Act 4 — Othello — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Act 4
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Othello's fit, the talk about Bianca that he overhears and takes for proof, his striking of Desdemona before Lodovico,
the brothel scene, in which he treats Emilia as its keeper and accuses Desdemona of adultery, Roderigo's complaints, and Desdemona and Emilia's talk before bed.
Key quotations: 'Lie with her! lie on her!', 'Pish! Noses, ears, and lips', 'Work on, / My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught', 'I will chop her into messes: cuckold me!', 'Do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated', 'I have not deserved this', 'Goats and monkeys!', 'Are his wits safe? is he not light of brain?', 'O, thou weed, / Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet / That the sense aches at thee', 'I took you for that cunning whore of Venice / That married with Othello', 'My mother had a maid call'd Barbara', 'Sing willow, willow, willow', 'Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?'.
Form: Othello's speech breaking into prose and fragments as he falls into a fit, against Desdemona's calm verse and the willow song.
Structure: the overheard talk with Cassio, the public blow in front of Lodovico, the brothel scene, and the quiet scene before bed that delays the end.
Context that helps a reading: Venice's shock when its governor strikes his wife in public, and the power a husband held over a wife.
Eduqas's Shakespeare questions don't mark context: the extract question (15 marks) and the whole-play essay (20 marks, plus 5 for spelling, punctuation, vocabulary and sentence structures) both mark response and analysis of language, form and structure (AO1 and AO2). Use context only in a phrase that supports an interpretation, and say which question each worked paragraph practises.
