Shakespeare · Tragedies

Othello

c. 1603–04

Tragedy — from Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi

A Moorish general in the service of Venice elopes with Desdemona, daughter of a senator, and is sent to Cyprus to meet a Turkish fleet. His ensign Iago, passed over for promotion in favour of Cassio, sets out to destroy him, using a lost handkerchief as proof of an invented adultery. The general smothers his innocent wife in her bed, learns the truth from Iago's own wife Emilia, and kills himself. Unusually for Shakespeare, the plot is domestic and almost without subplot, and the villain has more lines than the hero.

How to spot them

▸Venice, then Cyprus; a Moorish general and a Venetian senator's daughter
▸A handkerchief spotted with strawberries, a husband's first gift
▸An ensign passed over for promotion who destroys his commander with hints
▸A murder by smothering in a curtained bed
▸The villain has the longest part in the play, and tells the audience 'I am not what I am'

Scenes, characters & lines

'O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on'

Iago plants the suspicion while pretending to allay it

A handkerchief spotted with strawberries becomes the 'ocular proof' of adultery

Dropped by Desdemona, picked up by Emilia, planted in Cassio's lodging

'I am not what I am'

The ensign's announcement of himself in the first scene

The willow song, sung by a wife as she prepares for bed on the night she is killed

'Sing all a green willow must be my garland'

'Put out the light, and then put out the light'

The murder in the bedchamber

'Then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely but too well'

The final speech, before the suicide

'I have done the state some service, and they know't'

From the same last speech

'Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word'

The villain's refusal to explain his motive

Key ideas

Coleridge called Iago's reasoning 'the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity' — he offers several motives and settles on none
Shakespeare invented Emilia, whose testimony destroys her husband, and compressed Cinthio's slow plot into a few furious days

Quick-fire facts

•The source is the seventh story of the third decade of Giraldi Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi (1565), in which the only named character is Disdemona
•The first recorded performance was at Whitehall on 1 November 1604, before James I
•Iago has around 1,100 lines, more than the title role and the largest villain's part in Shakespeare
•Verdi's Otello (1887), with a libretto by Arrigo Boito, is often called the greatest of Shakespeare operas; Rossini had set the same story in 1816
•Ira Aldridge, an African American actor, played the role at Covent Garden in 1833; Paul Robeson's Broadway run of 1943–44 was the longest of any Shakespeare play on Broadway
•Laurence Olivier's 1965 film performance in dark make-up is now widely regarded as unwatchable, though it won four Oscar nominations at the time
•The Quarto of 1622 and the Folio of 1623 differ by about 160 lines, including the willow song, which the Quarto omits
•Phrases from the play include 'the green-eyed monster', 'wear my heart upon my sleeve' and 'a foregone conclusion'

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources

Folger Shakespeare Library — Othello
E. A. J. Honigmann (ed.) — Othello (The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series)