Othello Summary: Shakespeare's Tragedy of Jealousy, Trust and Revenge
What Othello is about
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy Shakespeare wrote around 1603. It moves between Venice and the island of Cyprus, and it follows a Moorish general in Venetian service who is manipulated by his own ensign into believing his wife has betrayed him. The machinery of the plot is small: a few lies, one dropped handkerchief, a conversation overheard from the wrong angle. The consequences are total.
The play opens with Roderigo, a wealthy gentleman, complaining to Iago that he has not been told about a secret marriage. Desdemona, daughter of the senator Brabantio, has eloped with Othello. Roderigo wanted her himself and had been refused by her father. Iago has a grievance of his own. Othello has promoted an aristocrat, Cassio, to lieutenant over him, and Iago believes Cassio is the weaker soldier. He sets Roderigo to wake Brabantio with the news, then slips away to warn Othello that the father is coming.
Brabantio takes his accusation to the Duke of Venice, claiming Othello won Desdemona by witchcraft. Othello answers that she fell in love with him because of the stories he told of his life before Venice. Desdemona confirms it. The senate is satisfied, and since the Turks are threatening Cyprus, Othello is sent to command the defence. Brabantio leaves with a warning that Iago hears and files away: she deceived her father, and may deceive you.
In Cyprus the storm has already wrecked the Turkish fleet, so there is no war to fight and nothing but time. Iago uses it. He gets Cassio drunk, has Roderigo provoke him into a brawl, and Cassio is stripped of his rank. Iago then advises Cassio to ask Desdemona to plead his case, which gives Iago the picture he needs: a disgraced officer in private conversation with the general's wife. From there he works on Othello by suggestion rather than accusation, and a lost handkerchief, Othello's first gift to Desdemona, becomes the proof that damns her.
The main characters
Othello is an outsider at the centre of Venetian power, trusted with the state's armies and never quite of the state. His eloquence in the first act is what wins the senate and won Desdemona. His collapse is the play.
Iago is the ensign who sets everything moving. Critics have argued for centuries about what actually drives him, and the question of his motive, and of his relationship to Othello, remains one of the major debates about the play.
Desdemona chose her husband against her father's will and defends that choice in open court. Emilia, Iago's wife, attends her, and it is Emilia who picks up the handkerchief and hands it to her husband without knowing what he wants it for. Cassio, Roderigo, Brabantio and Bianca, a Cyprus courtesan, complete the circle Iago plays on. Othello and Iago are two of the four longest roles Shakespeare wrote, and the parts of Othello, Iago, Desdemona and Emilia are all regarded by actors as demanding and highly desirable.
The themes
Love here is new, chosen and publicly defended, which is exactly what makes it fragile. Othello and Desdemona have no shared history to fall back on when doubt arrives.
Revenge runs through the play as a private grudge about promotion that expands until it consumes a household. Power is both military and domestic. Othello commands an army and cannot govern his own suspicion.
Identity sits underneath all of it. Othello is valued for his usefulness, and Brabantio's objection shows how conditional that welcome is. Critical attention has long focused on the play's treatment of race. The role was originally performed by white actors in dark makeup; black actors began playing Othello in the nineteenth century.
How it ends (spoilers)
Iago persuades Roderigo to attack Cassio in the street. The attempt fails, Cassio is wounded in the leg by Iago from behind, and Iago stabs Roderigo to death to silence him. Othello goes to Desdemona as she sleeps. She denies being unfaithful. He smothers her. Emilia arrives, Desdemona defends her husband as she dies, and when Othello names the handkerchief as his evidence, Emilia understands at last what her husband has done.
Why it still matters
Shakespeare took his plot from a 1565 novella by Cinthio and reworked it heavily. The play was never published in his lifetime and survives in a single quarto of 1622 and in the First Folio. It has been one of his most popular works with audiences and critics since its first performance, is grouped with Macbeth, King Lear and Hamlet among the major tragedies, and has produced a long line of stage, screen and operatic adaptations. It lasts because the destruction is so cheaply bought. One man with a grudge, a few well-placed words, and a piece of cloth.
