Othello

    Othello is the fifth of Shakespeare’s Tragedies written circa 1604-5. Rather than an historical, it is a domestic tragedy in which a great man suffers a reversal of fortune in his personal life due to a weakness – his naivety or credulity. The play is set in Italy, at this time not yet a nation state, rather a collection of City States with Venice one of the more powerful ones. Venice represents the centre of power, civilisation, culture and order.

    Shakespeare’s World # = Shakespeare lived in both Elizabethan and Jacobean England, a dynamic period of change, expansion, exploration and enlightenment, yet his view of the world (Weltanshaung) was quite different from ours. Though Copernicus had died 21 years before he was born and he was born in the same year as Galileo, his world was still geocentric rather than heliocentric; that is most people still believed that the earth was the centre of the world with the sun and planets revolving around it.