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    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello"
    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello"
    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello"
    Ebook38 pages27 minutes

    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 8, 2015
    ISBN9781535830386
    A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for William Shakespeare's "Othello" - Gale

      1

      Othello

      William Shakespeare

      1604

      Introduction

      November 4, 1604, is the first recorded date of a performance of William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, although most scholars believe that is was first performed in 1600 or 1601. All records indicate that the play was an immediate success, and interest in the story continued unabated for four hundred years. The story of Othello the Moor, his lovely wife Desdemona, and the dastardly villain Iago was enacted countless times on stage, reworked as an opera, choreographed as a ballet, filmed multiple times, and transformed into television shows, novels, and movies. The title role of Othello became the quintessential Shakespearean role for black actors, although many white actors acted the part as well, and the villainy of Iago remained one of the most complicated and contested issues of contemporary Shakespeare scholarship. For Americans, historic issues of slavery and race made Othello an especially troubling and problematic play. Likewise, issues of gender, post-colonialism, diversity, and global perspective continued to generate a lively critical debate on the play. The play is easily available to readers in many editions; one of the most useful for students is the Norton Critical Edition (2004), edited by Edward Pechter. As of the early 2000s, interest in Othello was unlikely to abate; it remained a towering story of passion and rage.

      Author Biography

      William Shakespeare's life was a source of mystery and controversy among scholars of English literature. What little was known of his life was gleaned from documentary evidence and writings of his contemporaries. Shakespeare himself left no writings concerning his personal life and thus remained a frustrating enigma for biographers and critics alike.

      Shakespeare was born to parents Mary and John Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Church records show that he was baptized on April 26, 1564; from this, scholars extrapolate that he was born several days earlier, and so April 23, 1564, is the traditional dating of his birth.

      Shakespeare's father was a glover and was active in town government. That John Shakespeare's fortunes began to decline in about 1576 suggested to some scholars that the family may have been Catholic or had Catholic sympathies at a time when

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