How Shakespeare presents Desdemona, and how the character develops across the text: the senator's daughter who defies her father to marry Othello, speaks up for Cassio and stays loyal to her husband as he turns on her.
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: 'My noble father, / I do perceive here a divided duty', 'I saw Othello's visage in his mind', 'My downright violence and storm of fortunes', 'thy solicitor shall rather die / Than give thy cause away', 'Be as your fancies teach you; / Whate'er you be, I am obedient', 'I think the sun where he was born / Drew all such humours from him', 'Beshrew me much, Emilia, / I was, unhandsome warrior as I am', 'My lord is not my lord', 'Unkindness may do much; / And his unkindness may defeat my life, / But never taint my love', 'Mine eyes do itch; / Doth that bode weeping?', 'That death's unnatural that kills for loving', 'A guiltless death I die'.
Her confident verse before the senate, her persistence for Cassio that Iago turns against her, and her bewildered loyalty in Acts 4 and 5.
Context that helps a reading: a senator's daughter expected to obey her father and then her husband, and readings of her as brave and outspoken or as stripped of her voice by the end.
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.
