Othello

Product Information

Nevill Coghill in 1964 argued that the changes in F were improvements made by the author, who might have taken advantage of the need to revise the play in consequence of the Act of Abuses to make other changes. [55] Folger Theatre reopens this fall, with the rest of the building to follow in 2024. Learn about the building renovation and start planning your visit. A jealous suitor of Desdemona. Young, rich, and foolish, Roderigo is convinced that if he gives Iago all of his money, Iago will help him win Desdemona’s hand. Repeatedly frustrated as Othello marries Desdemona and then takes her to Cyprus, Roderigo is ultimately desperate enough to agree to help Iago kill Cassio after Iago points out that Cassio is another potential rival for Desdemona.

Othello arrives, greets his wife, and announces that there will be reveling that evening to celebrate Cyprus’s safety from the Turks. Once everyone has left, Roderigo complains to Iago that he has no chance of breaking up Othello’s marriage. Iago assures Roderigo that as soon as Desdemona’s “blood is made dull with the act of sport,” she will lose interest in Othello and seek sexual satisfaction elsewhere (II.i. 222). However, Iago warns that “elsewhere” will likely be with Cassio. Iago counsels Roderigo that he should cast Cassio into disgrace by starting a fight with Cassio at the evening’s revels. In a soliloquy, Iago explains to the audience that eliminating Cassio is the first crucial step in his plan to ruin Othello. That night, Iago gets Cassio drunk and then sends Roderigo to start a fight with him. Apparently provoked by Roderigo, Cassio chases Roderigo across the stage. Governor Montano attempts to hold Cassio down, and Cassio stabs him. Iago sends Roderigo to raise alarm in the town. Gary Taylor in 1983 agreed with Coghill that F incorporated the author's own improvements to Q, but argued that another scribal hand had also made intervening changes to F. [56] Other adaptations of Shakespeare's story to be filmed include Franco Zeffirelli's 1986 film of Verdi's Otello [282] and the 1956 Jubal which resets the story as a Western, centered on the Cassio character. [283] The play was abridged to 30 minutes by Leon Garfield, and produced with cel animation for the TV series Shakespeare: The Animated Tales. [284] Tim Blake Nelson's basketball-themed teen drama O reset the story at an elite boarding school. The similarity of the film's ending to the Columbine massacre, which happened while the film was being edited, delayed its release for over two years, until August 2001. [285] A British TV adaptation by Andrew Davies, screened in 2001, re-set the story among senior officers of the Metropolitan Police. [286] And the first decade of the 21st-Century saw two non-English language film adaptations: Alexander Abela's French Souli set the story in a modern-day Madagascan fishing village, and Vishal Bhardwaj's Hindi Omkara amidst political violence in modern Uttar Pradesh. [287] Other media [ edit ] Stage adaptations [ edit ]Voltaire's 1732 French play Zaïre was a "neoclassical refurbishment" of Shakespeare's "barbarous" work. [290] And across continental Europe through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the play was better known than Shakespeare's in Jean-François Ducis' adaptation and its subsequent translations, in which a heroine renamed Hédelmone is stabbed to death by Othello. [291] Holland, Peter "Shakespeare Abbreviated" in Shaughnessy, Robert (ed.) "The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture", Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp.26–45, at p.41. Austern, Linda Phyllis "The Music in the Play" in Neil, Michael (ed.) and Shakespeare, William "Othello" The Oxford Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, 2006 pp.445-454 at p.445. Dive deep into the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and access primary sources from the early modern period. E. K. Chambers in 1930 argued that Q derived from a scribal manuscript, and F from the author's holograph. [51]

Iago begins to plant seeds of suspicion in Othello’s mind about his wife’s relationship with Michael Cassio. Iago gets hold of a handkerchief belonging to Desdemona and hides it in Cassio’s room pretending it is proof of Desdemona’s unfaithfulness. Some critics have suggested other motives: psychologist Ernest Jones's suggestion that Iago may be motivated by a repressed homosexual desire for Othello has been influential in subsequent performances of the role. [159]

Cast

Othello was performed in the Shimpa style in Japan in 1903 by Otojiro Kawakami, resetting the location Cyprus to Taiwan, which was then a Japanese colony. [221] M. R. Ridley in 1958, rejecting Walker's argument and accepting Greg's, argued that Q had greater authority and rejected F's changes as "memorial contamination" from a theatre prompt book or as "sophistications" by the editors of F. [54]