Othello

&
Much ado about
nothing

Bocchese Noemi Nardi Martina

Priante Sonia Repele Alberto
 Shakespeare’s life

William Shakespeare’ reputation is world-wide, but very little is known about who he was
or how he live. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. We know that he was the
third child of John Shakespeare, a merchant with an important role in politics of
Stratford-upon-Avon. In later years the business fortunes of John Shakespeare declined.
It is not known where the young William went to school, but it is thought that he
attended the Local Grammar school but not the university. He learnt grammar, logic and
rhetoric, on a firm Latin base.
When he was 18, William marry Anne Hathaway, the couple had three children (a
daughter , Susanna, and twins , Hamnet and Judith).
It is not known, how he first entered the world of theatre. According to one story, an
actor in the Queen’s Company died shortly before the company visited Stratford-upon-
Avon in 1587; it is said that Shakespeare took the dead man’s place.
There is evidence of his living in London in 1592, when Robert Greene wrote a letter to
three of his friends, lamenting that uneducated dramatists were more successful in the
theatre than university men like himself. By 1594 Shakespeare was an important
member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a theatrical company based in London, than
they will change their name in King’s Men in 1603.
Shakespeare wrote 38 plays for the theatre before died in 1616, as well as, poetry and
the most famous series of sonnets in the English language.
Pl
ot:
The play opens with Roderigo, complaining to Iago, because he hasn't told him about the
secret marriage between Desdemona, and Othello. He is upset because he loves her and
he had already asked her father for her hand in marriage. Iago hates Othello for
promoting a younger man named Cassio above him. Iago is also angry because he
believes that Othello slept with his wife Emilia. Iago convinces Roderigo to wake
Brabantio, Desdemona's father, and tell him about his daughter's elopement.

Before Brabantio reaches Othello, news arrives in Venice that the Turks are going to
attack Cyprus. Brabantio arrives and accuses Othello of seducing Desdemona, but he
explains that Desdemona became enamored of him for the stories he told of his
dangerous military life. Then, Othello leaves Venice to command the Venetian armies
against invading Turks on the island of Cyprus, accompanied by Desdemona,
Cassio,Iago, and Emilia.

They arrives in Cyprus finding

that the Turkish fleet is
destroyed by a storm. Iago
schemes to use Cassio to ruin
Othello and during a
celebration he persuades
Roderigo to engage Cassio in a
fight. Othello strips Cassio of
his rank. Cassio is distraught,
but Iago persuades him to
importune Desdemona to
persuade her husband to
reinstate him.

Iago now persuades Othello to

be suspicious of Cassio and
Desdemona. Desdemona drops
a Handerkief that was
Othello's first gift to Desdemona. Emilia steals it, at the request of Iago, but unaware of
what he plans: planting it in Cassio's home. Othello, beliving what Iago says, resolves to
kill his wife and asks Iago to kill Cassio as a duty.

Iago convinces Roderigo to kill Cassio. They fight and both are wounded. When Cassio
identifies Roderigo as one of his attackers, Iago kills Roderigo to stop him from revealing
the plot. He then accuses Bianca of the failed conspiracy to kill Cassio.

In the night, Othello smothers Desdemona to death in their bed. When Emilia arrives,
Othello tries to justify by accusing Desdemona of adultery. Then the Governor arrives,
with Iago, Cassio, and others, and Emilia begins to explain what Iago has done. Othello,
realizing Desdemona's innocence, stabs Iago but not fatally and he commits suicide with
a dagger.
Characters:
Othello
One aspect of OTHELLO that interests 20th-century
critics is the portrayal of the black hero Othello. At
the beginning of the play various characters draw
attention to Othello’s racial origins in a negative way.
Iago and Roderigo, for example, use openly racist
language when telling Brabanzio that Desdemona
has run away with Othello. In this speech Othello’s
blackness is clearly associated with physical passion
and with evil. The contrast between black and white
suggests the unnaturalness of the relationship. but
also Brabanzio’s accusation that Othello has used
magic and drugs in order to seduce Desdemona
emphasises the unnaturalness of the relationship.

Many characters in the play use very negative and

sometimes racist language when describing Othello. This doesn’t mean that Shakespeare
himself shares this view of the Moor. Indeed, one of the triumphs of the play is that
Shakespeare succeeds in portraying a black man as a credible tragic hero. Othello is
given in very positive features that counterbalance the negative views of him that are
expressed by other people.

Othello may be an outsider to Venetian society, but he posses excellent military virtues.
He is a man who knows his professional worth. In fact when he speaks about himself,
Othello’s language is formal and dignified. It loses some of this formal dignity when he
comes to speak of his feelings for Desdemona. It is here that he shows himself uncertain,
when confronted by emotions that are new to his experience. His language becomes
simple and direct, as he struggles to understand the force of his emotions. Othello’s
tragedy is that his military experience has not prepared him for the profundities of
emotional experience that love brings. At first he is moved to clumsy expressions of
surprise and joy when all is going well with the marriage. He has no defences, however,
against Iago’s manipulations, because Othello’s character is essentially innocent. He
can’t immahine that anyone could be as evil as Iago, and he therefore believes the lies
that he is told. His world collapse when his faith in Desdemona is destroyed.

At the end of the play Othello commints suicide like in the Senecan tradition of tragedy
(see Brutus and Antony)

Desdemona
Desdemona is a character in William Shakespeare's play Othello (c.1601 – 1604).
Shakespeare's Desdemona is a Venetian beauty who enrages and disappoints her father,
a Venetian senator, when she elopes with Othello, a man several years her senior. When
 her husband is deployed to Cyprus in the service of the Republic
of Venice, Desdemona accompanies him. There, her husband is
manipulated by his ensign Iago into believing she is an
adulteress, and, in the last act, she is murdered by her estranged
spouse.

Throughout the play Desdemona remains unaware of the disaster

that Iago is preparing for her and Othello. Her love for her
husband has motivated her behaviour, even causing her to
deceive her father Brabanzio in the early stages of the
relationship. Iago will later remind Othello of this previous
deception, and suggest that Desdemona’s characters is
fundamentally dishonest. She never comes to understand what
has changed Othello’s view of her.

Iago
Shakespeare contrasts Iago with Othello's nobility and integrity. With 1097 lines, Iago
has more lines in the play than Othello himself.

Iago is a Machiavellian schemer and manipulator, as he is often referred to as "honest

Iago", displaying his skill at deceiving other characters so that not only do they not
suspect him, but they count on him as the person most likely to be truthful.

In the exposition in Act 1, scene 1, Iago himself states that his prime motivation is
bitterness at having been passed for promotion to the top post. His racist disgust at
seeing "a black ram tupping" a "white ewe", and his supreme confidence in his ability to
destroy Othello and escape detection,
all present potential motives. In a later
soliloquy, it is revealed that Iago
suspects his wife of infidelity with both
Othello and Cassio.

Iago only reveals his true nature in his

soliloquies, and in occasional asides.
Elsewhere, he is charismatic and
friendly, and the advice he offers to
both Cassio and Othello is
superficially sound
Date and texts:
The earliest mention of the play is found
in 1604, which records that on
"Hallamas Day, the Kings Maiesties
players" performed "A Play in the
Banketinghouse at Whithall Called The
Moor of Venis." The work is attributed to
"Shaxberd." The Revels account was first
printed by Peter Cunningham in 1842,
and is now regarded as genuine. Based
on its style, the play is usually dated
1603 or 1604, but arguments have been
made for dates as early as 1601 or 1602.

The play was entered into the Register of

the Stationers Company on 6 October 1621, by Thomas Walkley, and was first published
in quarto format by him in 1622:

One year later, the play was included among the plays in the First Folio of Shakespeare's
collected plays. However, the version in the Folio is rather different in length, and in
wording: The First Folio and the Quarto. One explanation is that the Quarto may have
been cut in the printing house to meet a fixed number of pages. Another is that the
Quarto is based on an early version of the play, while the Folio represents Shakespeare's
revised version. Most modern editions are based on the longer Folio version, but often
incorporate Quarto readings of words when the Folio text appears to be in error. Quartos
were also published in 1630, 1655, 1681, 1695, 1699 and 1705.

Themes:
Although the title suggests that the
tragedy belongs primarily to
Othello, Iago plays an important
role in the plot. He reflects the
archetypal villain, and has the
biggest share of the dialogue. In
Othello, it is Iago who manipulates
all other characters at will (=a
volontà), controlling their
movements and trapping them in
an intricate net of lies. He achieves
this by getting close to all
characters and playing on their
weaknesses (=debolezze) while they
refer to him as "honest" Iago.

Cintio source:
Othello is an adaptation of the Italian writer Cinthio's tale "Un Capitano Moro" ("A
Moorish Captain") from his Gli Hecatommithi (1565), a collection of one hundred tales in
the style of Boccaccio's Decameron. Cinthio's tale may have been based on an actual
incident occurring in Venice about
in1508. Desdemona is the only named
character in Cinthio's tale, with his few
other characters identified only as "the
Moor" (Othello), "the squadron leader"
(Cassio), "the ensign" (Iago), and "the
ensign's wife" (Emilia). Cinthio drew a
moral (which he placed in the mouth of
Desdemona) that European women are
unwise to marry the temperamental
males of other nations.
Cinthio's Moor is the model for
Shakespeare's Othello, but some
researchers believe the poet also took
inspiration from the several Moorish
delegations from Morocco to
Elizabethan England. While
Shakespeare closely followed Cinthio's tale in composing Othello, he departed from it in
some details. Brabantio, Roderigo, and several minor characters are not found in
Cinthio, for example. Shakespeare's most striking departure from Cinthio is the manner
of his heroine's death. In Shakespeare, Othello suffocates Desdemona, but in Cinthio,
Othello commissions Iago to bludgeon his wife to death with a sand-filled stocking.
Plot:
“Much ado about nothing” was probably written between 1598 and 1599. It is a comedy
about love.
The action of the play begins with the visit of the Prince of Aragon, Don Pedro, to Messina
where he is the guest of Leonato.
One of Don Pedro’s officers, Claudio, fall in love with Leonato’s daughter, Hero. Don
Pedro helps Claudio to have Leonato’s permission to marry Hero, but the prince’s
brother, Don John, decided to destroy the relationship between Claudio and Hero. John,
with his friend Borachio, make it seem that Hero already has a lover.
Claudio’s best friend is another young officer called Benedick. He was well-known for his
humour and his determination never to fall in love. The prince and Claudio decide to
play a trick on him by making him believe that Leonato’s niece, Beatrice, is in love with
him. They also try to persuade Beatrice that Benedick is in love with her.
Claudio is very angry when he discovers that Hero seems to have a lover, and he decides
to humiliate her at the wedding ceremony. He denounces her in front of the guests, and
refuse to marry her. Hero faints with shock in the church and Claudio and Don Pedro
believe that she is dead.
The local constables, Dogberry and Verges, soon discover Don John’s plot against
Claudio and the Prince. Claudio is full of remorse when Leonato accuses him for Hero’s
death, and asks him to marry one of Hero’s cousin. Claudio agrees to do this, in order to
make amends for his cruelty to
Hero. When Claudio arrives at
the wedding he is amazed to
discover that the “cousin” is
really Hero herself. Benedick
interrupts the proceedings to ask
if he can marry Beatrice. The play
ends happily with two weddings.

Characters:
Don Pedro:
Prince of Aragon and he’s a friend
of an important Messina’s sir,
Leonato. He also is the
helper(good side) of the two main lovers in fact he’s the intermediary between Claudio
and Hero, Beatrice and Benedick. Don Pedro is considered a character that is the
middleman in the story and seems to understand the events more than the other
character, however Don Pedro also experiences
some dramatic irony.

Don John:
He is Pedro’s illegitimate brother and he represented
the villain(bad side) and the antagonist because he
wanted to ruin the relationship between Claudio and
Hero. In fact he thinks that Don Pedro is falling in
love with Hero and he wants to make his brother unhappy because he is jealous of Don
Pedro’s position of first born.

Claudio:
He is a young Lord of Florence, he was in the Don Pedro’s army with Benedick, his
friend. When he meet Hero, he fall in love with her, it’s love at first sight. He seems to be
brave, but when the situation requires courage, he proves to be fearful. In fact he
doesn’t confess his love for Hero and asks to Don Pedro to do it for him.

Hero:
She is Leonato’s daughter, she’s the emblem of
feminine virtues, grace and beauty. Shakespeare uses
her purity to symbolize the stereotype of the
Renaissance woman. In fact she fall in love with
Claudio and, according to the social conventions,
becomes his wife.

Benedick:
He is a young Lord of Padua, he also is in the Don
Pedro’s army and he’s a Claudio’s friend. He is well-
known for his humor. This character is built to be a
man that is opposed to social conventions, in fact he
criticizes women’s behavior and hates the idea of marriage.

Beatrice: She is Hero’s cousin and the female

protagonist. She has a strong character, in fact even if
she is a woman she doesn’t accept Benedick’s jokes
and quarrels with him like a man. As many
Shakespeare’s characters she is astute and
enterprising. At the end we can understand that she
wants to take Benedick’s revenge.

Themes:
Love: Love is represented by the two couples: Claudio/Hero and Benedick/Beatrice,
but these people are different lovers. Between Claudio and Hero there is a happy love, at
a certain point Claudio thinks Hero betrays him, but it isn’t true, so at the end they get
married. The love between Benedick and Beatrice is based on verbal fights, because they
don’t realize to be fall in love. At the end they declare love each other and they get
married, too.

Revenge: is represented
by the figure of Beatrice, who
wants to take Benedick
revange because he makes
joke of her.

Joke: is represented by the

trap of Don John and his
followers (Borachio and
Conrad) against Claudio and
Hero; but the strange way
Benedick and Beatrice
understand to be in love is a
joke, too. Joke is also
represented by the constant conflict based on irony and insults between Beatrice and
Benedick.

Comic: all these traps, jokes and tricks entail at the play a comic and funny soul

Historical context:
The comedy is setted in Messina, but the historical context isn’t define very well.
Probably Shakespeare didn’t insert it to stand out the comic and playful spirit. When this
comedy was written (1598-1599), Sicily
was under Spanish domination, so
some characters have Spanish
nationality as Don Pedro and his
followers. In the comedy is told that Don
Pedro and Italian gentlemen(that follow
him) have just come back from a battle,
but we don’t know where the fight takes
place. At the end the historical period
remains indeterminate for all the
comedy.
Women is
Shakespeare’s
comedies:
The theatre in Shakespeare’s day was
treated with suspicion by the authorities
because they think that it encouraged
bad behavior.
The morality of the time made it difficult
for drammatists to create convincing
parts for female characters. There were
two main reason for this. Firstly, there
was a convention that women could not
appear on stage, so boys or men had to
perform female roles. Secondly,
audiences expected the action to focus
on male heroes or villains.
Shakespeare uses his genius to portray
strong, independent and intelligent
women, as in this comedy, when
Benedick and Beatrice insults and jokes
themselves.
One recurrent theme in the comedies is the conflict between men and women, and the
resolution of this conflict through love and marriage. This theme is also present in “Much
Ado About Nothing”.
The play opens with the arrival of Don Pedro, Claudio, and Benedick from a successful
military campaign. At the beginning of the play Benedick and Beatrice compete againist
each other, and seem to have a dislike of each other. Their dislike is really based on
attraction. This is indicated very early in the play, before Don Pedro’s plan is put into
action, Benedick compare Beatrice and Hero and say that Beatrice is more beautiful than
Hero.