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Summary: Takes the entire text and dramatizes the presentation
Review: This full-cast dramatic recording of a classic Shakespeare takes the entire text and dramatizes the presentation, which results in a package capturing the excitement of both live play and written word. Audio listeners will enjoy the results; especially the pairing with classical music.
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Summary: Iago's Show
Review: This is one of Shakespheare's more psychologically complex plays. It is fun to experience the total meltdown of Othello by the scheming of Iago, a very wicked and unappealing character except for his cleverness. Iago is a misogynist who is paranoid about his wife being untrue to him with Othello. In his warped mind, he believes that this justifies him setting up Othello for a fall. Iago manipulates everyone and every event to his advantage until the end. He makes Othello question the virtue of Desdemona by saying that she was dishonorable to her father by not informing him of her affair with Othello.
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Summary: Pure Tragedy
Review: This play embodies tragedy, and may be my favorite play by Shakes. Othello has wonderful elements - some of the most unbearable and longest dramatic irony of any play, a devilish villain whose true motives we are left to guess, a virtuous but flawed protagonist, the triumph of evil over good. Othello is a gut-wrenching play and should be appreciated for its sheer dramatic energy and passion. Certainly other questions are explored - such as the issue of racial insecurities even in a successful and admired man among prejudiced people. However, perhaps the most important things to take out of it is the sheer evil that Iago spreads around him, puppeteering the good characters with strings of wickedness.
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Summary: Good
Review: This play is about an African Venetian General who has just married a white senator's daughter. Iago, Othello's auncient, is upset because Othello chose Michael Cassio as his lietnenant instead of him. Iago devises a plan to make it appear as though Othello's wife Desdemona is having an affair with Cassio. Unfortunately Othello believes Iago and as a result some pretty tragic stuff happens at the end that I cannot reveal. I personally enjoyed this novel because I am a big fan of Shakespeare. Even though Iago was evil he was a well written, well developed villain as were the other characters in the novel.
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Summary: Great villain, horrible story
Review: This play is truly sickening. The villain, Iago, is actually a fairly common person in real life, the kind of person whose greatest joy is seeing others in misery, who loves to turn people against each other and laugh. I used to work with an Iago. You probably did too. Shakespeare deserves a lot of credit for creating this villain. But the play itself is too much. As I'm sure you know, Othello's sweet wife Desdemona, well maybe I shouldn't spoil the horrid ending if you actually don't know it. Iago convinces Othello that his wife is cheating on him. Othello believes the wrong person. The Iagos of the world are very persuasive, particularly when they are smarter than the people they are lying to.
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Summary: That Shakespeare!
Review: This was the first Shakespeare play I read and i've got to tell you that this play is great. Sure, the language takes some getting use to, but the whole plot makes up for this fault. This play is a true tragedy, and this edition helps you really understand what's happening. This is a brilliant play with helpful footnotes
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Summary: A must-read for Shakespeare fans!
Review: Well-written play by William Shakespeare that includes all emotions. Appeals to everyone from children to adult.
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Summary: Art to us
Review: What to say is that I love it and it makes me greater in thoubght. Shakespeare was a beautiful and wonderful soul of one thousand different faces.
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Summary: One of Shakespeare's many "best" plays.
Review: When I rate this at four stars, I'm rating it against other Shakespearean plays; against the general run of literary work, it would certainly rate five. I dock it one star simply because I find the concept, which seems to be accepted as a given in the play, that if a man finds that the woman he loves is cheating on him, it's okay to kill her, and that it's only a bad idea because he might be mistaken, to be, shall we say, a less than enthralling idea which I hate to see perpetuated.Some other random comments on the work, in no particular order: 1) The racial angle is exaggerated. Yes, Othello is black, and there are a few racial epithets thrown around by his detractors, but really, there is less sign of racism inherent in the characters of this play than one might expect in your average modern person. The main point to making Othello black was to make him an outsider; the play could as easily have been set in England, and Othello made French. (But then, since the target audience was English, they'd have been more likely to get defensive about the portrayal of their prejudices as unreasonable.) 2) The main point of the play is not the evils of racism, but the evils of jealousy. 3) Iago is unquestionably the "best" villain in all of Shakespeare, and one of the best in all of literature, in terms of being a well-portrayed "subtle" villain. It's rare to see a portrayal of a lying, manipulative scoundrel that is actually plausible and successful; usually, the audience finds itself having a hard time believing that the manipulator's victims could possibly be so dumb as to not see through him; certainly, there's a large dollop of that sentiment in "Richard III". But in this play, Iago's lies are remarkably plausible, and it is very easy to see how he is successful in his plan; his machinations were excellently managed.
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Summary: Othello is O good read O! Makes me think of Jell-o! Really.
Review: While I was reading Othello with my tubby custard in one hand and the book held at a 90 degree angel in the other I thought, I'm reading a play and eating a custard from and outlawed children's show how bizare. However, life is filled with such suprises. Kind of like the suprises in the Bard's play Othello. Othello is a man who should have had it all. He had friends, a loving wife, and an army at his command. The play follows Othello through a conspiracy of his villanous friend, Iago, not the parrot from Aladin, but Shakespeare's greatest villan. Iago was disgrunteled by the fact that he was passed up on a raise and there fore plots everyone's downfall. Making this a great read for the guy at the bottom of totum pole who is doing fries and wants to move up to salads. Iago in the openion of this reader is the true comic genius. He plays Othello and others like they have the mental capacity of tree stumps. He convinces Othello that Desdemona, his wife, is having an afair. Iago narrates most of the play and you here a lot of what he is thinking and planing to do. Which brings me to jello nobody cares what Bill Cosby is thinking or that he is still trying to salvage a carrier. This play is by far one of the best of Shakespeares in terms of great characters, surprises, and monologes. The readers are beautifully captivated by the play with the genius use of dramatic irony. Nobody knows what will happen and at anytime a surprise is waiting to happen.
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