Brabantio and Roderigo — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Brabantio and Roderigo
Characters
What you need to know
How Shakespeare presents Brabantio and Roderigo, and how the character develops across the text: Desdemona's father, who accuses Othello of witchcraft and disowns her, and the foolish suitor whom Iago robs, uses and kills.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Thou told'st me thou didst hold him in thy hate', 'This accident is not unlike my dream', 'O thou foul thief, where hast thou stow'd my daughter?', 'a maiden never bold', 'To fall in love with what she fear'd to look on!', 'she was half the wooer', 'I had rather to adopt a child than get it', 'Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee', 'I will incontinently drown myself', 'I do not find that thou dealest justly with me', 'Every day thou daffest me with some device, Iago', 'I have no great devotion to the deed', 'O damn'd Iago! O inhuman dog!'.
Brabantio's claim that Desdemona was bewitched, which shows his prejudice rather than any fault in Othello, and Roderigo as the fool Iago can always use.
Context that helps a reading: a father's right to choose his daughter's husband, and a rich young Venetian with money to waste.
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.
