A respected general in Venice, Othello’s life unravels when the manipulative Iago plants seeds of doubt about his wife’s fidelity. Consumed by jealousy and deception, Othello is driven toward irreversible tragedy. In William Shakespeare’s Othello, the destructive power of envy and mistrust is laid bare—exploring love, manipulation, and the fragile line between truth and illusion.
Date: 1603 (United Kingdom)
Length: ~122 pages (varies by edition)
Cultural impact: ~20.000.000 copies (estimates)
Genre: Drama & Plays, Historical Fiction
"The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless, and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection, inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs... are such proofs of Shakespeare’s skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any modern writer." — Samuel Johnson, critic and lexicographer
"The third act of Othello is [Shakespeare's] masterpiece, not of knowledge or passion separately, but of the two combined... of consummate art in the keeping up of appearances with the profound workings of nature" — William Hazlitt, essayist and critic
"Othello is not jealous, he is trusting! ... All that has happened to Othello is that his soul has had the brains beaten out of it, thereby muddying his whole world-outlook, because his ideal has perished!" — Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist
"Iago is a being next to the devil" — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and critic
"Othello's tragedy is that he lives according to a set of stories through which he interprets the world... He is living the life of a chivalric warrior in a world run by money and self-interest" — Sean McEvoy, critic
"If in Iago Shakespeare created the most compelling villain in Western literature, in Othello and Desdemona he gave us our most tragic and unforgettable lovers" — Harold Bloom, literary critic
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