Does Iago kill Roderigo? He is a dissolute Venetian lusting after Othello's wife Desdemona. Roderigo has opened his purse to Iago in the mistaken belief that Iago is using his money to pave the way to Desdemona's bed. When the assassination of Michael Cassio runs amiss, Iago fatally wounds Roderigo. What happens to Cassio in Othello? Role in Othello Iago uses Cassio in his scheme to destroy Othello; Iago insinuates throughout that Cassio is having an affair with Othello's wife, Desdemona.
Cassio retaliates and mortally wounds Roderigo, but is himself stabbed from behind by Iago. His leg is wounded, but he survives. What orders does Lodovico bring for Othello?
Othello must sail to Turkey and conquer the kingdom. Othello must dismiss Iago and reinstate Cassio. Othello must barricade Cyprus and prepare for an attack. Why are Roderigo and Iago arguing when the play begins? Roderigo paid Iago to help him woo Desdemona, but it hasn't worked.
Iago thought that Roderigo would help overthrow Othello, but he won't. Iago believes that Roderigo has seduced Emilia, but he hasn't. What does Emilia tell Othello about Desdemona? Desdemona tells Emilia to lay her wedding sheets on the bed for that night. At Desdemona's request, Emilia brings in Iago, and Desdemona tries to find out from him why Othello has been treating her like a whore.
Iago tells Roderigo that Cassio is being assigned to Othello's place. How did Desdemona fall in love with Othello?
By his own admission, Desdemona fell in love with Othello's bravery and for surviving many sorrows and tribulations. Iago sneers that he bleeds but is not killed. Seeking some kind of final reconciliation, Othello asks Cassio how he came by the handkerchief, and Cassio replies that he found it in his chamber.
Lodovico tells Othello that he must come with them back to Venice, and that he will be stripped of his power and command and put on trial.
He reminds them of a time in Aleppo when he served the Venetian state and slew a malignant Turk. Lodovico prepares to leave for Venice to bear the news from Cyprus to the duke and senate.
In the first scene of Act V, we see the utterly futile end of Roderigo and his plans. Roderigo was first persuaded that he need only follow Othello and Desdemona to Cyprus in order to win over Desdemona, then that he need only disgrace Cassio, then that he need only kill Cassio. Now, Roderigo, stabbed by the man who gave him false hope, dies empty-handed in every possible way. Roderigo is certainly a pathetic character, evidenced by the fact that he does not even succeed in killing Cassio.
Because of this, Iago is forced to bloody his own hands, also for the first time in the play. Displaying a talent for improvisation, Iago takes the burden of action into his own hands because he has no other choice. Neither Lodovico, Graziano, nor Cassio shows the slightest suspicion that Iago is somehow involved in the mayhem.
But spotted sheets also suggests wedding-night sex. As Othello prepares to kill Desdemona at the beginning of the final scene, the idea of killing her becomes curiously intertwined, in his mind, with the idea of taking her virginity.
Ironically, despite being convinced of her corruption, part of him seems to view her as still intact, like an alabaster statue or an unplucked rose. Furthermore, the reader may recall that the all-important handkerchief is dyed with the blood of dead virgins. The wedding sheets would prove one way or another whether the marriage was consummated, depending on whether they were stained with blood. After Desdemona wakes, the scene progresses in a series of wavelike rushes that leave the audience as stunned and disoriented as the characters onstage.
Astonishingly, Desdemona finds breath again to speak four final lines after Emilia enters the bedroom. She speaks another five lines before dying for good. Before he kills himself, Othello invokes his prior services to the state, asking Lodovico and the other Venetians to listen to him for a moment. At this point, he is resolved to die, and his concern is with how he will be remembered.
As he continues, though, he addresses an important problem: will his crime be remembered as the fall from grace of a Venetian Christian, or an assault on Venice by an ethnic and cultural outsider?
Finally, he recalls a time in which he defended Venice by smiting an enemy Turk, and then stabs himself in a reenactment of his earlier act, thereby casting himself as both insider and outsider, enemy of the state and defender of the state.
Othello identifies himself firmly with Christian culture, yet his belief in fate and the charmed handkerchief suggest ties to a pagan heritage. Despite the fact that his Christianity seems slightly ambiguous, however, Shakespeare repeatedly casts Othello as Christ and Iago as Judas or, ironically, as Peter.
These echoes of the Gospel suggest that Othello and his tragedy are somehow central to the Christian world of Venice.
Ace your assignments with our guide to Othello! It is the stability of this very patriarchal society that Othello is committed to protecting, though he must kill his wife to do it. His stand for patriarchy is, however, also a barely disguised act of revenge for sexual betrayal; the political and the personal coalesce with particular force in cases of sexual misprision.
To address the murder of Desdemona it is necessary to consider the political implications of the killing of a woman as an act and a means of restabilizing and reifying a social order that is contingent on dominance and submission. The method of the killing of Desdemona has a special resonance in Shakespeare. Of the three murders of heroic women, this one is the most protracted, detailed, minutely observed. Unable to display preview.
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