Othello, the Moor of Venice: texts and contexts

About the series

About this volume

List of illustrations

Introduction

An Othello pre-text: Cinthio, from Gli Hecatommithi

Part one: William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice

Edited by David Bevington

Part two: Cultural contexts

Race and religion

Othello's sword and English sexuality

Blackness and Moors

Peter Martyr, from the decades of the New World or West India

George Best, from a true discourse of the late voyages of discovery

Queen Elizabeth I, licensing Casper Van Senden to deport Negroes

John Leo Africanus, from a geographical history of Africa

Lady and the Blackamoor

Ottoman empire and "turning Turk"

Richard Knolles, from the general history of the Turks

Giles Fletcher the elder, from policy of the Turkish empire

Church of England, prayer for the preservation of those christians and their countries that are now invaded by the Turk

Christianity

Nicholas Udall, from respublica

White devil

Geneva bible, verses on the white devil

Martin Luther, from a commentary upon the epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians

Cultural geography

Early modern Mediterranean

Myth of Venice

Dedicatory poems, from the commonwealth and government of Venice

Fynes Moryson, from an itinerary

Venice: Virgin/whore

Thomas Coryate, from coryats crudities

Cyprus: Birthplace of love

Richard Knolles, from the general history of the Turks

James VI and I, from the Lepanto

Aleppo

Jan Huyghen Van Linschoten, from his discourse of voyages into the East and West Indies

Africa and barbary

John Leo Africanus, from a geographical history of Africa

Marriage and the household

Baldassare Castiglione, from the book of the courtier

Juan Luis Vives, from instruction of a christian woman

William Whately, from a bride-bush: or, a wedding sermon

Ste. B, from counsel to the husband: to the wife instruction

Hannah Woolley, from the gentlewoman's companion; or, a guide to the female sex

Martin Parker, from the married man's lesson: or, a dissuasion from jealousy

From the cuckhold's haven

Masculinity and military life

Robert Barret, from the theory and practice of modern wars

Thomas Proctor, from of the knowledge and conduct of wars

Thomas and Leonard Digges, from an arithmetical military treatise, named stratioticos

Thomas Styward, from the pathway to martial discipline

John Taylor, from a valorous and perilous sea-fight fought with three Turkish ships

Passions

Thomas Wright, from the passions of the mind in general

Pierre de la Primaudaye, from the French academy

Love and jealousy

Thomas Buoni, from problems of beauty and all human affections

Benedetto Varchi, from the blazon of jealousy

Robert Burton, from anatomy of melancholy

Francis Bacon, from the essays or counsels, civil and moral

Encounters with Othello

Critical encounters

Thomas Rymer, from a short view of tragedy

Charlotte Ramsey Lennox, from Shakespeare illustrated

William Winter, from othello: as presented by Edwin Booth

Staging women

Thomas Jordan, from the nursery of novelties in a variety of poetry

Paula Vogel, from Desdemona: a play about a handkerchief

Blackface minstrelsy

Desdemonum: Ethiopian burlesque, in three scenes

Thomas Dartmouth rice, from Otello: Burlesque opera

Postcolonial encounters

Tayeb Salih, from season of migration to the North

Derek Walcott, goats and monkeys

Bibliography

Index