Othello Journals: Benchmark

Journal #1: 

Now will I question Cassio of Bianca,

A huswife that by selling her desires

Buys herself bread and clothes. It is a creature

That dotes on Cassio, as ’tis the strumpet’s plague

To beguile many and be beguiled by one.

He, when he hears of her, cannot refrain

From the excess of laughter. Here he comes.

As he shall smile, Othello shall go mad.

And his unbookish jealousy must construe

Poor Cassio’s smiles, gestures, and light behavior

Quite in the wrong.—How do you now, lieutenant?

Before Iago begins talking to himself, he and Othello are talking. Then he begins to talk to himself going on and on about Cassio and Bianca's relationship. He talks about how Bianca is a prostitute and gets clothes and food from being like this. He goes on to say that Cassio gets all fizzy and giggly inside, when she is around. I thought that at first Iago and Othello were going to talk about Cassio and Bianca's relationship together, but then Othello disappears, and Iago is just venting on how he feels about their relationship to himself, he wishes people were there but just wants to get it out. 

Journal #2:

In Act 3 scene 1, Emilia is talking to Cassio and he is begging to speak to Desdemona. Finally, Emilia lets them talk, and they have a intense conversation involving Othello and Cassio's relationships with them, they agree that their husbands are acting weird, for no obvious reason. In the play, Emilia is kind of like an extra person who is just there. She didn't come into the play until like midway through. She was like an extra set of eyes and ears through the whole thing. She always had something to say, and I'm not convinced that people actually care what she has to say and listen to her. She sees everything that is going on first hand, and that gives her a better opinion on it. For the most part, I think that every character sees Emilia the way she sees herself. They see her as annoying and always butting into everything thats going on. They don't hate her or tell her to go away or anything, but they don't listen to her either. They just see her as an extra, like she sees herself, but that doesn't really bother her. When we watch Emilia on her own, I noticed a lot of different things. I noticed her before as like a semi-important person who people really valued and cared for. Although when I looked into her more on my own, my opinion changed. It was so strange that now she came off as a nobody, who really didn't make too much of a difference in "Othello". 

Journal #3: 

Throughout Desdemona's life she didn't have many struggles or things that she had to spend hours trying to fix or figure out just the right thing to say or do. Her dad was always very protective and led her in the right direction for everything. She never had the chance to make her own decisions, so when it became time for her to decide what to do about Othello and the handkerchief she was lost. She wanted to tell the truth but she also still wanted Othello to be able to trust her. She blurted out that she hadn't lost the special gem of his mother in anticipation that she would be able to find it within a timely matter. Unfortunately, she had no idea where it was. If Desdemona was raised differently I don't think she would have ran into a problem like this where she was lost and confused on whether to lie or tell the simple truth to someone who loved her. 

Journal #4:

My character, Iago, doesn't move much, because for most of the scene he is just talking, but towards the end he has to hide and while he is hiding he shouts something that could jeopardize his life, but since he is in hiding, he screams it and is fine. I have to bring in a coin like maybe make a big coin and lie it to my pants so that you can see it. I'm having that coin, because during my part Roderigo is talking about how he has a coin and like a coin purse with it. It's not a big important part of the story, but it's something that adds a relation between the text and the acting. The thing thats going to make my group stand out is that we have memorized most of our lines and we have spent a lot of time going over and over what we are going to do. We have planed where we are going to stand and then where we are going to move throughout the whole scene.  

Journal #5: 

My character, Iago says a lot in our performance and much of it is important but one line really stuck out to me. While he is hiding from Brabantio he shouts “Zounds sir, you’re robbed, for shame put on your gown! Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe! Arise I say!” He was tell him to wake up and put his robe on and that now at this very moment Othello (black ram) could be having sex with Desdemona (white ewe). That is important because Brabantio didn’t know about Othello and his beloved daughter, so when he heard this he was very angry and upset. Iago and Brabantio knew each other, so thats why Iago was hiding from him while he was screaming this revealing information. During this whole scene, Roderigo is scared of Brabantio and if very timid, but on the other hand Iago is blankly going out and saying what needed to be said. Though, when he hides and shouts this, it makes it seem like he is scared of what Brabantio might say to him, but really he’s not, he just doesn’t want Brabantio to seem him since he knew him. 

My groups performance did go really well in my opinion, I wish I could have remembered my lines better and not have looked at the paper as much, because I think that would have made it much better, since my other group members memorized all of their lines. Because they memorized all of their lines, it freed them up to move around the stage more and have more emotion and interaction with the audience. Preforming the play really helped me understand better, since I am a visual learner it was easy for me to just watch and act out what was going on instead of just hearing or reading the words. It is much easier for me to understand, when there is interaction and moving and things of that sort of thing it laid out everything in my head for me, because while reading the book in class and listening to the audio, I knew what was going on but I couldn’t visualize anything, but with the acting and the scene I could.