Jealousy, Possession and Control

If romantic love is the positive pole of Paper 1 Section A, then jealousy, possession, and control represent its dark counterpart. Shakespeare is fascinated by what happens when love becomes distorted — when desire turns to obsession, affection to domination, trust to paranoia. Across all four set plays, Shakespeare explores the mechanisms by which love is corrupted, producing some of the most psychologically penetrating writing in the English language.

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Othello's Jealousy

Othello's jealousy is the most extensively dramatised in the Shakespeare canon. It is also the most debated: is Othello a naturally jealous man whose insecurity Iago exploits, or a noble man destroyed by a villain of extraordinary cunning?

The Temptation Scene (3.3)

Act 3 Scene 3 is one of the longest and most important scenes in Shakespeare. Over the course of approximately 480 lines, Iago transforms Othello from a man secure in his love to a man consumed by jealous rage. The key techniques:

Technique	Example	Effect
Insinuation	"Ha! I like not that" (3.3.35) — a throwaway comment about Cassio leaving Desdemona	Plants suspicion without making a direct accusation; Othello's imagination does the work
Echoing	"Indeed?" / "Honest, my lord?" / "Think, my lord?" — Iago repeats Othello's words back as questions	Creates the impression that Iago knows more than he is saying; forces Othello to articulate his own fears
False reluctance	"I am not bound to that all slaves are free to" (3.3.138) — Iago pretends he does not want to speak	Makes his eventual "revelations" seem more credible because they appear involuntary
Appeal to knowledge	"In Venice they do let God see the pranks / They dare not show their husbands" (3.3.206–07)	Uses racial and cultural prejudice to undermine Othello's trust in Desdemona
The handkerchief	"Have you not sometimes seen a handkerchief / Spotted with strawberries in your wife's hand?" (3.3.438–39)	Transforms an innocent object into "ocular proof" — the physical evidence Othello demands

The Language of Jealousy

Othello's language undergoes a devastating transformation. Compare the eloquent verse of Act 1:

"She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them." (1.3.168–69)

with the fragmented, bestial imagery of Act 4:

"Lie with her? lie on her? — We say lie on her when they belie her. — Lie with her — Loss, handkerchief — confessions — handkerchief!" (4.1.35–37)

The collapse from verse into prose, from measured sentences into ejaculatory fragments, from human language into animal imagery ("Goats and monkeys!" — 4.1.263) — this is Shakespeare dramatising the destruction of a man's identity through jealousy.

AO5 — Critical Interpretations: A.C. Bradley argues that Othello is "the most romantic figure among Shakespeare's heroes" and that his tragedy lies in the destruction of a fundamentally noble nature. F.R. Leavis counters that Othello's supposed nobility is self-dramatisation — that he has a "habit of self-approving self-dramatisation" that makes him susceptible to Iago. Edward Said and postcolonial critics read Othello's vulnerability as inseparable from his racial otherness in Venetian society.

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Petruchio's "Taming"

The Taming of the Shrew presents love as a power struggle in which one partner systematically dominates the other. Petruchio's methods include:

Method	Example	Analysis
Contradicting reality	"I say it is the moon that shines so bright" (4.5.4) when the sun is shining	Forces Katherine to deny the evidence of her own senses — a form of psychological domination (sometimes compared to gaslighting)
Denying food and sleep	"And with the clamour keep her still awake" (4.1.189)	Petruchio explicitly compares this to hawk-taming: subduing a wild creature through deprivation
Redefining identity	Petruchio insists Katherine is mild, sweet, and compliant even when she is furious	By refusing to engage with her anger, he denies her the identity she has constructed for herself
Controlling clothing	He rejects the cap and gown Katherine wants (4.3)	Clothing is identity; controlling what Katherine wears is controlling how she presents herself to the world

The Falconry Metaphor

Petruchio's soliloquy in 4.1 makes his strategy explicit:

"My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,
And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged,
For then she never looks upon her lure." (4.1.177–79)

The metaphor reduces Katherine to an animal to be trained. The verb "stoop" — a technical falconry term meaning to fly toward the lure — makes submission Katherine's destiny.