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Modern Text - PlayEduqas / AQA A-Level / Edexcel A-Level / OCR A-Level / Eduqas A-Level / Edexcel IAL

Othello

by William Shakespeare - c. 1603

Shakespeare’s Othello is a domestic tragedy of jealousy, race and manipulation. Written around 1603 at the beginning of the Jacobean era, the play follows a distinguished Moorish general in the service of Venice who is destroyed from within by his trusted ensign, Iago. Iago’s motiveless malignity, Othello’s susceptibility to doubt and the destructive power of a patriarchal honour culture combine to produce one of Shakespeare’s most intimate and devastating tragedies. Studied widely at A-Level, the play raises urgent questions about race and outsider identity in early modern Europe, the vulnerability of marriage to external poison, and the gap between appearance and reality. Its structure — a rapid public rise followed by a claustrophobic descent — gives Othello a psychological intensity that continues to generate powerful critical and performance readings today.

Quick Info

Genre

Tragedy

Setting

Venice, then Cyprus

Length

Five-act play (~3,550 lines)

Published

First quarto 1622; folio 1623

Plot Summary

The play opens in Venice at night, where Iago, ensign to the Moorish general Othello, wakes the senator Brabantio with the news that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with Othello. Iago is already burning with resentment because Othello has promoted the younger Cassio to lieutenant over him. Roderigo, a foolish suitor still hoping to win Desdemona, is funding Iago’s schemes. Brabantio hauls Othello before the Duke and the senate to answer the charge that he has seduced Desdemona by witchcraft. Othello defends himself with a calm, eloquent account of how Desdemona came to love him through his stories of travel and danger, and Desdemona herself declares her choice in public. The Duke sides with Othello and dispatches him to Cyprus to defend the island against a Turkish invasion. Desdemona insists on sailing with him.

In Act 2, a storm scatters the Turkish fleet before the battle can begin, and the focus of the play narrows to the confined military garrison on Cyprus. Iago engineers his first trap: he gets Cassio drunk on the night of Othello’s wedding celebrations, provokes a fight with Roderigo, and draws Montano, the former governor, into the brawl. Othello strips Cassio of his lieutenancy. Iago then persuades the distraught Cassio to plead for reinstatement through Desdemona, knowing that her kindness will look like something darker when seen through suspicious eyes.

Act 3 is the hinge of the tragedy. In the long central temptation scene, Iago gradually poisons Othello’s mind with hints, hesitations and pretended reluctance, suggesting that Desdemona is in a liaison with Cassio. A handkerchief that Othello gave Desdemona as his first gift — embroidered with strawberries — falls from her hand and is picked up by Iago’s wife Emilia, who gives it to Iago without knowing his purpose. Iago plants it in Cassio’s lodgings. By the end of the act Othello has sworn revenge and promoted Iago to lieutenant, while Desdemona, bewildered by her husband’s change, keeps trying to advocate for Cassio, unintentionally confirming the suspicion.

In Act 4 Othello’s collapse becomes visible. He eavesdrops on a conversation with Cassio that Iago has stage-managed to refer to the courtesan Bianca, interpreting the laughter as proof of adultery. Othello then watches Bianca hand the handkerchief back to Cassio. Othello strikes Desdemona in public before the Venetian ambassador Lodovico and decides she must die. In Act 5 Iago engineers Roderigo’s attack on Cassio; Cassio is wounded, Roderigo is killed by Iago to silence him. Othello smothers Desdemona in their bed. Emilia breaks in, discovers what has happened, and exposes the handkerchief plot, revealing Iago as the architect of everything. Iago stabs Emilia and is arrested. Othello, recognising what he has done, delivers a final speech about how he should be remembered and kills himself beside Desdemona’s body. Cassio is left to govern Cyprus and Iago is led away to be tortured.

Main Characters

Othello

A Moorish general in the Venetian army; the tragic protagonist

Othello is a distinguished military commander whose eloquence, dignity and record of service have earned him a command that a foreigner would not normally hold. Shakespeare presents him as an outsider defined by his blackness in a white Christian society, admired for his usefulness but never fully accepted. His language in Act 1 is expansive and self-assured; by Act 4 it has fractured into disordered prose, exclamation and violent imagery. His tragic flaw is his willingness to believe Iago over Desdemona, rooted partly in racial insecurity (“Haply, for I am black”) and partly in the absolute nature of his emotional investments. His final speech reclaims his dignity just long enough for him to execute justice on himself.

Desdemona

A Venetian noblewoman; Brabantio’s daughter and Othello’s wife

Desdemona is intelligent, articulate and morally courageous. She defies her father in open court to declare her choice of husband, insists on accompanying Othello to Cyprus, and continues to advocate for Cassio out of loyalty even as her husband’s behaviour darkens. Shakespeare refuses the passive-victim stereotype: Desdemona argues her case, questions Othello’s accusations and, in the willow scene with Emilia, shows a quiet premonition of her death. Her final moments, in which she briefly revives to shield Othello by claiming she killed herself, make her one of the most morally radiant figures in Shakespearean tragedy.

Iago

Othello’s ensign; the antagonist

Iago speaks more lines than anyone else in the play, Othello included, and is one of the most disturbing characters in Shakespeare. He offers multiple motives for his hatred of Othello — being passed over for promotion, unsubstantiated rumour that Othello has slept with Emilia, racial contempt, sheer resentment of virtue — without any of them fully explaining his conduct. Coleridge famously called this “motiveless malignity.” Iago manipulates every other character through tailored language, exploiting their specific vulnerabilities: Roderigo’s lust, Cassio’s anxiety about reputation, Othello’s racial self-doubt, Emilia’s desire to please. His refusal to explain himself at the end (“Demand me nothing”) denies the audience closure.

Cassio

Othello’s lieutenant

Cassio is a Florentine gentleman-soldier: educated, courteous, socially polished and, as Iago notes with contempt, theoretically trained rather than battle-tested. His excessive politeness to Desdemona provides Iago with raw material for suspicion. His disgrace in Act 2 reveals how much he values reputation: the lament “Reputation, reputation, reputation” is both touching and revealing of the honour-based masculinity that surrounds him. He survives the play and is promoted to govern Cyprus, but only after being seriously wounded.

Emilia

Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s attendant

Emilia grows in importance across the play. Initially she seems loyal to Iago, handing him the handkerchief without understanding what he will do with it. But her great speech in Act 4 scene 3 on the mutual duties of husbands and wives is one of Shakespeare’s most striking proto-feminist statements, and in Act 5 she becomes the play’s truth-teller. She exposes Iago in front of everyone, defies his command to be silent — “I will not charm my tongue” — and is murdered for it. Her courage redeems the network of female silence that Iago has exploited.

Roderigo

A Venetian gentleman in love with Desdemona

Roderigo is Iago’s dupe and his ATM. He has been pursuing Desdemona with gifts that Iago has mostly pocketed, and he is gullible enough to believe each new plan will finally win her. Shakespeare uses Roderigo to show Iago’s technique in miniature: the manipulator spots appetite, flatters it and empties it. Roderigo’s attempted murder of Cassio in Act 5 goes wrong, and Iago kills him to silence him — a fate that exposes the disposable nature of Iago’s alliances.

Brabantio

A Venetian senator and Desdemona’s father

Brabantio appears chiefly in Act 1. His response to Desdemona’s elopement combines racist outrage — he cannot believe she would choose Othello without enchantment — with wounded patriarchal authority. His parting warning to Othello (“She has deceiv’d her father, and may thee”) plants the first seed of doubt that Iago will later cultivate. Off-stage his death of grief at Desdemona’s marriage is reported in Act 5, adding another layer of collateral damage to the tragedy.

Key Themes

Jealousy

Jealousy is the engine of the tragedy, named directly by Iago as the “green-ey’d monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.” Shakespeare is careful to show that Othello is not innately jealous — his initial response to Iago’s hints is resistance — but that jealousy, once planted, consumes its host. The play distinguishes between different kinds of jealousy: Iago’s professional resentment of Cassio, his vague sexual jealousy of Othello with Emilia, Roderigo’s frustrated desire for Desdemona, and finally Othello’s overwhelming sexual jealousy. Each feeds on imagination rather than evidence. Shakespeare dramatises how jealousy generates its own proof: Othello increasingly sees what he expects to see, and the handkerchief becomes “ocular proof” only because he has already decided.

Race and otherness

Othello is the only non-white tragic protagonist in Shakespeare, and his race is inseparable from the play’s action. From the opening scene Iago and Roderigo use animal and sexual imagery to describe him — “an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe” — establishing a racist Venetian discourse that Othello has had to live inside. Shakespeare complicates this by giving Othello the most eloquent language in the early acts, inviting the audience to see his dignity before seeing his skin. But Othello has also internalised some of the surrounding prejudice: his line “Haply, for I am black” shows how racial self-doubt makes him vulnerable to Iago’s insinuations. The play asks whether the tragedy happens to Othello because he is an outsider, or because the society around him is ready to read every action through a racial lens.

Appearance vs reality

Every major disaster in the play arises from a gap between how things look and what they are. Iago’s famous line “I am not what I am” defines him as pure dissimulation. Desdemona’s kindness to Cassio looks like flirtation when reframed by Iago; a handkerchief dropped by accident looks like incriminating evidence; laughter about Bianca looks like laughter about Desdemona. Shakespeare builds the whole architecture of the tragedy on misinterpreted signs, and he reinforces the theme with the repeated use of the word “honest” to describe Iago — a word that, over the course of the play, is drained of meaning. The audience’s privileged position, hearing Iago’s soliloquies, intensifies the dramatic irony.

Honour and reputation

The world of Othello is structured around masculine honour and female reputation, two codes that the play shows to be both powerful and destructive. Cassio’s lament after his drunken brawl — “Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation” — captures how a soldier’s identity rests on public standing. Iago exploits this by attacking reputations from the outside: he destroys Cassio’s by getting him drunk, Desdemona’s by insinuating adultery, Othello’s by pushing him to behaviour that confirms Venetian stereotypes. Female reputation is even more fragile, being tied to sexual fidelity; a rumour is enough to condemn Desdemona in Othello’s mind. Emilia’s defiance in Act 5 is partly a rejection of the reputation-based silence that has been required of her.

Gender and marriage

Othello dramatises an early modern patriarchy in which women move from the authority of fathers to the authority of husbands. Desdemona’s elopement is radical because it sidesteps her father’s consent, and Brabantio’s sense of personal violation (“She has deceiv’d her father”) is consistent with his social world. Once married, Desdemona is subject to Othello in a way that leaves her defenceless against his suspicion. Shakespeare sets up a spectrum of female positions: Desdemona’s idealising love, Emilia’s pragmatic marriage to Iago, and Bianca’s socially stigmatised status as a courtesan. Emilia’s Act 4 speech on the mutual obligations of husbands and wives, and her willingness to die telling the truth, push back against the system that the play anatomises.

Manipulation and trust

Iago’s method is not force but manipulation — the careful placement of language, images and objects into minds already primed to receive them. He rarely tells a direct lie; instead he pauses, hesitates, asks questions, and lets the listener draw the ruinous conclusion. Shakespeare examines the particular vulnerabilities trust creates: Othello’s faith in Iago as his ensign, Cassio’s friendship with the man who gets him drunk, Emilia’s wifely habit of handing over the handkerchief. Every destruction in the play is made possible by a relationship of trust that Iago inverts. The tragedy is in some sense a tragedy of misplaced faith, and the play asks whether faith itself — in a spouse, in a soldier, in a god — is ever safe in a world where signs can be forged.

Historical Context

Shakespeare wrote Othello around 1603, at the start of the reign of King James I. The play was performed at court in November 1604 and published in quarto in 1622, then in the First Folio in 1623. The early Jacobean period was a moment of heightened anxiety about outsiders and about the stability of marriage: James’s succession had only just resolved the question of who would rule, plague had closed the theatres, and there was intense public interest in honour, duelling and reputation. Othello sits at the beginning of Shakespeare’s major tragic sequence, close to Hamlet and written just before King Lear and Macbeth.

Venice in the early seventeenth century was, in the English imagination, both a respected commercial republic and a morally ambiguous city of intrigue, sexual sophistication and military professionalism. Its practice of hiring foreign generals — because Venetian patricians feared a citizen commander — makes Othello’s position plausible rather than fantastical. Cyprus, the play’s second location, was a Venetian colony on the front line against the Ottoman empire until it fell to the Turks in 1571. By setting the military crisis on Cyprus, Shakespeare places his tragedy on a specific historical frontier between Christian Europe and the Islamic Mediterranean.

Moorish characters had appeared on the English stage before Othello — notably Aaron in Titus Andronicus and the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice — usually as either exoticised figures or villains. Shakespeare breaks with that tradition by making his Moor the tragic hero. “Moor” in early modern English was a flexible term covering North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans and, sometimes, Muslims generally; Othello’s exact background is deliberately ambiguous. Contemporary accounts of the visit of a Moroccan ambassador to Elizabeth’s court in 1600 and public anxiety about the status of “blackamoors” in England provide a specific context for the racial language of the play.

The honour culture in which Othello operates was familiar to Jacobean audiences: male status depended on public reputation, female status on sexual fidelity, and offences to either were felt to demand violent redress. Duelling was a live social problem. Shakespeare’s immediate source was an Italian novella by Cinthio, “Un Capitano Moro”, published in Hecatommithi (1565). In Cinthio’s version the Moor has no name, the ensign has clearer motives and dies later under torture over another matter, and the murder of the Desdemona figure is more prolonged and more brutal. Shakespeare compresses and elevates the story, gives his Moor eloquence, names, and interior life, and builds the deception around the handkerchief, which he found in Cinthio.

Key Quotations

"I am not what I am."

Iago — Act 1, Scene 1

Iago’s perverse inversion of the biblical “I am that I am” announces his nature as pure dissimulation and frames the whole play as a tragedy of misread signs.

"An old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe."

Iago — Act 1, Scene 1

Iago rouses Brabantio with animal, racist and sexual imagery, establishing the Venetian racial vocabulary that shadows Othello from the opening scene.

"She lov’d me for the dangers I had pass’d, / And I lov’d her that she did pity them."

Othello — Act 1, Scene 3

Othello’s account of his courtship to the Senate defines the marriage as one founded on narrative and sympathy — a bond that Iago will later reframe as seduction.

"Put money in thy purse."

Iago — Act 1, Scene 3

Iago’s refrain to Roderigo, repeated insistently, shows how he manipulates through rhythm and repetition as much as content, and reduces his dupe to a wallet.

"Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!"

Cassio — Act 2, Scene 3

Cassio’s triple cry after his drunken disgrace dramatises the weight of honour culture on male identity and gives Iago the opening he needs to manipulate him.

"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on."

Iago — Act 3, Scene 3

Iago names the emotion he is deliberately planting, the hypocrisy sharpened by the vivid metaphor of jealousy as a predator that mocks what it consumes.

"Haply, for I am black."

Othello — Act 3, Scene 3

Othello’s first explanation for why Desdemona might betray him is racial self-doubt, exposing how thoroughly he has internalised the society’s prejudice.

"She did deceive her father, marrying you."

Iago — Act 3, Scene 3

Iago reactivates Brabantio’s parting warning, turning Desdemona’s original act of love into evidence of a general capacity for deception.

"O, now, for ever / Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!"

Othello — Act 3, Scene 3

Othello’s farewell-to-occupation speech shows how the poisoning of his personal life annihilates his public identity as a soldier and commander.

"I’ll tear her all to pieces."

Othello — Act 3, Scene 3

The sudden, violent image signals the collapse of Othello’s measured early-act eloquence into the fragmented, savage language of jealous rage.

"Think on thy sins."

Othello — Act 5, Scene 2

Othello enters the bedroom casting himself as a priest of justice rather than a murderer, a self-deception that the scene will dismantle line by line.

"Put out the light, and then put out the light."

Othello — Act 5, Scene 2

The repeated phrase equates extinguishing the candle with extinguishing Desdemona’s life, and hesitates with appalling clarity on the irreversibility of the second act.

"I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee."

Othello — Act 5, Scene 2

The chiasmus of kiss and kill compresses love and murder into a single line and shows Othello’s attempt to aestheticise what he has done.

"I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak."

Emilia — Act 5, Scene 2

Emilia’s refusal to be silenced by her husband makes her the play’s truth-teller and breaks the network of female silence that Iago has exploited.

"Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. / From this time forth I never will speak word."

Iago — Act 5, Scene 2

Iago’s final refusal to explain himself denies the audience closure and leaves his malignity permanently unresolved.

"Then must you speak / Of one that loved not wisely, but too well."

Othello — Act 5, Scene 2

Othello shapes his own epitaph, trying to reclaim dignity and narrative control over how Venice will remember him after his suicide.

"I took by the throat the circumcised dog, / And smote him, thus."

Othello — Act 5, Scene 2

Othello re-enacts a past military execution of a Turk and completes it on himself, splitting his identity into Venetian judge and foreign enemy in a single gesture.

"O Spartan dog, / More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea, / Look on the tragic loading of this bed."

Lodovico — Act 5, Scene 2

Lodovico’s final denunciation of Iago uses an image of ruthless animal violence, returning to the animal imagery with which Iago opened the play.

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Key moments

I am not what I am

Moment 1 of 17 · Act 1, Scene 1

Iago wakes Venice

A street in Venice, outside Brabantio's house, at night

Iago tells Roderigo that he hates Othello for promoting Cassio over him, and serves him only to serve himself. They wake the senator Brabantio at night and, in crude animal images, tell him that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with Othello.

“I am not what I am”

Who

Iago
Roderigo
Brabantio

Why it matters

The play opens on Iago's hatred and racist language before Othello has spoken, so the audience meets the hero first through his enemy's eyes.

Appearance vs realityRace and othernessManipulation and trust

Act 1, Scene 1: Iago wakes Venice. Iago tells Roderigo that he hates Othello for promoting Cassio over him, and serves him only to serve himself. They wake the senator Brabantio at night and, in crude animal images, tell him that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with Othello. "I am not what I am" The play opens on Iago's hatred and racist language before Othello has spoken, so the audience meets the hero first through his enemy's eyes.
Act 1, Scene 2: Othello will not hide. Iago warns Othello that Brabantio is coming for him. Othello refuses to hide, trusting his record, and when Brabantio arrives with armed men and accuses him of enchanting Desdemona with charms and drugs, Othello calmly stops the fight. "Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them." Othello's first appearance contradicts everything said about him in the opening scene: he is calm, dignified and in command.
Act 1, Scene 3: Before the senate. The Duke and senators, who need Othello to defend Cyprus against the Turks, hear him explain that Desdemona fell in love with the stories of his life. Desdemona confirms it and asks to go with him. Brabantio gives her up with a warning that she may deceive Othello as she deceived her father. "She lov’d me for the dangers I had pass’d, / And I lov’d her that she did pity them." Othello's public triumph, and the only time in the play that the marriage is judged fairly and in the open.
Act 1, Scene 3: Iago's plan is born. Iago mocks Roderigo's threat to drown himself and tells him again and again to put money in his purse. Alone, he says he hates Othello, repeats a rumour that Othello has slept with his wife, and begins to plan: he will persuade Othello that Cassio is too familiar with Desdemona. "I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light." The first soliloquy makes the audience Iago's confidant: the plot is announced before it begins.
Act 2, Scene 1: Storm and reunion on Cyprus. A storm wrecks the Turkish fleet and separates the Venetian ships. Cassio, then Desdemona with Iago and Emilia, and finally Othello land safely, and Othello greets Desdemona with overwhelming joy. Alone, Iago says he suspects both Othello and Cassio with his own wife, and resolves to put Othello into a jealousy that judgement cannot cure. "If it were now to die, / ’Twere now to be most happy" The height of the couple's happiness, spoken in words that sound like a premonition of death.
Act 2, Scene 3: The drunken brawl. On the night of the celebrations Iago gets Cassio drunk, and Roderigo provokes him into a fight in which Montano is wounded. Othello dismisses Cassio from his post. Iago advises the despairing Cassio to ask Desdemona to plead for him, and privately plans to make her pleading look like desire. "Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation!" Iago's first success: Cassio loses his place and Desdemona is drawn into the plot.
Act 3, Scene 3: The temptation begins. Desdemona promises Cassio she will plead for him. As Cassio slips away when Othello arrives, Iago mutters “Ha, I like not that”, and Desdemona pleads for Cassio. Then, by hints, echoes and warnings, Iago leads Othello to suspect them. Left alone, Othello wonders whether his race, his manners or his age have lost him his wife. "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on." The turning point of the play: a mind is changed within a single scene.
Act 3, Scene 3: The handkerchief is dropped. Othello pushes away the handkerchief with which Desdemona tries to bind his aching head, and it falls. Emilia picks it up, because Iago has often asked her to steal it, and gives it to him; he resolves to leave it in Cassio's lodging. "Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs of holy writ." A lost object becomes false evidence, and Emilia supplies it without knowing why.
Act 3, Scene 3: The vow of revenge. Othello turns on Iago and demands proof. Iago describes a night when Cassio spoke of Desdemona in his sleep and claims to have seen Cassio wipe his beard with her handkerchief. Othello kneels and vows revenge, demands Cassio's death within three days, and makes Iago his lieutenant. "Now art thou my lieutenant." Iago gains the place he wanted in Act 1, and the tragedy is sealed.
Act 3, Scene 4: The magic in the handkerchief. Othello asks Desdemona for the handkerchief and tells her an Egyptian charmer gave it to his mother. Desdemona insists it is not lost and pleads for Cassio, while Othello demands it again and again. Cassio, who found it in his room, gives it to Bianca to copy. "There’s magic in the web of it." The handkerchief gains a history and a magic, so to Othello its loss seems a sign in itself.
Act 4, Scene 1: The trance and the blow. Iago's crude insinuations drive Othello into a trance. Hidden, Othello watches Cassio laugh about Bianca, believes he is laughing about Desdemona, and then sees Bianca return the handkerchief to Cassio in a temper. When Lodovico arrives from Venice with orders recalling Othello, Othello strikes Desdemona in front of him. "Is this the noble Moor, whom our full senate / Call all in all sufficient?" The private collapse becomes public: Venice sees what Iago has made of its general.
Act 4, Scene 2: The accusation. Othello questions Emilia, then accuses Desdemona of adultery, speaking to Emilia as if she kept a brothel. Desdemona, bewildered, asks Iago to help her win Othello back, while Emilia guesses exactly what has happened without knowing it is her husband. Roderigo complains that he has been cheated, and Iago persuades him to kill Cassio. "I will be hang’d, if some eternal villain, / Some busy and insinuating rogue" Dramatic irony at its sharpest: Emilia describes the villain to his face.
Act 4, Scene 3: The willow song. Othello orders Desdemona to bed and tells her to dismiss Emilia. As Emilia helps her undress, Desdemona sings the willow song of her mother's maid Barbary, and the two women talk about unfaithful wives. Emilia argues that husbands who mistreat their wives teach them to do wrong. "Let husbands know / Their wives have sense like them" A quiet scene before the catastrophe, and the play's clearest statement of a woman's point of view.
Act 5, Scene 1: Ambush in the dark. In a dark street Roderigo attacks Cassio and is wounded, and Iago, unseen, cuts Cassio's leg. Othello hears Cassio's cries and leaves, believing Iago has kept his word. When Lodovico and Gratiano arrive and Iago returns with a light, he stabs the wounded Roderigo to silence him, and later tries to throw suspicion on Bianca. "He hath a daily beauty in his life / That makes me ugly." Iago's plan begins to fail: Cassio survives, and Iago must improvise in front of witnesses.
Act 5, Scene 2: The murder. Othello stands over the sleeping Desdemona, determined to kill her as an act of justice. She wakes, denies giving Cassio the handkerchief and begs to live, but he smothers her. Emilia calls at the door with news of the fight, and Desdemona revives long enough to say that she dies guiltless and to blame herself, then dies. "Put out the light, and then put out the light" The catastrophe: Othello believes he is making a sacrifice, and the scene shows him committing a murder.
Act 5, Scene 2: Emilia speaks. Othello tells Emilia that her husband told him of the affair. Emilia calls it a lie, raises the alarm, and in front of Montano, Gratiano and Iago reveals that she found the handkerchief and gave it to Iago. Iago stabs her and runs; she asks to be laid beside her mistress and dies insisting that Desdemona was chaste. "I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak." The truth is spoken, at the cost of her life, by the wife Iago treated as a fool.
Act 5, Scene 2: Othello's last words. Iago is brought back a prisoner; Othello wounds him but cannot kill him, and Iago refuses to say another word. Letters found on Roderigo confirm the plot. Othello asks to be remembered truly, stabs himself and dies upon a kiss. Cassio is left to govern Cyprus and Iago to be punished. "Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, / Nor set down aught in malice." The hero reclaims his voice as the villain gives up his, and the ending leaves the audience to judge them both.

Character map

Select a person to see their relationships. Rings mark who is in the moment above.

Othello · husband and wife · Desdemona
Married in secret and defended in public, their love rests on story and pity. Iago persuades Othello that Desdemona's kindness is desire, and the marriage ends with her murder and his suicide on the same bed.
Iago · ensign and general · Othello
Othello trusts Iago completely and calls him honest almost to the end; Iago follows him, in his own words, “to serve my turn upon him”. Their kneeling vow in Act 3, Scene 3 can be read as a dark parody of a marriage.
Iago · husband and wife · Emilia
Iago treats Emilia with contempt and uses her to get the handkerchief. She obeys him until she learns what he has done, then exposes him in front of witnesses, and he kills her.
Iago · manipulator and dupe · Roderigo
Iago takes Roderigo's money and jewels, promising him Desdemona, and uses him first to provoke Cassio and then to attack him. When Roderigo becomes a danger, Iago kills him.
Iago · rivals · Cassio
Iago resents Cassio's promotion and poses as his friend while ruining him. Cassio calls him honest and takes his advice, which is how Iago draws Desdemona into the plot.
Othello · general and lieutenant · Cassio
Cassio went between Othello and Desdemona during the courtship. Dismissed after the brawl and then suspected as Desdemona's lover, he ends the play in Othello's place as governor of Cyprus.
Desdemona · mistress and attendant · Emilia
Their trust grows as the men turn against them. In the willow scene they speak frankly about marriage, and Emilia dies defending her mistress's honour.
Brabantio · father and daughter · Desdemona
Brabantio believes his daughter could only have loved Othello through witchcraft, and gives her up bitterly. In Act 5, Scene 2 Gratiano reports that grief at the marriage killed him.
Brabantio · host turned accuser · Othello
Brabantio often invited Othello and asked for his stories, but turned against him on hearing of the marriage. His parting warning is the seed Iago plants again in Act 3.
Cassio · unequal lovers · Bianca
Bianca loves Cassio and is jealous of the handkerchief; Cassio laughs at the idea of marrying her. Iago uses her twice, as the subject of the conversation Othello misreads and as a suspect after the ambush.
Lodovico · cousins · Desdemona
Lodovico brings the letter recalling Othello and sees him strike Desdemona. As the voice of Venice he closes the play, ordering the bed hidden and Iago punished.

Characters as described

Each portrait is drawn from the words of the text, not from a film or a stage production. The numbers on the picture point to those words.

Othello

The words the numbers point to

I saw Othello’s visage in his mind
the man commands Like a full soldier
for I am black
declin’d Into the vale of years

Act 1, Scene 3; Act 2, Scene 1; Act 3, Scene 3

Desdemona says she saw his face in his mind, and Montano, who served under him, that he commands like a full soldier. Othello names his own colour only in Act 3, once Iago has taught him to doubt, and gives it, with his age, as a reason his wife might leave him.

The play gives his colour and his age, and says nothing of his dress. His face is cut as a print cuts anything dark, left in ink with the light cut out of it, and he wears the general’s long coat and sash that mark him out in the panels.

Desdemona

The words the numbers point to

Blush’d at herself
O my fair warrior
Spotted with strawberries
’twas that hand that gave away my heart

Act 1, Scene 3; Act 2, Scene 1; Act 3, Scenes 3 and 4

Her father remembers a girl so shy that she blushed at herself; the woman who speaks for herself before the senate is braver than he knew. The handkerchief was Othello’s first gift to her, and Iago makes it the false proof of her guilt.

The play gives her no hair, face or dress. She is drawn as the panels draw her, her dark hair dressed up and a band of lace at the neck of her gown; her blush is the one colour on her, and the strawberries are worked on the handkerchief in the same red.

Iago

The words the numbers point to

I am not what I am
I must show out a flag and sign of love
I have looked upon the world for four times seven years
didst contract and purse thy brow together

Act 1, Scenes 1 and 3; Act 3, Scene 3

Iago tells Roderigo the truth about himself in the first scene, and everyone else a lie. He is twenty-eight and Othello’s ancient, the officer who carries the flag, and the “sign of love” he shows the world is the loyalty of a soldier.

The play gives his age and his rank, and everyone in it calls him honest. He is drawn as the panels draw him, clean-shaven, in a close dark cap and a baldric; the flag is his office, and it is plain because the play gives it no device.

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