Introduction to Othello and Shakespeare - Period 1

 'Assignments and Due Dates Writing Assignment #1 Posted: 2/2/11 Due 2/4/11 “If you have..."

Feb 7
Senior English Period 1
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

AIM: Getting a first impression of the play the way actors would have in Shakespeare’s time.

Before Shakespeare was read, Shakespeare was heard.
Before Shakespeare was rehearsed, Shakespeare was heard.

Procedure: listen to the first scene.
Teacher describes the subplot that opens the play.
Students try to learn the scene, ask about vocabulary, and memorize at least one line before the end of class.

No texts will be distributed.

HW: Find the play on the Internet, read and print scenes i-iii

Shakespeare’s job was to create sound-text that contained all the things that language is supposed to contain like sense, logic, but also imagery and emotion.

Everyone know the story of Othello, for instance, before Shakespeare’s play “Othello”

Othello was never printed during Shakespeare’s lifetime. (Baptized April 26 [probably born on April 23] April 1564; died 23 April 1616)

Shakespeare found the story of Othello in a work by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. Cinthio’s work had not been translated into English until 1753, or 137 after Shakespeare had already died, or 149 years after the first performed it before King James I on November 1, 1604. Shakespeare would have had to have read the French translation or the Italian original. No one knows for sure whether Shakespeare had one, the other, or both. Shakespeare both borrowed and adapted his Othello from Cinthio’s Hecatommithi. You can find the English translation on the Internet. virgil.org/dswo/courses/shakespeare-survey/cinthio.pdf
or at

“Cinithio was a deliberate moralist; most of the tales in his collections were exempla designed to teach simple moral lessons related to domestic affairs. This particular story he told as a warning to parents to look well into the disposal of their daughters in marriage, to warn of what might happen to a girl who married a man of different race, religion, and social customs. “ – George Lyman Kitteridge The Complete Works of Shakespeare; Kitteridge-Ribner Edition, page 1154

Three students should volunteer to read Hecatommithi and discuss it for the class as a short panel discussion, taking question from the Class.

The Hecatommithi is only 7 pages long- this is not a hard assignment. First come first served!