Othello

First performed around 1603–1604, William Shakespeare’s Othello is a tragedy of love, jealousy and the devastating power of deception. Othello, a distinguished Moorish general in the service of Venice, has secretly married Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian nobleman, and their happiness appears secure until his ensign, Iago, begins to manipulate those around him. Through insinuation, calculated cruelty and the exploitation of Othello’s deepest insecurities, Iago plants the suspicion that Desdemona has been unfaithful, setting in motion a chain of events from which no one emerges untouched.

Among Shakespeare’s most psychologically penetrating tragedies, Othello examines the fragility of trust, the corrosive force of envy and the ways racial prejudice can be turned into an instrument of control. Its tightly constructed plot and unsettling portrait of a mind gradually overwhelmed by doubt give the play an intensity quite distinct from Shakespeare’s larger political tragedies. At once an intimate drama of marriage and a searching study of manipulation, Othello remains central to the Shakespearean canon for its disturbing insight into how language, reputation and imagined betrayal can destroy what is most precious.

From the book

“Men should be what they seem; / Or those that be not, would they might seem none!”

— William Shakespeare, Othello

On Othello

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

— William Shakespeare, Othello