Race and prejudice — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Race and prejudice
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores race and prejudice: the racist language of Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio, a Venice that relies on Othello and still sees him as an outsider, and how far he comes to see himself through their eyes across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe', 'What a full fortune does the thick-lips owe', 'To the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou', 'an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian', 'Your son-in-law is far more fair than black', 'Haply, for I am black / And have not those soft parts of conversation / That chamberers have', 'Her name, that was as fresh / As Dian's visage, is now begrimed and black / As mine own face', 'Arise, black vengeance, from thy hollow cell!', 'O, the more angel she, / And you the blacker devil!', 'Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow, / And smooth as monumental alabaster', 'I took by the throat the circumcised dog, / And smote him, thus'.
How the racist language works: Iago, Roderigo and Brabantio use animal images and insults, and call him the Moor rather than by his name, to stir up fear of Othello, so an answer quotes these words only to analyse who uses them and why, never as if they were true.
How the play questions that prejudice: Othello's dignity and eloquence before the senate, Venice's trust in him as its general, and the Duke's praise that still measures his worth against whiteness.
Othello's words about his own colour once Iago has worked on him, how far he takes on the way others see him, and the images of black and white, angel and devil, at the end.
Other prejudices the play shows: against women, against Turks and Muslims in Othello's last speech, and Iago's resentment of Cassio's rank and learning.
Context that helps a reading: beliefs in Shakespeare's England that linked dark skin with sin and devils, critics who argue the play exposes racism and those who argue it repeats stereotypes, and the history of white actors in dark make-up in the role.
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.
