This page is about the Shakespeare play, for the board game, see Othello board game.

"Othello and Desdemona in Venice" by Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856)

Othello: The Moor of Venice is a play by Shakespeare written about 1603. Othello is a tragedy, like Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear. Shakespeare probably wrote Othello after Hamlet but before the latter two. The first recorded performance was on November 1, 1604 at Whitehall Palace in London.

The title character, Othello, is a noble Moor (North African Muslim) who commands an army in Cyprus. He is presented sympathetically despite his race. This is unusual for English literature of Shakespeare's time, which commonly depicted Moors and other dark-skinned peoples as villains. There is some controversy among scholars whether Othello was meant to be black (by today's standards of ethnicity) or Arab or both, though popular consensus among average readers and audiences today lean towards the former. Shakespeare avoids any discussion of Islam in the play.

Plot summary

Othello, who has just eloped with Desdemona when the play opens, leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies in Cyprus. When Desdemona and Cassio join Othello in Cyprus, the treacherous standard-bearer Iago persuades Othello that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with Cassio. Othello kills Desdemona in anger. Iago's wife, Emilia, then reveals that Desdemona's affair was an invention of Iago's. Iago kills Emilia and Othello commits suicide. Cassio rules Cyprus and Iago's punishment is left for Cassio to decide (see also Othello list of characters).

The plot for Othello was developed from Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatommithi, which it follows closely. The only named character in Cinthio's story is "Disdemona" (Greek for 'unfortunate'); the other characters were identified only as 'the standard-bearer,' 'the captain,' and 'the Moor.' In the original, the standard-bearer lusts after Disdemona, and is spurred to revenge when she rejects him. Shakespeare invented a new character, Roderigo, who pursues the Moor's wife and is killed while trying to kill Cassio. The Moor in Cinthio's story never repents of murdering his wife, and both he and the standard-bearer escape Venice and are killed only much later. Cinthio also drew a moral (which he placed in the mouth of the lady) that European women are unwise to marry the hot-blooded, uncontrollable males of other nations; Shakespeare suppressed this observation.

Movie and Opera versions

Othello was also made into a movie several times, including:

• Othello (1922) starring Emil Jannings. Silent.
• The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice (1952) by Orson Welles
• Othello (1965) starring Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay, and Joyce Redman
• Otello (1986)
• Othello (1995) starring Kenneth Branagh, Laurence Fishburne, and Irene Jacob. Directed by Oliver Parker.
• Kaliyattam (1997), in Malayalam, a modern update, set in Kerala, starring Suresh Gopi as Othello, Lal as Iago, Manju Warrier as Desdemona, directed by Jayaraaj.
• O (2001) an modern update, set in an American high school.
• Also in 2001, the ITV television network in the United Kingdom screened a modern-day adaptation of the story of the play in modern English, with Othello now the first black Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police. Made for the network by London Weekend Television, the new adaptation was scripted by Andrew Davies, directed by Geoffrey Sax and starred Eamon Walker, Christopher Eccleston and Keeley Hawes.

The same story is the basis for two operatic versions, both called Otello, by Gioacchino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi.

See also

• Othello list of characters

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Tragedy of Othello, The Moor of Venice

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Othello

• Othello (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/2267) - plain vanilla text from Project Gutenberg
• The Tragedie of Othello (http://william-shakespeare.classic-literature.co.uk/the-tragedie-of-othello/) - HTML version of this title.

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