Othello Read Online Free PDF

are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an
Aside?
(often a line may be equally effective as an aside or a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a
may exit
or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.
    Line Numbers in the left margin are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.
    Explanatory Notes at the foot of each page explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.
    Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with “Q” indicating that it derives from the First Quarto of 1622, “Q2” from the Second Quarto of 1630, “F” from the First Folio of 1623, “F2” a reading that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, “F3” from the Third Folio of 1663–64, “F4” from the Fourth Folio of 1685, and “Ed” that it derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. A selection of Quarto variants and plausible unadopted editorial readings is also included. Thus, for example: at “5.2.390, Judean = F. Q, F2 = Indian.” This indicates that at Act 5 Scene 2 Line 390 we have retained the Folio reading “Judean” and that “Indian” is an interestingly different reading in the Quarto and Second Folio.

KEY FACTS
    MAJOR PARTS: (
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage
) Iago (31%/272/12), Othello (25%/274/12), Desdemona (11%/165/9), Cassio (8%/110/9), Emilia (7%/103/8), Brabantio (4%/30/3), Rodorigo (3%/59/7), Lodovico (2%/33/4), Duke of Venice (2%/25/1), Montano (2%/24/3).
    LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 80% verse, 20% prose.
    DATE: 1604. Performed at court, November 1604; apparently uses Knolles’
Historie of the Turkes,
published late 1603; probably post-dates the period when theaters were closed due to the plague from May 1603 to April 1604. The Turkish wars in the eastern Mediterranean were of interest to King James, who had written a poem about the 1571 naval battle of Lepanto, which was reprinted in 1603, the year of his accession to the English throne. Some scholars, however, argue for a slightly earlier date.
    SOURCES: Based on a novella in Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio’s
Gli Hecatommithi
(1565), perhaps read in a 1584 French translation by Gabriel Chappuys. Context probably provided by Richard Knolles,
The Generall Historie of the Turkes
(1603), Sir Lewis Lewkenor’s translation of Gasparo Contarini’s
The Commonwealth and Government of Venice
(1599), and John Pory’s translation of Leo Africanus’
Geographical Historie of Africa
(1600).
    TEXT: There are two early texts, markedly different from each other: a Quarto published in 1622 and the First Folio of 1623. The Folio contains over 150 lines that are not in the Quarto. The Quarto has fuller stage directions, a handful of lines that are absent from the Folio, and a large number of oaths that were watered down or omitted in the Folio, as a result of the prohibition on stage swearing. In all, there are about a thousand verbal variants. The two texts seem to derive from different theatrical manuscripts, the Folio possibly having being set from a transcript by Ralph Crane, scribe to the King’s