OTHELLO: SHORT PLOT SUMMARY - Neville High Schoolneville.mcschools.net/UserFiles/Servers/Server_36999/Fil… · Web viewThis reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word

UNIT 3: Othello, the Moor of Venice by William Shakespeare Donn 2016-2017

ACT I, the Exposition: I am not what I am

1.1 Iago reveals that Othello has secretly married Desdemona. 1.2 Othello faces a showdown with Brabantio, Desdemona's angry father. The tiff is cut short

when the Duke orders that Othello get himself over to the Duke's chambers, sooner rather than later.

1.3 Othello explains how Desdemona and he fell in love. Desdemona has his back. The Duke says the marriage seems legit, and sends Othello off to fight an enemy fleet.

ACT II, Rising Action: Divinity of Hell

2.1 The enemy fleet destroyed. Awaiting Othello’s return, Iago and Desdemona match wits. Othello arrives at Cyprus and joyfully greets his wife. It's time for the honeymoon.

2.3 Othello and Desdemona finally get some alone time, but then they're interrupted when Cassio gets into a drunken brawl. Othello, furious, fires him.

2.3 Iago’s “Divinity of hell” soliloquy

Act III, the Climax: The Handkerchief

3.2 Othello and Iago tour the city. 3.3 Othello comes back to find Cassio slinking away from a conversation with Desdemona. He

and his wife play-fight in that annoying newlywed way. But Iago slowly starts messing with Othello's mind and convinces Othello that Desdemona's cheating on him with Cassio. Othello demands proof of Iago's claim, but already believes him, proof or not. He swears to punish his wife and Cassio with death.

The scene above includes the “mock wedding” between Iago and Othello.

3.4 Othello, suspicious, asks Desdemona where the special handkerchief he gave her is. Because Iago has had it stolen, Desdemona can't produce it. She doesn't want to admit this, though, so she and Othello get in a huge fight.

Act IV, Falling Action: Proof

4.1 Iago torments Othello with more graphic images of Desdemona's cheating, so much so that Othello has a brief epileptic fit. Then Iago sets up a conversation with Cassio so that Othello thinks he's hearing them talk about Desdemona when, really, Cassio's talking about a prostitute. After this, when Desdemona comes in with a visitor announcing that Othello is called back to Venice, Othello gets so angry that he hits his wife in front of everyone.

4.2 Othello tries to get Emilia to confess that Desdemona is having an affair. Emilia says it just isn't true. Then Othello confronts Desdemona and calls her a whore. Desdemona denies it, but Othello doesn't believe her.

Ronald Donn Neville High School 2016-2017 English II Pre-AP & Gifted materialsTECH: Use of Technology TMAT: Teacher Made Material

Materials Key: Accommodations:504's Present. Students have been given preferential seatingand extended time.

DL: Differentiated Learning LDOE: Louisiana Department of Education


Act V, Resolution: A Birth and a Kill

5.1 Othello oversees what he thinks is Cassio's murder, and is satisfied. 5.2 Othello strangles Desdemona. Emilia comes in and raises the alarm. When Othello tells her

why he thinks Desdemona cheated on him, Emilia realizes that this must be a plot by her husband. She tells Othello the truth, and he responds by trying to stab Iago and failing in the process. Iago refuses to tell Othello why he destroyed his life. Othello, heartbroken, stabs himself and dies next to Desdemona.

OTHELLO: SHORT PLOT SUMMARY

The story of William Shakespeare's Othello is set in 16th-century Venice and Cyprus. Othello the Moor, a noble black general in the Venetian army, has secretly married a beautiful white woman called Desdemona, the daughter of a prominent senator, Brabantio. When he finds out, he is outraged, and promptly disowns her.Othello’s ensign, Iago, harbours a secret jealousy and resentment towards the Moor, partly because another soldier, lieutenant Cassio, has been promoted ahead of him, and also because he suspects that Othello has had an affair with his wife. Intent on revenge, Iago hatches a devious plan to plant suspicions in Othello’s mind that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with Cassio. He orchestrates a street fight, for which Cassio is wrongly blamed, and is then dismissed from his post by Othello. Desdemona takes up Cassio’s case with her husband, which only further inflames his suspicions that the pair are lovers.In the meantime, Iago manages to procure a treasured handkerchief from Desdemona that was given to her by Othello. He plants it on Cassio so that Othello sees it, then concludes that it is proof of their affair. Maddened by jealousy, he orders Iago to murder Cassio, and then he strangles Desdemona. Immediately afterwards her innocence is revealed, and Iago’s treachery exposed. In a fit of grief and remorse Othello kills himself. Iago is taken into custody by the Venetian authorities.





OTHELLO: HISTORICAL CONTEXT TO THE STORY

Written against the backdrop of the bubonic plague and the death of Queen Elizabeth I, The Othello play is thought to have been completed sometime in early 1604. Shakespeare appropriated the basic plot, historical context and storyline from Geraldi Cinthio’s popular book, Hundred Stories, the first sentence of which reads, “There was a Moor in Venice”. There were also other books that he probably used to shape the plots details, such as John Leo Africanus’s Geographical History of Africa, published in November 1600, Lewis Lewkenor’s book on the Constitution of Venice, and Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s History of the World.

Peter Ackroyd, author of Shakespeare – The Biography, argues for an additional background source to the plot. He writes of a story about Philip II, the King of Spain, who was allegedly of a very jealous nature, and was said to have strangled his wife in bed after she had inadvertently dropped her handkerchief. If this tale is true, it is too close to the plot of Othello to be a coincidence.

Real life encounters also fed into the play’s storyline. Shakespeare would have come into contact with members of London’s African community, who would have figured in his daily life around the streets of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, Silver Street and Turnmill Street, where he lived and socialised. He would have interacted with them as servants, musicians, entertainers and even prostitutes. He would have been aware of their struggles within Elizabethan society, and the racism they endured.

In 1600 Shakespeare may also have met Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun — the olive-skinned Moorish ambassador to the Arab King of Barbary — who is often cited as the inspiration for Othello. He visited the court of Queen Elizabeth, and sat for a portrait. Some suggest that Shakespeare and his troupe perhaps performed for him.





Action and Plot: Recognize key moments in the drama, including observations about1. Setting: What is the effect of the environment? 2. Symbolic objects 3. Chronology: How long does a scene take?

When writing you cite act, scene, and line(s) like this: (I.ii.34-38)

Character: Focus on how characters change and react to one another, especially:1. Background2. Rank and position3. Motivation

Text: Focus on evidence directly from the text; locate specific examples of1. Dialogue2. Monologue3. Soliloquy4. Asides

Subtext: Focus on the real meaning behind words and actions, including:1. Unspoken meanings and motivation2. Verbal, dramatic, or situational irony2. Double entendre or Ronald Donn Neville High School 2016-2017 English II Pre-AP & Gifted materialsTECH: Use of Technology TMAT: Teacher Made Material




innuendos3. Repeated imagery that creates extended metaphors with in a singular speech, or conceits that run throughout the play

Close Reading Drama: the ACTS Method





Lesson 1: Vicious Imagery: Major Symbols and Motifs in Othello LESSON SUMMARY: This lesson sets up a discussion of the play’s symbolism, and introduces the function of Exposition (Act I). The purpose for introducing symbolism first, rather than gleaning through inference, is to help students recognize significant moments in the dialogue; to read Shakespeare, students must be able to ‘edit’ for significant moments. This will connect to Lesson 2, “The function of dialogue, monologue, and soliloquy”

LEARNING TARGETS: Students should be reading Act I and completing the AL task for this act, which contains close reading questions and offers teacher’s notes on the play that direct students toward relevant themes. Students will learn how symbolism is introduced through dialogue and action, and can explore the relationship between symbolism and the unfolding events in the play. LSS RL 9-10.1-2, 4-5. W 9-10.4, 9

This discussion will also give students time to read Act I of Othello, reviewing the teacher’s notes in the Actively Learn online version.

PRIOR LEARNING: None. This is the first lesson in a new unit.

Text Description

Unit Assessment Connection

Othello Act I, Masterpiece Series

TEXT DESCRIPTION: This is the anchor text of the unit, and is appropriately complex.

TEXT FOCUS: The Exposition (Act I) establishes the characters, conflict, and motifs of the play.

Readers examine the symbolism of the play to recognize the author’s strategy: To provide an objective correlative to the play’s themes.

Vocabulary: Exposition, Symbolism, Motif, Monologue, Soliloquy, Aside

LESSON PROGRESSION





Bellringer: Students will review the “ACTS” Cornell notes created by the teacher for the purpose of studying drama from a close reading approach.

1. Improvised Scene: “The Senior Trip.” Each student should be shown his/her role independently: Neither should be shown the full situation.

SAY: Let’s start by demonstrating how imagery and language arises naturally out of speech, especially speech that is intended to be persuasive. Here’s the situation:

The players are Bob, Jim, and Peter-Jack. Bob and Jim go to Neville, and have been best friends since 6 th grade. Bob’s family is from New Orleans. Jim is from Monroe. Peter-Jack grew up in West Monroe, goes to Ouachita HS, but is coming to Neville next year because his family is moving here where his father will practice law.

Bob has a shot at quarterback on the football team. Jim is President of the E-sports club, even though he hasn’t been able to get online recently because his computer is broken and his parents can’t replace it until next year. They’ve both known Peter-Jack for about a year. They know that Peter-Jack is a cousin to the Duck Dynasty folks, and their families go way back. PJ’s family has money, but Peter-Jack says that he isn’t going to take his parents’ money. He wants to raise the money himself.

Bob, Jim, and Peter-Jack all want to raise money to go on the Senior Trip in 2 years. They need $3000 apiece, they’ve got a plan to start a weekend business mowing lawns and cleaning yards. They’ve got a list of clientele from Peter-Jack, who knows a lot of wealthy West Monroe folks through the Duck Dynasty folks. Bob lives on the North Side, and has a lot of contacts and people willing to donate equipment. Jim is a hard worker, and his dad owned a lawn business, so he has the know-how to get things up and running quickly. They’ve figured it out, and it’s doable—but only if they all work together.

BOB: You’ve lived here since the 6th grade. You’re a trustworthy guy, and everybody loves you because you are nice to everybody and can tell a great story—especially about growing up in the French Quarter of NOLA. You’ve seen the Saints more than once. You are popular, athletic, street smart, and you’re not the type to put up with foolishness. You expect the best from everybody, and you don’t listen to gossip, rumors, and other naysaying. You’re the kind of person who has to see something for yourself to believe it, and you believe that silence really is a virtue. Jim is your best friend since Pre-K, and you are extremely excited to be working with him. However, you’ve also gotten to be very good friends with Peter-Jack in the last year; you and PJ have been Grand Theft Auto online for about a year, and have made a great team so far, ranking in the top 300 players in the U.S.





JIM: You are the suspicious type, but you are very good at hiding it. Everybody loves you: You are known as “Good Old Jim.” You don’t know Peter-Jack that well, and you don’t trust Peter-Jack because you know he comes from money, hangs out wealthy families from West Monroe, and you think it’s a big mistake to work with Peter-Jack. You don’t trust his loyalties, and you think Peter-Jack just wants to work with you and Bob because he wants steal your friendship with Bob so that Peter-Jack will have a popular friend when he gets to Neville next year. You want to cut PJ out of the business venture and find somebody closer to home. You sincerely believe that if you’re going to get to go on that Senior trip, you have no choice but turn Bob against Peter-jack, because he will mess everything up by either slacking or dropping out of the business and just getting his parents to pay for it.

You know that Bob doesn’t listen to rumors and gossip, and you know that Bob can be stubborn. He also has a temper, and you need Bob to stay your friend if you have any hope of going on that trip. If you’re going to convince Bob that Peter-Jack needs to be cut out of the equation, you can’t just say it. You have to make Bob think that Bob came up with the idea himself.

That’s your situation. Now get to it. Ask students to take notes on the word choices, bodily gestures, and the IMAGERY of the language used.

Discuss how symbols, motifs, allegorical elements of play must all necessarily come through speech, and that it helps to recognize certain ideas and words.

2. Review “ACTS” notes template. Remind students they are not always looking for ALL of the information in the “cue” column; the teacher-made prompts in the cue column are there as a guide, not a list in a worksheet.

SAY: This first lesson touches on language of the play, themes, and figurative language. We WILL get into more performance-based reading, but it helps a LOT if you know what you’re looking for when reading. This first lesson also touches on the five themes you will have a choice to write about, and you will need to be able to work with your team. Take GOOD notes, and ask QUESTIONS.

THEME-BASED TOPICS

ORDER AND CHAOS FEMALE IDENTITY RACE RELATIONS SOCIAL CLASS





PROOF AND EVIDENCE

3. ACTS Notes: Symbolism and Major Motifs That Create Theme in Othello

Show Act I of Oliver Parker’s Othello (action before characters move location to Cyprus). Pause the film at certain points, asking students to identify and classify symbols:

A. ACTS NOTES: COLOR SYMBOLISM: Show colors of The Last Supper by Da Vinci, compare to Senate scene. How is the director

interpreting the characters through color? What does such use of symbolism or color motifs communicate?

Note that this is the director taking cues from the play. The play’s colors are a bit more appropriate for the time period:

ACTION: Blackness, whiteness made a point from the start. Who mentions it first? Iago: “The Moor.” (I.1.39Roderigo: “”the thicklips” (I.1.66)

CHARACTER: -Iago’s modus operandi: Use other’s biases against them. What may we infer?Othello, Desdemona. How do they perceive color? What caused them to fall in love?

TEXT: Explore this idea further. Othello is aware of racial preconceptions about him. However, what does he focus on? (p. 27): “Rude Am I in speech…”

SUBTEXT: What do we know so far about racial preconceptions? Discuss “allegorical thinking” of the day, the believe in signs and “natural” revelation. Discuss how sometimes you need to know the society before you know the subtext. Consider this quote:

“The key, Isaac Butler relates, is to consider that to renaissance Englishfolk, "Moorish" would have been inextricably tied into religion: Othello is a converted Muslim, and his tragedy, then, is possibly one of failed assimilation and acculturation.”

--Rob Beschizza, BoingBoing





Cultural subtext:

“Blackness”: Meant skin color, religious heathenism, cruelty, earthiness, beastishness. Othello wasn’t so much the black race to these characters as he was barbaric, potentially untrustworthy…his actions and words were more important than the color of his skin. Iago knows this…and that’s why he focuses less on Othello’s race and more on how he doesn’t fit in! This doesn’t mean Othello and the others aren’t aware of race…it means that his race is a symbol for defects in his personality and his abilities as a man.

“Fairness”: Beauty, lightness of skin, blondeness, gentleness, politeness, good upbringing. On the other side of the coin, so much is made out of Desdemona’s beauty…but again, it’s merely a signifier of deeper personality traits that Iago must convince Othello are incompatible with his. Remember Brabantio’s words: “For Nature so preposterously to err…that she would love that which she feared to look on!” Brabantio further calls attention more to Othello’s heart and and motives than to his face. He uses Othello’s color as a sign of his heart and soul by focusing on his “bosom,” meaning, his chest and heart, his true self: “The sooty bosom of a such a thing as thou!”

The next category is an extension of blackness and fairness, as it takes the idea of blackness and ties it directly into more religious and cosmological views: Nature and its beasts. It shows some fine examples of allegorical thinking, people who judged others based on appearances because the understood the world within the context of popular imagery.

B. ACTS NOTES: “The Beast with Two Backs”: “BESTIAL IMAGERY” as a MOTIF:

The imagery Iago uses of beasts, animals, trapping, hunting, and gardening—the subjugation of wildness and chaos—comes directly from a long tradition of bestiaries.

Definition of “Bestiary,” from Wikipedia:

A bestiary, or bestiarum vocabulum, is a compendium of beasts. Originating in the Ancient world, bestiaries were made popular in the Middle Ages in illustrated volumes that described various animals, birds and even rocks. The natural history and illustration of each beast was usually accompanied by a moral lesson. This reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word of God, and that every living thing had its own special meaning. For example, the pelican, which was believed to tear open its breast to bring its young to life with its own blood, was a living representation of Jesus. The bestiary, then, is also a reference to the symbolic language of animals in Western Christian art and literature.




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_Christian_art

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compendium


You have seen an example of bestiary all your lives. Our state uses a bestiary under which to unite our identity as citizens of the state of Louisiana.

Bestiary Example (1626):









Devil’s Triumph, from a Bestiary:

The imagery Iago uses is burned into the imaginations of the audience to whom he speaks directly. He uses imagery that they knew, that had been used to teach them moral lessons about the world since childhood—and had been used for centuries in folk tales, nursery rhyme (remember, Mother Goose tales are a bestiary), and in sermons and illustrations of the Bible, where the saints were blonde and white, and the devil was a serpent and a black goat.

Iago also uses imagery of gardening and agriculture—something the rural folks certainly understood. We also need to remember that their idea of nature was that nature was wild, and chaotic, and our job is to TAME nature. This is where the whole idea of the “English Garden” comes from: To bring ORDER to the CHAOS that is nature.

English Garden:





ACTS NOTES

Watch the balcony scene. Pause.ACTION: Where do we see animals in Iago’s rant to Brabantio? How does he use animal imagery to convince Brabantio? (p. 11): I.1.100-119.

Watch the Senate Scene. Pause. CHARACTER: Notice how the director chose to show Othello. Notice color and markings on his character in the film.





The horns of the cuckold:

TEXT: The plot itself, which people know, contains conflict based on emotions that blind one to the truth and make mean act like beasts: Jealousy. Lust. Pride. Ambition.

Say: Iago’s “bestial” imagery often combines with the imagery of gardening and hunting. What do these have in common?

Read: (P. 39) I.3.320-345. Note the imagery.

Iago, as a god-like manipulator, “tends” to these beasts and tames nature to make a perverse “garden” of evil out of the people he manipulates.

Re-read lines 320-345.

Notice some of Iago’s imagery when he talks to Roderigo and tells him that he feels love is just a cutting or a sample of lust:

“A sect or a scion.”

NOTE ON PERFORMANCE: History has shown us that the actors talked to the crowd, roped them into the play through audience participation. When Iago delivers a soliloquy, if he was a good actor, he breaks the 4th wall and speaks directly to the audience, calling on them to conspire with him. From I.1.395-399:





Cassio’s a proper124 man: let me see now: To get his place and to plume up my will125 In double knavery126—How, how? Let’s see:— After some time, to abuse Othello’s ear

That he is too familiar with his wife.

SUBTEXT: Something to Think About: What “Bestial” behavior is part of the play’s plot? War, violence, sexual jealousy, and racial prejudice. IN this world, rank and order were supremely important. They were familiar with Nature as a violent, chaotic.

THEME OF MALE/FEMALE ROLES: Remember, he has to convince Roderigo that the best Roderigo can hope for is to sleep with her: “Thou shalt enjoy her.” This helps Roderigo man up and do the bloody things that Iago wants him to do. He experiments on Roderigo first, before he tackles Cassio or Othello to turn them into beasts.

Tie in with end of Act I, Iago’s “pep talk” with Roderigo: “We have reason to cool our….”. Explain that “Be a man” meant to man up, but also meant to use Reason over emotion (don’t forget “Drown cats and blind puppies.”) The subtext here is pretty clear: How could Iago manipulate others with such imagery?

.C. ACT NOTES: SYMBOLISM OF THE HANDKERCHIEF:

The most important symbol of the play, the handkerchief means different things to different characters. To Othello, it’s a symbol of Desdemona’s chastity—that she gives to him. To Desdemona, it’s a symbol of Othello’s charms and his exotic history, the thing she falls in love with.

There’s irony in the fact that Othello claims he used no magic or charms to win Desdemona. However, later in the play, when he suspects her of cheating, this is what he tells her:

OTHELLO. ’Tis true: there’s magic in the web28 of it. A sibyl,29 that had number’d in the world The sun to course two hundred compasses,30 In her prophetic fury31 sew’d the work; The worms were hallow’d that did breed the silk; And it was dyed in mummy which the skillful





Conserved of maidens’ hearts.32

Source: http://www.shmoop.com/othello/handkerchief-symbol.htmlThe paradox is that the strawberries, while the chaste blood of virgins on their wedding nights, also represents disease. Every symbol has two sides.

The historical reality of spotted handkerchiefs was that the handerchief was meant to mask the blood of tuberculosis when coughed into. The Black Death had ravaged Europe too, and

consumption would remain a killer—even Poe wrote about it two hundred years later.

William Shakespeare and the Black Death / Bubonic PlagueWilliam Shakespeare lived in the Elizabethan era when the bubonic plague, sometimes referred to as the Black Death, was virulent. He was known to have a terrible fear of the deadly disease and its consequences and this is hardly surprising as it touched so many areas of his life including his life as an actor at the Globe Theater. There were high mortality rates amongst Elizabethan children and this was true of the brothers and sisters of Shakespeare some of whom were struck down by the Bubonic plague (Black Death)

Information about the Symptoms of the Black Death or the Bubonic PlagueThe symptoms associated with the disease were, and are, painful swellings (bubos) of the lymph nodes. These swellings, symptoms of the deadly plague, would appear in the armpits, legs, neck, or groin. Victims also suffered a very high fever, delirium, the victim begins to vomit, muscular pains, bleeding in the lungs and mental disorientation. The illness also produced in the victim an intense desire to sleep, which, if yielded to, quickly proved fatal. It was no wonder that the Black Death or Bubonic Plague was so feared by the people of the Elizabethan era.

Finally, some Ironic motifs couched in the names and nicknames:

Self image is the source: “The Moor.” How does Othello see himself? How do others? “Far more fair than black.”

Honesty and appearances: Not a symbol per se, but a theme and a motif because the word appears ____ times. Iago is “Honest Iago.” Discuss how some critics insist that Iago actually does not tell a lie…rather, he either gets others to lie for him or manipulates perception until others comes to the conclusion he wants them to.





CHARACTERS AND WORLD VIEW (a Philosophical Spectrum)

Idealism Realism Pragmatism (ends justifies means) Othello “Heaven” Brabantio “than get it” Iago “Hell and night” “by Janus”Cassio “Reputation” Desdemona “my husband” Emilia (the body/appetite) Roderigo “not in my virtue” the Duke “far more fair…” Bianca (Cassio’s mistress)




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OTHELLO: SHORT PLOT SUMMARY - Neville High Schoolneville.mcschools.net/UserFiles/Servers/Server_36999/Fil… · Web viewThis reflected the belief that the world itself was the Word