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[[bold]] The Story of the Play [[/bold]]
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told him the truth of the little napkin and saved the lives of both master and mistress.

  It may be of moment to spend a word on the probable date of the action. It has long been my opinion that academic research about the plays of Shakespeare tends to imply several thousand times the research and information which the author had at his command and substitute a spurious history. However, risking the chance, it is of interest that from the beginning of the Venetian Eastern Empire, which was built up to insure a commerce route to India and the East, Venice had had her troubles.

  These troubles came both from her Christian sister states in Italy, who also had the Eastern trade in view, and from the Ottoman Empire which rather naturally disliked the domination of the Eastern Mediterranean by a Christian state. Venice had gotten control of Cyprus in 1488, through protecting the claimant to the throne, one Cattarina Cornaro. The protection of the lady consisted of taking her to Venice, placing her in luxurious but actual imprisonment, and putting a military governor in her place at Cyprus. Venice retained control of this military outpost until 1571 when Selim the Magnificent captured it. There seems to be a tendency on the part of literary scholars to place the probable date of the action of Othello at this later time; but in doing this they skip blithely over two things. First, that Shakespeare finishes the Empire problems with the destruction of the Turkish fleet by the storm which preceded the arrival of the Othello family at the island; and, second, that in 1498 Venice and France formed an alliance to attack the state of Milan, then ruled by Lodovico Sforza. Sforza was well schooled in diplomacy, and stirred up the

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Turks to attack the Eastern possessions of Venice in order to divert her attention. The diversion was satisfactory and at Sapienza the Venetian fleet was completely defeated on August 25, 1502. Venice was forced to sue for peace.

  During this same period an Eastern neighbor of Venice was having a deal of Turkish trouble too, the oldest Christian Empire, Abyssinia, was being attacked. This empire had been such a land of mystery to the Western nations that great legends about its mythical ruler Prester John had grown up, and late in the Fifteenth Century a Portuguese missionary had gone there to investigate. The result of his visit was an alliance of Abyssinia and Portugal against the Turks during the same time when the French and Venetians were fighting Sforza and the Turks. It has even been suggested that the Portuguese-Abyssinian concord might have been allied with Venice at this time and thus have given Venice the services of such an Ethiopian military genius as Othello. I doubt that Shakespeare documented his play of the dusky general to any such extent. But he might have been artistically tempted by the great prowess of the mythical Prester John, ruler of the black empire, and thus have given some of his stature and genius to Othello.

  For the Economist, we have a final tragedy in the play, that of Venice, a regal mistress of empire whose glory was very soon to be found only in archives and painting. For during this time the Doge and the Council dismissed consideration of a plan of Far Western exploration proferred by Columbus. Had the Fathers been less interested in Cyprus and the Levant, they and not Spain might have had Empire in the Americas. The tragedy of Venice was analogous with the tragedy wrought by the evil Iago; they, too, were ambitious.

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[[photograph of scene from Othello]]