ABSTRACT
Matters of state had separated Leontes and Polixenes in their childhood, and although they regularly wrote to each other, when the play opens they had only recently met again, when Polixenes, King of Bohemia, visited Leontes' court in Sicily. A reminder of the plot of Othello immediately reveals some of these differences between the onset of jealousy in Leontes and its onset in Othello. The play opens with Iago, Othello's ensign, complaining about being passed over for promotion. Othello has instead made Michael Cassio his lieutenant. Stewart describes some of different interpretations of Othello that have been made along psychological lines. The term "Othello Syndrome" was first introduced in 1955 to describe a series of schizophrenic, paranoid, and epileptic patients, in whom delusions of infidelity were prominent psychopathological features of a psychotic reaction. Othello's jealousy builds to a point far beyond that of Leontes, since he murders his wife, despite her vehement protestations of innocence.
