“I wanted an edition of Othello that had the necessary footnotes, background material, and a good selection of recent critical articles that would be accessible to students and would spark class discussions. This was it.”
—Deborah Montuori, Shippensburg University
This Norton Critical Edition includes:
·The First Folio text (1623).
· An introduction, explanatory footnotes, note on the text, and textual notes by Edward Pechter.
· Fifteen illustrations.
· Giraldi Cinthio’s sixteenth-century story in its entirety, which Shakespeare used for both the plot and many details of Othello.
· A generous selection of interpretive responses to Othello from its origins to the present day, including—new to the Second
Edition—those by Stanley Cavell and Lois Potter. Edward Pechter’s popular theatrical and critical overview of Othello has been significantly expanded.
· An updated Selected Bibliography.
"Othello is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation impregnated by genius." - Samuel Johnson (1765)
"Of all Shakespeare's tragedies... Othello is the most painfully exciting and the most terrible. From the moment when the temptation of the hero begins, the reader's heart and mind are held in a vice, experiencing the extremes of pity and fear, sympathy and repulsion, sickening hope and dreadful expectation." - A. C. Bradley (1904)
