History Theatre / Othello

* ExactEavesdropping: At one point Othello hears what appears to be Cassio bragging about sleeping with Desdemona. Cassio's actually talking about his mistress, Bianca. A {{justified}} use of this trope as Iago was talking to Cassio at the time and deliberately guiding him to talk about his mistress.

* TalkingInYourSleep: Iago tells Othello that he knows that Cassio has an affair with Desdemona because he heard him talking about it in his sleep, along with some more... physical demonstration.

* ATragedyOfImpulsiveness: The title character, with only circumstantial evidence supplied by a truly nasty ManipulativeBastard, believes that his wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him. He proceeds plots to have Cassio, her supposed lover (he isn't), killed, and ultimately kills Desdemona himself. When the truth is revealed, it drives him to suicide. There's a reason why 'Othello' is also known as 'The Tragedy of the Handkerchief'.

* VorpalPillow: Othello kills Desdemona by smothering her with her own pillows. This is the closes they came to getting in bed together.

** Othello's murder of Desdemona. Even he's aware of how horrible it is, and he clearly has a difficult time going through with it. But he does, the truthfulness and severity of her nonexistent crime be dammed.

* NoAccountingForTaste: Iago and Emilia have a very unhappy marriage with him frequently making misogynistic jokes in her presence. One of the early results of her bad treatment is that Emilia puts forward some, for the time, very surprising ideas about whether a woman could ever be justified in cheating on her husband. Emilia feels far more loyalty and affection towards Desdemona than her husbands (which in the end leads to Iago's downfall).

** Brabantio isn't as villainous as Roderigo and especially not on Iago's level, but he's still quite quick to draw swords against Othello due to being horrified at his daughter being with a Moor and even after learning that they're genuinely in love, he completely disowns her.

* EveryoneHasStandards: A villainous example. Brabantio is stated to have been fond of Othello and would invite him over to hear of his stories, Othello even saying that his father in law loved him. But once Brabantio's heard that the Moor has married his daughter, he shows that he's a racist {{Jerkass}} whose absolutely disgusted by his daughter marrying a man of a different race. So basically, Brabantio has no problem being nice to Othello and treating him as a TokenBlackFriend, but he's completely averse to the idea of a family member who's not his own race.

* FlawExploitation: Iago is the ''master'' of this, playing Brabantio's racism and paternalism, Cassio's low alcohol tolerance, Othello's [[GreenEyedMonster jealousy]], and Roderigo's lust (and lack of grey matter) all to his own advantage.

** Desdemona has promised Cassio that she'll plead his case to Othello to try and get him re-instated. Perfectly fine. Desdemona proceeds to do so, insistently and constantly, ignoring timing, tact, and Othello's mood at any given moment. She is also avoidant about missing the handkerchief when being direct could have helped her standing with Othello.

* IgnoredConfession: Iago flat out tells Othello that he shouldn't believe anything Iago says and that it's all probably lies anyway. Which of course just leads Othello to trust him more, which ''of course'' was [[ReversePsychology Iago's plan all along.]]

* BittersweetEnding: Leans heavily on the bitter side: Iago is taken to face justice, but Desdemona, Emilia, and Othello are dead, Cassio possibly crippled, Bianca is distraught, and now the white characters are both back in charge, with their prejudices reinforced by Othello's actions.

* AssholeVictim: Roderigo is a racist who remorselessly goes after Othello to be with his wife, who doesn't love him in the slightest. Compared to Iago's other victims, it can be hard to shed any tears for Roderigo.

* AmbiguouslyBrown: It's very hard to tell whether Othello is supposed to be a Moor of Moroccan descent or a Sub-Saharan African. And he was originally played by a white actor in blackface, which doesn't help at all. He is called "black" a few times, but that term back then was far broader than it is in modern Anglophone countries and could even simply refer to pale-skinned Northern Europeans with dark hair. For what it's worth, modern researchers are leaning towards the former, as Othello's appearance seems to be based an emissary from Morocco who showed up in England a couple years before the play was completed to forge an Anglo-Moroccan alliance. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_el-Ouahed_ben_Messaoud Said emissary, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, was a caucasian, olive-skinned Berber.]]

** "The Ensign's wife" (Emilia) was in on the murder plot from the beginning. Here, while she steals the handkerchief, she has no idea what Iago plans to do with it and utterly appalled when she learns the truth.