Originally published in 1991. Collecting together commentary and critique on ‘the Scottish play’, this book showcases varied discussions of the text and the theatrical productions. From Samuel Johnson’s brief 1765 comment to the editor’s own piece on the Porter’s scene, the texts included here are popular important accounts of thoughts and scholarship on the play over the years. Some pieces address the most famous early Lady Macbeth – Mrs Siddons, while others look at a theme or specific issue such as Lady Macbeth’s children. This is a great sample of the voluminous body of work looking at the tragedy, considering its images, symbols, meanings and its challenges for the stage.

In this volume on Othello, Laurie Maguire examines the use and misuse of language, the play's textual and performance histories and how critics and directors have responded to the language of sexual jealousy.

Before her death in September 2001, Susan Snyder collected a number of her essays that she felt represented some of her best work in Shakespearean criticism over a period of about three decades. Many of them were written for specific occasions or specific reasons having to do with teaching or with panel discussions before diverse audiences, which she entered into along with others. In the process she contributed some of the best work on Shakespeare that was then extant, as this collection demonstrates.
Searching for a principle of organization, Professor Snyder decided that it would be best to arrange the essays in chronological order. The result was a kind of "intellectual autobiography," as she calls it in her Preface, and the title she chose was Shakespeare: A Wayward Journey, since it reflects her travels over the various avenues of Shakespearean criticism.

Act by act, scene by scene, each Shakespeare Explained guide creates a total immersion experience in the plot development, characters, and language of the specific play. As companion to the students' edition of the actual text of the play, each provides an exploration of the themes, motifs, symbols, and interpretations of the work. an introduction discusses the play's historical and social context, and each guide concludes with suggested essay topics and a quiz to help readers review the play and connect with Shakespeare's work on the page and with the world he created on stage for his audience.

Originally published in 1984. With selections organised chronologically, this collection presents the best writing on one of Shakespeare’s most studied plays. The structure displays the changing responses to the play and includes a wide range of criticism from the likes of Coleridge, Hazlitt, Moulton, Granville-Barker, Orwell, Levin, Stampfer, Gardner and Speaight interspersed with short entries from Keats, Raleigh, Freud and others. The final chapter by the editor elucidates his own thoughts on Lear, building on his commentary in the Introduction which puts the collection in context.

One of the four great tragedies—alongside Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth—Othello is among the darkest of Shakespeare’s plays, illumining the shadows of the gloomiest recesses of the human psyche and serving as a damning indictment of the world in which it was written. A cautionary tale of the destructiveness of sin and the ruinous consequences of bad philosophy, Othello seems to express Shakespeare’s rage at the cynicism and brutality of the age in which he lived. From the Machiavellian menace of Iago to the blind and prideful jealousy of Othello, this classic of world literature shows us the shadow falling over a society that has turned its back on the light and life of virtue.

The Ignatius Critical Editions present a tradition-oriented approach to reading Western classics. While many critical editions view literature through the lens of modernism and post-modernism, this series offers critical examinations informed by the Judeo-Christian heritage as passed down through the ages—the same heritage that provided the crucible in which the great authors formed these classic works.

Edited by acclaimed literary biographer Joseph Pearce, the Ignatius Critical Editions provide essays and footnotes that analyze works in light of the Western tradition, allowing the reader to meet the authors in their element.

The series is ideal for academic study and for anyone wishing to understand the great literary works of Western civilization in the company of some of the finest literature professors alive today.

Originally published in 1995. Providing the most influential historical criticism, but also some contemporary pieces written for the volume, this collection includes the most essential study and reviews of this tragic play. The first part contains critical articles arranged chronologically while the second part presents reviews of stage performances from 1901 to 1988 from a variety of sources. Chapters chosen are representative of their given age and critical approach and therefore show the changing responses and the topics that interested critics in the play through the years. Coriolanus is an unsympathetic character and the play has been traditionally less popular than other tragedies - a comprehensive introduction by the editor discusses these attitudes to the play and the reasons behind them.

A comprehensive collection of the best writing about this Shakespearian play, both as dramatic literature and theatrical performance, this book is an excellent resource companion to the text. This collected wisdom was originally published in 1986. It contains pieces of commentary from as far back as the late 18th Century but also highly acclaimed critical pieces from more recent years, organised into six general themes.

It is almost as if Shakespeare had deliberately adapted this brutal murder tale to dare himself to find sympathy in the farthest extreme of human error. The three chief characters do grave - the gravest - wrong; and yet, plunged as they are into an atmosphere of sensuality, betrayal, and terror, to murder, lie, and scheme, they have yet persistently commanded the involvement and pity of their audiences. Herein would lie a crucial question for critics and actors seeking the true images of these characters: how can - and for the critics, why should - three such wrongdoers as Othello, Desdemona, and Iago win, so surely, so much care and compassion?
Beginning here, the author sets out to discover how the complex, troubled characters of the play were interpreted by actors and critics from Shakespeare's time to the present. Starting with Burbage, Shakespeare's own "grieved Moor," Rosenberg re-creates the historic stage interpretations of Othello - by Betterton in the Restoration, by Booth, Quin, Garrick, Barry, and Kemble in the eighteenth century, by Kean, Macready, Irving, Booth, Forrest, and Salvini in the nineteenth, and by prominent actors of our own time. The great Iago characterizations are also here, and the Desdemonas in a line that includes Mrs. Siddons, Ellen Terry, and Sarah Bernhardt. The theater record is supplemented with comments on the characters provided by distinguished modern actors of the play.
Then the author compares the acting interpretations with those of the critics, from old Rymer - who called Othello a "bloody farce" - to the most significant modern commentators. In some of the wittiest parts of the book, Rosenberg defends in turn Iago, Othello, Desdemona, and the play (and even Thomas Bowdler) from the attacks of their severest critics; but he finds it possible to reconcile the best critical characterizations with the best acting conceptions, and to propose a synthesis based on his own study and experience of the play.
The author's study of the successive stage editings of the play - some of them to reduce playing time, others demanded by the taste and moral sense of each new age - provides a running commentary of social and cultural history, and shows how these cuttings affected, as well as revealed, the actors' concepts of the characters. Othello is the most erotic, the most sensual in language and imagery of the great tragedies, and its heavily sexual atmosphere, so suitable to the seventeenth century, offended later cultures: the eighteenth century tried to "refine" it, and the nineteenth - particularly the age of Victoria - to "refine refinement" - but the essential form of the play survived.