Othello

Othello is a tragedy by the English playwright William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1603 and first recorded as performed at the English royal court on 1 November 1604. Set in Venice and on the island of Cyprus, the play follows Othello, a Moorish general in Venetian military service, whose marriage to Desdemona is destroyed by the calculated manipulation of his ensign Iago, who convinces Othello that Desdemona has been unfaithful with his lieutenant Cassio, using a lost handkerchief as apparently damning evidence. Iago's motives are left deliberately unresolved even as his scheming methodically isolates Othello from every source of reassurance, driving him to murder Desdemona in a jealous rage before learning of Iago's deception and taking his own life. Alongside Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth, Othello is generally counted among Shakespeare's four great tragedies, and it has drawn particularly sustained critical attention for its treatment of race, jealousy and the psychology of manipulation, with the roles of Othello and Iago numbering among the longest in the Shakespearean canon. The play remains one of Shakespeare's most frequently staged and adapted tragedies, including numerous operatic and film versions.