It's not surprising that Shakespeare chose Venice as the setting of a story filled with passion, jealousy, and sexual tension. For the Elizabethans, the Italians were wicked, murderous, and of loose morals. When playwrights of the day wanted to portray wickedness, they often created Italian characters causing problems in England, or set the plays in Italy. 

Venice was particularly exciting to the English. The women there were rumored to be very beautiful, and very interested in making love. Venetian men were considered hot-tempered, aggressive, and easily jealous. An Elizabethan audience watching Othello would have been highly suspicious of Desdemona and her behavior. Running off to get married behind your father's back was simply not done. Because Desdemona was Venetian, however, audiences wouldn't have been too surprised. As for Iago, he probably represented the kind of villain Elizabethans thought ran rampant throughout Italy! 

One interesting note is that the name Iago is Spanish. (The Italian form is Giacomo.) Shakespeare gave his most evil character a Spanish name, probably because Spain was England's worst enemy. Italy may have been the home of romantic, exotic sin, but true evil, according to the Elizabethans, came from Spain! 

The major themes of Othello are:

1. appearance and reality,
2. society's treatment of the outsider; and
3. jealousy

Shakespeare was fascinated with these questions. Many of his most evil characters were thought by others in the play to be sincere and truthful. In Othello, this theme has its most potent and dramatic realization in the character of Iago. Iago fools everyone in the play into believing he's honest. No one even suspects him of treachery, until the final act when Roderago first realizes how badly he's been fooled. In short, Iago proves that evil intentions can be masked behind a facade of honesty. 

The theme emerges in other characters: Brabantio is deceived by Desdemona's reaction to Othello, assuming she fears him when she truly loves the Moor. Othello suspects that Desdemona is unfaithful, despite her innocent looks. Othello also feels he's being deceived by Cassio, whom he trusts and who appears loyal. Emilia's exterior suggests salty indifference, but she turns against her husband and dies in defiance of Desdemona. Even Bianca, who is suspected of dishonesty, is ultimately seen as a sincere and caring woman.     And Othello, considered a barbarian by many in the play, is gentle and noble until driven to near-madness by the cruel manipulations of his most trusted "friend."                       

The inability to judge true from false is a human dilemma that we have all faced. In Othello's case, the dilemma proves fatal. Shakespeare dramatizes the problem by showing the consequences of trusting someone whose mask of honesty is perfect, almost to the very last. 

2. SOCIETY'S TREATMENT OF THE OUTSIDER 
Everyone has known the feeling of being alienated from a group, whether it's as the new kid at school, as a member of an ethnic or religious minority, or as someone who holds an unpopular opinion. Shakespeare points that problem in Othello by making his hero an outsider, one who doesn't quite belong in the society in which he lives. From the very beginning, when he's held in suspicion by a man who accuses him of seducing his daughter with mysterious charms, Othello stands apart from everyone else. As a man of another race and from another country, much of the conflict he faces is due to the reigning opinion that he doesn't quite belong. 

Othello's sensitivity to the issue becomes clear when Iago uses it as proof that Desdemona couldn't be faithful to a man so foreign- such a match is "unnatural," he says. Othello's self-confidence, once so strong, is easily eroded by Iago's ability to convince him that he's inferior to the men of Venice. Shakespeare dramatizes through Othello the tragedy of a man whose insecurities about his background, fed by public opinion, weaken his defenses and allow his worst instincts to take over. 

3. JEALOUSY 
Othello represents how jealousy, particularly sexual jealousy, is one of the most corrupting and destructive of emotions. It is jealousy (fed by his innate sense of evil) that prompts Iago to plot Othello's downfall; jealousy, too, is the tool that Iago uses to arouse Othello's passions. Roderigo and Bianca demonstrate jealousy at various times in the play, and Emilia demonstrates that she too knows the emotion well. Only Desdemona and Cassio, the true innocents of the story, seem beyond its clutches. 

Shakespeare used the theme in other plays, but nowhere else is it portrayed as quite the "green- eyed" monster it is in this play. Since it is an emotion that everyone shares, we watch its destructive influence on the characters with sympathy and horror.

Shakespeare delighted in taking old stories, adding his own particular brand of genius, and creating something new and better.  He based Othello on a story in a collection of tales, called Hecatonimithi, written in 1565 by Giraldi Cinthio, an Italian. A short synopsis of the original story gives some indication of how Shakespeare merely borrowed stories and made them his own. 

The heroine, called Disdemona, falls in love with a Moor. Her family agrees reluctantly to her marriage with him, and the couple lives together in Venice for awhile. 

The Moor (given no name) is sent to command the troops in Cyprus. The Moor and Disdemona travel there together, and it's in Cyprus that the ensign (Shakespeare's lago) plots against them. 

The ensign is in love with Disdemona. He feels that her rejection of him comes from her love of the captain  (Shakespeare's Cassio). Therefore, the ensign's plot is against Disdemona, not the Moor. 

The captain loses his job when he attempts a fight with another soldier; he isn't drunk, and the character of Roderigo has no counterpart. 

The ensign steals Disdemona's handkerchief (while she is holding his child) and places it in the captain's house. The captain finds it and tries to return it to Desdemona, but he leaves quickly when he hears the Moor's voice. 

Together, the Moor and the ensign kill Disdemona by hitting her on the head with a sandbag, and then making the roof collapse to make it look like an accident, The Moor is eventually killed by a relative of Disdemona, and the ensign is tortured to death for another crime. The ensign's wife has known the story all along. 

By making the Moor the center of his tragedy, Shakespeare created a character of nobility and sympathy. (The Moor in the Cinthio tale is unsympathetic.) He transformed an ugly little tale of sexual jealousy into a character study of a good man who, for all his virtue, is caught in a trap of evil and can't escape.  It was Shakespeare's genius to take the stuff of melodrama and transform it into tragedy of the highest.

What is it that causes Othello's downfall?  Some have said that he's simply a jealous person whose jealousy of his wife gets out of hand.  Others insist that jealousy is not part of his natural make-up that the emotion takes over only when Iago pushes him to the brink of insanity.

Most of the evidence in the play tends to support the latter interpretation.  Othello doesn't show himself to be jealous early in the play.  Manipulated by Iago's skillful lies, Othello must confront emotions he can't handle.  His jealousy literally drives \him mad.  Anger and hate replace his wisdom and judgment, and the power of these destructive emotions leads to this sorry end. 

Adapted from Barron's Educational Series, Inc. Electronically Enhanced 1993, World Library, Inc.