Tor’s Reviews > Othello > Status Update

so emilia is the best character! i really like her dynamic with her husband, its very interesting in a time where shakespeare only wrote one or two female characters (who were often seen as unruly when they didn't obey their husbands) so it's especially intriguing that a "rebelling" wife is the hero... of course, she had to die (unfortunate)! i also really loved emilia's and desdemona's dynamic. they should marry

"Avaunt! Be gone! Thou hast set me on the rack: / I swear 'tis better to be much abused / Than but to know 't a little/ [...] What sense had I of her stolen hours of lust? / I saw 't not, thought it not, it harmed not me: / I slept the night well, was free and merry:/ I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips. / He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen,/ Let him not know 't, and he's not robbed at all." (3.3.330)

the stages of a shakespearean tragedy taking form, with iago planting an obsessive seed in othello's head and othello doubting desdemona, rambling in long soliloquies about her unfaithfulness. "o curse of marriage, / that we can call tehse delicate creatures ours, / and not their appetites! i had rather be a toad, / and live upon the vapor of a dungeon / than keep a corner in the thing i love / for others' uses" 3.3

cassio had an interesting little spiel about alcohol and drinking. in a drunken lament he mourned his reputation, which he lost to the influences of his drink. he cries, "reputation is forever, while my body only lasts til death". iago tells him that reputation is often given to people undeserving, and those who do deserve it often lose it without reason.