English Language Reference - General & Miscellaneous

Othello

Name: Othello
Author: William Shakespeare
ISBN: 9783655166567

by William Shakespeare

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Overview

The most striking difference between Othello and Shakespeare's other tragedies is its more intimate scale. Because the play focuses on personal rather than public life, Othello's private descent into jealous obsession is especially chilling to behold. This invaluable new study guide to one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies contains a selection of the finest criticism through the centuries on Othello, including commentaries by such important critics as Voltaire, Charles Lamb, A. C. Swinburne, T. S. Eliot, and many others. Studients will also benefit from the additional features in this volume, including an introduction by Harold Bloom, an accessible summary of the plot, an analysis of several key passages, a comprehensive list of characters, a biography of Shakespeare, essays discussing the main currents of criticism in each century since Shakespeare's time, and more.

About the Author, William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, in 1564. The date of his birth is traditionally April 23, which happens to be St. George's Day, and the day in 1616 on which the playwright died. At age eighteen he married a Stratford farmer's daughter, Anne Hathaway. They had three children. Around 1585 William joined an acting troupe on tour in Stratford from London, and thereafter spent much of his life in the capital. He produced Othello in 1602-03, amid the series of great tragedies, including Hamlet and King Lear, he wrote in the first years of the new century. Shakespeare wrote thirty-six plays and much poetry, and earned enormous fame in his own lifetime in prelude to his immortality.

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Editorials

The ALAN Review - Barbara G. Samuels

Shakespeare's plays often retell stories from other sources. In this novel, Julius Lester reverses that order and transforms Othello from drama to novel form. In doing so, he further investigates the characters of Othello, Iago, and Desdemona and provides answers to questions left unanswered by Shakespeare. He transforms Iago and his wife Emilia into Africans, sets the novel in England, and explores the racial issues in the story. Lester, author of books on slavery and African Americans in the United States, makes the mixed-race marriage and the relationships between blacks and whites more relevant and accessible to contemporary young people with his interpretation of the play. Of course most of the language in the novel is changed, but readers familiar with Shakespeare will recognize phrases and sentences as well as modern paraphrasing of allusions to Elizabethan society. Othello: A Novel may provide a transition to help students move into Shakespeare while at the same time raising challenging questions for discussion.