Comparision between old and new "Othello" stories

The Story That Started It All

William Shakespeare based his play "Othello" on a story called "Hecatommithi" by Giraldi Cinthio's. This was a collection of a hundred tales that was printed in Italy in the sixteenth century. It is thought that Shakespeare read the original Italian version and got inspired to write his own. In writing his own version, Shakespeare kept most of the original ideas but also added some of his own twists.

Giraldi, Giovanni Battista , 1504-73, Italian author, known also as Cinthio, Cintio, Cinzio, or Cyntius. He wrote tragedies, lyric verse, and tales. Some of the stories in his Hecatommithi [one hundred tales] (1565) were translated by Whetstone and other 16th-century English writers (Info Please).

The plot of Shakespeare's "Othello" is largely taken from Giraldi Cinthio's "Hecatommithi", a tale of love, jealousy, and betrayal; however, the characters, themes, and attitudes of the works are vastly different, with Shakespeare's play being a more involved study of human nature and psychology. There are, however, a few deviations from Shakespeare's source, one of which being the motivations of the Iago figure. Cinthio's Iago was driven to revenge when Desdemona refused to have an affair with him; Iago's motivations are not nearly so plain in Shakespeare's version. Shakespeare tired to get the point of jealousy across more then revenge. (Othello)

The idea of Othello returning to the bestial state through the bare-handed murder of Desdemona is wholly Shakespeare's. In the main source for Othello, "Hecatommithi" the murder of Desdemona (or Disdemona as she is named in the story) is a stunningly violent act. In "Hecatommithi", Iago beats Disdemona with a stocking filled with sand, and then he and the Moor knock down the ceiling to break her skull. Cinthio makes no mention of Othello ever touching his wife. The only named character in Cinthio's story is Disdemona; the other characters are identified only as "the standard-bearer",meaning Iago, "the captain" who is Cassio, and "the Moor" which is Othello. In the original, the standard-bearer lusts after Disdemona, and is spurred to revenge when she rejects him. (Hecatommithi)

Minor differences are evident throughout, such as the mode of Desdemona's death, the supposed love of Cassio (not Iago) for Desdemona and the way that the handkerchief scene unfolds. One of the most obvious distinctions between the two stories is that Hecatommithi is written in story form while Othello is written as a play. Shakespeare invented a new character, Roderigo, who pursues the Moor's wife and is killed while trying to murder the captain. Unlike Othello, the Moor in Cinthio's story never repents the murder of his wife, and both he and the standard-bearer escape Venice and are killed much later. Cinthio also made a moral, that European women are unwise to marry the hot-blooded, uncontrollable males of other nations; Shakespeare chose not to reproduce this theory. (Hecatommithi)

In Shakespeare version, Iago is sexually obsessed, Othello seems to demonstrate extreme sexual reserve, and Cassio is a ladies man. Shakespeare places far more emphasis on Othello's race than Cinthio. Shakespeare is more inventive with both Othello's exotic past and the deep human emotions that come to the surface in the play. Cinthio's version is, in a word, "flat". It is just a story that is told and not gone into as much dept was Shakespeare made the reader connect with every character in his play. Othello is so much more than that. It explores jealousy, betrayal, blind rage, resentment and the gradual way that a human psyche can be destroyed. Shakespeare tell us more about Othello, inventing an exotic past for him and for the handkerchief, a past that makes him a romantic as well as a faithful military man (Othello)

Shakespeare was remarkably faithful and superior to his source. He kept the main message of Hecatommithi but made the story more personal and deeper. In the original the reader did not even know the name of the main character, but Shakespeare gave each character a physical and psychological identity.