Quiz guide:  55-72 (Thursday)

• In Chapter 1, Maguire gives several examples of how characters misread and misunderstand each other. One of them is “speaking stoutly” (the beginning of today’s reading). Explain what that means with the example in the book
• Give an example of how the play “stresses acts of speaking and listening.”
• Give an example of how Desdemona and Emilia talk while “speaking different languages.”
• How is Iago’s role “full of stage directions”? Give an example.
• How is Othello’s last speech to the Senate like his firsts speech?
• What does the book mean by the “duality of words” and their connection to “things”? Give an example.
• Why is language “dangerous” in tragedy?
• What is the example of analepsis used by the book?
• The book says Iago’s riddling often uses a form of “to be.” Give an example.
  

129-154 (Tueday)

• When the book says Othello “is unusually conscious of difference, doubleness, binaries, borders, …” etc., what does it mean? Give an example that isn’t the first one in the list that follows.
• How does Iago, who swears by Janus, deal with “linguistic doubles”?
• How is Iago like clowns in other Shakespeare plays?
• What does Iago “appropriate” from the clown in this play?
• Since “puns” didn’t technically exist in Shakespeare’s time, the author uses the term “paronomasia.” How are pun and paronomasia different?
• How is Iago the “human embodiment of a pun”?
• The book says that “Othello’s identity is founded on metaphor.” Explain.
• The section “Slipper and subtle” language says Iago lies without lying through repetition, negative avowal, and hypothesis. Give an example and explain how he uses these linguistic tactics “dishonestly” or exploits their ambiguity.
• How does Iago “triumph over his general” by conquering Othello’s “controlled syntax”? Give an example.
• Give an example of how Iago “destabilizes the verb ‘to be.’”

Essay: Modal verbs were used to create the “potential mood” in Shakespeare (today, we would call it the subjunctive mood). Why, in your opinion, does Coriolanus object to Sicinius’s word “shall” in the passage quoted at the end of today’s selection? Try using the word “shall” to describe someone else’s actions (those of a friend or a roommate, for example). For example, you could say, "You shall not complete your homework" or "you shall marry a photographer" or "you shall keep your voice down." What does using that modal word change meaning? How do others react to it? Now try some other modals ("may," "would," "would have," etc.) on other people. Don't explain. Write an essay about modals in the Coriolanus passage and in your own experiment.