| “And spoke such scurvy and provoking terms” (I.ii.9). | Alliteration |
| “To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on” (I.i.123-127). | Alliteration |
| “Because we come to do you service and you think we are ruffians, you’ll have your daughter covered with a Barbary horse, you’ll have your nephews neigh to you, you’ll have coursers for cousins and jennets for germans” (I.i.123-127). (Calling them horses/animals) | Metaphor |
| “Even now, now very now an old black ram is tupping your white ewe” Othello and Desdemona (racist, symbolizes Des being pure. Ewe=female sheep) | Metaphor |
| “By Janus, I think no” (I.ii38). (Allusion to a Roman God with two faces) | Allusion |
| “Sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the Devil bid you” (I.i.122-123). | Allusion |
| “‘Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrously pitiful” (I.ii.186). (Othello) | Oxymoron |
| “At this odd-even and dull watch o’th’night” (I.i.138). | Oxymoron |
| “Wherein I space of most disastrous chances of moving accidents by flood and field of her breath ‘scapes i’thiminent deadly beach…” (I.ii.155-157). (Othello) | Foreshadow |
| “Look to her, Moor, if thor hast eyes to see. She has deceived her father and may thee” (I.iii.333-334). (foreshadowing deception) | Foreshadow |
| “The bloody book of law” (I.iii. 80-81). | Personification |
| “It is silliness to live when to live is forment and then we have a prescription to die when death is our physician.” (I.iii.350-353). | Personification |
| “I know my price, I am worth no worse a place” (Act 1 Scene 1, 13) | Motivation |
| And it is thought abroad that ‘twixt my sheets ‘has done my office” (Act 1 Scene 3, 430) | Motivation |
| “I am not what I am” (Act 1 Scene 1, 72) | Paradox |
| “The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief;” (I. iii. 238-239 | Paradox |
| “Honest Iago” (I.ii.336). | Irony |
| “A man he is of honest and trust” (I.iii.331). (Othello about Iago) | Irony |
| “Your son-in-law is far more fair than black” (I.iii. 333) (Duke to Brabantio) | Pun |
Othello Literary Devices
July 26, 2019