ENG201 paper 2 due May 14

Paper 2 — 1000 words, MLA format, email it to me at gklock@bmcc.cuny.edu by May 14

The following is a speech from the play we read. I want you to tell me about it using the terms we use in this class: tell me what the speech is about, and tell me about irony, metaphor, and theme, including author and audience. (For theme it also might be useful to connect this speech to another moment in the play, but you can just go from memory if you can’t quickly find the part you want to discuss).  

This is the speech Othello gives before he kills himself. Othello is speaking to his bosses. 

Soft you; a word or two before you go.                                  Soft you = wait

I have done the state some service, and they know't.

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,                           pray you = beg you

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,                                extenuate = make seem less serious

Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak              aught = anything ; malice = hatred

Of one that loved not wisely but too well;

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought

Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away                               see note

Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdued eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,                           Albeit = although 

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this;

And say besides, that in Aleppo once,                        Aleppo = far away battlefield 

Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,                      see note

I took by the throat the circumcised dog,                   see note

And smote him, thus. [Stabs himself]                         smote = killed

Notes

·       “Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away / Richer than his tribe” — this is about Native Americans who did not understand that Europeans considered pearls to be treasure

·      “medicinal gum” — tree sap, which people believed was medicine

·       “Turban’d Turk” — a Muslim foreigner (where circumcision is a normal thing; it was not in Venice during the time of the play)

·      “Venetian” — from Venice, where the people he is talking to are from. 

IMPORTANT COVID-19 NOTE: this was originally supposed to be an in-class essay where I could make sure you didn’t use the internet for your first draft. Because of COVID I can’t do that. I considered making the assignment here very unusual so that it would be impossible for you to plagiarise, but I don’t feel like twisting this into knots to defeat you, because being unable to do the wrong thing is not the same as deciding to to the right thing (and that is a whole philosophical issue on its own so have fun thinking about that). 

So I am just asking you, as a personal favour to me, to use your brains and not the internet to do this assignment — and if you do use the internet you need to be clear where you are using it with phrases such as “According this This Expert Guy on This Website” and then you can say what he said before coming back to say what you want to say. If you need help with this check out the MLA Citation guide in the syllabus. 

One thing I would love to see here, and that would help me see that this was really your work would be if you could connect this speech to anything in modern society or movies, TV shows, comic, music etc that you are interested in and if you could use anything from my videos in your paper just to show me that you learned something from them. 

Make this 1000 words long and in MLA format and email it to me at gklock@bmcc.cuny.edu