ABSTRACT
For the first twenty-nine pages of his masterful Othello and Interpretive Traditions, Edward Pechter reiterates in different ways just how painful it is to experience Shakespeare's play both on the page and the stage. It is precisely this pain that, according to Pechter, has helped sustain the play's “extraordinary power to affect audiences over four centuries” (21), and it is this pain that is at the very core of so many responses to Othello (8). In part, the “excruciating anxiety” upon which Pechter dwells has much to do with the “impossible demands of responding at once to Othello's and Iago's voices.” And, it is these “impossible demands” that have produced a “record of grief, rage and resistance” across numerous interpretations of the play (8).
