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Othello
The Shakespeare Made Easy series aims to take the fear out of Shakespeare. By having Shakespearean and Modern English facing each other, pupils will find it easier to comprehend the text. Through discussion of the life, work and theatre of Shakespeare pupils can gain a more rounded understanding of these classic works.
Paperback
Published November 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
January 28, 2026
A complete no frills adaptation - literally just a translation, without footnotes or explanations. Pretty good for reading along while watching the play. The lack of frills has some benefits and some drawbacks.
-The introduction is fairly bare bones - nothing you haven't heard before. Pretty skippable. More on the modernisation process might have been nice here.
-The lack of footnotes can lead to confusion. Some words are quite obscure but aren't translated or explained (strumpet soon comes to mind), while some of the modernisations are likely to confuse students even further ('mum's the word' being a modernisation none of my students would get)
+There aren't any distractions or attempts to razzle-dazzle the modernised version. At the same time, it isn't dumbed down within an inch of it's life. You can get a strong sense of the feeling of the original passage from reading the modernised versions. The meter and rhyme is usually lost but this is inevitable.
+The real bonus of this version is the many questions it asks at the end. There are specific discussion and essay questions for each scene and each character. They are great questions to trial for students and teachers alike.
-The introduction is fairly bare bones - nothing you haven't heard before. Pretty skippable. More on the modernisation process might have been nice here.
-The lack of footnotes can lead to confusion. Some words are quite obscure but aren't translated or explained (strumpet soon comes to mind), while some of the modernisations are likely to confuse students even further ('mum's the word' being a modernisation none of my students would get)
+There aren't any distractions or attempts to razzle-dazzle the modernised version. At the same time, it isn't dumbed down within an inch of it's life. You can get a strong sense of the feeling of the original passage from reading the modernised versions. The meter and rhyme is usually lost but this is inevitable.
+The real bonus of this version is the many questions it asks at the end. There are specific discussion and essay questions for each scene and each character. They are great questions to trial for students and teachers alike.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review