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Title: Othello by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0-671-72281-6 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.11 (57 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Shakespeare doesn't need war or royalty to make great drama
Comment: William Shakespeare is perhaps at his most subtle best in _The Tragedy of Othello_. Unlike in many of his other plays, particularly tragedies and certainly histories, Shakespeare writes on a massive scale - about the highly privileged, about royalty, about bloody family feuds and wars. Not only does _Othello_ contain none of that, but it manages to be Shakespeare's most intense play, hitting the audience harder than any other.
Like _Romeo and Juliet_, it involves star-crossed lovers: an older black officer (Othello) and a young white woman (Desdemona). Shakespeare's modernity is particularly shocking. Even in the latter half of the 20th century, audiences were not ready to see a black man with his hands upon a white woman, even if it's a white man in blackface - and yet four hundred years ago, Shakespeare wrote this play. It shatters immense racial barriers, and yet Shakespeare never intended it to be a play about race - and it isn't. Othello's race is, amazingly, highly unimportant in the grand scheme of the play.
_Othello_ hits very close to home. Rather than dealing with things most audiences never have to face, the plot is extremely domestic and straightforward - unlike in Shakespeare's other tragedies, there is no comic relief. There is one plot, one line of thought, and you are forced to deal with every minute of it. You never get a rest from the action. Then there's the domesticity of it - the villainous Iago wants to take revenge upon Othello, and so, in the guise of an honest friend, convinces Othello that Desdemona has been sleeping with fellow officer Cassio. No matter our position in life, we can all empathize with Othello's struggle between trusting his friend and trusting his wife, and the madness that comes from being overtaken by extreme jealousy. Iago's elaborate plot to destroy the lives of Othello, Cassio, and Desdemona is extremely simple to understand, even in iambic pentameter.
This is also one of the only plays where the villain, not the hero, is the one who speaks most to the audience. We learn everything about Iago and his plans, because we as an audience develop a close relationship with him as he talks to us - seeing his charming side and the side that is purely amoral and perhaps even purely evil. Shakespeare, in Iago, has created the first true villain of drama, the ultimate "charming man without a conscience." The only thing we truly -don't- know about him is why he wants to ruin the lives of these people - and perhaps that's for the best. Shakespeare has left scholars and actors to wonder about it for hundreds of years, and come up with all sorts of theories.
_The Tragedy of Othello_ just goes to prove that Shakespeare did not rely on elaborate stories of royalty and war, but could create the most intense dramas revolving around the most intimate and domestic of settings - the bedroom.
If you think you know _Othello_ because you saw the film _O_, you couldn't be more wrong. There's no such thing as a Shakespeare plot without the brilliance of Shakespearean language - and nothing captures the innocence of Desdemona and the near gleeful evil of Iago like the words of Shakespeare, the greatest dramatist to write in the English language.
Rating: 5
Summary: A fine edition with many helps for the reader
Comment: This edition is from the 3rd Arden Series and may have a more modern feel to readers than the previous series did. For example, modern scholars believe that Shakespeare's plays were performed without break between scene and act so this edition does away with the ACT I Scene 2 headings and instead merely inserts 1.2 in the text where the change occurs.
There is a fine introductory essay that gives important cultural information to help the reader understand the moral climate in Venice in Shakespeare's time and the context of the play in the author's career and times.
This edition has the many good notes one expects from Arden editions. The longer notes are moved to the back to avoid too great an interruption to the readability of the text. There is also music for the two songs in the play and an index.
A fine edition that I am glad to own and refer to.
Rating: 4
Summary: Othello is O good read O! Makes me think of Jell-o! Really.
Comment: While I was reading Othello with my tubby custard in one hand and the book held at a 90 degree angel in the other I thought, I'm reading a play and eating a custard from and outlawed children's show how bizare. However, life is filled with such suprises. Kind of like the suprises in the Bard's play Othello. Othello is a man who should have had it all. He had friends, a loving wife, and an army at his command. The play follows Othello through a conspiracy of his villanous friend, Iago, not the parrot from Aladin, but Shakespeare's greatest villan. Iago was disgrunteled by the fact that he was passed up on a raise and there fore plots everyone's downfall. Making this a great read for the guy at the bottom of totum pole who is doing fries and wants to move up to salads. Iago in the openion of this reader is the true comic genius. He plays Othello and others like they have the mental capacity of tree stumps. He convinces Othello that Desdemona, his wife, is having an afair. Iago narrates most of the play and you here a lot of what he is thinking and planing to do. Which brings me to jello nobody cares what Bill Cosby is thinking or that he is still trying to salvage a carrier. This play is by far one of the best of Shakespeares in terms of great characters, surprises, and monologes. The readers are beautifully captivated by the play with the genius use of dramatic irony. Nobody knows what will happen and at anytime a surprise is waiting to happen.
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Title: The TEMPEST by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722905 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: King Lear by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722727 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $3.99 |
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Title: Othello (Cliffs Notes) by Helen McCulloch, Gary Carey ISBN: 0764585878 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 19 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare ISBN: 0671722859 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1992 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: Hamlet (Shakespeare Made Easy: Modern English Version Side-By-Side With Full Original Text) by William Shakespeare, Alan Durband ISBN: 0812036387 Publisher: Barrons Educational Series Pub. Date: February, 1986 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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