50 Fun Facts About Othello

What phrase completes the play's full title, The Tragedy of Othello, ...?

It is usually ranked with Hamlet, King Lear and Macbeth as one of Shakespeare's four major tragedies.

In which two places is Othello set?

Shakespeare added the Turkish threat to Cyprus himself; his source has no war at all.

What military rank does Iago hold under Othello?

His grudge begins when Othello promotes the aristocrat Cassio to lieutenant over him.

Whom does Othello promote to lieutenant, provoking Iago's resentment?

Iago considers the aristocrat a less capable soldier than himself.

Who is Desdemona's father?

He is a Venetian senator who accuses Othello of winning his daughter by witchcraft.

Which wealthy, dissolute gentleman pays Iago to help him win Desdemona?

Iago eventually stabs him to death in the dark to stop him revealing the plot.

Which enemy fleet is threatening Cyprus when Othello is dispatched there?

They feint at Rhodes first, but a storm destroys their fleet before Othello even arrives.

How does Othello say he won Desdemona's love, rather than by witchcraft?

The senate is satisfied once Desdemona confirms she loves him.

What happens to the Turkish fleet before the Venetians land on Cyprus?

Othello orders a general celebration, which gives Iago his chance to get the new lieutenant drunk.

How does Iago first bring about the new lieutenant's disgrace?

Montano is injured trying to calm him, and Othello strips Cassio of his rank.

In Shakespeare's source story, by what title is the equivalent of Othello's lieutenant known?

Only the wife is named in the source; the other characters are simply the Moor, the Ensign and the Corporal.

Who finds the dropped handkerchief and hands it to Iago?

She is Desdemona's attendant and does not know what her husband plans to do with it.

What fruit is embroidered on the handkerchief?

Critics read the red fruit on white cloth as a symbol of Desdemona's virgin marriage.

Who is Bianca?

Iago gets Cassio talking about her while Othello, listening, believes they are discussing Desdemona.

How does Othello kill Desdemona?

Verdi's opera restored the pillow as the murder weapon after Ducis's French adaptation had used a dagger.

Who exposes Iago's plot after Desdemona's death?

Iago stabs her to death in the scuffle that follows.

What does Iago vow once he is exposed?

His refusal to explain himself led Coleridge to write of his "motive-hunting of motive-less Malignity".

How does Othello die?

Lodovico then appoints Cassio as his successor and orders him to punish Iago.

Who apprehends both Iago and Othello for the murders at the end of the play?

He is Brabantio's kinsman and denounces Iago before leaving to tell the others what has happened.

Whose 1565 collection of novellas was Shakespeare's main source for the plot?

Giovanni Battista Giraldi's Gli Hecatommithi also supplied the plot of Measure for Measure.

Which is the only character given a name in Shakespeare's source story?

Her name means "ill-omened" in Italian; the others are simply the Moor, the Ensign and the Corporal.

How is the wife murdered in Shakespeare's source story?

The Moor and the Ensign then bring down the bedroom ceiling to make it look like an accident.

What is the latest year in which Othello could have been written, based on a recorded court performance?

The performance appears in the accounts of Sir Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels; the King's Men played it at court on 1 November 1604.

In what year was Othello first published, as a quarto?

It appeared again a year later in the First Folio, with about 160 extra lines including the Willow Song.

How many lines does the First Folio text of Othello contain that are missing from the 1622 quarto?

They include Othello's "Pontic Sea" speech and Desdemona's Willow Song.

How many quarto oaths are missing from the Folio, possibly because of the 1606 Act of Abuses?

There are more than a thousand other variations of wording, spelling and punctuation between the two texts.

How many lines does Iago speak, making his the larger of the play's two great roles?

Only Hamlet and Richard III are longer parts in the Shakespeare canon.

Which word is used more than 40 times in the play, usually about Iago and with a double meaning?

It works both as a condescending term for a social inferior and as a claim about his truthfulness.

Which critic coined the phrase "motive-hunting of motive-less Malignity" to describe Iago?

Writing in 1818, he also argued that Shakespeare could not have conceived Othello as black.

Which critic suggested in 1693 that the play should have been called "The Tragedy of the Handkerchief"?

He also offered the moral that good wives should "look well to their Linnen".

Which visitor to London in 1600 is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's portrait of a Moor?

His entourage stayed half a year, and Shakespeare's company played at court during the visit.

Which actor originally played the title role for the King's Men?

His eulogies reveal that he was especially admired in the part.

Who gave the first known professional performance of Othello by a black actor, in New York in 1822?

His protégé Ira Aldridge, billed as the African Roscius, played the part in London three years later.

Which black actor's 1943 Broadway Othello, directed by Margaret Webster, was a theatrical landmark?

José Ferrer played Iago and Uta Hagen was Desdemona; he had first played the role in London in 1930.

Which Russian director staged a 1930 Moscow Art Theatre Othello by letter while ill in France?

He had seen Salvini's Othello in 1882 and first played the part himself in 1896.

Which actor's 1965 film of his National Theatre Othello earned him an Oscar nomination alongside Maggie Smith, Frank Finlay and Joyce Redman?

He described his walk in the role as being "like a soft black leopard"; later critics have called the performance racist.

Whose Othello film, panned in 1955 as "The Boor of Venice", was hailed as a classic when restored in 1992?

Filming stopped whenever his money ran out, and he took acting jobs to pay for the next stretch.

Who played Iago opposite Laurence Fishburne in Oliver Parker's 1995 film?

It was his first screen villain, and the film was trailed as an "erotic thriller".

The 1995 film starring Laurence Fishburne was the first major-studio Othello to do what?

Low-budget independent films with Ted Lange and Yaphet Kotto had done so earlier.

Which composer's 1887 opera Otello, with a libretto by Boito, is considered equal to the play?

It premiered at La Scala on 5 February 1887 and was his penultimate opera.

Which composer's 1816 Otello made Desdemona its focus and even spawned a version with a happy ending?

It was titled Otello, ossia il Moro di Venezia.

In the teen film O, what is the name of the character based on Othello?

Excerpts from Verdi's Otello serve as his theme while rap and hip-hop surround the white students.

Vishal Bhardwaj's Hindi film Omkara relocates the story to political violence in which Indian state?

Alexander Abela's French Souli moved it to a Madagascan fishing village in the same decade.

Which 1956 Western resets the story around the lieutenant character?

Franco Zeffirelli filmed Verdi's opera thirty years later.

Which earlier Shakespeare comedy with a similar slander plot influenced Othello?

Titus Andronicus, with its Moorish villain Aaron, is another forerunner.

Roughly how many hours does the action on Cyprus occupy, in the play's 'short' time scheme?

The double time scheme was first fully laid out by John Wilson in Blackwood's Magazine in 1849-50.

Which role gave the first professional acting appearance by a woman on the English stage in 1660?

History does not record who played her that December night; Margaret Hughes is the first woman known to have taken the part.

Which actor initiated the 'Bronze Age of Othello' by rejecting blackface for lighter makeup?

Kean collapsed while playing the role and died two months later, according to theatre legend.

Which Italian actor always played Othello in Italian, even alongside English-speaking casts?

Stanislavski saw his Othello in 1882 and said the actor 'grasped all of us in his palm'.

Which comedian played Othello for Northern Broadsides in 2009 in a change of direction?

Chiwetel Ejiofor's 2008 Donmar Warehouse Othello was a breakout role the previous year.