ON CHARLES LAMB'S OTHELLO

• Only five of the Shakespearean leading characters appear in the Lamb story: Othello, Iago, Desdemona, Emilia, and Cassio. Bianca is fully missing, not even mentioned; while Roderigo is only mentioned in passing, not by name but as a "fellow Iago had set on," his motivation of unrequited love as lowed out as his name.
• Othello was the first tragedy Charles Lamb adapted as a Tale. The second was the Scottish Play, after which he decided to retell in short prose all the other Shakespearean tragedies... minus the Roman tragedies and Titus Andronicus.
• Charles wrote to Wordsworth that "we believe Othello is the best among the Shakespearean Tales I have written." Not only the first, but also the author's fave retelling! No surprise that it has endured to the present day!
• The Lamb version lows out, at the end, that Othello's successor is Cassio, aside from giving a more righteous ending in which Iago is tortured with undescriptible pain, then executed in some unspecified way.
• In the Lamb version, the attempt to murder Cassio happens off-story: the lieutenant is brought wounded and bleeding (no mention of his new disability) into his commanding officer's bedchamber and Iago's attack upon him is told as a rather succinct flashback.
• Charles omits Othello's final suicidal speech and the fact that he understands his transgressions and cannot forgive himself for what he has done. It's the narrator who points out the faults in the general.