• The Play
• The Play in Performance
• Questions to think about

If you are studying the play, for work or pleasure, you might choose to work through this page with a copy of the play to hand and respond to the questions.

You can email questions or ideas to:

The Play

The play we now tend to call just Othello was first published in 1622 (that's six years after Shakespeare died and about twenty years after he wrote the play) in quarto - a small book containing only one play - with the title The Tragoedy of Othello, the Moore of Venice.

A year later, in 1623, it was one of the 35 plays published in Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, the book that we now know as First Folio . In the list of plays at the front of the book, 'A Catalogue' , John Heminges and Henry Condell (the two actors from Shakespeare's company who were responsible for the book) placed Othello in the Tragedy section with the title Othello, the Moore of Venice.

There are a number of differences between the two printed versions of the play. The Folio is 160 lines longer and has over 1,000 differences in wording. Only the Folio has Desdemona's willow song (Act 4, Scene 3) and it has a larger role for Emilia in the closing scenes too.

If you look at the first page of the Folio (1623) version you will notice some differences from your own edition of the play:

You will see that the act and scene headings are in Latin ('Actus Primus. Scena Prima'), you might notice some spelling differences ('Epithites', for example, at line 15), and the character usually called Roderigo is here called Rodorigo. Comparing this page with your own edition of the play shows how much work a modern editor does. In addition to modernising spelling and making it consistent you might find that your editor has added a location for the scene. The New Swan Shakespeare, for example, starts Act One, Scene One with the direction 'Venice. A street.'

But if you go back to the 1622 or 1623 version the titles alone reveal important information. In each case the play is identified by genre (the kind or style): tragedy,
by the name of the main character: Othello,
by Othello's racial identity: a Moor,
and by the place where part of the action is set: Venice.

What Does The Term Tragedy Signify?

What Does The Name Othello Signify?

Duke: Valiant Othello we must straight employ you Against the general enemy Ottoman. (1.3.47-8)

There are three other references in the play to Ottomites. The third, said by Othello himself when breaking up the fight between Cassio and Montano, is particularly interesting:

Are we turned Turks? And to ourselves do that which heaven hath forbid the Ottomites? For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl... (2.3.166-8)

Othello is using a contrast between the Turks / Ottomites, who are Muslims, and the Christians. 'Barbarous' is synonymous with Turkish / Ottomite behaviour. Earlier, however, Iago had used a similar contrast to compare Othello and Desdemona: 'an erring Barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian.' Are we to believe that Othello himself is a Turk, an Ottomite, a Barbarian, or a Muslim?

What Does The Term Moor Signify?

In the 1603 edition of his Epitome of the Theater of the World, a series of maps with commentaries, Abraham Ortelius describes 'Barabarie' and some of the characteristics of its inhabitants:

The people are generalye all tawney, moores, verye sturdye and stronge of bodye... They are very jealous of theyr wyves... and very hardlye can they forget any iniurye offered them... The countrye swaynes are better, more lovinge, and patiente, but so simple that they will beleeve any incredible fiction.

Shakespeare, and his audience, may have been well aware of such stereotypes.

For the plot, and the creation of dramatic tension, the most important signification of 'Moor' is to reinforce DIFFERENCE.

What Is The Significance Of Venice?

You will see how the sixth line begins 'Fugia in Venetia un Moro, molto valoroso' (There was once in Venice a Moor, a very valiant man) and five lines below you will spot 'Disdemona'. The story that follows provides the outline and some of the detail, such as the embroidered handkerchief, for Shakespeare's play. There are some differences: in Cinthio Iago (who is not named but identified as an Ensign) is motivated by lust for Disdemona and when she ignores him he plots her downfall. Eventually both Othello and the Ensign batter Disdemona to death with sandbags and pull down part of the ceiling to make it look like an accident. Race is not an issue in the story until the Ensign tells Othello that Desdemona dislikes his blackness.

So although Shakespeare made some changes he was following his source story when he set Othello in Venice and the use of the city is historically accurate as a centre of Christian resistance to the Turks, but it had other associations for the original audience and readers of his play. Venice was an important port, like London, and there was commercial competition between the two. It had an ethnically mixed population (think of the Jewish community represented in The Merchant of Venice) and a reputation as the sex capital of Europe. The city's women were considered loose (and records show that courtesans were part of the hospitality offered to visiting merchants) so it is easier for Iago to sow seeds of doubt in Othello's mind. When Othello asks 'Are you not a strumpet' (4.2.83) and 'What, not a whore?' (4.2.87), and alleges 'I took you for the cunning whore of Venice / That married with Othello' (4.2.91-2), his reactions are triggered not just by Iago but by the reputation of Venetian women.

The Play in Performance

The task of production is to lift the words from the page and give a visual reality to genre, character, identity and place. The following six pictures show how actors have responded to that task from 1814 to 1919.

Edmund Keane

Edmund Kean playing Othello in 1814, a performance described by William Hazlitt as 'the finest piece of acting in the world' and 'a masterpiece of natural passion.' The racial 'difference' of this Othello is strongly represented through costume and jewelry. What do the bracelets, chain and dagger suggest to you?

Mr. G.Y. Brooke

Although this is the moment when Othello swears vengeance:

...Now by yond marble heaven
In the due reverence of a sacred vow
I here engage my words. (3.3.463-5)

Mr. G.Y. Brooke, at the Olympic Theatre in 1848, presents a less violent looking figure than Kean. His 'difference' is conveyed through the long, embroidered kaftan and through facial hair, an enduring way of playing the role.

Tommaso Salvini's Othello

The 'difference' of Tommaso Salvini's Othello of 1875 was apparent from the moment he spoke; an Italian, he delivered the lines in his own language. This concerned the audience less than his savage violence and the growls he emitted as he murdered Desdemona. What does his turban suggest about his racial identity?

Wilson Barrett

The costume and makeup of Wilson Barrett, playing Othello at the Lyric Theatre in 1897, suggest an accumulation and exaggeration of the images of difference that have gone before. In addition to a turban, chain, kaftan, dagger and moustache he has acquired a beard and ear-rings to further set him apart from the Venetians and to convey a very exotic figure.

Forbes Robertson

Two early twentieth-century performances emphasised another aspect of Othello's difference - his military prowess. On tour in 1901, Forbes Robertson wore neck, chest and thigh armour which, in addition to his turban and ear-rings, suggested the 'warlike Moor', 'the man [who] commands / Like a full soldier', and 'the brave Othello' of Act Two, Scene One.

F.J. Nettlefold

In 1919 F.J. Nettlefold, playing at the Scala Theatre in London, extended this representation and played Othello in full, head-to-toe, medieval armour, a very powerful image of difference.

The last two images to look at are not representations of actors in performance but are illustrations from editions of the play. The first, an engraving by Du Guernier, comes from Alexander Pope's edition of Shakespeare (1728, vol. 8) and shows the moment when Emilia discovers the dying Desdemona. Othello is distinguished solely by his colour: his costume is a conventional eighteenth-century frock-coat. You may think Desdemona looks rather strange. This may be, in part, the effect of being smothered but it also reflects the common practice of reworking existing images. The artist had already used the same composition to illustrate Cymbeline (the moment when Giacomo spies on Innogen in bed) and has just made minor changes for the Othello picture.

The final picture was painted by F. Dicksee for a large, lavish edition of the play published by Cassell in 1890. It has a caption from the final scene:

Yet I'll not shed her blood:
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow.

In his introduction Edward Dowden offers the following description:

Othello is a baptised Saracen of the north-western coast of Africa, of royal race and noble person; an honoured servant of the Venetian State, grave and dignified in his bearing, noted for his majestic self-possession, trained in a school of hardship; not insensible, indeed, to womanly grace and beauty, but delighting in these with a manly purity of passion.

Do you think these qualities are shown in the portrait? Are they supported by the text or do you think Dowden may be listing late Victorian rather than Shakespearian values?

Both these pictures make use of the contrasts, particularly in colour and light, that Othello refers to in his 'It is the cause' speech that opens the final scene. Look back at that moment and see how many contrasts you can find in the speech (and look not just for contrasts in meaning but in delivery too).

Questions to think about

TRAGEDY

The dramatic conventions of Elizabethan / Jacobean tragedy make this Othello's play, as the title indicates. But is the tragedy confined to the main character? Consider what happens to Desdemona, Emilia, Brabantio and Cassio. Can you make a case for the play being their tragedies too?

OTHELLO

Remember that a tragedy is about unusual or exceptional people. In the play Othello is most obviously an exception because of his colour but he has other differences from those around him, too. How many differences can you identify? You might consider age, rank, language, personality, and background.

A MOOR

The performance photographs above show white actors playing Othello.

Black actors have had great success in the role on stage and on film - Paul Robeson in London in 1930 and America in 1943; Willard White in Stratford in 1989; John Kani in South Africa in the late 1980s; Laurence Fishburne in the 1995 film.

Some black actors, like Hugh Quarshie, have major reservations about playing the part, arguing that it a representation of an offensive racial stereotype.

In November 1997 Patrick Stewart played Othello at the Washington Shakespeare Theatre in America. In what was called a 'photo-negative' production Stewart presented the Moor as a white man while the rest of the cast (except Bianca, the Cypriots, and Brabantio's servants) was African-American.

What are the issues here? Can any actor take the role? Must Othello be black? Could he be Welsh or Japanese or Australian? What difference would it make to the play?

VENICE

I've suggested a number of reasons why Venice should be the initial setting of the play but you should consider why Shakespeare moves his characters to Cyprus and why he chooses to keep them there. Early in the second act Othello announces 'News, friends, our wars are done, the Turks are drowned' (2.1.201) confirming the rumour of the Third Gentleman, 'News, lads: our wars are done!' (2.1.20) So why don't they all go home? What dramatic purpose is served by leaving them on the island?

To take you further

In addition to the connections that you can make through this site it is worth visiting The Electric Shakespeare at http://webware.princeton.edu/Lit131 which provides a range of useful links.

If you have access to a library look at E.A.J. Honigmann's edition of Othello in the Arden Shakespeare Third Edition (London: Thomas Nelson, 1997) which has a very thorough introduction, or Norman Sanders' edition in the New Cambridge Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) which has strong sections on the language of the play and its performance history. Virginia Mason Vaughan's 'Othello': A Contextual History (Cambridge University Press, 1994) explores how the presentation and reception of Othello has changed over the years. Hugh Quarshie's Second Thoughts about 'Othello' (International Shakespeare Association, 1979) presents a black actor's view of the play

Catherine M.S. Alexander
June 1999