with heavenly shows, as I do now.” | Iago to audience (the devil disguises as an angel; aka Iago disguises himself as ‘honest Iago’ to other characters) |
| “Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul/ But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,/ Chaos is com again.” | Othello to Desdemona (when he and Desdemona aren’t in love, everything else will fall into chaos; Iago will catch Othello’s soul) |
| “My lord, you know I love you.” | Iago to Othello (Iago is pulling a Judas and betraying Othello) |
| “Men should be what they seem; or those that be not, would they might seem none!” | Iago to Othello (men should be truthful in image; ironic because Iago is anything but truthful about himself) |
| “Good name in man and woman, dear my lord. Is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals mu purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.” | Iago to Othello (opposite of what Iago to said to Cassio about others’ opinions; before Iago said others’ opinions don’t matter but now he’s saying they do) |
| “Is it the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” | Iago to Othello (jealousy is a monster that eats itself) |
| “Poor and content is rich, and rich enough;/ But riches fineless is as poor as winter/ To him that ever fears he shall be poor.” | Iago to Othello (if you’re rich but worried about losing the fortune, you’re the equivalent of poor; if you’re poor but content, then you’re the equivalent of rich) |
| “Think’st thou I’Id make a life of jealousy,/ To follow still the changes of the moon/ With fresh suspicions?” | Othello to Iago (aka “Do you really think I’m jealous? Because I’m definitely not.” |
| “Where virtue is, these are more virtuous. Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw the smallest fear or doubt of her revolt, For she had eyes, and chose me. | Othello to Iago (Othello can’t get jealous because Desdemona chose him and he looks down on people who doubt themselves) |
| “In Venice they do let God see the pranks they dare not show their husbands; their best conscience is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown.” | Iago to Othello (Venetian women, aka like Desdemona, let God see their habits of sleeping around but not their husbands) |
| “Why did I marry? This honest creature doubtless sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds.” | Othello to Iago (FATAL DECISION; Othello believes Iago that Desdemona deceived him) |
| sonnet | a 14 line poem with a formal rhyme scheme (typically having ten syllables per line aka iambic pentameter) |
| Petrarchan | 1 octave (abba abba) 1 sestet (cdecde) |
| Elizabethan | 3 quatrains (abab cdcd efef) 1 couplet (gg) |
| verse | a single metrical line in a poetic composition |
| stanza | a group of lines of verse, usually set off from other groups by a space (the stanzas of a poem often have the same internal pattern of rhymes) |
| prose | written or spoken language in its ordinary form (without metrical structure) |
| Henry VIII six wives’ fates | divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived |
| language Shakespeare wrote in | early modern English |
Devine Othello Study Quotes, English History, Poetry Terms
August 6, 2019