ABSTRACT
Did Shakespeare write Othello backwards? Did he start with act 3, scene 3, and after completing act 5, did he compose acts 1–2? According to Ned B. Allen, writing in the pages of Shakespeare Survey more than thirty years ago, that is just what he did. Comparing Shakespeare's play with its main source in Giraldi Cinthio's seventh novella in his Hecatommithi, third decade (Venice, 1566), Allen noticed that the action of Othello that is directly indebted to the source begins with 3.3. Cinthio's account of the fateful marriage of Othello and Desdemona does not include the episodes of acts 1 and 2, which are Shakespeare's invention (Allen, 13–29).
