Detailed Notes on Act 4 of Othello. including summaries of each act, key quotes, analysis of language and form and key contexts. At an A* A-level standard.
SUMMARY:
At the thought that Desdemona is having an affair, Othello briefly falls down in a
trance.
Iago places Othello where he can watch and heart the conversation between he
and Cassio so that he thinks that Cassio’s mocking replies are about Desdemona,
not Bianca.
Bianca enters and produces Desdemona’s handkerchief, convincing Othello that
Desdemona is guilty, and that Cassio has given her handkerchief to his mistress.
Important orders arrive from Venice, but Othello remains agitated and strikes
Desdemona in public.
This scene has structural significance in the sense that Iago is able to provide the
ultimate ‘ocular proof’ of Desdemona and Cassio’s affair through Cassio’s conversation
with Iago and the fact that Bianca has possession of Desdemona’s handkerchief. Equally,
the arrival of Lodovico is important in providing an outsider’s perspective of Othello’s
behaviour.
OTHELLO’S BREAKS DOWN IN A TRANCE
We once again enter the conversation between Othello and Iago in media res which
suggests how the two have been talking for much longer than what the audience
experience and therefore Iago has had more opportunity to convince Othello of
Desdemona’ infidelity.
Othello begins to use religious imagery suggests that to ‘be naked in bed and do no
harm’ is ‘hypocrisy against the devil!’ in order to emphasise the Christian notion of
Desdemona’s sin being linked to hell and the devil.
Othello’s mention of ‘the raven’ as a death omen perhaps foreshadows both his and
Desdemona’s death through the use of simile ‘As doth the raven o’er the infected
house’ in which the use of the verb ‘infected’ connotes the way in which Othello is
mentally plagued by his suspicions of his wife’s betrayal.
As Iago continues to mention the possibility of Cassio and his wife having ‘lied together’,
Othello becomes increasingly erratic and starts to break down into prose with use of
short interjection and exclamation ‘Lie with her? Lie on her? - we say lie on her when
they belie her’
Iago’s use of the first-person personal pronoun ‘Othello’ is important as this suggests
an element of closeness in their relationship that he no longer refers to him as a person
of higher position ‘my lord’
Iago makes very generalised and misogynistic judgements of women stating that ‘there
are millions now alive that lie in those unproper beds’ in which the hyperbole of
‘millions’ indeed suggests that many women betray their husbands in such a way, this
draws on the contextual fact that men would worry about the paternity of their child,
particularly as children carry their wealth.
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