This second edition of Othello has a new, illustrated introduction by leading American scholar Ayanna Thompson, which addresses such key issues as race, religion and gender, as well as looking at ways in which the play has been adapted in more recent times. Othello is one of Shakespeare's great tragedies-written in the same five-year period as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth. The new introduction attends to the play's different meanings throughout history, while articulating the historical context in which Othello was created, paying particular attention to Shakespeare's source materials and the evidence about early modern constructions of racial and religious difference. It also explores the life of the play in different historical moments, demonstrating how meanings and performances develop, accrue, and metamorphose over time. The volume provides a rich and current resource, making this best-selling play edition ideal for today's students at advanced school and undergraduate level.

Shakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.

“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.

Aspects of Othello, with its companion volume, Aspects of Macbeth, brings together authoritative articles by distinguished Shakespeare scholars. In making their selections from the entire range of Shakespeare Survey volumes, Professors Kenneth Muir and Philip Edwards have borne the interest of general readers in mind as well as the needs of teachers and students. In each volume the plate section includes both the articles' original illustrations and new material and there are specially written prefaces by the editors.