Othello, The Infamous Ripley and SHAKSPER

Abstract

When in March 1994 I last had the pleasure of visiting with the honoree of this book, I learned he had just completed The Texts of ‘Othello’. On the train to Newcastle, I relished the prospect of consulting the printout. Or perhaps the typescript, I thought, revising the prospect with a reflection on differing rates in the assimilation of computer technology. Not enough revision, as it turned out: in Newcastle I found myself browsing through the original holograph manuscript of The Texts of ‘Othello’, and chatting, about, among other things, SHAKSPER, the electronic discussion group of which I had for some years been a member. Questions came, answers followed: about a thousand SHAKSPEReans throughout the world, ranging from eminent academics to casually interested laity, conversing about whatever the latitudinarian moderator, Professor Hardy Cook of Bowie State University in Maryland, allowed — which is to say, pretty much anything with a Shakespearean resonance.