In the introduction to his edition of the play in The Complete ...

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In the introduction to his edition of the play in The Complete Signet Classic Shakespeare, Alvin Kernan remarks:Othello is probably the most neatly, the most formally constructed of Shakespeares plays. Every character is, for example, balanced by another similar or contrasting character. Desdemona is balanced by her opposite, Iago; love and concern for others at one end of the scale, hatred and concern for self at the other.
 
  Besides Desdemona and Iago, what other pairs of characters strike balances?

Question 2

How essential to the play is the fact that Othello is a black man, a Moor,and not a native of Venice?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

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Answer to Question 1

Kernans introduction continues:
The true and loyal soldier Cassio balances the false and traitorous soldier Iago.... The essential purity of Desdemona stands in contrast to the more practical view of chastity held by Emilia, and her view in turn is illuminated by the workaday view of sensuality held by the courtesan Bianca.... Iagos success in fooling Othello is but the culmination of a series of such betrayals that includes the duping of Roderigo, Brabantio, and Cassio.

Answer to Question 2

• Othello is an outsider, one not totally familiar with the ways of the Venetians. Both Iago and Brabantio at various points suggest to his face that there is something unnatural about a beautiful, socially prominent young white womanone besieged with suitors of a like kindfalling in love with a middle-aged black man. All of this makes it easier for Iago to play on Othellos latent insecurities and stir his self-doubts; and so the fact seems quite essential to the plot. (See especially I, iii, 6066, 96107, and III, iii, 21523, 24453, 27484.)

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