Cinthio's Desdemona: The Story that Inspired Othello (English-Italian Parallel Edition)

The play Othello is one of Shakespeare's grimmest tragedies. Cinthio's Desdemona: the Story that inspired Othello, is almost horror.

Written in the Duchy of Ferrara decades before the Shakespeare play, the story Cinthio gives us is centred on its only named character: Desdemona.

It is a story about a man obsessed with a woman he cannot have (Desdemona) and who, because of it, he wants to kill. Shakespeare's play is about a man's hatred of a man: Iago's hatred of Othello. It is a profound diff...