What does Kiernan Ryan believe the play is a 'searing critique' of?
Racial and sexual injustice.
What evidence does Ryan provide to substantiate this view?
Because Desdemona and Othellos relationship falls apart due to ideas about race and sexuality that where ingrained into their society and therefore themselves.
What does Ryan believe is Brabantio's main fear regarding Othello and Desdemona's relationship?
Brabantio argues that treating inferiors as equals means there’s nothing to stop the underclass or outcasts of society taking higher places and having power over us.
Which quotations are used to demonstrate that characters 'speech is infected with contempt for "the Moor"?
‘Even now, now, very now, an old black ram / Is tupping your white ewe’
‘the thick-lips'
'Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou'
'Your son-in-law is far more fair than black’
What type of jealousy is shown to be the 'rule' in Venice?
Sexual jealousy
What item does Ryan believe links the three couples?
The handkerchief
Why does Ryan believe Iago is so successful in making Othello believe that Desdemona has been unfaithful?
Because Othello's insecurities are not only supported by Iago but by the society hes living in, he also shares a warped view of women and female sexuality with Iago and other men.
Which two quotations does Ryan use to show this to be true?
‘I told him what I thought, and told no more / Than what he found himself was apt and true’
‘Demand me nothing; what you know, you know’
Summarise why Ryan believes that Iago DOES NOT possess 'motiveless malignity'.
He believes that Iago is not the fundamental or sole cause of the tragedy he just initiates it because Othello and Desdemona have made a mockery of the principles of social, sexual and racial hierarchy on which Iago's identity and sense of self-worth depend , he creates a plot to put them back in the place he thinks they belong. Iago's flaws simply mirror the flaws in society.
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