Compare And Contrast O To Othello

The Tragedy of Othello, the moor of Venice, otherwise known as Othello, is a Shakespearean tragedy believed to be written in 1603. The quarto edition of the play first appeared in 1622; the version printed in the 1623 Folio edition is around 160 lines longer than the quarto and has over a thousand words differences in the writing. Othello revolves around the four central characters: the titular character Othello, his wife Desdemona, the main antagonist Iago and his lieutenant Cassio. Due to the play’s themes of racial prejudice, betrayal, love, jealousy, revenge and appearance vs reality, it has been consistently performed in theatres worldwide and Othello has been the source for many film and literary adaptations. In this essay, I aim to explore the different ways in which Othello is

The setting and historical context of both adaptations proves to be important in culturally transforming the original play. The events in the original source take place in Venice and Cyprus during the early modern period which was approximately Shakespeare’s time in history. Likewise, the film Othello is set in the same locations and therefore follows the original source text closely, however the context seems much more prevalent. Situations such as the beating of Rodney King and the OJ Simpson murder trials were clear examples of why the film adaptation was much more provocative than its original source. It is said that during these events in the 1990s, Othello would “become a play saturated with racial anxiety” . Meanwhile, in O, the setting has changed to retell the tragedy in a contemporary manner. A way to convince the viewers of Odin’s otherness in O was setting the film in South Carolina, an extremely conservative state known for its racism and slavery during the time of the Civil War. Odin’s otherness is therefore treated as a sense of irony due to the