The text of this Norton Critical Edition is that of the First Folio, printed in 1623. Additions and emendations adopted from the First Quarto (1622) appear in the Textual Notes that follow the play. Othello is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations.

 

“Sources and Contexts” reprints the sixteenth-century story by Giraldi Cinthio that Shakespeare used for the plot of Othello and for many of its details. Edward Pechter’s essay provides context for readers through its discussion of the play’s central topics―Moors, Turks, Venetians, marriage and domesticity, fathers and daughters, and female sexuality.

 

Seventeen wide-ranging interpretive essays are reprinted. Contributors include Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, T. S. Eliot, Kenneth Burke, Lynda E. Boose, Mark Rose, and Patricia Parker.

 

An annotated Selected Bibliography is also included.