Othello - William Shakespeare

This edition of "Othello" aims to shed light on the text of the play as we have come to know it, and on our knowledge of its early history. The professional malpractices of the publisher of the Quarto, as described in documents in the Public Record Office, and the professional zeal of the Folio scribe, who wished to tidy and correct Shakespeare's manuscript, introduced many plausible but post-Shakespearean readings into the text, which call into question a number of our assumptions about the play. As well as investigating the implications of these findings about the early texts, the editor offers a wider background to the play, discussing major critical issues, the play in performance and the relationship between reading and seeing it, and topics such as its date, sources, the famous conundrum of "double time", and its "greatness" compared with "Hamlet" and "King Lear". Commentary notes assist the reader's understanding of the text in detail; many are concerned with the contemporary resonances of its language.