Common Core: 11th Grade English Language Arts : Complex or contested usage: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.11-12.1.B
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for Common Core: 11th Grade English Language Arts
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Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Complex Or Contested Usage: Ccss.Ela Literacy.L.11 12.1.B
Passage adapted from Othello by William Shakespeare (1604)
IAGO: Three great ones of the city,
In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,
Off-capp'd to him: and, by the faith of man,
I know my price, I am worth no worse a place:
But he; as loving his own pride and purposes, 5
Evades them, with a bombast circumstance
Horribly stuff'd with epithets of war;
And, in conclusion,
Nonsuits my mediators; for, 'Certes,' says he,
'I have already chose my officer.' 10
And what was he?
Forsooth, a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,
A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife;
That never set a squadron in the field, 15
Nor the division of a battle knows
More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,
Wherein the toga’d consuls can propose
As masterly as he: mere prattle, without practise,
Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election: 20
And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other grounds
Christian and heathen, must be be-lee'd and calm'd
By debitor and creditor: this counter-caster,
He, in good time, must his lieutenant be, 25
And I—God bless the mark!—his Moorship's ancient.
In line 9, the phrase “my mediators” refers to which of the underlined and bolded phrases?
"his Moorship" (line 26)
"a spinster" (line 17)
"Three great ones of the city" (line 1)
“One Michael Cassio” (line 13)
"Three great ones of the city" (line 1)
“My mediators” refers to the interlocutors who intervened unsuccessfully on the speaker’s (Iago’s) behalf to help him obtain the position of Lieutenant. These were the "three great ones of the city" who personally advocated on Iago's behalf (lines 1-2). “One Michael Cassio” refers to the officer who was made Lieutenant instead of the Iago. Iago is upset that he has not been chosen; he uses the derogatory title “His Moorship” to refer to the general who has granted the position of Lieutenant to Cassio instead of the speaker. The "spinster" he references is only mentioned as a metaphor for Cassio's lack of experience, it does not reference an actual person.
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