"Partly Racist Warning"

As I was just diving right into this play, I decided to stop flailing about, and start swimming around and start looking. I don't want to bash my head on the bottom of the pool.

So instead of hurting myself...

I stopped reading and went to Sparknotes, which is one of the best things that ever happened to high school English students/English majors everywhere, and searched Othello.  I found this video a helpful go over of the play, even if the man has a dreadfully dull voice.

Wikipedia, one of the two sources of all information, gave me background information and the source history in brief. This play was written around 1604. Turns out Shakespeare mooched this play off of an Italian play called "Un Capitano Moro", or "A Moorish Captain," by Cinthio. The plays are pretty darn similar. Shakespeare does depart from it, however, in a few different ways. For example,

• Desdemona is the only character named in the Cinthio. Everyone else just has cool titles, like Moor, or Engisn, or Captain. Cool, huh?
• In Cinthio, Iago wanted to get with Desdemona, and was driven by revenge when she refused him.
• In Cinthio, Othello and Iago tag team to kill Desdemona and then cover the murder by making it look like an accident. Othello is caught later and tortured and killed. Iago is caught for other crimes and meets the same fate. Emilia is the only character that isn't dead at the end, and she tells the story. THIS is the most striking departure from the original text.
• Shakespeare adds characters.
• FUN FACT: The notes in some editions of Cinthio's play include a "partly-racist warning."

I hearkened to our dear teacher, and turned to the textbook and found some fascinating information. Like that though Shakespeare's main tragedies focus around "the deadly sins of the spirit" like "ambitious pride, ingratitude, wrath, jealousy, and vengeful hate," Othello is focused on sexual jealousy (Bevington 605). It's not just about the cosmos and the huge scheme of life and the universe, but about "the destruction of love through jealousy" (605). A list of differences between this and the other major tragedies is provided, including:

• Protagonist not a king or prince
• No supernatural visitions
• Social order not taken as seriously
• Not a widespread condemnation of humanity
• Focuses on ideas of divine justice
• Battles of good and evil for favor of the protagonist

I did a little background check on a character I'm interested in studying. Did you know that Iago is one of the few Shakespeare villains who do evil for the sake of being an evil jerk? He isn't driven entirely by ambitious pride or anything else like that. There are elements of that, but he really just wants to be mean sometimes.

And now that I have done all of that, I feel more prepared to jump back into reading. I have found some interesting themes that I want to see if I can pull out and examine more in detail. I'm wondering what literary application I should take with this. Hmmmm.....