Act 5 — Othello — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Act 5
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
The failed attack on Cassio in the dark and Iago's killing of Roderigo, Othello's murder of Desdemona,
Emilia's discovery of the truth and her death at Iago's hands, Iago's silence, and Othello's last speech and suicide.
Key quotations: 'This is the night / That either makes me or fordoes me quite', 'I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense', 'It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul', 'Put out the light, and then put out the light', 'Kill me to-morrow: let me live to-night!', 'Nobody; I myself. Farewell: / Commend me to my kind lord: O, farewell!', 'Moor, she was chaste; she loved thee, cruel Moor', 'Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: / From this time forth I never will speak word', 'Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, / Nor set down aught in malice', 'Of one that loved not wisely but too well', 'I kiss'd thee ere I kill'd thee: no way but this; / Killing myself, to die upon a kiss', 'Look on the tragic loading of this bed'.
Structure: the ambush in the dark street, the bedchamber scene that Emilia's truth-telling turns, and an ending in which Iago refuses to explain and Othello tells the story of his own life.
Context that helps a reading: tragedy's ending in death and judgement, and Othello comparing himself in his last speech with a Turk he once killed.
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.
