Until you read the stories that Shakespeare read, it’s difficult to fully understand the plays he wrote. This is the tale of a particular story he read: the Italian novella which inspired Othello. Shakespeare adapted its plot to the stage, and like Romeo and Juliet, he made it world famous. To Shakespeare, Othello was the most important person in the tale. For the author of the novella however, Desdemona was the heart of the story. For the novella focusses on hatred of a woman. In Shakespeare’s hands the story became a play about the hatred of a man. There is much that the two stories share in common. Most of…