Synopsis
The original story of the Moor of Venice, by Gianbattista Giraldi Cinthio (1565), served William Shakespeare to create Othello, the only one of his great tragedies based on a work of fiction. Contravening the Elizabethan image of the Moor, Shakespeare inverts the roles of the protagonists and gives the Moor Othello the character of a noble and aristocratic man, while he reserves perversity and hypocrisy for the Italian Iago, developing in him one of the most profound studies of the wrong. In the end, the protagonist, like a true tragic hero, aware of his degradation and his loss, writes his own epitaph, with the anguish of the shattered hero. Translation and editing by Ángel-Luis Pujante, National Translation Award.