Reading Order
Othello Reading Order
Othello, the Moor of Venice (c. 1603–1604) by William Shakespeare is the most intimate of Shakespeare's great tragedies — where Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth deal with kingdoms and the world, Othello is entirely about a marriage, a friendship, and a man's destruction by jealousy. Othello, a Black Moorish general in Venetian service, has secretly married Desdemona; his ensign Iago, passed over for promotion, sets out to destroy Othello by convincing him that Desdemona has been unfaithful with the lieutenant Cassio. The play is driven by the extraordinary character of Iago — the most sustained portrayal of manipulative evil in Shakespeare and one of the great embodiments of malice in world literature. He gives no fully adequate motive for his actions and provides the play's running commentary on his own villainy. Othello is the most troubling of the great tragedies for modern readers because of its treatment of race — Othello's Blackness is central to the play's dynamics of status, trust, and the vulnerability to which Iago exploits — and the play has generated enormous critical debate about whether Shakespeare is exposing or reproducing racist assumptions. The final scene, in which Othello smothers Desdemona before discovering her innocence and killing himself, is the most harrowing domestic scene in Shakespeare.
Where to start
Othello (c. 1603–1604) — any good scholarly edition. Best reading order: the Arden Third Series (ed. E.A.J. Honigmann) or the Oxford (ed. Michael Neill, which has the most extensive treatment of race in the play); for readers new to the play, watching the 1995 Oliver Parker film with Laurence Fishburne, or the 1965 Olivier film, before reading is recommended.
Complete Othello Book List
- 1Buy
Othello
William Shakespeare (Oxford, ed. Michael Neill)·2006·The most complete modern scholarly edition with the most extensive treatment of race in the play — Neill's Oxford edition is the definitive modern text for critical study - 2Buy
The Story of a New Name
Elena Ferrante·2013·The Neapolitan novel that is the closest contemporary parallel to Othello's domestic jealousy — Ferrante's portrayal of Elena and Nino, and the way Nino's attention destroys trust, inhabits the same world of intense jealousy and feminine vulnerability that Othello dramatizes - 3Buy
Desdemona
Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré·2012·Morrison's theatrical piece giving Desdemona a voice — Morrison imagines Desdemona and her African nurse Barbary in conversation after death; the most important feminist and postcolonial response to Othello by a major literary figure - 4Buy
Desdemona (A Play About a Handkerchief)
Paula Vogel·1994·Vogel's feminist retelling imagining what Desdemona was doing while Othello was at war — a darker counter-narrative to Shakespeare's play that has been widely performed; complements Toni Morrison's Desdemona - 5Buy
Jealousy
Alain Robbe-Grillet·1957·The French nouveau roman that inhabits the same psychological territory as Othello — Robbe-Grillet's unnamed narrator's obsessive surveillance of his wife's behavior is the novelistic equivalent of Othello's jealousy; one of the great literary explorations of pathological suspicion - 6Buy
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Arundhati Roy·2017·The novel that engages most directly with Othello's concerns about identity, belonging, and the destruction of love by social forces — Roy's India, like Shakespeare's Venice, is a world where race, caste, and religion determine who can love whom
Othello — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Othello about?
Othello (c. 1603–1604) by William Shakespeare is the story of Othello, a Black Moorish general in Venetian service, who has secretly married Desdemona. His ensign Iago, passed over for promotion, sets out to destroy Othello by convincing him that Desdemona has been unfaithful with the lieutenant Cassio. Through a series of manipulations — including a planted handkerchief — Iago destroys Othello's trust in Desdemona. Othello smothers Desdemona before discovering her innocence; Iago is exposed; Othello kills himself. The play is Shakespeare's most intimate tragedy, driven by the extraordinary character of Iago, and is central to debates about race in Shakespeare because Othello's Blackness is integral to the play's dynamics of trust, jealousy, and vulnerability.
Who is Iago in Othello and why is he so famous?
Iago is Othello's ensign — his junior officer — who has been passed over for promotion in favor of Cassio and sets out to destroy Othello through an elaborate campaign of manipulation and deceit. He is famous because he is one of the most psychologically fascinating villains in world literature: he operates by exploiting other people's virtues (Othello's trust, Cassio's friendliness, Desdemona's goodness), he provides a running commentary on his own villainy in soliloquy, and he gives no fully adequate motive — his 'motiveless malignity' (Coleridge's phrase) makes him disturbing in a way that a character with a clear grievance would not be. S.T. Coleridge's famous phrase 'the motive-hunting of motiveless malignity' captures the horror of Iago's character.
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