Othello

Austin Tichenor explores how the shift of a narrative’s perspective can offer answers to questions about which characters deserve redemption and our forgiveness, from Lear to Iago to Richard III.

John Douglas Thompson, who is playing the title role in Othello in the Royal Shakespeare Company production, shares his insights about the character and the play.

As visitors enter the Folger’s Shakespeare Exhibition Hall from the west lobby, before discovering the playwright’s stories and related artifacts in the interactive galleries, a majestic black mirror centered on a scarlet wall beckons them to take a closer look.

The contemporary artist reflects on his new piece for the Folger’s Shakespeare Exhibition and how his work uses museums’ collections to explore their histories.

Austin Tichenor grapples with the larger question of whether Iago deserves the sympathetic re-evaluation found in Iago: The Green Eyed Monster.

Farah Karim-Cooper explores the way that race is represented by Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello, in this excerpt from her new book, The Great White Bard.

Can we love Shakespeare and be antiracist? Farah Karim-Cooper’s new book explores the language of race and difference in plays such as Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, and The Tempest.

Actor Adrian Lester walks us through big moments in his illustrious career, including Cheek by Jowl’s all-male “As You Like It” and Peter Brook’s “Hamlet.”

Dumbarton Oaks fellow Abner Aldarondo explores a book in the Folger Collection that gathers together six plays printed in Mexico City in the 1830s.

Theater-maker and past Folger Fellow Debra Ann Byrd tells us about her solo show.

Keith Hamilton Cobb reflects on his play American Moor and how the questions he received in response to it led to the development of the Untitled Othello Project, a deeply scrutinizing exploration of Shakespeare’s text.

Dr. Patricia Akhimie and Dr. Carol Mejia LaPerle explore the ways that Shakespeare’s language—think descriptors like “fair,” “sooty,” and “alabaster”—constructs and enshrines systems of race and racism.