Othello
General, a Moor in Venice
- Wants
- To be certain of the one thing he believes he earned.
- Undone by
- He trusts the story of himself as a soldier more than the evidence of his marriage.
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PlayRenaissance · 1603Study guide · no full textSteady
Othello
William Shakespeare →The tragedy is almost domestic: no ghosts, no witches, only a man deciding whom to believe. Iago never lies outright — he pauses at the right moment.
Study guide
This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy.”
The castFull atlas →
Iago
Ensign, and the play's engineer
- Wants
- To be promoted, or failing that, to make everyone else pay.
- Undone by
- He calls his motive a grievance because he does not want to look at the real one.
Now read the first page with all of this in mind.
The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.