About the Play:

An epic Shakespearean tragedy, Othello, is brimming with jealousy, passion, ambition and betrayal. Othello, a Moor who has become a general in the Venetian army, sees his happy marriage to the beautiful Desdemona destroyed when his seemingly trustworthy ensign, Iago, suggests to him that she may be unfaithful. The "green-eyed monster" soon rears its ugly head, as the previously happy couple are set onto a path to tragedy.

The Theatre Guild's 1943 production of Othello at the Sam S. Shubert Theatre was the first major production of the Shakespeare play in the United States to cast a black Othello, noted actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, opposite Uta Hagen as Desdemona and her then-husband Jose Ferrer as the evil Iago. The production was quite popular, and still holds the record for longest-running Shakespeare play on Broadway, with 296 performances. It then toured the U.S. and Canada for another season, playing in 45 cities, a longer run than any other Shakespeare play in U.S. stage history.

Read William Shakespeare's great tragedy Othello in all its brilliance and actually understand what it means. No Fear Shakespeare gives you Shakespeare's complete text of Othello on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand modern English on the right.

Shakespeare side-by-side in plain English. Each No Fear Shakespeare contains:
• The complete text of the original play
• A line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into the kind of English people actually speak today
• A complete list of characters with descriptions
• Plenty of helpful commentary

About the Playwright:

Arguably the greatest English-language playwright, William Shakespeare was a seventeenth-century writer and dramatist, and is known as the Bard of Avon. Under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I, he penned more than 30 plays, 154 sonnets, and numerous narrative poems and short verses. Equally accomplished in histories, tragedies, comedy, and romance, Shakespeare's most famous works include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, and As You Like It. Like many of his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare began his career on the stage, eventually rising to become part-owner of Lord Chamberlain's Men, a popular dramatic company of his day, and of the storied Globe Theatre in London. Extremely popular in his lifetime, Shakespeare's works continue to resonate more than three hundred years after his death. His plays are performed more often than any other playwright's, have been translated into every major language in the world, and are studied widely by scholars and students.