OTHELLO [Mass Market Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author)

Book Description

Series: New Folger Library Shakespeare | Publication Date: July 1, 1993

An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespeare with these features: Illustrated with photographs from New York Shakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readable introductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, a lively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on the play in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-date annotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of key passages.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press; New edition edition (July 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671722816
• ISBN-13: 978-0671722814
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #714,621 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ocular Proof, October 10, 2000

By 

C. Colt "It Just Doesn't Matter" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: OTHELLO (Mass Market Paperback)

As a play, "Othello" encompasses many things but more than anything else it is a study of pure evil. Although Othello is an accomplished professional soldier and a hero of sorts, he is also a minority and an outcast in many ways. As a Black man and a Moor (which means he's a Moslem), Othello has at least two qualities, which make him stand out in the Elizabethan world. He is also married to a Caucasian woman named Desdemona, which creates an undercurrent of hostility as evidenced by the derogatory remark "the ram hath topped the ewe".

Othello's problems begin when he promotes one of his soldiers, Michael Cassio as his lieutenant. This arouses the jealousy and hatred of one of his other soldiers, Iago who hatches a plot to destroy Othello and Michael Cassio. When Cassio injures an opponent in a fight he is rebuked, punished, and subsequently ignored by Othello who must discipline him and teach him a lesson. Iago convinces Desdemona to intervene on Cassio's behalf and then begins to convince Othello that Desdemona is in love with Cassio.

This is actually one of the most difficult Shakespeare plays to watch because the audience sees the plot begin to unfold and is tormented by Othello's gradual decent into Iago's trap. As with other Shakespeare plays, the critical components of this one are revealed by language. When Othello is eventually convinced of Cassio's treachery, he condemns him and promotes Iago in his place. When Othello tells Iago that he has made him his lieutenant, Iago responds with the chilling line, "I am thine forever". To Othello this is a simple affirmation of loyalty, but to the audience, this phrase contains a double meaning. With these words, Iago indicates that the promotion does not provide him with sufficient satisfaction and that he will continue to torment and destroy Othello. It is his murderous intentions, not his loyal service that will be with Othello forever.

Iago's promotion provides him with closer proximity to Othello and provides him with more of his victim's trust. From here Iago is easily able to persuade Othello of Desdemona's purported infidelity. Soon Othello begins to confront Desdemona who naturally protests her innocence. In another revealing statement, Othello demands that Desdemona give him "the ocular proof". Like Iago's earlier statement, this one contains a double meaning that is not apparent to the recipient but that is very clear to the audience who understands the true origin of Othello's jealousy. Othello's jealousy is an invisible enemy and it is also based on events that never took place. How can Desdemona give Othello visual evidence of her innocence if her guilt is predicated on accusations that have no true shape or form? She can't. Othello is asking Desdemona to do the impossible, which means that her subsequent murder is only a matter of course.

I know that to a lot of young people this play must seem dreadfully boring and meaningless. One thing you can keep in mind is that the audience in Shakespeare's time did not have the benefit of cool things such as movies, and videos. The downside of this is that Shakespeare's plays are not visually stimulating to an audience accustomed to today's entertainment media. But the upside is that since Shakespeare had to tell a complex story with simple tools, he relied heavily on an imaginative use of language and symbols. Think of what it meant to an all White audience in a very prejudiced time to have a Black man at the center of a play. That character really stood out-almost like an island. He was vulnerable and exposed to attitudes that he could not perceive directly but which he must have sensed in some way.

Shakespeare set this play in two locations, Italy and Cypress. To an Elizabethan audience, Italy represented an exotic place that was the crossroads of many different civilizations. It was the one place where a Black man could conceivably hold a position of authority. Remember that Othello is a mercenary leader. He doesn't command a standing army and doesn't belong to any country. He is referred to as "the Moor" which means he could be from any part of the Arab world from Southern Spain to Indonesia. He has no institutional or national identity but is almost referred to as a phenomenon. (For all the criticism he has received in this department, Shakespeare was extrordinarlily attuned to racism and in this sense he was well ahead of his time.) Othello's subsequent commission as the Military Governor of Cypress dispatches him to an even more remote and isolated location. The man who stands out like an island is sent to an island. His exposure and vulnerability are doubled just as a jealous and murderous psychopath decides to destroy him.

Iago is probably the only one of Shakespeare's villains who is evil in a clinical sense rather than a human one. In Kind Lear, Edmund the bastard hatches a murderous plot out of jealousy that is similar to Iago's. But unlike Iago, he expresses remorse and attempts some form of restitution at the end of the play. In the Histories, characters like Richard III behave in a murderous fashion, but within the extreme, political environment in which they operate, we can understand their motives even if we don't agree with them. Iago, however, is a different animal. His motives are understandable up to the point in which he destroys Michael Cassio but then they spin off into an inexplicable orbit of their own. Some have suggested that Iago is sexually attracted to Othello, which (if its true) adds another meaning to the phrase "I am thine forever". But even if we buy the argument that Iago is a murderous homosexual, this still doesn't explain why he must destroy Othello. Oscar Wilde once wrote very beautifully of the destructive impact a person can willfully or unwittingly have on a lover ("for each man kills the things he loves") but this is not born out in the play. Instead, Shakespeare introduces us to a new literary character-a person motivated by inexplicable evil that is an entity in itself. One of the great ironies of this play is that Othello is a character of tragically visible proportions while Iago is one with lethally invisible ones.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare at His Best!, January 9, 2002

By 

"mmille1019" (Okemos, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: OTHELLO (Mass Market Paperback)

Othello is by without a doubt my favorite of the plethora of Shakespeare's tragedies. Although Othello himself is quite an intricate character, it was funny and almost ironic how the character that grabbed my observance the most was the villain Iago. Iago, being perhaps Shakespeare's most consummate villain, directly or indirectly seemed to control the minds and hearts of almost everyone he interacted with. Bravery, loyalty, ambition, honesty, and chivalry are all issues addressed within the play, and when combined with a great deal of power struggles, they can create an intense whirlwind of emotions and confusion running high. Othello, even being a powerful and bold general, is easily deceived by Iago as well as are many of the other characters who soon come to find out what it means to be struck by Iago's wrath. All of these things considered, one can easily find themselves engulfed with all sorts of emotions, and be filled with empathy and rage toward the diverse array of characters, maybe even find a little piece of themselves in each one of them. The play can be compared to many of Shakespeare's plays, both comedy and tragedy, in different ways. If you enjoyed the plot of Much Ado About Nothing, or Romeo and Juliet, then you can not go wrong by reading this play. Also, if you like strong women roles and always find yourself identifying easily with those characters in Shakespeare's plays, one of the female characters in Othello, Emelia will be quite a delight. For me, by the last page and last quote of this play, I was literally holding back the tears, and that impact is no exaggeration. If you have yet to read Othello, don't wait another second. Go right now to the nearest bookshelf, dust it off and I promise the pages will just seem to simply turn themselves. Enjoy!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Shakespeare's Best, January 18, 2002

By 

"kenamat" (Wilmington, DE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: OTHELLO (Mass Market Paperback)

I agree with the critics on this one. I feel that `Coriolanus' doesn't get enough credit as a play; I think `King Lear' receives far too much credit; but I think `Othello' rightly deserves to be considered one of Shakespeare's greatest Tragedies. I even consider `Othello' to be among Shakespeare's greatest plays even when all the Comedies, Tragedies, and Histories are judged together. This is a very powerful play and shows how a good, honest, successful man can destroy his life by having his fatal flaw of insane jealousy manipulated against him by his enemy.

The one thing that bothers me about this play is my contention that the entire mess could have been averted if Othello simply sat down with his wife and simply had a real and honest conversation with her. If Othello communicated properly with his wife there could have been a very happy ending and Shakespeare could have called this play `Much Ado About Nothing II'.

I very highly recommend this play and I consider this to be Shakespeare's third greatest Tragedy right behind `Coriolanus' and `Hamlet', respectively.