Othello Opening Scene

The effect Shakespeare wants the opening scene to have on the audience is to make them stick to the play by making them feel like they are part of it and to raise their curiosity. The opening scene also serves as an introduction of different characters, themes and the atmosphere to the play as a whole.

First of all, Shakespeare brings the audience into the play by starting it with an argument, which attracts the audience’s attention because it is not the usual way that an opening should be. The audience will get more involved to the play when they get more interested to it.

Secondly, Shakespeare uses different kind of language in the opening scene to show the emotion or the relationship between people to the audience. For example, when Brabantio knows about the marriage of Desdemona and Othello, broken sentence structure is used in his lines to show his mind is not functioning and organized well because he feels so shocked and distraught about the fact. Blank verse is transformed to prose when Iago is talking to Roderigo instead of Brabantio. This shows the difference in relationships and allows the audience to have better understanding about the situations.

On the other hand, the opening scene provides the audience with clues which hint at the outcome of Othello. Though it mainly introduces the vice characters, and the audience don’t exactly know who Othello is, the scene has actually established Othello’s and Iago’s relationships, evoked the desire on the revenge of Iago, and foreshadowed a bit about what is going to happen. It also acts as an introduction of different themes of the play. The biggest theme of the play jealousy has already brought out from the first scene. It is clearly seen that the way Iago feels jealous about Othello and Michael Cassio, which slowly builds all the hatred and his path of destroying Othello’s life. The theme of race is also brought out. Iago keeps using animal imagery like ‘Barbary horse’ and phrases like ‘thick lips’ to name Othello and show no respect to him by connoting the Moor is a savage, while Brabantio strongly disagrees with the marriage of Desdemona and Othello since Othello is a black. The problem of gender and marriage is shown from the case of Desdemona – woman seems to have less rights and her marriage should be assign by her father, who see his daughter's elopement as a kind of theft of his personal property. Moreover, Iago has mentioned that there are two kinds of servants – one is loyal but rather stupid because they are devoting while another kind looks loyal but actually is just working for their own benefits. This shows the theme of appearance verses reality – how reality can be so different with the whole thing looks or seems.