Othello

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Bate, Jonathan (ed.), Rasmussen, Eric (ed.) and Shakespeare, William "Othello", The RSC Shakespeare, The Random House Publishing Group, 2009, p.3. Othello was not published in Shakespeare's lifetime. [42] The first published version of the play was a quarto in 1622 (usually abbreviated to "Q"), which was followed a year later by the play's appearance in the First Folio (usually abbreviated to "F"). [43]

Othello and Iago are two of the five longest parts in the Shakespeare canon. At 1097 lines, Iago's is the larger of the two: only Hamlet (in Hamlet) and Richard (in Richard III) are longer. [138] Genre [ edit ]All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them: Othello being allocated to the King's Company's repertoire. [192] These patents stated that "all the women's parts to be acted in either of the said two companies for the time to come may be performed by women". The first professional acting appearance by a woman on the English stage was that of Desdemona in Othello on 8th December 1660, although history does not record who took the role. [193] [194] Margaret Hughes is the first woman known to have played Desdemona. [195] Othello’s lieutenant. Cassio is a young and inexperienced soldier, whose high position is much resented by Iago. Truly devoted to Othello, Cassio is extremely ashamed after being implicated in a drunken brawl on Cyprus and losing his place as lieutenant. Iago uses Cassio’s youth, good looks, and friendship with Desdemona to play on Othello’s insecurities about Desdemona’s fidelity. Rosenfeld, Colleen Ruth "Shakespeare's Nobody" in Orlin, Lena Cowen (ed.) "Othello - The State of Play" The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, pp.257-279 at p.269.

It is based on the story Un Capitano Moro ("A Moorish Captain") by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565. A terminus a quo (i.e. the earliest year in which it could have been written) is given by the fact that one of its sources, Holland's translation of Pliny's Natural History, was published in 1601. [35] IAGO from behind wounds CASSIO in the leg, and exit CASSIO I am maim'd for ever. Help, ho! murder! murder! A jealous suitor of Desdemona. Young, rich, and foolish, Roderigo is convinced that if he gives Iago all of his money, Iago will help him win Desdemona’s hand. Repeatedly frustrated as Othello marries Desdemona and then takes her to Cyprus, Roderigo is ultimately desperate enough to agree to help Iago kill Cassio after Iago points out that Cassio is another potential rival for Desdemona.Act 2, scene 1 The Turkish fleet is destroyed in a storm, while Cassio and then Desdemona, Emilia, and Iago arrive safely at Cyprus. Desdemona anxiously waits for Othello. When his ship arrives, he and Desdemona joyfully greet each other. Iago, putting his plot into action, persuades Roderigo that Desdemona is in love with Cassio and that Roderigo should help get Cassio dismissed from the lieutenancy. Shakespeare certainly put both jealousy and politics into the plot, and young people who begin their path towards political understanding of the world now, post-2016, feel more strongly about the lying, the manipulation, the slander than about the unreasonable reaction to the suspicion of faithlessness. Buhler, Stephen M., "Musical Shakespeares: Attending to Ophelia, Juliet, and Desdemona" in Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture", Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp.150–174, at pp.171–172.

Iago crudely informs Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, that Othello and Desdemona have eloped. Before the Venetian Senate, Brabantio accuses Othello of bewitching Desdemona. The Senators wish to send Othello to Cyprus, which is under threat from Turkey. They bring Desdemona before them. She tells of her love for Othello, and the marriage stands. The Senate agrees to let her join Othello in Cyprus. Aphra Behn's 1688 novel Oroonoko, and its subsequent dramatisation by Thomas Southerne, reset Othello's enslavement in the context of the then-current Atlantic triangle. [327] Iago's maudlin concerns and jealousy force him to plot against general Othello and his wife, Desdemona. Othello, a battle-scarred yet lovable person, turns into a mercurial misogynistic and nihilistic personality due to the mundane concerns injected by Iago. Iago’s multiple interventions obfuscated the issues further. His character can be considered the paradigm for jealousy and hatred, a phony partisan who slanders to destroy any relationships. He knew to tell the right things to the right people at the right time to manipulate them to whatever extent he wanted. The way Shakespeare has counter projected jealously is simply brilliant. The way Iago engineers the jealousy of other characters is peerlessly done by the author. Othello is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603. It is based on the story Un Capitano Moro (A Moorish Captain) by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565.

Robert Smallwood writing for Shakespeare Quarterly in 1990, quoted by Welles, 2000, pp.307-313 at p.311. The character's own motives are never made clear, because Iago himself expresses too many motives: [144] Othello is considered not only the greatest of Shakespeare's tragedies but also the timeliest. This might be a play written hundreds of years ago, but all the themes discussed in it are even entirely relevant today. We can see multiple manipulation levels, betrayal, jealousy, and even racism in this book if we read between the lines. Iago persuades Othello to be suspicious of Cassio and Desdemona's relationship. When Desdemona drops a handkerchief (the first gift given to her by Othello), Emilia finds it and gives it to Iago at his request, unaware of what he plans to do with it. Othello appears and, then being convinced by Iago of his wife's unfaithfulness with his captain, vows with Iago for the death of Desdemona and Cassio, after which he makes Iago his lieutenant. Thompson and Honigmann, 2016, pp.29-31 citing Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets.

In spite of Othello's protestations in the first act that no magic was used in his wooing of Desdemona, he later claims magical properties for the handkerchief, his first gift to her. [122] [123] A question which has interested critics is whether he himself believes these stories or is using them to pressure or test Desdemona. [124] [125] There is certainly a contradiction between Othello's assertion - linked to its supposed magical properties - that his mother received the handkerchief from an Egyptian charmer in Act 3 Scene 4, [126] and his later assertion that his father gave it to his mother, made in Act 4 Scene 2. [127] [128] Are we, the audience, intended to believe in the handkerchief's magical properties? [129] Among feminist appropriations of the Othello story, Paula Vogel's 1994 Desdemona, A Play about a Handkerchief sets the story in a kitchen in Cyprus, where only Desdemona, Emilia and Bianca appear. [306] In Djanet Sears' 1998 Harlem Duet, Othello's lover challenges his subservient passion: "...why you trying to please her? ... I'm so tired of pleasing White folks." [307] And Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré's 2012 Desdemona sets its story in a timeless afterlife of the characters, in which Othello and Desdemona have leisure to talk through all facets of their relationship, and in which Desdemona is reunited with her former maid Barbary, whose actual name is Sa'ran. [308] Critics have naturally focused on the two central male roles. But Emilia becomes a powerful role in the final act. Indeed Charlotte Cushman's Emilia was said to upstage Edwin Forrest's Othello in 1845. [211] And when Fanny Kemble played Desdemona in 1848 she changed the performance tradition. Previously, Desdemonas had (in her words) "always appeared to me to acquiesce with wonderful equanimity in their assasination" but Kemble, a passionate feminist and abolitionist, decided "I shall make a desperate fight for it, for I feel horribly at the idea of being murdered in my bed." [212] Brabanzio’s kinsman who accompanies Lodovico to Cyprus. Amidst the chaos of the final scene, Graziano mentions that Desdemona’s father has died. ClownGillies, John; Minami, Ryuta; Li, Ruru and Trivedi, Poonam "Shakespeare on the Stages of Asia" in Wells, Stanley and Stanton, Sarah (eds.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage", Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp.259-283 at pp.260-261. Towards the end of the play, Desdemona's goodness increasingly becomes represented by long-suffering martyrdom, perceived as a longstanding sign of acceptable femininity. In place of the headstrong heroine of the opening acts, Desdemona, increasingly stripped of agency, endures her husband's anger and humiliations – even his striking her in public – and eventually, while dying, tries to exonerate him for his murder of her. [115] Others perceive Desdemona's reaction as one of strength and dignity, not passivity. [116] Othello’s ensign (a job also known as an ancient or standard-bearer), and the villain of the play. Iago is twenty-eight years old. While his ostensible reason for desiring Othello’s demise is that he has been passed over for promotion to lieutenant, Iago’s motivations are never very clearly expressed and seem to originate in an obsessive, almost aesthetic delight in manipulation and destruction.