Othello by William Shakespeare
Published 1603 · 122 pages · 172,908 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Drama
How hard is Othello to read?
Othello scores 58 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 62 out of 100
- Iago's plain language against Othello's exotic imagery; military and domestic registers.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Less complex than Hamlet; passion makes language direct.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Psychological drama grounded in action; themes emerge from specifics.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Tight plot with few digressions; Venice to Cyprus to catastrophe.
- Narrative indirection: 65 out of 100
- Iago's motives endlessly debated; truth and lies constantly confused.
- Symbolic density: 65 out of 100
- The handkerchief, the marriage bed, the candle Othello snuffs.
- Ironic distance: 70 out of 100
- The audience watches Iago deceive everyone; dramatic irony constant and painful.
- Resolution withholding: 30 out of 100
- Full tragic revelation and punishment; Othello kills himself over Desdemona's body.
- Structural complexity: 50 out of 100
- Classical focus on single action; fast pace from marriage to murder.
How Othello is regarded
Othello holds a literary regard score of 92 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.