February Books 26) Othello, by William Shakespeare

[nwhyte]

Othello popped up on my friends list twice today, elmyra just saw the RSC production and someone else in a locked post saw the Northern Broadsides version with Lenny Henry. I have just finished the Arkangel version (travelling last week in noisy aeroplanes didn't help me speed through it).

I knew next to nothing about Othello before this, and the single

Comments

[shsilver]

If you want to think of Othello in really mind blowing terms, back in college, I wrote a paper with the thesis that Iago was really the good guy and Desdemona was trying to destroy Othello. I managed to successfully defend the thesis in the essay (and went on to write another one for the same professor explaining why T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" should be a read as a comforting poem).

[inuitmonster]

I studied this in school and liked it then, but I feel now that it does not really work so well. The big problem is that Othello is far less interesting a character than Iago, with Othello seeming like a bit of a cipher in his oqwn story.