Othello: Revised Edition (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series) - Softcover

William Shakespeare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472571762 ISBN 13: 9781472571762

Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare, 2016

Synopsis

This second edition of Othello has a new, illustrated introduction by leading American scholar Ayanna Thompson, which addresses such key issues as race, religion and gender, as well as looking at ways in which the play has been adapted in more recent times. Othello is one of Shakespeares great tragedieswritten in the same five-year period as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. The new introduction attends to the plays different meanings throughout history, while articulating the historical context in which Othello was created, paying particular attention to Shakespeares source materials and the evidence about early modern constructions of racial and religious difference. It also explores the life of the play in different historical moments, demonstrating how meanings and performances develop, accrue, and metamorphose over time. The volume provides a rich and current resource, making this best-selling play edition ideal for today's students at advanced school and undergraduate level.

About this title

Review:

If anything, Othello has increased its stature as one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies ever since it was first written, between 1603 and 1604, due to the victimisation suffered by its tragic hero, Othello, as a result of his skin colour. Othello is a "noble Moor", a North African Muslim who has converted to Christianity and is deemed one of the Venetian state's most reliable soldiers. However, his ensign Iago harbours an obscure hatred against his general, and when Othello secretly marries the beautiful daughter of the Venetian senator Brabanzio, Iago begins his subtle campaign of vilification, which will inevitably lead to the deaths of more than just Othello and Desdemona.

An extraordinary play, both for its dramatic economy and power as well as its remarkable language, from Othello's bombastic "traveller's history" to Desdemona's elegiac "willow song", the play raises uncomfortable questions about ongoing questions of not only racial identity but also sexuality, as Othello and Desdemona's sexual relationship becomes the voyeuristic site of Iago's attempt to destroy them. Particularly fascinated with the question of what it means to "see", Othello also contains one of the greatest tragic death scenes in all of Shakespeare, with Othello's final identification with "a malignant and a turbaned Turk". --Jerry Brotton

Review:

"Scholars and students alike will appreciate Thompson's reframing of the play in terms of the most current scholarly debates about genre, race, and sexuality, as well as her thorough and up-to-date account of the play's stage history." - Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"The new introduction for the revised edition of Othello by Ayanna Thompson is a welcome reconsideration of the 1997 original Arden3 edition ... Thompson's introduction recognizes and incorporates the vast critical world of early modern race studies that has developed in the past twenty years ... [It] is wide-ranging yet absolutely clear, providing a new frame for the play that students and academics alike will find useful for years to come ... The superb introduction ... opens new avenues of research and frames the play in ways that bring it up to date with the latest scholarship." - Sixteenth Century Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1472571762
• ISBN 13: 9781472571762
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Ayanna Thompson, E. A. J. Honigmann