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Your third essay will focus on William Shakespeare's play Othello. As with the previous essays, you will choose a topic, several of which I have listed below. Your thesis statement will be a statement of what you think Shakespeare is saying about that topic. This should be an opinion that anyone who has read the play could possibly disagree with. Therefore, be sure to make your thesis arguable, but don't make it far-fetched. Once again, you will write at least one thousand words to support your thesis. In your discussion, you do not have to use outside sources, but if you do, you will have to document them. If you use sources, do not use dictionaries, the Bible, other fiction (including other plays). As in the past, stay away from Shakespeare's biography. Document those sources according to the MLA format that I discussed with you in class and that can be found on my website under "documenation."

If you don't like any of the topics I've listed below, then choose your own; however, I want to approve a topic that is not listed below. One other point: as I've stated in class, there is no sense spending time reading and thinking about the play, writing the essay, and then turning it in without having thoroughly proofread it.

Remember that the thesis must be an opinion of what you believe Shakespeare is saying about the topic, not your views about the topic. Use incidents and lines from the play to support your argument. When you quote lines from the text, document them according to these guidelines:

Introduce the quotation by letting your reader know who is speaking and to whom.
Use present tense verbs in your introduction. Remember that the play is always with us.
Example: In answer to Desdemona's question about are there cheating wives, Emilia replies, "Yes, a dozen, and as many / To th' vantage as would store the world they played for. / But I do think it is their husbands' faults / If wives do fall" (4.3.85-88). The numbers in parenthesis represent act four, scene three, lines 85-88. The / indicates where one line ends and another begins.
If you choose a quotation of longer than four lines of poetry, then separate the quotation ten spaces from the left margin of your text. You should not use quotation marks for a long quotation. The indentation tells the reader that you are quoting. Such a quotation would look like the following:

Just before Othello murders Desdemona, he tries to justify taking her life in the following soliloquy:

It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.

Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!

It is the cause. Yet I'll not shed her blood,

Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow,

And smooth as monumental alabaster. (5.2.1-5)

If you are quoting passages that are in prose, then don't use the / between lines.
A maximum of 15 % of your paper should appear in quotation marks--this includes your scholarly sources, if you choose to use them--and keep your long quotations to a minimum.

The above form of documentation is referred to as in-text documentation. To complement it, you will also have to include a works cited page at the end of your paper. The citation for your Shakespeare play will appear as follows:

Shakespeare, William. Othello. The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays and Sonnets. Ed. Stepen

1. Throughout the years, the character Iago has been an enigma to Shakespearean scholars. To be sure, Shakespeare gives reasons for Iago's villainy--he was overlooked for a promotion, he suspects that Othello has slept with Emilia, and he himself is in love with Desdemona--but the more one thinks about Iago, the more these seem like excuses rather than reasons. Write an essay in which you argue convincingly what Iago's motivation is for his vengeance.

2. Othello has a heroic background as a general. The government of Venice has placed great faith in his judgment. Montano, the out-going governor of Cyprus, praises Othello's character and leadership. What is it, then, in a man so well-respected, that makes him so vulnerable to Iago's machinations that he turns his love for Desdemona into jealousy and hatred?

4. In her book Shakespeare After All, Marjorie Garber says that Othello lives behind his public image too much to acknowledge that he, too, can be suseptible to passion. She says that Othello "distrusts the personal [self], and takes refuge in the public self" (603). This denial, she says, is at least partially responsible for his tragedy. Argue for or against this idea.

5. As we mentioned in class, Desdemona is probably fifteen or sixteen. She is innocent and naive. As Marjorie Garber remarks, she "is perhaps flawed in being too flawless for the world of tragedy" (604). Create an argument in which you prove that Desdemona is responsible for the tragedy that occurs in the play.