Plot overview — Othello — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Plot overview
Introduction
What you need to know
The whole play in brief, act by act, and how Iago turns a newly married general against his wife in a few days, from a night-time alarm in Venice to the deaths in the bedchamber in Cyprus.
Where each act's key moment falls: the elopement and trial in Venice, the reunion and Cassio's fall in Cyprus, the temptation scene, the handkerchief and the striking of Desdemona, and the murder and its discovery.
How the action in Cyprus is packed into little more than a day and a half while the play suggests a much longer marriage, and why that speed suits Iago's plot.
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.
