Othello is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in It is based . Othello confronts Desdemona, and then strangles her in their bed. When Emilia arrives, Desdemona defends her husband before dying, and.
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Even if that man is a synth? Contents [ show ]. General Services Quests Essential: In Cinthio, the two murderers escape detection. The "Moor" then misses Desdemona greatly, and comes to loathe the sight of the "Ensign". He demotes him, and refuses to have him in his company. The "Ensign" then seeks revenge by disclosing to the "Squadron Leader" the "Moor's" involvement in Desdemona's death. The two depart Cyprus for Venice, and denounce the "Moor" to the Venetian Seignory; he is arrested, taken to Venice, and tortured. He refuses to admit his guilt and is condemned to exile.
Desdemona's relatives eventually find and kill him. The "Ensign", however, continues to escape detection in Desdemona's death, but engages in other crimes while in Venice. He is arrested and dies after being tortured. Cinthio's "Ensign's Wife" the play's Emilia , survives her husband's death to tell her story. Cinthio's "Moor" is the model for Shakespeare's Othello, but some researchers believe the poet also took inspiration from the several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England circa Another possible source was the Description of Africa by Leo Africanus.
The book was an enormous success in Europe, and was translated into many other languages, [8] remaining a definitive reference work for decades and to some degree, centuries afterwards. While supplying the source of the plot, the book offered nothing of the sense of place of Venice or Cyprus. The earliest mention of the play is found in a Revels Office account, which records that on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 6 October , by Thomas Walkley , and was first published in quarto format by him in One year later, the play was included among the plays in the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays.
However, the version in the Folio is rather different in length, and in wording: Some of these cluster together in quite extensive passages. The Folio also lacks a scattering of about a dozen lines or part-lines that are to be found in the Quarto. These two versions also differ from each other in their readings of numerous words. Although its title suggests that the tragedy belongs primarily to Othello, Iago plays an important role in the plot. He reflects the archetypal villain, and has the biggest share of the dialogue.
In Othello , it is Iago who manipulates all other characters at will, controlling their movements and trapping them in an intricate net of lies. He achieves this by getting close to all characters and playing on their weaknesses while they refer to him as "honest" Iago, thus furthering his control over the characters.
Bradley , and more recently Harold Bloom , have been major advocates of this interpretation. Leavis , have focused on Othello.
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Although characters described as "moors" appear in two other Shakespeare plays Titus Andronicus and The Merchant of Venice , such characters were a rarity in contemporary theatre, and it was unknown for them to take centre stage. There is no consensus over Othello 's ethnic origin. Honigmann , the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, concluded that Othello's race is ambiguous.
As critics have established, the term 'Moor' referred to dark-skinned people in general, used interchangeably with terms such as 'African', 'Somali', 'Ethiopian', 'Negro', 'Arab', 'Berber', and even 'Indian' to designate a figure from Africa or beyond. Iago twice uses the word Barbary or Barbarian to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by Berbers. Roderigo calls Othello "the thicklips", which seems to refer to Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally.
However, Jyotsna Singh wrote that opposition of Brabantio to Desdemona marrying Othello-a respected and honoured general-cannot make sense except in racial terms, citing the scene where Brabantio accuses Othello of using witchcraft to make his daughter fall in love with him, saying it is "unnatural" for Desdemona to desire Othello's "sooty bosom".
Michael Neill, editor of The Oxford Shakespeare , notes that the earliest critical references to Othello's colour Thomas Rymer 's critique of the play, and the engraving in Nicholas Rowe 's edition of Shakespeare assume him to be Sub-Saharan, while the earliest known North African interpretation was not until Edmund Kean 's production of He stayed with his retinue in London for several months and occasioned much discussion.
While Shakespeare's play was written only a few years afterwards, Honigmann questions the view that ben Messaoud himself was a significant influence on it.
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Othello is referred to as a "Barbary horse" 1. Desdemona's physical whiteness is otherwise presented in opposition to Othello's dark skin: In Elizabethan discourse, the word "black" could suggest various concepts that extended beyond the physical colour of skin, including a wide range of negative connotations. Othello was frequently performed as an Arab Moor during the 19th century.
He was first played by a black man on the London stage in by the most important of the nineteenth-century Othellos, the African American Ira Aldridge who had been forced to leave his home country to make his career. The first major screen production casting a black actor as Othello did not come until , with Laurence Fishburne opposite Kenneth Branagh 's Iago. The casting of the role comes with a political subtext. Patrick Stewart played the role alongside an otherwise all-black cast in the Shakespeare Theatre Company 's staging of the play [35] [36] and Thomas Thieme, also white, played Othello in a Munich Kammerspiele staging at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre , Stratford.
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Michael Gambon also took the role in and ; their performances were critically acclaimed. The race of the title role is often seen as Shakespeare's way of isolating the character, culturally as well as visually, from the Venetian nobles and officers, and the isolation may seem more genuine when a black actor takes the role. But questions of race may not boil down to a simple decision of casting a single role.
Bal, a Hawaiian actor of mixed ethnicity, playing Iago.
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As the Protestant Reformation of England proclaimed the importance of pious, controlled behaviour in society, it was the tendency of the contemporary Englishman to displace society's "undesirable" qualities of barbarism, treachery, jealousy and libidinousness onto those who are considered "other". Audiences of the time would expect Othello to be insecure about his race and the implied age gap between himself and Desdemona.
Though the actual racial definition of the term is murky, the implications are religious as well as racial. Vozar, in a article in Philosophy and Literature , suggests that the epileptic fit relates to the mind—body problem and the existence of the soul. There have been many differing views on the character of Othello over the years.
Bradley calls Othello the "most romantic of all of Shakespeare's heroes" by "hero" Bradley means protagonist and "the greatest poet of them all". On the other hand, F. Leavis describes Othello as "egotistical". There are those who also take a less critical approach to the character of Othello such as William Hazlitt , who said: Othello possesses an unusually detailed performance record. The play is there attributed to "Shaxberd".
Othello was also one of the twenty plays performed by the King's Men during the winter of , in celebration of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V, Elector Palatine. Soon after, on 8 December , Thomas Killigrew 's new King's Company acted the play at their Vere Street theatre, with Margaret Hughes as Desdemona — probably the first time a professional actress appeared on a public stage in England.
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It may be one index of the play's power that Othello was one of the very few Shakespearean plays that was never adapted and changed during the Restoration and the eighteenth century. This production was the first ever in America to feature a black actor playing Othello with an otherwise all-white cast there had been all-black productions of the play before. It ran for performances, almost twice as long as any other Shakespearean play ever produced on Broadway.
Although it was never filmed, it was the first lengthy performance of a Shakespeare play released on records, first on a multi-record 78 RPM set and then on a 3-LP one. The critics had mixed reactions to the "flashy" production which included mid-western accents and rock-and roll drumbeats but gave Robeson primarily good reviews. Darlington of The Daily Telegraph ranked Robeson's Othello as the best he had ever seen [51] while the Daily Express , which had for years before published consistently scathing articles about Robeson for his leftist views, praised his "strong and stately" performance though in turn suggested it was a "triumph of presence not acting".
Actors have alternated the roles of Iago and Othello in productions to stir audience interest since the nineteenth century. Despite her loyalty to her husband, Othello physically and verbally abuses Desdemona, slapping her and calling her a whore in public. By the play's end, Desdemona is so beaten down that she's pretty passive when Othello strangles her and when, with her dying breath, she blames herself for Othello's physical and emotional abuse. Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom thinks that Desdemona's virginity is the big driving question of the play. Bloom argues that Othello and Desdemona never had sex—that Desdemona actually dies a virgin.
He points out that every time the newlyweds come close, something interrupts them—an order to come see the Duke, a war, or Cassio's drunken brawl. When Desdemona and Othello first arrive in Cyprus, it's clear they haven't had sex yet. After all, Othello says it explicitly.
What happens next—whether Cassio's fight really prevents any sex at all that night—is less clear. But Bloom argues that what makes Othello's jealousy so torturous is that the only way he can figure out if Desdemona is actually cheating with him or not is to have sex with her. If she's still a virgin, she's been faithful. But, Bloom suggests, Othello just can't take the pressure of sleeping with his wife and the possibility of realizing in the act that she's not a virgin, which would prove that she must have been sleeping around.
Other literary scholars argue that Othello and Desdemona do eventually consummate their marriage in the play—just before their lovemaking is interrupted by Cassio's drunken brawl.